No More Learning

I
am thrilled at the sight of it, bearing aloft its scarlet standard for
the regiment of green-clad foresters around, and I go half a mile out
of my way to examine it. A single tree becomes thus the crowning
beauty of some meadowy vale, and the expression of the whole
surrounding forest is at once more spirited for it.

A small red maple has grown, perchance, far away at the head of some
retired valley, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faithfully
discharged the duties of a maple there, all winter and summer,
neglected none of its economies, but added to its stature in the
virtue which belongs to a maple, by a steady growth for so many
months, never having gone gadding abroad, and is nearer heaven than it
was in the spring. It has faithfully husbanded its sap, and afforded a
shelter to the wandering bird, has long since ripened its seeds and
committed them to the winds, and has the satisfaction of knowing,
perhaps, that a thousand little well-behaved maples are already
settled in life somewhere. It deserves well of Mapledom. Its leaves
have been asking it from time to time, in a whisper, "When shall we
redden? " And now, in this month of September, this month of traveling,
when men are hastening to the seaside, or the mountains, or the lakes,
this modest maple, still without budging an inch, travels in its
reputation,--runs up its scarlet flag on that hillside, which shows
that it has finished its summer's work before all other trees, and
withdraws from the contest. At the eleventh hour of the year, the
tree which no scrutiny could have detected here when it was most
industrious is thus, by the tint of its maturity, by its very blushes,
revealed at last to the careless and distant traveler, and leads his
thoughts away from the dusty road into those brave solitudes which it
inhabits. It flashes out conspicuous with all the virtue and beauty of
a maple,--_Acer rubrum_. We may now read its title, or _rubric_,
clear. Its _virtues_, not its sins, are as scarlet.

Notwithstanding the red maple is the most intense scarlet of any of
our trees, the sugar maple has been the most celebrated, and Michaux
in his "Sylva" does not speak of the autumnal color of the former.
About the second of October, these trees, both large and small, are
most brilliant, though many are still green. In "sprout-lands" they
seem to vie with one another, and ever some particular one in the
midst of the crowd will be of a peculiarly pure scarlet, and by its
more intense color attract our eye even at a distance, and carry off
the palm.
A large red maple swamp, when at the height of its change,
is the most obviously brilliant of all tangible things, where I dwell,
so abundant is this tree with us. It varies much both in form and
color. A great many are merely yellow; more, scarlet; others, scarlet
deepening into crimson, more red than common. Look at yonder swamp of
maples mixed with pines, at the base of a pine-clad hill, a quarter of
a mile off, so that you get the full effect of the bright colors,
without detecting the imperfections of the leaves, and see their
yellow, scarlet, and crimson fires, of all tints, mingled and
contrasted with the green. Some maples are yet green, only yellow or
crimson-tipped on the edges of their flakes, like the edges of a
hazelnut bur; some are wholly brilliant scarlet, raying out regularly
and finely every way, bilaterally, like the veins of a leaf; others,
of more irregular form, when I turn my head slightly, emptying out
some of its earthiness and concealing the trunk of the tree, seem to
rest heavily flake on flake, like yellow and scarlet clouds, wreath
upon wreath, or like snow-drifts driving through the air, stratified
by the wind. It adds greatly to the beauty of such a swamp at this
season, that, even though there may be no other trees interspersed, it
is not seen as a simple mass of color, but, different trees being of
different colors and hues, the outline of each crescent treetop is
distinct, and where one laps on to another. Yet a painter would hardly
venture to make them thus distinct a quarter of a mile off.

As I go across a meadow directly toward a low rising ground this
bright afternoon, I see, some fifty rods off toward the sun, the top
of a maple swamp just appearing over the sheeny russet edge of the
hill, a stripe apparently twenty rods long by ten feet deep, of the
most intensely brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any
flowers or fruits, or any tints ever painted. As I advance, lowering
the edge of the hill which makes the firm foreground or lower frame of
the picture, the depth of the brilliant grove revealed steadily
increases, suggesting that the whole of the inclosed valley is filled
with such color. One wonders that the tithing-men and fathers of the
town are not out to see what the trees mean by their high colors and
exuberance of spirits, fearing that some mischief is brewing. I do not
see what the Puritans did at this season, when the maples blaze out in
scarlet. They certainly could not have worshiped in groves then.
Perhaps that is what they built meeting-houses and fenced them round
with horse-sheds for.


THE ELM

Now too, the first of October, or later, the elms are at the height of
their autumnal beauty,--great brownish-yellow masses, warm from their
September oven, hanging over the highway. Their leaves are perfectly
ripe. I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of the
men who live beneath them.