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twg_000000038500 | to add another fixed fact to the stock of human knowledge, even though it be only that the 'peeper' is a frog, and not a 'newt' or a 'myth.' "But who would suppose that such a tiny little frogling could make such a loud, shrill, and ear-piercing sound? Who would think that a million of such puny things, could make | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038501 | the air of a summer evening so full of the music of their songs? I remember how, in my boyhood, I listened to their voices, which came up loudest, shrillest, merriest, when twilight was spreading its grey mantle over the earth; while the song of the birds was hushing into silence, and the coming darkness was lulling the things of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038502 | the day into repose; Oh! how merrily they sang along the little brooklet that took its rise in a spring in the meadow, and wended its way among the young grass, just springing into verdure, to the beautiful lake beyond. Their song is in my ear now, and that meadow, that beautiful lake, the tall hills on the summits of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038503 | which the departing sunlight lingered, the tall maples that clustered in their conelike beauty around that gushing fountain, the clustered plum trees, the giant oak, spared by the woodman's axe when the old forest was swept away, the fields, the 'Gulf' in the hill-side, and the beautiful creek, that came cascading down the shelving rocks, and leaping over precipices in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038504 | which the speckled trout sported: all these are before me now--a vision of loveliness, all the more dear because stamped upon the memory when life was young. Oh! Time! Time! the wrecks that lie scattered in thy pathway! That little brooklet, and the peepers, the fountain, the maples, and the meadow, are all gone. The brave old oak was riven | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038505 | by the lightning. The fields have crept up to the very summit of the hills, and even the stream that came down from the mountain has vanished away, save when the rains, or the melting snows send it in a freshet over the rocks where, when I was a boy, it was cascading always. That beautiful meadow, too, is gone, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038506 | and the streets of a modern village, with blocks of houses, and stores, and shops, occupy the place where I swung my first scythe. The old log-house vanished years and years ago. A steamboat ploughs its way through that beautiful lake, and the things of my boyhood are but visions of memory, called up from the long, long past. Not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038507 | one landmark of the olden time remains. Oh! Time! Time!" . THE CRICKET IN THE WALL--THE MINISTER'S ILLUSTRATION--OLD MEMORIES. We spent the following day in drifting quietly around the lake, floating lazily in the little bays, under the shadow of the tall trees, and lounging upon small islands, gathering the low-bush whortleberries which grew in abundance upon them. We filled | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038508 | our tin pails with this delicious fruit for a dessert for our evening meal. On one of these islands we found indications of its being inhabited by wood rabbits, and we sent Cullen to the shanty for the dogs to course them, not however with any intention of capturing them, but to enjoy the music of the chase, and hear | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038509 | the voices of the hounds echoing over the water. We landed them upon the island, and began beating for the game. The hounds understanding that their business was the pursuit of deer, and having hunted the island over thoroughly, came back to us, and sat quietly down upon their haunches, as much as to say there was nothing there worth | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038510 | looking after. But we had seen one of the little animals that had been roused from its bed by the dogs, and we called their special attention to the fact by leading them to the spot, and bidding them to "hunt him up." They understood our meaning, and started on the trail, with a loud and cheerful cry. For half | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038511 | an hour, they coursed him round and round the island, making the lake vocal with their merry music. We might have shot the game they were pursuing fifty times, but we had no design against its life. The little fellow did not seem to be greatly alarmed, for we noted him often, when by doubling he had temporarily thrown off | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038512 | the dogs, squat himself down, and throw his long ears back in the direction of the sound that had been pursuing him; and when the dogs straightened upon his trail, and approached where he sat, he would bound nimbly away among the thick bushes to double on them again. We called off the dogs and passed on to float along | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038513 | under the shadow of the forest trees and the hills, and take an occasional trout by way of experiment among the broken rocks along the shore. We had dispatched Cullen to the shanty to prepare dinner for us by six o'clock, at which hour we were to be at home. Cullen had promised, to use his own expression, "to spread | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038514 | himself" in the preparation of this meal, and he kept his promise. On our return, we found a sirloin of moose roasted to a turn, a stake of bear-meat broiled on the coals, a stew of jerked venison, and as pleasant a dish of fried trout and pork as an epicure could desire. Our appetites were keen, and we did | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038515 | ample justice to his cookery. This was one of the most delightful evenings that I have ever spent in the northern woods. There was such a calm resting upon all things, such an impress of repose upon forest and lake, such a cheerful quiet and serenity all around us, that one could scarcely refrain from rejoicing aloud in the beauty | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038516 | and the glory of the hour. As the sun sank to his rest behind the western hills, and the twilight began to gather in the forest and over the lake, the moon rose over the eastern high lands, walking with a queenly step up into the sky, casting a long line of brilliant light across the waters, showing the shadows | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038517 | of the mountains in bold outline in the depths below, and paling the stars by her brightness above. We all felt that we were recruiting in strength so rapidly in these mountain regions, where the air was so bracing and pure, under the influence of exercise, simple diet, natural sleep, and the absence of the labors and cares of business, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038518 | that we were contented, notwithstanding the monotony that began to mark our everyday proceedings. "I have been listening," said Spalding, as we sat upon the rude benches in front of our camp-fire, indulging in our usual season of smoking after our meals, "to the song of the crickets in those rude jams, and they call up sad, yet pleasant memories | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038519 | from the long past; of the old log house, the quiet fire-place, the crane in the jam, the great logs blazing upon the hearth of a cold winter evening, the house dog sleeping quietly in the corner, and the cat nestled confidingly between his feet. Oh! the days of old! the days of old! These crickets call back with these | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038520 | memories the circle that gathered around the hearth of my home, when I was young. Father, mother, brothers, sisters, playmates, and friends. How quietly some of them grew old and ripe, and then dropped into the grave. How quietly others stole away in their youth to the home of the dead, and how the rest have drifted away on the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038521 | currents of life and are lost to me in the mists and shadows of time. Even the home and the hearth are gone; they 'Battled with time and slow decay,' until at last they were wiped out from the things that are. The song of the peepers is a pleasant memory, and comes welling up with a thousand cherished recollections | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038522 | of our vanished youth; but the song of the cricket that made its home in the jams of the great stone fire-place is pleasanter, and the memories that come floating back with his remembered lay are pleasanter still. He was always there. He was not silent, like the out-door insect, through the spring month and the cold of winter, piping | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038523 | only in sadness when the still autumnal evenings close in their brightness and beauty over the earth; but he sang always, and his chirrup was heard at all seasons. In the winter the fire on the hearth warmed him; in the summer he had a cool resting place, and he was cheerful and merry through all the long year. And | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038524 | this reminds me of an anecdote of a venerable minister, who passed years ago to his rest. He was a Scotchman, and when preaching to his own congregation at Salem, in Washington comity, he indulged in broad Scotch, which to those who were accustomed to it was exceedingly pleasant. I was a boy then, and was returning with my father | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038525 | from a visit to Vermont. We stopped over the Sabbath at Salem, and attended worship in the neat little church of that pleasant village. There were no railroads in those days. The iron horse had not yet made his advent, and the scream of the steam whistle had never startled the echoes that dwell among the gorges of the Green | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038526 | Mountain State. Oh! Progress! Progress! I have travelled that same route often since, more than once within the year, and I flew over in an hour what was the work of all that cold winter day that brought us at night to that neat little village of Salem. I thought, as I dashed with a rush over the road I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038527 | once travelled so leisurely, how change was written upon everything; how time and progress had obliterated all the old landmarks, leaving scarcely anything around which memory could cling. Well! well! it is so everywhere. All over the world, change, improvement, progress are the words. The venerable minister, for his locks were grey, and time had ploughed deep furrows down his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038528 | cheeks, and draws palpable lines across his brow, was, as my memory paints him, the personification of earnestness, sincerity and truth. The text and the drift of the sermon I have forgotten, save the little fragment that fixed itself in my memory by the singularity of the figure by which he illustrated his meaning. He was speaking of the operation | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038529 | of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart, and how gently it won men from their sinful ways. He said, 'It was not boisterous, like the rush of the tempest; it was not fierce, like the lightning; it was not loud, like the thunder; but it was a still sma' voice, like a wee cricket in the wa's.' I regard | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038530 | the cricket that chirruped in the wall as an institution. One of the past to be sure, swept away by the current of progress, whose course is onward always; over everything, obliterating everything, hurling the things of today into history, or burying them in eternal oblivion. In this country there is nothing fixed, nothing stationary, and never has been since | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038531 | the first white man swung his axe against the outside forest tree; since the first green field was opened up to the sunlight from the deep shadows of the old forests that had stood there, grand, solemn, and boundless since this world was first thrown from the hand of God. There will be nothing fixed for centuries to come. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038532 | tide of progress will sweep onward in the future as it has done in the past. Onward is the great watchword of America, and American institutions; onward and onward, over the ancient forests; onward, over the log-houses that stood in the van of civilization; over the great fire-places; over the cricket in the wall; over the old house dog that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038533 | slept in the corner; over the loved faces that clustered around the blazing hearth in the days of our childhood; over everything primitive, everything, my friends, that you and I loved, when we were little children, and that comes drifting along down on the current of memory--bright visions of the returnless past. Ah, well! it is best that it should | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038534 | be so. It is best that the world should move on; that there should be no pause, no halting in the onward march. What are we that the earth should stand still at our bidding, or pause to contemplate our tears? Dust to dust is the great law, but so long as a phoenix rises from the ashes of decay, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038535 | what right have we to murmur? Time may desolate and destroy, but man can build up and beautify. True, his works perish as he perishes, but new works and new men are rising forever to fill, and more than fill, the vacancies and desolations of the past. Go ahead then, world! Sweep along, Progress! Mow away, Time! Tear down temple | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038536 | and stronghold; sweep away the marble palace and log-house! sweep away infancy and youth, manhood and old age; wipe out old memories, and pass the sponge over cherished recollections. The energy and the ingenuity of man are an over-match even for time. From the ruins of the past, from the desolations of decay, new structures will rise, and a new | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038537 | harvest, more abundant than the old, will spring up from the stubble over which Time's sickle has passed. Recuperation is a law stronger than decay, and it is written all over the face of the earth." . THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE--"SOME MEN ACHIEVE GREATNESS, AND SOME HAVE GREATNESS THRUST UPON THEM"--A SLIDE--RATTLESNAKES AT THE TOP AND AN ICY POOL AT | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038538 | THE BOTTOM--A FANCIFUL THEORY. While we sat thus conversing, our boatmen went down along the beach, and around a little point that ran out into the lake, to bathe. They were jolly, but uncultivated men, given to rudeness and profanity of speech when out of our immediate presence, and by themselves, and we heard from them, while they were splashing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038539 | and struggling in the water, expressions somewhat inelegant as well as profane. "I have often thought," said Spalding, as we listened to the rude and sometimes profane speech of our men, "how vast the influence which circumstances or accident, over which men have no control, have upon their conduct and destiny in this world, if not in the next. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038540 | poet has well said, 'Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of Ocean bear; And many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.' "These rude men are but testifying to the great truth, that man is the creature, in a greater or less degree, of circumstances; that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038541 | he is great or small, polished or rude, wise or simple, according to the accident of his birth, or the surroundings in the midst of which his journey of life lays. True, there _are_ intellects that will work themselves into position, men who will hew their way upward in spite of the difficulties which beset them, as there are others | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038542 | who will plunge down to degradation and dishonor, in defiance of tender rearing, of education, of association, and all the allurements to an upward career that can be presented to the human understanding. But these are so rare, that they may be properly regarded as exceptions to the general rule; so rare, indeed, as to prove its truth. You and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038543 | I can look around us, and from among our acquaintances select many men and women, whose genius and solid understanding, and whose virtues too, have remained undeveloped, and probably will do so till they die, from lack of opportunity for their exercise. Accident seems to have stricken them from their legitimate sphere. Circumstances, for which they were not responsible, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038544 | over which they could exercise no control, have barred them out from their seeming true position in the world, and the genius which was intended for the daylight and the eagle's flight towards the sun, is left to skim in darkness along the ground, like the course of the mousing owl. We have all seen another thing, which baffles our | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038545 | philosophy, while it proves the truth of the theory of which I am speaking. We have seen men, and see them every day, who, from no quality of heart or mind seem fitted to rise in the world, occupying commanding positions to which accident has lifted them; whose genius commands no admiration, whose virtues are of a doubtful character, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038546 | who possess no one quality which entitles them to our respect or the respect of the world. As the former are the victims of circumstance, these latter are its creatures. Both are the sport of fortune; the one class its victims, and the other its favorites. How is all this to be accounted for? And where rests the responsibility of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038547 | failure, and where the credit of success? Are there accidents floating about among the paths marked out on the chart of life by the Deity, which jostle his creatures from the destiny intended for them? Or were men thrown loose upon the currents of life, to take their chances of good and evil, to be virtuous or vile, according to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038548 | the influences among which they were floating, to be fortunate or otherwise, as the means of advancing themselves drifted within their reach? If so, where rests the responsibility, I ask again, of failure, and where the credit of success? Children are born into the world under strangely different influences. One first sees the light in the haunts of vice and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038549 | crime, amidst the corruptions which fester away down in the depths of a great city. The influences which surround it are only and always evil. They are such in infancy, in childhood, in youth, and in manhood. Another is cradled under the influence of intelligences, piety, virtue; having around it always the safeguards of refined and Christian civilization. What is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038550 | the difference in the degree of responsibility attached to the future of these antipode beginnings? Can you tell me where, and how these wide, terribly wide distinctions are to be reconciled? When and where the career of these germs of being, starting from points so wide asunder, are to meet, and how the balances of good and evil, of suffering | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038551 | and enjoyment of sinning and retribution, are to be adjusted at last? I have been asking myself, too, while listening to the speech of these men, so thoughtlessly uttered, where these profane epithets, these impious expressions, are to rest at last? Who can tell whether they do not go jarring through the universe, marring the music of the spheres, throwing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038552 | discord into the anthems of the morning stars when they sing together, a wail among the glad voices of the sons of God, when they shout for joy? In this world, and to the dulness of human perception, when the sound of the impious words has died away, or a smile comes back to the face clouded by the angry | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038553 | thought, the effect seems to have ceased; but it may not be so. The word or the thought may be wandering for ages, vibrating still, away off among the outer creations of God. The angel that bore them at the beginning from the lips or the heart, may be flying still, and generations and centuries may have passed, before his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038554 | journeying with them shall have ceased. "It is a fanciful idea, that whatever we say or think, is immortal; that every word we utter goes ringing through the universe forever; that every thought of the heart becomes a creation, a thing of vitality in some shape, starting forward among the things of some sort of life, never to die! I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038555 | have sometimes, in my dreamy hours, speculated upon the truth of such a theory, and reasoned with myself in favor of its reality. All I can say in its favor, however, is that I cannot disprove it. It may be true, or it may not. There are other mysteries quite as incomprehensible, the results of which we can see, without | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038556 | being able to penetrate the darkness in which they dwell. But assuming its truth, and appreciating the consequences which would follow, we should rule the tongue with a sterner sway, and guard the heart with a more watchful care than is our wont. Think of the obscene word becoming a living entity, the profane oath a thing of life; the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038557 | filthy or impure thought, assuming form and vitality, all starting forward to exist forever among the creations of infinite purity. Who would own one of these ogres in comparison with the beautiful things of God? Who would say of the obscene word, the profane oath, or the filthy or impious thought, 'this is mine. I made it. I am the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038558 | author of its being--its creator!' And yet it may be so. If it is, there are few of us who have not thrown into life much, very much to mar the harmonies of nature, to throw discord among the spheres." "Your statement," remarked Smith, "that accident has much to do with making or marring the fortunes of men, is doubtless | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038559 | true. Men are destroyed by accident, and their lives are sometimes saved by it. And if you'll put away metaphysics, come out of the cloud in which you have hid yourself in your dreamy speculations, I will furnish you with a case in point, showing that a man may get into a very unpleasant predicament, where he runs a great | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038560 | risk and gets some hard knocks, and yet be able to thank God for it, in perfect earnestness of spirit. A case of the kind came under my own observation, and while there was not much philosophy, or abstract speculation about it, there was a great deal of hard practical fact. It happened when I was a boy, at the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038561 | old homestead, in the valley that stretches to the southwest from the head of Crooked Lake. That valley is hemmed in by high and steep hills, and at the tune of which I speak, was much more beautiful in my view than it is now. There was no village there then, and the farms which stretched from hill to hill | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038562 | were greatly less valuable than they are now; but the woods and pastures, and meadows, lay exactly in the right places, and had among them partridges, and squirrels, and pigeons, and cattle, and sheep enough to make things pleasant; besides, there were plenty of trout in those days, in the stream that flows along through the valley midway between the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038563 | hills. On the north side, coming down through a gorge, or 'the gulf,' as we used to call it, was a stream which, in the dry season of the year, was a little brook, trickling over the rocks, but which, in the spring freshets, or when the clouds emptied themselves on the mountain, was a wild, foaming, roaring, and resistless | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038564 | torrent. In following this stream into 'the gulf,' you walked on a level plain between walls of rock, rising two or three hundred feet on either hand, and a dozen or more rods apart, until you came to 'the falls,' down which the stream rushed with a plunge and a roar, when its back was up, or over which, in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038565 | the dry season, it quietly rippled. These 'falls' were not perpendicular, but steep as the roof of a Dutch barn, and it was a great feat to climb them when the stream was low. Ascending about fifty feet, you came to a broad flat rock, large and smooth as a parlor floor, and which in the summer season was dry. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038566 | Well, one day, in company with a boy who was visiting me, I went up to the 'falls,' and we concluded to climb the shelving rocks to the 'table;' and taking off our shoes and stockings, entered upon the perilous ascent--for such to some extent it was. Hands and feet, fingers and toes, were all put in requisition. My friend | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038567 | began the ascent before I did, and was half way up when I started. I ought to have said, that at the foot of the 'falls,' was a basin, worn away by the torrent, and in which the water, clear and cold, then stood to the depth of three or four feet. We were toiling painfully up, when I heard | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038568 | a rush above, and in an instant my friend came like an arrow past me, sliding down the shelving rocks on his back, or rather in a half-sitting posture, his rear to the rocks. I won't undertake to say that the fire flew as he went by me, for the rocks were slate, and therefore such a phenomenon was not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038569 | likely to occur, but the entire absence of the seat of my friend's pantaloons, and the blood that trickled down to his toes, showed that the friction was considerable. As he passed me, I heard him exclaim, 'thank God,' and the next instant he plunged into the cold water at the base of the falls. What there was to be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038570 | thankful for in such a descent over the rocks, I could not at the time comprehend, as the chances were in favor of a broken back, or neck, or some other consummation equally out of the range of gratitude, in an ordinary way. He came up out of the water blowing and snorting like a porpoise with a cold in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038571 | his head, and waded to the shore. 'Come down,' he shouted, which I did, not quite so far or fast as he did, but fast enough to make an involuntary plunge, head foremost, into the pool at the bottom. The occasion of his catastrophe was this: he had ascended so near the table rock, that his hands were upon it, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038572 | and was lifting himself up, when, as his eyes came above the surface, the edge upon which his hands with most of his weight rested, gave way, and he started for the basin below. But he had a view of what satisfied him that to this accident he owed his life, and it was a sense of gratitude for his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038573 | escape, that prompted the exclamation I heard as he went bumping past me. Coiled on the rock above, and within reach of his face, were several large rattlesnakes, and he always insisted that one made a spring at him, as his hands gave way, and he put out for the basin into which he plunged. He was a good deal | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038574 | bruised, but his escape from the poisonous reptiles reconciled him to that." . HEADED TOWARDS HOME--THE MARTIN AND SABLE HUNTER--HIS CABIN--AUTUMNAL SCENERY. We concluded that we would break up our camp in the morning, and drift leisurely back towards civilization. We had tarried upon this beautiful lake until we had explored its romantic nooks, and we started on our return | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038575 | to our old camping ground at the foot of Round Pond. We had refrained for two days from disturbing the deer, and our supply of fresh venison was entirely exhausted. Just at the outlet of the lake we were leaving, is a little bay, towards the head of which are a great number of boulders, laying around loose, scattered about | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038576 | like haycocks in a meadow, only a great many more to the acre. The water about these boulders is shallow, and the lily-pads and grasses make a luxuriant pasture for the deer. Among these boulders, and concealed by one of them, save when his head was up, was a deer. While he fed we could see nothing of him, but | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038577 | when he raised his head to look around him, that alone was visible above the rock. Smith and myself were in the leading boat, he in the bow with his rifle. As the current swept near the rocks where the deer was feeding, we let our little craft drift quietly in that direction. As we came within shooting distance, say | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038578 | from fifteen to twenty rods, Smith adjusted his rifle, and as the animal raised its head above the rock, he sighted him carefully, and fired. It was a beautiful shot. There was nothing of the animal but the head visible, and the bullet, true to its aim, struck it square between the eyes, and it fell dead. This shot, together | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038579 | with the glory of killing the bear, elated Smith wonderfully, and upon the strength of them, he assumed the championship of the expedition. We drew the deer into the baggage-boat, and sent forward our pioneer to erect our tents, and prepare a late dinner, at our old camping ground, while we landed with the dogs on the island near the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038580 | head of Round Pond, or Lake, to course whatever game they might find upon it. They soon burst into full chorus, and dashed away. The island is small, containing only a few acres, and the game could not, therefore, take a wide range After a single turn, a deer broke, like a maddened war-horse, from the thicket, and plunging into | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038581 | the lake, struck boldly for the mainland, five hundred yards distant. We were near by with our two boats when he took to the water, and we thought we would accompany him as an escort to the shore; so we rowed up, and with a boat on each side, and within ten feet of him, as he swam, escorted him | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038582 | towards the forest. We treated him with great respect, offering him no indignity, interfering with him in nothing; and yet the old fellow seemed very far from appreciating our politeness, or relishing our company. The truth is, he was horribly frightened, and he struggled desperately to rid himself of our association; but we stuck by him like his destiny, talking | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038583 | kindly to him, endeavoring to impress upon his mind that we meant him no harm--indeed, that we were his friends. But, I repeat, he did not appreciate our politeness. By-and-by his feet touched the sand, and he bounded forward, as much as to say, "Good-bye, gentlemen," when a simultaneous yell from all six of us, and the discharge of four | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038584 | rifles in quick succession over him, added wonderfully to the energy of his flight. He will be likely to recognise us if he ever meets us again, and if the past furnishes any admonitions to his kind, he will give us a wide berth. We rowed leisurely along the eastern shore, and in a deep bay found excellent fishing, at | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038585 | the mouth of a cold mountain brook. On the banks of this bay we found the winter hut of a martin and sable trapper. It had an outer and inner apartment, the latter almost subterranean. The hut was composed of small logs, which a single man could lay up, the crevices between which were closely packed with moss, and the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038586 | roof covered with two or three layers of bark. The doorway was sawed through these logs, and a door, constructed of bark, was made to fit it; a rude hearth of sandstone was built in one corner, and a hole was open above it to let out the smoke. Against the outside of this pen, only about ten feet square, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038587 | logs were leaned up, the ends of which rested upon the ground, the interstices between them carefully stopped with moss, and the whole covered with bark; the ends consisted of stakes, driven into the ground and chinked with moss. Into this sleeping apartment a door was cut from the parlor, large enough for a man to pass by getting down | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038588 | on all-fours; while within was a plentiful supply of boughs from the spruce and fir tree. In this hut, now so dark, and in which the air was so dead and fetid, a solitary trapper had wintered, pursuing his occupation of martin and sable hunting--the which, if tolerably successful, would yield him some two or three hundred dollars the season. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038589 | He carried into the woods a bag of flour or meal, a few pounds of pork, pepper, salt, and tea; and this, with the game he killed, made up his supply of food. With no companion but his dog, he had probably spent two or three months, and very possibly more, in this lonely cabin. We arrived at our camp | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038590 | towards evening, and dined sumptuously on fresh venison and trout. Our pioneer had provided a luxurious bed of boughs within, and had fashioned rude seats in front of our tents. He had rolled the butt of a huge tree, which he had felled, to the proper place, against which to kindle our camp-fire, and we had a pleasant place to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038591 | sit, with our pipes, in the evening, looking out over the water, listening to the pile-drivers, half a dozen of which were driving their stakes along the reedy shore, with commendable diligence. The sunlight lay so beautifully on the hillsides, and contrasted so admirably with the deep shadows of the valley beneath, the lake was so calm and still, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038592 | old woods stood around so moveless and solemn, that one could scarcely persuade himself that he was not looking upon some gigantic picture, the fanciful grouping and transcendent coloring of some ingenious and winning artist. "The hillsides about these lakes," remarked the Doctor, "must be superlatively beautiful in the fall, when the forest puts on its autumnal foliage. They present | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038593 | such a variety of trees, of so many different kinds, and the hills and mountains are so admirably arranged, that they must be gorgeous beyond description. However we may prefer the green and _living_ beauty of spring, when everything is so full of vitality, so buoyant and free, yet the autumn scenery is the most magnificent of any in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038594 | year." "Every season has its charms," said Spalding, "Even the winter, with its cold, its dead and cheerless desolation, has its robe of chaste and peerless white, which, as well as that of the spring-time, the summer, and the autumn, has been the theme of song. I agree with you, that in gorgeousness of beauty, there is no season so | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038595 | rich as the autumn. Spring-time has its pleasant scenery, its genial days, its deep green, its flowers, and its singing birds; and these are all the more lovely because they follow so closely upon the cold storms, and bleak winds, the chilling and blank desolation of winter. We love the spring because of its freshness, its pervading vitality, its recuperating | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038596 | influences. Everybody loves the spring-time; everybody talks about the spring-time; poets sing of it; orators praise it; 'fair women and brave men' laud it; so that were spring-time human, and possessing human instincts, and subject to human frailties, it would have plenty of excuse, for becoming a very vain personage. "Somebody has called the autumnal days the 'saddest of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038597 | year.' I have forgotten who he was, if I ever knew; but in my judgment, he was all wrong. Dark days there are--damp, chilly, misty, wet, and unpleasant days in autumn; days that make one relish a corner by an old-fashioned fire. There are gusty, windy, capricious days in autumn, which nobody cares to praise, when the northwest wind goes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038598 | sweeping over the forest, roaring among the trees, and whirling the sere leaves along the ground, and which, to tell the truth about them, are anything but pleasant. But 'some days _must_ be dark and dreary,' and they serve to give the sunlight of a bright to-morrow a keener relish, and a lovelier comparative beauty. To call the fall days | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038599 | the 'saddest of the year' is an absurdity, poetical I admit, but still an absurdity. There is nothing sad in a cold, or a wet, a drizzly, a gusty, or a stormy day; much there may be that is unpleasant, much that one may be disposed to quarrel with, but they are anything but sad. "A calm autumnal day in | 60 | gutenberg |
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