No More Learning

THE RED MAPLE

By the twenty-fifth of September, the red maples generally are
beginning to be ripe. Some large ones have been conspicuously changing
for a week, and some single trees are now very brilliant. I notice a
small one, half a mile off across a meadow, against the green woodside
there, a far brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer,
and more conspicuous. I have observed this tree for several autumns
invariably changing earlier than its fellows, just as one tree ripens
its fruit earlier than another. It might serve to mark the season,
perhaps. I should be sorry if it were cut down. I know of two or three
such trees in different parts of our town, which might, perhaps, be
propagated from, as early ripeners or September trees, and their seed
be advertised in the market, as well as that of radishes, if we cared
as much about them.

At present these burning bushes stand chiefly along the edge of the
meadows, or I distinguish them afar on the hillsides here and there.
Sometimes you will see many small ones in a swamp turned quite crimson
when all other trees around are still perfectly green, and the former
appear so much the brighter for it. They take you by surprise, as you
are going by on one side, across the fields, thus early in the season,
as if it were some gay encampment of the red men, or other foresters,
of whose arrival you had not heard.

Some single trees, wholly bright scarlet, seen against others of their
kind still freshly green, or against evergreens, are more memorable
than whole groves will be by and by. How beautiful, when a whole tree
is like one great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from
lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if you look toward
the sun! What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape?
Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. If such a phenomenon
occurred but once, it would be handed down by tradition to posterity,
and get into the mythology at last.
The whole tree thus ripening in advance of its fellows attains a
singular preeminence, and sometimes maintains it for a week or two. 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.