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27 chapters
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
The author wishes to express his thanks to the editors of the Boston Evening Transcript and the Atlantic Monthly for permission to reprint in this volume matter originally contributed to the columns of that paper and magazine; and to A. S. Burbank of Plymouth, I. Chester Horton, and Howard S. Adams for permission to reproduce various illustrations. CHAPTER CHAPTER I OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS CHAPTER II PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS CHAPTER III UNBUILDING A BUILDING CHAPTER IV FOREFATHERS' DAY CHAPTER V THE SING
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OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS
"The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed." So sang Felicia D. Hemans in the early years of the last century and she has been much derided by the thoughtless and irreverent who have said that the landing of the Pilgrims was not on a stern and rock-bound coast. Such scoffers evidently never sailed in by White Horse beach and "Hither Manomet" when a winter northeaster was shouldering the deep sea tides up against
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PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS
PLYMOUTH MAYFLOWERS
The first day on which one might hope for mayflowers came to Plymouth in late April. The day before a bitter northeaster had swept through the town, a gale like the December one in which the Pilgrim's shallop first weathered Manomet head and with broken mast limped in under the lee of Clark's Island. No promise of May had been in this wild storm that keened the dead on Burial Hill, yet this day that followed was to be better than a promise. It was May itself, come a few days ahead of the calenda
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UNBUILDING A BUILDING
UNBUILDING A BUILDING
I tore down an old house recently, rent it part from part with my own hands and a crowbar, piling it in its constituents, bricks with bricks, timber on timber, boards with boards. Any of us who dare love the iconoclast would be one if we dared sufficiently, and in this work I surely was an image-breaker, for the old house was more than it seemed. To the careless passer, it was a gray, bald, doddering old structure that seemed trying to shrink into the ground, untenanted, unsightly, and forlorn.
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FOREFATHERS' DAY
FOREFATHERS' DAY
One does not need to seek the brow of Cole's Hill very early on Forefathers' Day to see the star of morning rise and shine upon Plymouth. It marks the passing of one of the four longest nights of the year, those of the four days before Christmas, a memorable period for all Americans, for during it the Pilgrim Fathers came to Plymouth. According to the best authorities the exploring party set foot on the famous rock on Monday, Dec. 21 (new style). But the ship herself did not enter the harbor for
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THE SINGING PINES
THE SINGING PINES
The pines were asleep in the noonday heat That shimmered down the lea, But they waked with the roar of a wave-swept shore When the wind came in from the sea. They sang of ships, and the bosun piped, The hoarse watch roared a tune, The taut sheets whined in the twanging wind, You heard the breakers croon. For their brothers, masts on a thousand keels, Had sent a greeting free, And the answering song swelled clear and strong When the wind came in from the sea. Last night I heard the pines sing aga
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NANTUCKET IN APRIL
NANTUCKET IN APRIL
It is fabled that nine hundred years ago the Norsemen riding the white horses of the shoals, dismounted upon Nantucket, its original European discoverers. But this is hardly to be believed, for they did not stay there. Conditions the world over have changed much since the day of the Vikings, but still today he who comes to Nantucket must emulate them, and ride the same white horses of the shoals, for they surround the island and prance for the modern steamer as they did for the long Norse ships
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FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE
FOOTING IT ACROSS THE CAPE
The Pilgrims might have been envied their discovery of Cape Cod if they had come in the spring of the year. As it was, though they hailed it with joy, it being land anyway, yet they must have found it inexpressibly lonesome and spooky. To the newcomer it is apt to be a ghostly sort of place at any time of year, unless mayhap he be from some similar strand, for its rolling sand hills are swept by winds that wail, and beaten by a sea that grumbles when it does not cry aloud. At the time of year wh
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WILD APPLE TREES
WILD APPLE TREES
Coming back to my pastures after long absence I am always surprised and often otherwise moved at the changes which I can then clearly see have taken place in them. Had I frequented them day by day these would never have appeared to me. Just as in the countenances of one's best friends, seen often, there seem to be no mutations and we need to think definitely of some past period and then to compare the impression with the present one to see that the child is growing up or the old man growing olde
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MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT
MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT
All through the afternoon of the fervent July day I could see the sun sifting and winnowing his gold for the sunset. All the morning his alchemic forces had been quietly transmuting gray mists of midnight, vapors from damp humus, moisture from lush leaves and I know not what other pure though common elements into the precious glow that began to haze the west soon after noon. The old belief that the alchemist at his utmost cunning could recreate rose blooms from their own ashes had sure foundatio
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TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED
TURTLE-HEAD AND JEWEL-WEED
In my town, summer, whom the almanack calmly orders out on August 31st, refuses to be evicted in person and lingers serenely while the furniture is being removed, often until late September. In these September days I think we love her best, perhaps because we know that soon we shall lose her, and already the parting has begun. It is not that certain flowers that came joyously in June are now but dry bracts and seed pods. She has given us other beauties and fragrance to take their places. It is r
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THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK
THE WAY OF A WOODCHUCK
The memory of my first glimpse of a woodchuck always reminds me of an old story which needs to be retold that it may point my moral even though it does not adorn my tale. A minister, supplying for a time in a country parish, took a pleasant path through the fields to the church of a Sunday morning just before the service. There he found a boy digging most furiously in the sandy ground. "My lad," said the minister, in kindly reproof, "you ought not to do this on Sunday morning unless it is a labo
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ALONG THE SALT MARSHES
ALONG THE SALT MARSHES
When the wind is east Sumner's Islands seems to tug at its moorings like a cruiser swinging at a short hawser in the shelter of Stony beach. If you will stand on the tip of its gray rock prow and face the sea it is hard not to feel the rise and fall of surges under you, and in fancy you have one ear cocked for the boatswain's whistle and the call to the watch to bear a hand and get the anchor aboard. Just a moment and you will feel the pulse of the screw, hear the clink-clank of shovels and slic
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FISHING "DOWN OUTSIDE"
FISHING "DOWN OUTSIDE"
In the beginning of things were the cunners, known along Massachusetts Bay mainly as perch. Names are good only in certain localities. If you ask a Hingham boy how the cunners are biting he will be likely to throw rounded beach stones at you, thinking he is being made game of. Down at Newport, R. I., they catch cunners and if you talk salt-water perch to them it is at your peril. Elsewhere they are chogsett, or peradventure burgall, but everywhere they are nippers and baitstealers, and the trait
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VOICES OF THE BROOKSIDE
VOICES OF THE BROOKSIDE
For two hundred years the water has rippled over the sill on which once firmly set the gate to the old milldam. Of the mill, save this, no sliver of wood remains, and even the tradition of the miller and his work is gone. We merely know that here stood one of the grist mills of the early pioneers, a mill to which the neighbors brought their corn in sacks, perchance upon their shoulders, and after the wheel had turned and the grist was ground, carried the meal off in the same way. Thus rapidly do
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GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER
GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER
"The Fourth of July is past; the summer is gone," says a New England proverb. In this as in many a quaint saying of our weather-wise, hill-tramping ancestors, there is more than a half-truth hidden in what seems a humorous distortion. In mid-August we look about us and know this, for we see ourselves slipping more and more rapidly down the long slope that leads from flower-crowned hilltop to frozen lake. Some day a snowstorm will get under the runners and the balance of the descent will be but a
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JOTHAM STORIES
JOTHAM STORIES
Almost daily in our hottest season the east wind brings coolness and refreshment to the dwellers at the sea beach. Nor does it stop at the seacoast. Often hills a dozen miles inland feel its cool caress. The inland, simmering beneath the sun, with the thermometer in the eighties or worse, sends heavenward great columns of heated air. To take the place of this the lower strata draws in from the sea, filled with the coolness and sparkle of the brine and informed with that mysterious tonic which se
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GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER
GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER
I think the daintiest scent that can be found in the woodland in these last days of September is that of the coral-root flower, which looks like a wan, tan ghost of a blossom, but nevertheless is sweet and succulent. The plant is by no means common in my world. Many a year goes by without my seeing it at all. In autumn it grows from among dry pine leaves, a slender spike that has neither root leaves nor stem leaves, but looks like the dried flower scape of some spring blooming plant. So protecti
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MYSTICAL PASTURES
MYSTICAL PASTURES
Two century-old pasture pines shelter my favorite sleeping spot in the pasture, and croon solemn, mystical tunes all night long. If I could but, with my dull ear grown finer, some day learn to interpret these I might grow wise with the yet unfathomed wisdom of the universe. Their runes are not of the gentle, vivid life that thrills below them. Before the little creatures of the pasture world were created, before pines grew upon earth, the words they sing were set to the sagas of vast space, rhyt
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WHITE PINE GROVES
WHITE PINE GROVES
A tiny brown wing brushed my cheek this morning, flitting madly southeastward on the wings of the November gale. It was a belated one of many that have scattered from the pine taps this autumn, for it was the single wing of a white pine seed and the cone harvest has been good. Ever since August the squirrels have known this and the stripped spindles lie by the score under the big pasture pines where these have left them after eating the seeds. It seems much work for small pay for the squirrel. H
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THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER
THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER
In late autumn the pasture is a place of ghosts, yet ghosts so friendly withal that one walks among them unafraid. November is the month of transition when many of the pasture folk pass on to another, perhaps a better life. The blue-jays stop their harsh teasing screams now and then to toll a clear, musical passing bell for these, and the nuthatches are goblin gabriels blowing eerie trumps of resurrection to which the spirits of the bee people drone a second as they wing their way onward. The gr
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RED CEDAR LORE
RED CEDAR LORE
The rough November winds which roar through the bare branches of the tall trees ride over spaces of sun-steeped calm in the sheltered pastures. Here often summer slips back and dances for a day, arrayed in all the jewels of the year. The older birches toss amber-brown beads upon her as she sways by, but the little ones dance with her, their temples bound with gold bangles which autumn gave them. The lady birches are in fashion this year most surely. Now that they have doffed summer draperies it
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AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK
AUNT SUE'S SNOWBANK
For weeks the country folk, wise in weather lore, have been shaking their heads of a morning or an evening and saying, "The air is full of snow!" No one of them can tell you how he knows it, but he knows. "It feels like snow," and that does not mean that the air is of a certain coldness or chilliness, dampness or dryness, though there is definite balance of these conditions when we say it. It means that there is in it another quality, too subtle to be defined, that touches some equally subtle si
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SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS
SPORTS OF THE WINTER WOODS
The time to go into the winter woods for love of them is in the still chill of dawn when the blue-black of the west is hardly yet touched with the purple that heralds the day, when the high sky in the east begins to warm from gray to gold and below black twigs make lace against an amber glow that draws one as does the flame the moth. At such a time the cold of the night may lie bitter on the open fields and the snow crystals there whine beneath the tread, but in the deep heart of the woods the w
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COASTING ON PONKAPOAG
COASTING ON PONKAPOAG
Looking backward from these days of slothful ease in getting about it seems as if the golden days of Ponkapoag were those of a generation and more ago. Then it was an isolated hamlet. To be sure, there was a railroad a mile and a half away and the venturous traveller might go north or south on it twice a day, though few Ponkapoag people were that sort of venturesome travellers. The days of the stage coaches had passed and the place was more thrown upon its own resources, especially for excitemen
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PICKEREL FISHING
PICKEREL FISHING
I rarely know where the pickerel fishermen come from. They seem to be a race apart and their talk is not of towns or politics, of business or religion. Neither love nor war is their theme, but ice and fishing through it, and what happens to a man while so doing. If I suggest Randolph, or Framingham, Wellesley or Weymouth, they know them, perchance, as places where such and such ponds have a depth that is known to them and ice on which they have had adventures which they can detail. Those things
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YULE FIRES
YULE FIRES
The Peace of the Gods which our Aryan forbears knew descended at Yuletide hovers near always as we watch the Yule log, whether in the keen air under the stars, or in the tapestried shelter about the carefully fended hearth. Man loves warmth, but he worships flame, as he always has since he first saw it fall from heaven, though few of us now make our prayer to it. Its flicker in the night will draw us far; nor are we alone in this, for all the wild things of the wood come as well and toss back it
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