No More Learning

Of course, he will see a Brocken spectre
of himself. He will see several meeting-houses, at least, and,
perhaps, that somebody ought to be assessed higher than he is, since
he has so handsome a wood-lot. Now take Julius Caesar, or Emanuel
Swedenborg, or a Fiji-Islander, and set him up there. Or suppose all
together, and let them compare notes afterward. Will it appear that
they have enjoyed the same prospect? What they will see will be as
different as Rome was from heaven or hell, or the last from the Fiji
Islands. For aught we know, as strange a man as any of these is always
at our elbow.

Why, it takes a sharpshooter to bring down even such trivial game as
snipes and woodcocks; he must take very particular aim, and know what
he is aiming at. He would stand a very small chance, if he fired at
random into the sky, being told that snipes were flying there. And so
is it with him that shoots at beauty; though he wait till the sky
falls, he will not bag any, if he does not already know its seasons
and haunts, and the color of its wing,--if he has not dreamed of it,
so that he can _anticipate_ it; then, indeed, he flushes it at every
step, shoots double and on the wing, with both barrels, even in
corn-fields. The sportsman trains himself, dresses, and watches
unweariedly, and loads and primes for his particular game. He prays
for it, and offers sacrifices, and so he gets it. After due and long
preparation, schooling his eye and hand, dreaming awake and asleep,
with gun and paddle and boat, he goes out after meadow-hens, which
most of his townsmen never saw nor dreamed of, and paddles for miles
against a head wind, and wades in water up to his knees, being out all
day without his dinner, and _therefore_ he gets them. He had them
half-way into his bag when he started, and has only to shove them
down. The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his
windows: what else has he windows or eyes for?
It comes and perches at
last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it
_with the feathers on_. The geese fly exactly under his zenith, and
honk when they get there, and he will keep himself supplied by firing
up his chimney; twenty musquash have the refusal of each one of his
traps before it is empty. If he lives, and his game spirit increases,
heaven and earth shall fail him sooner than game; and when he dies, he
will go to more extensive and, perchance, happier hunting-grounds. The
fisherman, too, dreams of fish, sees a bobbing cork in his dreams,
till he can almost catch them in his sink-spout. I knew a girl who,
being sent to pick huckleberries, picked wild gooseberries by the
quart, where no one else knew that there were any, because she was
accustomed to pick them up-country where she came from. The astronomer
knows where to go star-gathering, and sees one clearly in his mind
before any have seen it with a glass. The hen scratches and finds her
food right under where she stands; but such is not the way with the
hawk.

* * * * *

These bright leaves which I have mentioned are not the exception, but
the rule; for I believe that all leaves, even grasses and mosses,
acquire brighter colors just before their fall. When you come to
observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find that
each has, sooner or later, its peculiar autumnal tint; and if you
undertake to make a complete list of the bright tints, it will be
nearly as long as a catalogue of the plants in your vicinity.




WILD APPLES

THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE TREE


It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is
connected with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of
the _Rosaceae_, which includes the apple, also the true grasses, and
the _Labiatae_, or mints, were introduced only a short time previous
to the appearance of man on the globe.

It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown
primitive people whose traces have lately been found at the bottom of
the Swiss lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of Rome, so
old that they had no metallic implements. An entire black and
shriveled crab-apple has been recovered from their stores.

Tacitus says of the ancient Germans that they satisfied their hunger
with wild apples (_agrestia poma_), among other things.

Niebuhr observes that "the words for a house, a field, a plow,
plowing, wine, oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to
agriculture and the gentler way of life, agree in Latin and Greek,
while the Latin words for all objects pertaining to war or the chase
are utterly alien from the Greek. " Thus the apple tree may be
considered a symbol of peace no less than the olive.