XXIII.
FAREWELL TO “SUMMER REST.”
In this bright October day I know, not what Eve felt in leaving Paradise, but what John Milton imagined that she felt. To be sure, I have no such garden as hers must have been, and besides, I leave at a different season of the year; for she inquires feelingly, “Who now shall train these flowers?” whereas my flowers are so nearly spent that there is no need of training them. Tuberoses are gone, verbenas are gone, phloxes, common roses, and all the garden tribe, except scarlet sage, faithful marigolds, that never flinch to the last, and petunias, that are more graceful than they, and full as constant. Besides, there is the slow-footed chrysanthemum, too late for summer, often too late for autumn,—that never gets its Sunday jacket on until it is time to take it off again. But the amplitude of the floral harvest has been reaped. Now we only glean. Still one leaves a home of two months—summer months—not without a fluttering somewhere about the heart. The still days, the deep days, the mellow days, without taxation or excitement, are over. Now for the plunge and rush! Now for men. Farewell, Nature!
Good by, top of the hill! from which not a dwelling can be seen, only an horizon of mountains; and where, so often, just after the sun sets, we have lingered alone, in the mystery and inexplicable delight of an evening solitary hour, lifted far above the surrounding earth, and almost as one suspended in the very ether.
Good by, homely stone wall! along which have grown so many weeds which we naughtily admired and cherished, contrary to good farming manners; where so many shrubs, finding good soil, shot up into thickets laced with wild grape vines. Old tumble-down stone wall! Every stone colored and built over with weather-stains of hard moss; stones covered with brilliant ampelopsis, with the three-leaved ivy, fair to see, foul to touch, and with the rampant bitter-sweet! Let no one despise a stone wall, nor judge of it only from the cow’s point of view. It is the city of refuge to all the little fry. Squirrels run in and out, with saucy alertness, every summer’s day. Hares and rabbits find it a bulwark. The hoary old fat woodchuck rejoices in it as in a fenced city. Birds, too, wrens and sparrows, creep in and out, like children playing bo-peep. On these sturdy stones have we sat hours and hours, asking no softer cushion, and desiring no finer spectacle than God sent down from the heavens, or displayed upon the earth. The winter will soon vault into my seat, and a white shroud cover down the neglected old wall on the hill-top! Good by!
Neither can a sensitive nature forget his summer companions, or stint them in their meed of praise and gratitude. Worms whose metamorphosis we have watched; spiders whose webs glitter along the grass at morning and at evening, or mark out geometric figures among the trees,—spiders red, brown, black, green, gray, yellow, and speckled; soft-winged moths, gorgeous butterflies, steel-colored and shining black crickets, locusts, and grasshoppers, and all the rabble of creaking, singing, fiddling fellows besides, which swarm in air and earth,—we bid you all a hearty good-by. Sooth to say, we part from some of you without regret. But for the million we feel a true yearning,—so much have we watched your ways, so many hours has our soul been fed by you through our eyes. Ye are a part of the Great Father’s family.
O, how goodly a book is that which God has opened in this world! Every day is a separate leaf,—nay, not leaf, but volume, with text and note and picture, with every dainty quip and quirk of graceful art, with stores of knowledge illimitable, if one will only humble himself to receive it!
One should not willingly be ungrateful, even to the smallest creatures, or to inanimate objects, that have served his pleasure. And so, to reed and grass, bush and tree, stone and hill, brook and lake, all creeping things and all things that fly, to early birds and late chirping locusts, we wave our hand in grateful thanks!
But to that Providence over all, source of their joy and mine, what words can express what every manly heart must feel? Only the life itself can give thanks for life!