are yet "lilies of the field" over which you may profitably meditate, remembering that Solomon Ben-David was not so arrayed. Two kinds there are,—one like the tiger-lily of the gardens, the petals curled back and showing the whole leopard-spotted corolla,—the other bell-shaped, rarer, and growing one only on a stalk. Both are to be found in open spaces, bush-grown fields, and airy, sunny spots. It is worth a hot and dusty June walk to get into one of those nooks. You can spend days and not exhaust the study which one little triangular bit of overgrown pasture affords,—spend them, not as a naturalist in close, patient study, because to such a one a square yard of moss is as exhaustless as the forests of Guiana to a Waterton, but as a nemophilist, taking simple delight in mere observation and individual discovery.
"Many haps fall in the field
Seldom seen by watchful eyes."
And so all sorts of curious ways are discoverable by the mere wood-lounger. At one time your way is barred by the great portcullis of the strong threaded web of the field spider, who sits like a porter in king's livery of black and gold at his gate. Then you have a peep into the winding maelström-funnel of another of the spider family. Poe must have suffered metempsychosis into the body of a blue-bottle, when he wrote his "Descent into the Maelström"; for such an insect, hanging midway down that treacherous, sticky descent, and seeing Death creeping up from the bottom to grasp him, might have a clear idea of what was undergone by the fisherman of Lofoden.
Or, if one tire of the open meadows, and the sun be too hot, think of the laurel groves,—not now, as in the Christmas-time, white with snow, but white again with thousands on thousands of argent cups, loaded with blossoms, meeting over your head in arches of flowery tracery, and one solitary tree standing deep in the woods, like a frigate packed with her silver canvas lying out to windward of the fleet of merchantmen she is convoying. The cool laurel groves! Often as one sees that sight, it is always with a fresh shock of pleasure to the frame.
Then, when autumn comes and the leaves change, there is still endless variety for the little basket or botanical-case which swings lightly on your arm or hangs across your shoulder. Owen Jones never devised any ornaments for wall or niche one half so brilliant as the color of those leaves which a dexterous hand will readily group upon a sheet of white paper, where your eye may catch it, as, after achieving a successful sentence, you look up from your study-table. Speaking of leaves, who knows how large an oak-loaf will grow in this New England? I have just sat down after measuring one gathered in a bit of copse hard by the town of M–, a bit of copse which skirts a beautiful wild ravine, with a superb hemlock and pine grove creeping down its steep bank. I have just honestly measured my leaf, and it shows fourteen inches in length by a trifle of nine and a half in breadth.
In the same ravine I found—and in any patch of woodland you may do the like—a perfect treasury of mosses. A shallow tin box or a wooden bowl filled with these and duly watered will give a winter-garden to the smallest lodging. Sun and light are, as Mr. Toots says, of "no consequence" to the moss family. But if one be above such trifles as mosses, and with Young American loftiness aspire to full-grown trees, there is still plenty to do in the most ordinary woodlands. After a chapter of Mr. Ruskin upon Claude and Poussin and Turner, there is nothing like going to the original documents. In default of the National Gallery from London and the Pitti Palace from the other side of Arno, which cannot be summoned into court at a moment's notice, we can solve at least half the problem. Mr. Ruskin may or may not be right about the Claudes; but it is very easy to see if he be right as to the trees. And if we prove him right with his theory of branches and bark, we have a fair presumption that he has eyes to see the alleged falsehoods in him of Lorraine. Now here is a chance to do a little bit of Art-criticism quite unexpensively. Discontented young gentlemen murmur about the education of this people being too practical, unaesthetic, and all that, and sigh for the culture which a foreign land only can give. But a man who has no eye for Nature will hardly learn to love her at second-hand through the mediation of canvas and colors. I should like very much to be able to walk into a Turner Gallery once a week; but, for all that, I would not give up a Connecticut Valley sunset, such as last summer could be had for the looking at. Not Turner, even, could paint those level shadows, all interfused with trembling light, that filled the hollows of the hills across the river, and brought out their wavy contour, and showed the depth and distance of the valley opening miles away. Could he throw athwart the dark mirror of the sleeping water in the gorge, which led the imprisoned river stealthily to the sea, the gliding snows of the sails rosy-white that stole swan-like from behind the bluffs? Could he bring down the rainbow till its hither abutment rested on the centre of the stream in a transparent mist of driving rain, while its keystone was lost in the stooping cloud above? Art is good, as well as long; but time is also fleeting, and, not being millionnaires, with the luxury of a run across the Atlantic at command, let us make what we can out of what we have. It is very probable that architecture, too, is a sore subject to aspiring Young America, who turns discontentedly from the stucco and pine-plank tracery of the new cathedral of St. Aërian. But let Young America go out to the meadows, and discover for himself a group of young elms. There is one I know of, not unattainable by very moderate pedestrianism from the same seaport before alluded to, where a most exquisite arrangement of arches and tracery can be seen. Six or eight elms, their long bending boughs clothed with thick, clinging leafage, mingle their tops, forming a sort of vaulted roof, such as at the intersection of nave and transepts occurs in every Gothic church which has no central tower. More exquisite curves, better studies for a healthy-minded and original architect, could hardly be found. The interlacing branches are suggestive of tracery-patterns, not to be outdone even in the flamboyant windows of York and Rouen. There is no excuse for the squat, ugly, and stupid arches one sees in almost every attempt at pointed architecture, when the elm-tree springs by every riverside in the land.
But it is time to conclude our desultory rambles. It would be pleasant to me to recall many another of my old haunts, spots which, perhaps, were never called beautiful before now, and may not be again for many a day. For they all lie in a very tame and prosaic country, nearly level, the utmost elevation getting hardly a couple of hundred feet above tidewater mark; a country with less natural beauty than belongs to most New England towns,—bare, bleak, rocky, with stunted vegetation and ungenial soil. Yet within its limits there are brooks and marshes and copses and woodlands,—rocks over which the wild columbine hangs its fuchsia-like pendants, and dells where nestle the earliest and sweetest of the wood-flowerets.
And now to come back to the miserable sinner. As schoolboy, as bank-clerk, as teacher, as worker in many ways, he has unemployed leisure in the hours of daylight,—not so many as he should have, perhaps, but still many hours in the course of the month. Shall he go to the livery-stable, the bowling-alley, or the billiard-saloon? Not being a saint, of course he can plead no high-toned sense of need of physical culture, to warrant these indulgences. He goes because he likes it, gets enjoyment, exercise, rest for a mind tasked to the full with the day's work. This he ought to have; and if butting little ivory balls about or propelling big wooden ones will give it him, let him have it, if so be that it cannot be got otherwise. There is no contamination in the cue or the ten-pin; but there is in the habits and associations of the places where they are found. Let us not be maw-wormish about it, but tell the truth as it is. The quasi-gambling principle upon which all such places are conducted stimulates the love of hazard and makes way for the betting propensity to become full-blown. Of course, one can bet, if one have money; two lumps of sugar and a few flies will enable a man to lose the fortune of the Rothschilds, if he will. That is not the question. The billiard-saloons do educate men for the gambling-house, simply because they cannot go to them without either losing their money or winning their games. Beside that, the gaseous, dusty, confined, and tobacco-scented air of those places is not to be compared with our free, open, out-doors hills and meadows, for any hygienic purposes.
But, argument apart, there is a sad New England story, so often repeated as to be almost wearisome, were it not so sad. It is of the fresh, frank, honest-hearted boy, who may be seen behind many a bank-counter. At first, so active, trustworthy, and trusted,—yet with the constant temptation of unemployed time and energies demanding supply of action. Little by little these are supplied,—supplied by the billiard-table and its concomitants.
