Part 7

Not many days hence they will be out in the wide world of air and sunshine of which they now know as little as when they chipped the shell. Lusty fellows they will be then, with much of their parents' beauty already displayed in their bright new plumage and capable of an outcry that will hold a bird-eating cat at bay. A little later they will be, as their parents are, helpful allies against the borers, the insidious enemies of our apple-tree. It is a warfare which the groundling habits of the golden-wings make them more ready to engage in than any other of the woodpecker clans.

In sultry August weather, when the shrill cry of the cicada pierces the hot air like a hotter needle of sound, and the dry husky beat of his wings emphasizes the apparent fact of drouth as you walk on the desiccated slippery herbage of meadow and pasture, the golden-wings with all their grown-up family fly up before you from their feast on the ant hills and go flashing and flickering away like rockets shot aslant, into the green tent of the wild cherry trees to their dessert of juicy black fruit.

Early in the dreariness of November, they have vanished with all the horde of summer residents who have made the season of leaf, flower, and fruit the brighter by their presence. The desolate leafless months go by, till at last comes the promise of spring, and you are aware of a half unconscious listening for the golden-wings. Presently the loud, long, joyous iteration breaks upon your ear, and you hail the fulfillment of the promise and the blithe new comer, a golden link in the lengthening chain that is encircling the earth.

JUNE DAYS

June brings skies of purest blue, flecked with drifts of silver, fields and woods in the flush of fresh verdure, with the streams winding among them in crystal loops that invite the angler with promise of more than fish, something that tackle cannot lure nor creel hold.

The air is full of the perfume of locust and grape bloom, the spicy odor of pine and fir, and of pleasant voices--the subdued murmur of the brook's changing babble, the hum of bees, the stir of the breeze, the songs of birds. Out of the shady aisles of the woods come the flute note of the hermit thrush, the silvery chime of the tawny thrush; and from the forest border, where the lithe birches swing their shadows to and fro along the bounds of wood and field, comes that voice of June, the cuckoo's gurgling note of preparation, and then the soft, monotonous call that centuries ago gave him a name.

General Kukushna the exiles in Siberia entitle him; and when they hear his voice, every one who can break bounds is irresistibly drawn to follow him, and live for a brief season a free life in the greenwood. As to many weary souls and hampered bodies there, so to many such here comes the voice of the little commander, now persuasive, now imperative, not to men and women in exile or wearing the convict's garb, but suffering some sort of servitude laid upon them or self-imposed. Toiling for bread, for wealth, for fame, they are alike in bondage--chained to the shop, the farm, the desk, the office.

Some who hear, obey, and revel in the brief but delightful freedom of June days spent in the perfumed breath of full-leafed woods, by cold water-brooks and rippled lakes. Others listen with hungry hearts to the summons, but cannot loose their fetters, and can only answer with a sigh, "It is not for me," or "Not yet," and toil on, still hoping for future days of freedom.

But saddest of all is the case of such as hear not, or, hearing, heed not the voice of the Kukushna, the voices of the birds, the murmurous droning of bees amid the blossoms, the sweet prattle of running waters and dancing waves. Though these come to them from all about, and all about them are unfolded the manifold beauties of this joyous month, no sign is made to them. Their dull ears hear not the voices of nature, neither do their dim eyes see the wondrous miracle of spring which has been wrought all about them. Like the man with the muck-rake, they toil on, intent only upon the filth and litter at their feet. Sad indeed must it be to have a soul so poor that it responds to no caress of nature, sadder than any imposition of servitude or exile which yet hinders not one's soul from arising with intense longing for the wild world of woods and waters when Kukushna sounds his soft trumpet call.

XVI

THE BULLFROG

The flooded expanse of the marshes has shrunken perceptibly along its shoreward boundaries, leaving a mat of dead weeds, bits of driftwood, and a water-worn selvage of bare earth to mark its widest limits. The green tips of the rushes are thrust above the amber shallows, whereon flotillas of water-shield lie anchored in the sun, while steel-blue devil's-needles sew the warm air with intangible threads of zigzag flight.

The meshed shadows of the water-maples are full of the reflections of the green and silver of young leaves. The naked tangle of button-bushes has become a green island, populous with garrulous colonies of redwings. The great flocks of wild ducks that came to the reopened waters have had their holiday rest, and journeyed onward to summer homes and cares in the further north. The few that remain are in scattered pairs and already in the silence and seclusion of nesting. You rarely see the voyaging muskrat or hear his plaintive love calls.

Your ear has long been accustomed to the watery clangor of the bittern, when a new yet familiar sound strikes it, the thin, vibrant bass of the first bullfrog's note. It may be lacking in musical quality, but it is attuned to its surroundings, and you are glad that the green-coated player has at last recovered his long-submerged banjo, and is twanging its water-soaked strings in prelude to the summer concert. He is a little out of practice, and his instrument is slightly out of tune, but a few days' use will restore both touch and resonance, when he and his hundred brethren shall awaken the marsh-haunting echoes and the sleeping birds with a grand twilight recital. It will reach your ears a mile away, and draw you back to the happy days of boyhood, when you listened for the bullfrogs to tell that fish would bite, and it was time for boys to go a-fishing.

In the first days of his return to the upper world of water, this old acquaintance may be shy, and neither permit nor offer any familiarity. The fixed placidity of his countenance is not disturbed by your approach, but if you overstep by one pace what he considers the proper limit, down goes his head under cover of the flood. Marking his jerky course with an underwake and a shiver of the rushes, he reappears, to calmly observe you from a safer distance.

Custom outwears his diffidence, and the fervid sun warms him to more genial moods, when he will suffer you to come quietly quite close to him and tickle his sides with a bullrush, till in an ecstasy of pleasure he loses all caution, and bears with supreme contentment the titillation of your finger tips. His flabby sides swell with fullness of enjoyment, his blinking eyes grow dreamy and the corners of his blandly expressionless mouth almost curve upward with an elusive smile. Not till your fingers gently close upon him does he become aware of the indiscretion into which he has lapsed, and with a frantic struggle he tears himself away from your grasp and goes plunging headlong into his nether element, bellowing out his shame and astonishment.

Another day as you troll along the channel an oar's length from the weedy borders, you see him afloat on his lily-pad raft, heeding you no more than does the golden-hearted blossom whose orange odor drifts about him, nor is he disturbed by splash of oar nor dip of paddle, nor even when his bark and her perfume-freighted consort are tossed on your undulating wake.

As summer wanes you see and hear him less frequently, but he is still your comrade of the marshes, occasionally announcing his presence with a resonant twang and a jerky splash among the sedges.

The pickerel weeds have struck their blue banners to the conquering frost, and the marshes are sere, and silent, and desolate. When they are warmed again with the new life of spring, we shall listen for the jubilant chorus of our old acquaintance, the bullfrog.

XVII

THE ANGLER

Angling is set down by the master of the craft, whom all revere but none now follow, as the Contemplative Man's Recreation; but is the angler, while angling, a contemplative man?

That beloved and worthy brother whose worm-baited hook dangles in quiet waters, placid as his mind--till some wayfaring perch, or bream, or bullhead shall by chance come upon it, he, meanwhile, with rod set in the bank, taking his ease upon the fresh June sward, not touching his tackle nor regarding it but with the corner of an eye--he may contemplate and dream day dreams. He may watch the clouds drifting across the blue, the green branches waving between him and them, consider the lilies of the field, note the songs of the catbird in the willow thicket, watch the poise and plunge of the kingfisher, and so spend all the day with nature and his own lazy thoughts. That is what he came for. Angling with him is only a pretense, an excuse to pay a visit to the great mother whom he so dearly loves; and if he carries home not so much as a scale, he is happy and content.

But how is it with him who comes stealing along with such light tread that it scarcely crushes the violets or shakes the dewdrops from the ferns, and casts his flies with such precise skill upon the very handsbreadth of water that gives most promise to his experienced eye; or drops his minnow with such care into the eddying pool, where he feels a bass must lie awaiting it. Eye and ear and every organ of sense are intent upon the sport for which he came. He sees only the images of the clouds, no branch but that which impedes him or offers cover to his stealthy approach. His ear is more alert for the splash of fishes than for bird songs. With his senses go all his thoughts, and float not away in day dreams.

Howsoever much he loves her, for the time while he hath rod in hand Mother Nature is a fish-woman, and he prays that she may deal generously with him. Though he be a parson, his thoughts tend not to religion; though a savant, not to science; though a statesman, not to politics; though an artist, to no art save the art of angling. So far removed from all these while he casts his fly or guides his minnow, how much further is his soul from all but the matter in hand when a fish has taken the one or the other, and all his skill is taxed to the utmost to bring his victim to creel. Heresy and paganism may prevail, the light of science be quenched, the country go to the dogs, pictures go unpainted, and statues unmoulded till he has saved this fish.

When the day is spent, the day's sport done, and he wends his way homeward with a goodly score, satisfied with himself and all the world besides, he may ponder on many things apart from that which has this day taken him by green fields and pleasant waters. Now he may brood his thoughts, and dream dreams; but while he angles, the complete angler is not a contemplative man.

The rivers roaring between their brimming banks; the brooks babbling over their pebbled beds and cross-stream logs that will be bridges for the fox in midsummer; the freed waters of lakes and ponds, dashing in slow beat of waves or quicker pulse of ripples against their shores, in voices monotonous but never tiresome, now call all who delight in the craft to go a-fishing.

With the sap in the aged tree, the blood quickens in the oldest angler's veins, whether he be of the anointed who fish by the book, or of the common sort who practice the methods of the forgotten inventors of the art.