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LINES TO BLUMINE

When day gives place to sweeter night,
And twinkling stars come out on high,
Like sentinels in armor bright,
To watch amid the ebon sky;

High in the north thine eye will see
That lonely star, whose steady beam
Shall look into thy heart, and be
The phantom of thy troubled dream.

I love thee not: though once thy heart
Beat in warm answer to my own;
Like strangers we shall meet and part,
And I shall tread my way alone.

Brooklyn, L. I. Hans Von Spiegel.

EPISTLE TO THE EDITOR

Dear Knick: Were’t not for reverence due
From such as I to such as you,
I really could not choose but swear
To think that e’en a millionaire,
With piles enough of brick and stone
To make a city of his own,
And broad domains in simple fee,
Or held in pledge as mortgagee,
And scrip whose outspread folds would cover
His native Hesse-Darmstadt over;
Should have withal the hard assurance
To hold a Son of Song in durance.
Why, as I lately sauntered out
To see what Gotham was about,
Just below Niblo’s, west southwest,
In a prosaic street at best,
I chanced upon a lodge so small,
So Lilliputian-like in all,
That Argus, hundred-eyed albeit,
Might pass a hundred times, nor see it.

Agog to see what manikin
Had shrined his household gods therein,
With step as light as tip-toe fairy’s
I stole right in among the Lares.
There in the cosiest of nooks,
Up to his very eyes in books,
Sat a lone wight, nor stout nor lean,
Nor old nor young, but just between,
Poring along the figured columns
Of those most unmelodious volumes,
Intently as if there and then
He conned the fate of gods and men.
Methought that brow so full and fair
Was formed the poet’s wreath to wear;
And as those eyes of azure hue,
One moment lifted, met my view,
Gay worlds of starry thoughts appeared
In their blue depths serenely sphered.
Just then the voice of one unseen,
All redolent of Hippocrene,
Stole forth so sweetly on the air,
I felt the Muse indeed was there,
And feel how much her words divine
Must lose, interpreted by mine.

For shame, it said, Fitz-Greene, for shame!
To yield thee to inglorious thrall,
And leave the trophy of thy fame
Without its crowning capital!

The sculptor, bard, as well may trust
To shape a form for glory’s shrine,
If, ceasing with the breathing bust.
He leave unwrought the brow divine.

How oft the lavish Muse has grieved.
O’er hopes thy early years inspired,
And sighed that he who much received,
Forgot that much would be required.

But not too late, if heeded yet,
The voice that chides thy mute repose,
And bids thee pay at last the debt
Thy genius to Parnassus owes.

’Tis not enough that pride may urge
Thy claims to memory’s grateful lore,
And boast, as rapt from Lethe’s surge,
The Suliote and the Tuscarore.

Nay, bard, thy own land’s mighty dead
Deserve a nobler hymn from thee,
Than bravest of the brave that bled
At Laspi or Thermopylæ.

Remember, then, thy young renown,
Thy country’s dead, thy muse’s sigh;
And bid thy vigorous manhood crown
What youthful genius reared so high!

Still to his task the bard applied,
Unrecked, unheeded all beside;
And as he closed his balance-sheet,
I heard his murmuring lips repeat:
‘Three hundred thousand, city rents,
Item a hundred, seven per cents,
Add cash, another hundred, say
From bonds and notes paid off this day,
And eke from drafts at sight for dues
Just credited to land accrues,
Whose rental stretches on and on
From Aroostook to Oregon;
Total, a semi-million clear
Income received for one short year!’
Aladdin’s wealth scarce mounted faster
At its spring-tide than thine, Herr Astor.

W. P. P.

EARLY SPRING AT THE HOMESTEAD

BY HANS VON SPIEGEL

Lo! here is Spring again, the dainty goddess come back to see what Winter has been doing for so many months in forest and meadow, on the broad hill-side and in the valley. The old ice-king has had a merry time of it, playing with the long branches of the graceful maiden-like elm, and wrestling with the gnarled and haughty oak. You might have heard him roaring in the depths of the woods, had you been here, venerable Deidrich, day and night for a sevennight, apparently just for the sake of making a noise, and compelling the obeisance of the forest. Like any other demagogue, he gains attention by his blusterings. How lowly that young poplar bent before him, while the old hemlocks scarcely deigned a show of reverence! When you were in your youth, and the world seemed larger than now, did you not feel more of respect and awe for the great man than you now do? Ah! well-a-day! how little is the world’s esteem worthy of care! Ambition climbs the dizzy steeps of fame; the young and inexperienced, whose admiration is not worth a straw, applaud; but the wise, for whose good-will Ambition toils, look on with indifference; for they know the emptiness of human greatness. But while we stop to moralize, the reader grows a-weary; and even thou, Deidrich, who art so constitutionally polite, compressest thy labial muscles, and thumpest nervously the floor with thy gold-headed walking stick. What a pity that we cannot talk nonsense gracefully!

There, now, all this time has the damsel Spring been awaiting our commands, shivering mayhap in her scanty drapery, while we have been prating. So it is the world over. The best intentioned forget the claims of others, listening to the sweet music of their own sweet voices. Deidrich, you ought to be here in the country to see what Hans and Peter are doing ‘at this present.’

Just back of the house, (we are at the old Homestead,) the snow has melted away, and an impatient crocus is just peeping up to get a look at the warm sun. The spruce, at whose foot it grows all the winter long, has kindly extended one of its lower branches over it, to shield it from the frost, and now straitens it up again to give the poor little plant a glimpse or two of the warm blue sky and the golden sun. And here, on the southern side of the house, the windows are thrown up, and the door of the wing swung open for the first time in four long months. There, Peter, in the side of the wing where you see the ends of two or three bricks protruding from a circular hole in the clapboards, is the nest of a pair of wrens that year after year come back to rear a new family, and chirp and chatter away the summer, when their labors have ceased. If it were a few weeks later, you might get acquainted with the comical little occupants, who are as brisk and busy as if they were not in reality great grand-parents to a whole republic of wrens. See! on the top of the wood-shed, how proudly the old rooster struts along the weather-board, enjoying the discomfiture of his wives, who have been trying for this half-hour from the corn-house steps to reach the same desirable elevation. And ever and anon he crows to answer the tumultuous cackle of the plebeian fowl in the barn-yard, with whom he never mingles, save when a hawk threatens them with common danger; and then, forgetting all his aristocracy, he seeks the same sheltering apple-tree or clump of briars in the fence-corner, where the enemy cannot penetrate. Friend Peter, just buckle on your over-shoes and come with me through the back gates which have stood open all winter to allow ingress to huge sled-loads of fire-wood. Tread carefully over the soft snow which ‘slumps’ at every step, and let us take a look at the barn-yard down yonder, across the way from the farm-house.

Now is there not some poetry here? That yoke of brindle-oxen standing under the dripping eaves chewing their cud; can you not see gladness in their broad faces? There is old Line-back, the cow that fifteen years ago used to have the same corner. I wonder if she recognizes me? She is graver than the other cows; red and black, around her butt; the tuft of wool on her horns shows that she retains her old spirit, and does not allow the dainty sheep that crowd around us, to pick out the most savory portions of her hay, without asserting her rights of priority. There, flocking in the hay-loft door, over the cow-house, are the cackling multitude which we heard awhile ago. They were probably instigated to their clamor by the ‘cut-cut-ca-da-cut’ of some young hen who had laid the first egg of the season. The rest replying, no doubt, that they severally had done the same at some spring-time anterior, but now for the first time thought of mentioning so trifling a circumstance. Peter sagely opines that they are holding a tea party! Let us drop into the ‘grain-barn’ and see what Hans’ little brothers are raising such a children’s noise about. There goes Jim from the highest scaffold into the straw at the bottom of the ‘deep bay.’ Billy is just preparing to jump too; and Sid, a little more lazy, is but half up the upper ladder. Sid sees us, and without saying a word, begins to climb down again. This draws Billy’s attention, and crying ‘Hans has come home! Hans has come!’ springs off, half smothering poor Jim in his descent. There, now, Peter, after seeing me kiss my brothers, don’t accuse me of possessing a cold heart, merely because I don’t happen to love the women. What is a woman, but flesh and blood after all? Do you think those black, flashing eyes and rosy cheeks and swelling bosom, and those warm lips which breathe soft deceit the while you press them, are any thing more than ‘common clay?’ I have seen many lovely ones, yet as Byron hath it:

‘Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.’

I wish, friend Peter, that we could stay a fortnight to enjoy the opening of spring, but as we must wend our way eastward day after tomorrow, we will resign ourselves to fate, and make the best of it. Look down into the valley where Green Brook comes singing and bubbling out from the deep shade of the hemlocks into the open meadows! The snow has melted away from its margin, and the brown sward is smiling in the cheerful afternoon sun. There, on that tall stump, on the other side, sits a sentinel crow, while his companions are strolling about catching up dainties which the frost and snow have hid from their vision the winter long. Hurra! hurra! see over the edge of Pine Hill come the first pigeons of the season from the warm south! Look how they rise and fall again in their easy flight, as they pass up the valley and go whirring in among the dense evergreens. I told you we should see pigeons soon, but you thought it too early. We will have sport to-morrow, if it is warm. For the present, let us see whether Hans’ old fowling-piece is still safe from rust. Here it stands behind his bed-room door, dressed up like an old maid for a sailing party, all in flannels. There, Peter, is a true ‘stubb-and-twist,’ and the locks, although rather out of fashion, are still as elastic as ever. This Hans himself will use to-morrow; for it is an old friend and might feel hurt to be entrusted to the care of a stranger. Here, Jim, run down to Colonel Hyde’s and borrow his long double-barrel; but don’t tell him that pigeons have been seen, or he will want to use it himself. Get a cannister of Dupont, and half a dozen pounds of No. 4 shot. None of the fine mustard-seed or robin, but the heavy duck-shot, that will enter at twenty rods. That is the kind for pigeons, their feathers are so compact; for if you fire at them flying, you might as well toss turnip-seed at them as to shoot fine shot that will glance from their sleek feathers like drops of rain.

Here comes Jim, with the colonel’s gun. Is it not a grand one? Now for cleaning the pieces, and filling the flasks and shot-belts. Look out, or you will scald your fingers with the hot water. A little more soap, and the barrels are as clean as a silver thimble. Snap! These are fine caps: put this box into your pocket, or we shall forget it. Let us look out at the sunset before tea, and then go to bed early, that we may be up in season for to-morrow’s sport.

How broadly and slowly the sun sinks behind the forest! The glowing points of his diadem reach to the zenith, and the purple clouds that float around the west, dazzle the eye as they lie in contrast with the soft blue sky. How bland the air is, like that of summer! We can almost drink it.

Well, mother, I am glad to be at home again at the tea-table. Here, Peter, don’t look sad now because you are not at your own home. We will go up in the summer and view Lake Erie in its beauty and vastness, and stroll along the beach, beneath the overhanging cedars and larches, and the broad-leafed chestnuts. Whose voice is that in the entry? Why, Kate, how do you do! Never mind, if you are married, you needn’t start so. I’m an old friend, you know, and your lips are as tempting as ever! Ah! I forgot there were strangers by. Madam Von Rosenbacker: Herr von Geist, a man after my own heart. Well, Kate, you haven’t altered much from what you were when we used to pick blackberries together. Indeed, I have lost the bottle of wine; you only escaped though by three days over the six months that I limited your marriage to. You shall have the champaigne, and I will come up in the summer to bring it, and will buy an indulgence from the tee-total society long enough to drink it with you. Now that she is gone, Peter, let me ask if you don’t think her a glorious woman? Her large blue eyes, her soft flaxen hair and rosy cheeks, and tall graceful figure, make her ‘splendid.’ Peter, she was the first girl that I ever ‘set my face against,’ as poor Power used to say; and now, old bachelor as I am, I envy her husband.

To bed we go, and Somnus touches our eyes with his wand of poppies. Ye gods! how sweet and soft a bed at home is, after travelling till one’s bones ache with jolting stages and jarring rail-cars!

·····

Up! up! friend Peter; here we are abed, while daylight is glimmering through the blinds. Just put your head out here at this window and snuff the fresh spring air. Hear the roaring of Fish Creek as it comes up over the wooded hills. By no means! Don’t suppose for the sixtieth part of a minute that I intend to hurry you away without breakfast; but you must step down into the kitchen, where the girl has prepared us a strong cup of coffee; as good, no doubt, as Mother Bee used to provide for our matin meal on College Hill. Here, Dancer, you must have some breakfast too.

Well, are we all ready? Powder, shot, and caps enough, and every thing in order? Eh! Peter, what are you twisting your mouth about? Ah, yes, indeed, I forgot. Here’s a dozen Principes to use as occasion may offer, and especially after dinner; which is to be sent up with the rest into the sugar-bush, where we will rendezvous about one o’clock, and in the afternoon help ‘sugar off.’ See the sunlight on the barns yonder; how warm it looks! Look off on that hill-side, where the snow lies so deep! How like a speck of gold it shimmers to the eye! and there goes Dancer on the crust, as if he enjoyed the freshness of the air, and the warm sunlight. Let us try the crust too, and if it will bear us, we shall save time by going across lots. Here we go, with our heels crunching the glittering pavement, leaving scarcely a vestige of our tread, the frost of last night has so effectually congealed it. Yonder across this valley which the hills prevent our seeing from the house, is the sugar-bush, sloping to the south. The canal we first crossed leads to the old mills down to the right yonder, where you see that grove of black-cherry trees, and the little house on the knoll. The mist that you see to the left, rises from the mill-dam, the monotonous hum of whose falling waters you have heard for some time. This is Furnace Creek, whose swift current harbors the most beautiful trout. That crow yonder on the dry hemlock is calling to his mate, and the speckled wood-pecker is tapping away at that old beech, that the nice insects within its decayed interior may come out to make him a breakfast. Hark! do you not hear the drum of that partridge? He is up there in that thicket of young beeches and hemlocks, on the other side of the road. As you hear the slow, measured drum which he gives at first, and which he hastens into a whirr like distant thunder, does not ‘The old Man’s Counsel’ come fresh to your memory, and almost ringing in your ear? Ah! this is the glory of true poetry, that it clothes the commonest things with a new interest, and forever after they become objects of love, at least of meditation. Who that has read the same author’s ‘Lines to a Waterfowl,’ does not gaze with other than a sportsman’s pleasure upon even a wild duck, if it flies past him after sunset. But there goes a flock of pigeons, and here over our heads; one! two! three! more than a hundred in each! What a rushing sound their wings make! They fly too high for us just now: but wait till we get on the cleared hill yonder to the right of the sugar-bush, and we shall have rare sport as they emerge from the trees and skim along the edge of the ‘clearing.’

Here we are in the sugar-bush. Are these not noble trees? For how many years have they stood thus interlocking their strong boughs like brethren! While Columbus was asking a supper for his boy at the convent door, three centuries and a half ago, these same trees were here, scarcely younger than now. Yonder is the hill we saw from the rude bridge below the mill-dam. Let us clamber over the log-fence and get into the clearing.

Well, Peter, this hill that we are on is just one mile from home, though it looks not half the distance. Is this not a glorious view? Hill and valley spread out like a map before us! The snow lies in patches upon the fields, and the sun is lighting up the tinned spire of the village church, which, as the stage passed it yesterday, you thought looked like a superannuated old man with a martin-cage upon his crooked back. There is the old homestead looking at us through the locusts that surround it, and there are the orchards off to the right, which in a few weeks will be white with blossoms. Now, steady, my boys! Do you see that flock of pigeons? Wait till they pass us, that our shot may take effect on their backs. Whang! hack!! bang!!! What! three barrels off and only a handful of tail-feathers! How they opened as we fired, as if to let the shot go through. Hist! don’t stir! Look up softly into the dry top of this hemlock, right over our heads: four, five, six! all in a huddle. I’ll fetch some of them with my last barrel. Snap! fiz! confound the cap! Hold still, they see us. I’ve got a fresh cap on: bang! Here comes one, tumbling through the limbs on to the snow. Is he not a handsome bird; with his glossy purple breast and slender blue neck! Load quickly, and let us be ready for the next flock.

Hear them scream and coo in the wood to the right. Hear the leaves crackle down on that slope where the snow is off under those tall beeches. The ground is fairly blue with them. Softly there over the dry brush! See them turning up the leaves for beech-nuts: they are all moving this way. Down, behind this log: they are not twenty yards off. Cock both barrels; and now fire! What a stunning sound they make, like the roaring of a tornado! Look, they have settled down again on the other side of the ravine. Well, here, Peter, what do you think of the fun now?—fourteen cock pigeons and one hen, to be divided between us. This is what I call sport: none of your reed-birds and meadow-larks, such as cockney sportsmen frighten away from the fields of Jersey or Long-Island. Here they come again by scores. Now let us see how good a shot you are. Two cocks on the topmost branch of that old maple, full forty yards to the trunk. No, no! don’t get any nearer, for they see you. Well done! Hear him thump on the leaves; and here comes the other, fluttering round and round like a shuttlecock. Ten to one that you shot him through the head. There! I told you so! His wings are not hurt, but a shot has cut away his bill. Here, Dancer, don’t bite him so, but bring him here! Chick, chick, churr! Mister Red-squirrel, we’ll ‘give you a few,’ as Jared used to say. On that knot in the green hemlock, he sits with his tail spread out over his head, for all the world like a young miss in a high-backed, old-fashined easy-chair. Well, we wont harm him, for the sake of the associations his comical appearance awakens.

Dancer is barking down in the ravine. There he comes! as if he were crazy; he is on the track of a hare! Do you see that pair of slender ears pricked up behind the roots of that fallen tree? Let me try my skill at a long shot. I’ve hit them, that’s poz! No, I haven’t either; for the nimble-footed thing is scudding away round the hill as safe as if I had not wasted my loading on her.

This sunken cask down here where the water wells up through the white sand, used to be the father of the cool spring water for the uses of the Homestead, and was conveyed the whole distance in ‘pump-logs.’ You can see the end of one, with an iron band sunk into it, sticking out of the earth. This spring, however, has been long exchanged for one on higher ground, and the wooden logs for lead pipe, half as expensive, and not half so healthy. Just pop over that chip-munk, whose head is peeping out of the ground at the foot of the maple sapling. Too cruel! Well done! you are growing compassionate all at once. Look out for your head! I declare, you escaped narrowly! That dead limb would have dispersed all your theology, had it struck your head. Well, Dancer, what are you staring at? Do you think the old tree dropped one of its limbs on purpose? Ah, ha! I see! Peter, do you see that tuft of dark moss in the crotch of that largest maple: well, I am going to shoot at it for sport, so here goes! I thought it was a black squirrel; how he leaps from the top boughs. Hurrah! here we go over logs and through bushes; the squirrel still ahead of us, springing from tree top to tree top. How he rattles down the dry splinters as he scratches up that dead hemlock. Now we’ve got him! Go round on the other side of the tree and he will dodge back this way, and I shall get a crack at him. But he don’t though! He must have a hole up there. Sure enough, there is one! Let me get this old bough broken in two, and I will start him. Now be ready, and shoot him as he comes out. The old tree is hollow all the way up; it sounds as I strike like an old bass-drum. There! he’s out! blaze away! Not that time did you hit him. That’s better! see him hang by one leg! here he comes! ‘dead as a door nail!’ Thump! how he struck the ground. What a tail he has!

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And now we are at the ‘boiling place.’ Two strong beech crotches are driven into the ground, about twelve feet apart, and a strong pole is laid over them, some five feet from the ground. The huge back-log was the butt of that tremendous beech you see lying just at the top of the knoll. The cauldron you see is filled with the fresh sap two or three times a day, and before filling each time, the boiling liquid is dipped out into the largest kettle alongside of it, and that in turn is emptied into a smaller one, that no time may be lost in boiling it away. Taste the syrup in this smaller kettle; it is almost molasses. Try on that ‘neck-yoke’ and come, let us help carry sap before dinner. The spiles you see sticking from augur-holes in every maple are made of young sumacs, which are sawed off the right length, and then the pith is punched out with a wire. The clean white-pine buckets, without bails, into which the sap drips from the spiles, are made expressly for this use, and so is that enormous hogshead where the sap is poured before it is strained for the cauldron. For the present let us to dinner. Well, Herr Peter, although our dinner was laid on a beech log, and our table-cloth nothing but a piece of coarse linen, and our knives and forks such as Adam and Eve used before us! was it not excellent! Wie schmackt es! How smacked it! as it passed through our devouring jaws; and how sweet was the pure spring water from the bright tin dipper! Now for a quiet smoke on the plank settle in the bough-house, while Joe and Hiram are getting ready to ‘sugar off.’ Here, if there comes up a storm, they sit and watch the kettles; and sometimes when the weather is clear they sit up all night. So at last you do love a cigar better than a meerschaum? I confess it is the same with me! How old Deidrich would frown, if he heard such an admission from those who boast as we do the pure Deutchen-blut, the true Dutch blood!

What! two o’clock so soon! They have hung the ten-pail kettle that contains the thick syrup upon a pole between two slender crotches, and have already kindled a fire. How it bubbles and ‘blubbers’ up, like thick hasty-pudding, with a dignified slowness that is inimitable. Now it rises to the top of the kettle and will boil over! O, you needn’t turn up your nose at the slice of clean fat pork that Joe has just thrown in, for that has saved our sugar. See, it gradually subsides till it rests a third way down. You have heard that oil will still the surface of the sea; and the oily part of the pork answers the same purpose with the boiling syrup. Now it begins to granulate, swing it off. Here, drop some of it into this bucket of cold water, and then poke it out with that pine stick, while I run up on the side-hill yonder and get a pail of snow, which will cool it faster. Ha, ha, ha! you do look handsome; suppose Meeta could see you with your jaws stuck fast together with the candy, and your face looking like the head of Medusa. While you are getting over the lock-jaw, I will trail some on this snow to take home to little Sue, who begged me to bring her back some maple candy. Now let us ride down home on the ox-sled, with the huge tin pails full of the hot syrup, which wont get half cold before it is safe in the farm-house pantry, in a half dozen well-buttered milk-pans to harden for future use.

Once more in bed after a hearty supper; and once more out of it, too, for the stage horn is blown. We must hurry or we are left; for it stops only fifteen or twenty minutes to change the mail.