The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866. Various
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clung most eloquently to his neck with both her hands, the joyful light from her eyes streaming silently into his. O, it was fair to see,—this might of human love,—this mystery that needed no solving! His face shedding fidelity and joyfulness, and her heart accepting it with a trust that had not one question!
In a few but most eloquent words he told us his adventures. But that would make a story by itself. A shipwreck,—and capture by Japanese pirates,—prison,—escape,—landing at Mobile,—pressed into the Rebel service,—battle,—prisoner to the Union forces,—glad taking of the oath of allegiance,—interview with General Banks, and service at last for the North. It was a wild, strange story of suffering, hardships, and wonderful escapes. Colonel Lunt said he never should have known the man, nor guessed at him, but for his eyes, he was so altered in every way,—so rough and strong-looking, with his complexion tanned and weather-beaten; and he had always been such a delicate, curled darling of indulgent parents! However, he looked twice the man he was before, Mrs. Lunt whispered me; and Percy could not take her eyes off him, he looked so strong and noble, and his face so full of high thoughts.
He had been in several battles, and had been wounded twice. After his first wound he had been some time in a Southern hospital. "And now I think of it, Percy," he said, turning suddenly to her, and taking her on his knee as if she had been a baby, "it was in a hospital that I found out where you were. You must know that I hadn't the least clew to your whereabout, and thought of you as most likely still in London. You know our plan was to travel together for some months, and I could not guess where you might be, if indeed you were alive. After the battle the other day, I went into one of the improvised hospitals to look after some brave fellows of mine, when one of the nurses asked me for directions as to the burial of some men who had just been brought in. They had officers' uniforms on, and it was ascertained that they were really dead. As I turned to give the necessary directions, a man at my side, who was smoothing down the limbs of one who had just ceased to breathe, handed me a photograph from the man's breast, all rumpled and bloody. I recognized it in a moment as yours, Percy,—though how it should have been in that man's breast, I couldn't see."
Percy and I looked at each other. But we dared not think. He went on.
"I could not recognize him. But he was one of so many who were brought in on that terrible day after the battle, and except my own company I scarcely knew any of the officers. But I saw by the photograph where you were, at least the name on the back was a guide. It was Barton, Mass., and the date of April, 1861. So, as I had worked pretty well at Antietam, Little Mac gave me a week's furlough, and I thought I would try it!"
"Do you remember at all how he looked?" Mrs. Lunt asked, for I could not speak.
"The young officer? Yes, Madam, I looked keenly at him, you may be sure. He was tall and fine-looking, with dark, curling hair, and his regular features were smiling and peaceful. They mostly look so who are shot dead at once. And this one had not suffered. He had died at the moment of triumph."
I went home to fear and to weep. It seemed too certain. And time brought us the truth. Robert had fallen as he would have chosen to fall, leading on his men. He was so tall, and he was such a shining mark for death! But I knew that no din of cannon or roar of battle was loud enough to overcome the still, small voices of home, and that his last thought was, as he wrote me it would be, "of you all."
O beautiful, valiant youth! O fearful ploughshare, tearing thy way through so many bleeding hearts! O terrible throes, out of which a new nation must be born!
IN THE HEMLOCKS
Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of birds that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half the number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We little suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are intruding upon,—what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from Central and South America, and from the islands of the sea, are holding their reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing their pleasure on the ground before us.
I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They did not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had sons and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was a sound as of suppressed hilarity.
I take it for granted that the forester was only saying a pretty thing of the birds, though I have observed that it does sometimes annoy them when Spaulding's cart rumbles through their house. Generally, however, they are as unconscious of Spaulding as Spaulding is of them.
Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty varieties of these summer visitants, many of them common to other woods in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient solitudes, and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite unusual to find so large a number abiding in one forest,—and that not a large one,—most of them nesting and spending the summer there. Many of those I observed commonly pass this season much farther north. But the geographical distribution of birds is rather a climatical one. The same temperature, though under different parallels, usually attracts the same birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to the difference in latitude. A given height above the sea level under the parallel of 30° may have the same climate as places under that of 35°, and similar Flora and Fauna. At the head-waters of the Delaware, where I write, the latitude is that of Boston, but the region has a much greater elevation, and hence a climate that compares better with the northern part of the State and of New England. Half a day's drive to the southeast brings me down into quite a different temperature, with an older geological formation, different forest timber, and different birds,—even with different mammals. Neither the little Gray Rabbit nor the little Gray Fox is found in my locality, but the great Northern Hare and the Red Fox are seen here. In the last century a colony of beavers dwelt here, though the oldest inhabitant cannot now point to even the traditional site of their dams. The ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the reader, are rich in many things beside birds. Indeed, their wealth in this respect is owing mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growths, their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered retreats.
Their history is of an heroic cast. Ravished and torn by the tanner in his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, their energies never paralyzed. Not many years ago a public highway passed through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travellers took the hint and went around; and now, walking along its deserted course, I see only the footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels.
Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them. Here she shows me what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom and am awed by the deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently about me.
No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these solitudes. The cows have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing is to be had. In spring the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the country about penetrate the old Barkpeeling for raspberries and blackberries; and I know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid stream casting for trout.
In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright June morning go I also to reap my harvest,—pursuing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit more savory than berries, and game for another palate than that tickled by trout.
June, of all the months, the student of ornithology can least afford to lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage. And what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest to me. I have met the Gray-cheeked Thrush (Turdus aliciæ) in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The silence of the Cedar-Bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. A bird's song contains a clew to its life, and establishes a sympathy, an understanding, between itself