Footing It in Franconia

Part 1

Books by Mr. Torrey.

=EVERYDAY BIRDS.= Elementary Studies. With twelve colored Illustrations reproduced from Audubon. Square 12mo, $1.00.

=BIRDS IN THE BUSH.= 16mo, $1.25.

=A RAMBLER’S LEASE.= 16mo, $1.25.

=THE FOOT-PATH WAY.= 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.

=A FLORIDA SKETCH-BOOK.= 16mo, $1.25.

=SPRING NOTES FROM TENNESSEE.= 16mo, $1.25.

=A WORLD OF GREEN HILLS.= 16mo, $1.25.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA

BY BRADFORD TORREY

“And now each man bestride his hobby, and dust away his bells to what tune he pleases.”

CHARLES LAMB.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1901

COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY BRADFORD TORREY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published October, 1901

CONTENTS.

PAGE

AUTUMN 1

SPRING 79

A DAY IN JUNE 120

BERRY-TIME FELICITIES 147

RED LEAF DAYS 177

AMERICAN SKYLARKS 195

A QUIET MORNING 208

IN THE LANDAFF VALLEY 217

A VISIT TO MOUNT AGASSIZ 228

FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA

Part 2

AUTUMN

“There did they dwell, As happy spirits as were ever seen; If but a bird, to keep them company, Or butterfly sate down, they were, I ween, As pleased as if the same had been a Maiden-queen.”

WORDSWORTH.

Five or six hours of pleasant railway travel, up the course of one river valley after another,--the Merrimac, the Pemigewasset, the Baker, the Connecticut, and finally the Ammonoosuc,--not to forget the best hour of all, on the shores of Lake Winnipisaukee, the spacious blue water now lying full in the sun, now half concealed by a fringe of woods, with mountains and hills, Chocorua, Paugus, and the rest, shifting their places beyond it, appearing and disappearing as the train follows the winding track,--five or six hours of this delightful panoramic journey, and we leave the cars at Littleton. Then a few miles in a carriage up a long, steep hill through a glorious autumn-scented forest, the horses pausing for breath as one water-bar after another is surmounted, and we are at the height of land, where two or three highland farmers have cleared some rocky acres, built houses and painted them, and planted gardens and orchards. As we reach this happy clearing all the mountains stand facing us on the horizon, and below, between us and Lafayette, lies the valley of Franconia, toward which, again through stretches of forest, we rapidly descend. At the bottom of the way Gale River comes dancing to meet us, babbling among its boulders,--more boulders than water at this end of the summer heats,--in its cheerful uphill progress. Its uphill progress, I say, and repeat it; and if any reader disputes the word, then he has never been there and seen the water for himself, or else he is an unfortunate who has lost his child’s heart (without which there is no kingdom of heaven for a man), and no longer lives by faith in his own senses. On the spot I have called the attention of many to it, and they have every one agreed with me. Mountain rivers have attributes of their own; or, possibly, the mountains themselves lay some spell upon the running water or upon the beholder’s eyesight. Be that as it may, Lafayette all the while draws nearer and nearer, we going one way and Gale River the other, until, after leaving the village houses behind us, we alight almost at its base. Solemn and magnificent, it is yet most companionable, standing thus in front of one’s door, the first thing to be looked at in the morning, and the last at night.

The last thing to be thought of at night is the weather,--the weather and what goes with it and depends upon it, the question of the next day’s programme. In a hill country meteorological prognostications are proverbially difficult; but we have learned to “hit it right” once in a while; and, right or wrong, we never omit our evening forecast. “It looks like a fair day to-morrow,” says one. “Well,” answers the other, with no thought of discourtesy in the use of the subjunctive particle, “if it is, what say you to walking to Bethlehem by the way of Wallace Hill, and taking in Mount Agassiz on our return after dinner?” Or the prophet speaks more doubtfully, and the other says, “Oh well, if it is cloudy and threatening, we will go the Landaff Valley round, and see what birds are in the larch swamp. If it seems to have set in for a steady rain, we can try the Butter Hill road.”

And so it goes. In Franconia it must be a very bad half day indeed when we fail to stretch our legs with a five or six mile jaunt. I speak of those of us who foot it. The more ease-loving, or less uneasy members of the party, who keep their carriage, are naturally less independent of outside conditions. When it rains they amuse themselves indoors; a pitch of sensibleness which the rest of us may sometimes regard with a shade of envy, perhaps, though we have never admitted as much to each other, much less to any one else. To plod through the mud is more exhilarating than to sit before a fire; and we leave the question of reasonableness and animal comfort on one side. Time is short, and we decline to waste it on theoretical considerations.

Our company, as I say, is divided: carriage people and pedestrians, we may call them; or, if you like, drivers and footmen. The walkers are now no more than the others. Formerly--till this present autumn--they were three. Now, alas, one of them walks no longer on earth. The hills that knew him so well know him no more. The asters and goldenrods bloom, but he comes not to gather them. The maples redden, but he comes not to see them. Yet in a better and truer sense he is with us still; for we remember him, and continually talk of him. If we pass a sphagnum bog, we think how at this point he used to turn aside and put a few mosses into his box. Some professor in Germany, or a scholar in New Haven, had asked him to collect additional specimens. In those days of his sphagnum absorption we called him sometimes the “sphagnostic.”

If we come down a certain steep pitch in the road from Garnet Hill, we remind each other that here he always stopped to look for Aster Lindleyanus, telling us meanwhile how problematical the identity of the plant really was. Professor So-and-So had pronounced it Lindleyanus, but Doctor Somebody-Else believed it to be only an odd form of a commoner species. In the Wallace Hill woods, I remember how we spent an afternoon there, he and I, only two years ago, searching for an orchid which just then had come newly under discussion among botanists, and how pleased he was when for once my eyes were luckier than his. If we are on the Landaff road, my companion asks, “Do you remember the Sunday noon when we went home and told E---- that this wood was full of his rare willow? And how he posted over here by himself, directly after dinner, to see it? And how he said, in a tone of whimsical entreaty, ‘Please don’t find it anywhere else; we mustn’t let it become too common’?” Oh yes, I remember; and my companion knows he has no need to remind me of it; but he loves to talk of the absent,--and he knows I love to hear him.

That willow I can never see anywhere without thinking of the man who first told me about it. Whether I pass the single small specimen between Franconia and the Profile House, so close upon the highway that the road-menders are continually cutting it back, or the one on the Bethlehem road, or the great cluster of stems on Wallace Hill, it will always be his willow.

And indeed this whole beautiful hill country is his. How happy he was in it! I used sometimes to talk to him about the glories of our Southern mountains,--Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia; but he was never to be enticed away even in thought. “I think I shall never go out of New England again,” he would answer, with a smile; and he never did, though in his youth he had traveled more widely than I am ever likely to do. The very roadsides here must miss him, and wonder why he no longer passes, with his botanical box slung over his shoulder and an opera-glass in his hand,--equally ready for a plant or a bird. He was always looking for something, and always finding it. With his happiness, his goodness, his gentle dignity, his philosophic temper, his knowledge of his own mind, his love of all things beautiful, he has made Franconia a dear place for all of us who knew him here.

To me, as to all of us, it is dear also for its own sake. This season I returned to it alone,--with no walking mate, I mean to say. He was to join me later, but for eight or ten days I was to follow the road by myself. At night I must make my own forecast of the weather and lay out my own morrow.

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