Little Rivers | Page 7

a walker, taking the river-side path, or making a way for yourself
through the tangled thickets or across the open meadows. You may go
as a sailor, launching your light canoe on the swift current and
committing yourself for a day, or a week, or a month, to the delightful
uncertainties of a voyage through the forest. You may go as a wader,
stepping into the stream and going down with it, through rapids and
shallows and deeper pools, until you come to the end of your courage
and the daylight. Of these three ways I know not which is best. But in
all of them the essential thing is that you must be willing and glad to be
led; you must take the little river for your guide, philosopher, and
friend.
And what a good guidance it gives you. How cheerfully it lures you on
into the secrets of field and wood, and brings you acquainted with the
birds and the flowers. The stream can show you, better than any other
teacher, how nature works her enchantments with colour and music.

Go out to the Beaver-kill
"In the tassel-time of spring,"
and follow its brimming waters through the budding forests, to that
corner which we call the Painter's Camp. See how the banks are all
enamelled with the pale hepatica, the painted trillium, and the delicate
pink-veined spring beauty. A little later in the year, when the ferns are
uncurling their long fronds, the troops of blue and white violets will
come dancing down to the edge of the stream, and creep venturously
out to the very end of that long, moss- covered log in the water. Before
these have vanished, the yellow crow-foot and the cinquefoil will
appear, followed by the star- grass and the loose-strife and the golden
St. John's-wort. Then the unseen painter begins to mix the royal colour
on his palette, and the red of the bee-balm catches your eye. If you are
lucky, you may find, in midsummer, a slender fragrant spike of the
purple- fringed orchis, and you cannot help finding the universal self-
heal. Yellow returns in the drooping flowers of the jewel-weed, and
blue repeats itself in the trembling hare-bells, and scarlet is glorified in
the flaming robe of the cardinal-flower. Later still, the summer closes
in a splendour of bloom, with gentians and asters and goldenrod.
You never get so close to the birds as when you are wading quietly
down a little river, casting your fly deftly under the branches for the
wary trout, but ever on the lookout for all the various pleasant things
that nature has to bestow upon you. Here you shall come upon the
cat-bird at her morning bath, and hear her sing, in a clump of
pussy-willows, that low, tender, confidential song which she keeps for
the hours of domestic intimacy. The spotted sandpiper will run along
the stones before you, crying, "wet-feet, wet-feet!" and bowing and
teetering in the friendliest manner, as if to show you the way to the best
pools. In the thick branches of the hemlocks that stretch across the
stream, the tiny warblers, dressed in a hundred colours, chirp and
twitter confidingly above your head; and the Maryland yellow-throat,
flitting through the bushes like a little gleam of sunlight, calls "witchery,
witchery, witchery!" That plaintive, forsaken, persistent note, never
ceasing, even in the noonday silence, comes from the wood-pewee,

drooping upon the bough of some high tree, and complaining, like
Mariana in the moated grange, "weary, weary, weary!"
When the stream runs out into the old clearing, or down through the
pasture, you find other and livelier birds,--the robins, with his sharp,
saucy call and breathless, merry warble; the bluebird, with his notes of
pure gladness, and the oriole, with his wild, flexible whistle; the
chewink, bustling about in the thicket, talking to his sweetheart in
French, "cherie, cherie!" and the song-sparrow, perched on his
favourite limb of a young maple, dose beside the water, and singing
happily, through sunshine and through rain. This is the true bird of the
brook, after all: the winged spirit of cheerfulness and contentment, the
patron saint of little rivers, the fisherman's friend. He seems to enter
into your sport with his good wishes, and for an hour at a time, while
you are trying every fly in your book, from a black gnat to a white
miller, to entice the crafty old trout at the foot of the meadow-pool, the
song- sparrow, close above you, will be chanting patience and
encouragement. And when at last success crowns your endeavour, and
the parti-coloured prize is glittering in your net, the bird on the bough
breaks out in an ecstasy of congratulation: "catch 'im, catch 'im, catch
'im; oh, what a pretty fellow! sweet!"
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