No More Learning

Wealth indoors may be the inheritance of few, but it is equally
distributed on the Common. All children alike can revel in this golden
harvest.

Surely trees should be set in our streets with a view to their October
splendor, though I doubt whether this is ever considered by the "Tree
Society. " Do you not think it will make some odds to these children
that they were brought up under the maples? Hundreds of eyes are
steadily drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the
truants are caught and educated the moment they step abroad. Indeed,
neither the truant nor the studious is at present taught color in the
schools. These are instead of the bright colors in apothecaries'
shops and city windows. It is a pity that we have no more _red_
maples, and some hickories, in our streets as well. Our paint-box is
very imperfectly filled. Instead of, or beside, supplying such
paint-boxes as we do, we might supply these natural colors to the
young. Where else will they study color under greater advantages? What
School of Design can vie with this? Think how much the eyes of
painters of all kinds, and of manufacturers of cloth and paper, and
paper-stainers, and countless others, are to be educated by these
autumnal colors. The stationer's envelopes may be of very various
tints, yet not so various as those of the leaves of a single tree. If
you want a different shade or tint of a particular color, you have
only to look farther within or without the tree or the wood.
These
leaves are not many dipped in one dye, as at the dye-house, but they
are dyed in light of infinitely various degrees of strength and left
to set and dry there.

Shall the names of so many of our colors continue to be derived from
those of obscure foreign localities, as Naples yellow, Prussian blue,
raw Sienna, burnt Umber, Gamboge? (surely the Tyrian purple must have
faded by this time), or from comparatively trivial articles of
commerce,--chocolate, lemon, coffee, cinnamon, claret? (shall we
compare our hickory to a lemon, or a lemon to a hickory? ) or from ores
and oxides which few ever see? Shall we so often, when describing to
our neighbors the color of something we have seen, refer them, not to
some natural object in our neighborhood, but perchance to a bit of
earth fetched from the other side of the planet, which possibly they
may find at the apothecary's, but which probably neither they nor we
ever saw? Have we not an _earth_ under our feet,--aye, and a sky over
our heads? Or is the last _all_ ultramarine? What do we know of
sapphire, amethyst, emerald, ruby, amber, and the like,--most of us
who take these names in vain? Leave these precious words to
cabinet-keepers, virtuosos, and maids-of-honor,--to the Nabobs,
Begums, and Chobdars of Hindostan, or wherever else. I do not see why,
since America and her autumn woods have been discovered, our leaves
should not compete with the precious stones in giving names to colors;
and, indeed, I believe that in course of time the names of some of our
trees and shrubs, as well as flowers, will get into our popular
chromatic nomenclature.

But of much more importance than a knowledge of the names and
distinctions of color is the joy and exhilaration which these colored
leaves excite. Already these brilliant trees throughout the street,
without any more variety, are at least equal to an annual festival and
holiday, or a week of such. These are cheap and innocent gala-days,
celebrated by one and all without the aid of committees or marshals,
such a show as may safely be licensed, not attracting gamblers or
rum-sellers, not requiring any special police to keep the peace. And
poor indeed must be that New England village's October which has not
the maple in its streets. This October festival costs no powder, nor
ringing of bells, but every tree is a living liberty-pole on which a
thousand bright flags are waving.