Of Punch as a local politician we are hardly fair judges, and it may be a mistaken suspicion that he has occasionally given up to party what was meant for mankind. With respect to "foreign affairs," we shall be safer in saying, that, with all his cosmopolitanism, he is a shade or two John-Bullish. Thanking him for his fraternal cordiality towards "Jonathan," we must doubt if it will do to trust implicitly his reports and impressions of men and things across the Channel. That he is more than half right, however, when lingering remains of insular prejudice tinge his solicitude to save his native land from entangling alliances, and keep its free government from striking hands with despotism, we incline to believe; and we honor him that his loyalty is not mere adulation, but duly seasoned with the democratic principle that would have the stability of the throne the people's love,—the people being of infinitely greater importance than the propping-up or the propagation of royal houses. In one sad direction Punch's patriotism and humanity, it seems to us, were wrathful exaggerations, open to graver objection than yielding unconsciously to a natural bias. In his zeal against terrible outrages, he forgot that two wrongs never make a right. We refer to his course on the Indian Revolt. From the way he raised his voice for war, almost exterminating, and with no quarter, one would think the British rule in the East had been the rule of Christian love,—that Sepoys and other subjects had known the reigning power only as patriarchal kindness,—and so, without excuse, a highly civilized, justly and tenderly treated people, suddenly, and without provocation, became rebellious devils, and rebellious only because they were devils. In the hour of horror-struck indignation, was not Punch too blood-thirsty, vindictive, unjust, and oblivious to the truth of history, that the insurgents are poor superstitious heathens, whom a selfish policy may have kept superstitious and heathenish? True, he was the witness of broken hearts and desolate hearth-stones at home, and daily heard of hellish atrocities inflicted on the women and children abroad,—enough to crush out for the moment every thought but the thought of vengeance. Yet, even at such a crisis, he should have remembered, that England, in strict accordance with the stern, unrelenting logic of events, having sown to the wind, might therefore have reaped the whirlwind. It is among the mysteries of Providence, that retributive justice, when visiting nations, often involves innocent victims,—but it is retributive justice still; and tracing up rightly the chain of causes and effects, it may be that the tragedies of Delhi and Lucknow are attributable, to say the least, as much to the avarice of the dominant as to the depravity of the subjugated race. The bare possibility that this might be the truth a philosopher like Punch ought not to have overlooked, in the suddenness and fire of his anger.

Finally, Punch is no ascetic, but quite the reverse. He cannot be expected, any more than his namesake, the beverage, to go down with the apostles of temperance. He is a convivialist,—moderately so,—and no teetotaler. He evidently prefers roast-beef and brown-stout to bran-bread and cold water, and has gone so far as to sing the praises of pale-ale. He thinks the laboring classes should have their pot of beer, if the nobility and gentry are to eat good dinners and take airings in Hyde Park, on Sundays. He is a Merry Englishman, as to the stomach,—and, like a Merry Englishman, enjoys good living. There is no denying this fact; but here is the whole front of his offending. Remember that he was born at the Shakspeare's Head, and has had a publican for his right-hand man.

These are defects, it may be; and yet not by its defects are we to judge of a work of Art. Of that generous and just canon Punch should have the full benefit. Try him by that, and he has abounding virtues to flood and conceal with lustrous and far-raying light his exceptional errors. To brief notices of some of these—regretting the want of room to enlarge upon them as it would be pleasant to do—we gladly turn.

Punch is to be loved and cherished as the maker of mirth for the million. Saying this, we do not propose to go into an argument to excuse, justify, or recommend hilarity for its own sake or its medicinal effects on overtasked bodies and souls. Desperate attempts have been made to prove the innocence of fun, and the allowableness of wit and humor. Assuming or conceding that the jocose elements or capacities of human nature need apology and defence, very nice distinctions have been drawn, and very ingenious sophistry employed, to prove that the best of people may, within certain limits, crack jokes, or laugh at jokes cracked for them. These efforts to accommodate stern dogmas to that pleasant stubborn fact in man's constitution, his irresistible craving for play, and irresistible impulse to laugh at whatever is really laughable, are about as necessary as would be an essay maintaining the harmlessness of sunshine. The fact has priority over the dogmas, and is altogether too strong to need the patronizing special-pleading they suggest. Instead of going into the metaphysics of the question about the lawfulness and blamelessness of humor shown or humor relished, suppose we cut the knot by a delightful illustration of the compatibility of humor with the highest type of character.

No one will deny the sincerity, earnestness, devotedness, sublime consecration to duty, of the heroine of the hospitals of Scutari. No one will dispute the practical piety of the gentle, but fearless, the tenderhearted, but truly strong-minded woman, who made the lazar-house her home for months together,—ministered to its sick, miserable, and ignorant inmates,—put, by the unostentatious exercise of indomitable faith and unswerving self-sacrifice, the love and humanity of the Gospel in direct and strongest contrast with the barbarisms of war. No one will deny or dispute this now. That heroic English maiden, whose shadow, as it fell on his pillow, the rude soldier kissed with almost idolatrous gratitude, has won, without thought of seeking it, and without the loss of a particle of humility and womanly delicacy, the loving admiration of all Christendom. Well, she

"whose presence honors queenly guests, Who wears the noblest jewel of her time, And leaves her race a nobler, in her name,"

shall be the sufficient argument here,—especially as none have paid finer, more delicate, or truer tributes to her virtue than Punch. In a recent sketch of her career, accompanying her portrait in the gallery of noted women, this sentence is given from a descriptive letter:—"Her general demeanor is quiet and rather reserved; still, I am much mistaken, if she is not gifted with a very lively sense of the ridiculous." Here is a delightful, and, we doubt not, true intimation. Since the springs of pathos lie very near the springs of humor, in the richest souls, the fair Florence must, in moments of weariness, have glanced with merry eyes over the pages of Punch, or handed, with smiling archness, his inimitable numbers to her wan and wounded patients, kindly to cheat them into momentary forgetfulness of their agonies. If this were so, who shall say that the use or enjoyment of wit is not as right as it is natural? None, unless it be the narrowest of bigots,—like those who objected to this heroic lady's mission of mercy to the East, because she did not echo their sectarian shibboleths, and would not ask whether a good nurse were Protestant or Romanist.

We may repeat, therefore, as a prime excellence of Punch, that he is the maker of mirth for the million. He is mainly engaged in furnishing titillating amusement,—and he furnishes an article, not only marketable, but necessary. All work makes Jack a dull boy,—and not infrequently an unhappy, if not bad boy,—whether Jack be in the pulpit, the counting-room, the senate-house, or digging potatoes; and what is true of Jack is equally true of Gill, his sister, sweetheart, or wife. That Punch every week puts a girdle of smiles round the earth, interrupts the serious business of thousands by his merry visits, and with his ludicrous presence delights the drawing-room, cheers the study, and causes side-shakings in the kitchen,—entitles him to be called a missionary of good. Grant this,—then allow, on the average, five minutes of merriment to each reader of each issue of Punch,—then multiply these 5 minutes by—say 50,000, and this again by 52 weeks, and this, finally, by 17 years, and thus cipher out, if you have a tolerably capacious imagination, the amount of happiness which has flowed and spread, like a river of gladness, through the world, from that inexhaustible, bubbling, and sparkling fountain, at 85, Fleet Street, London.

Punch is the advocate of true manliness. Velvet robes and gilded coronets go for nothing with him, if not worn by muscular integrity; and fustian is cloth-of-gold, in his eyes, when it covers a stout heart in the right place. He has no mercy on snobbism, flunkeyism, or dandyism. He whips smartly the ignoble-noble fops of the household-troops,—parading them on toy-horses, and making them, with suicidal irony, deplore the hardships of comrades in the Crimea. He sneers at the loungers, and the delicate, dissipated roues of the club-house,—though their names were once worn by renowned ancestors, and are in the peerage. Fast young men are to him befooled prodigals, wasting the wealth of life in profitless living. He is not, however, an anchorite, or hard upon youth. On the contrary, he is an indulgent old fellow, and too sagacious to expect the wisdom of age from those sporting their freedom-suits. Still, he has no patience with the foppery whose whole existence advertises fine clothes, patronizes taverns, saunters along fashionable promenades, and ogles opera-dancers. In this connection, his hits at "the rising generation" will be called to mind. Punch has found out that in England there are no boys now,—only male babies and precocious men;—no growing up,—only a leap from the cradle, robe, and trousers to the habiliments and manners of a false manhood. Punch has found out and frequently illustrates this fact, and furnishes a series of pictures of Liliputians aping the questionable doings of their elders. It is observable, however, that he confines these portraits of precocity chiefly to one sex. Whether this be owing to his innate delicacy and habitual gallantry, or to the English custom of keeping little girls—and what we should call large girls also—at home longer, and under more restraint, than in our republic, we cannot say. Were he on this side of the Atlantic, he might possibly find occasion to be less partial in the use of his reproving fun. Young misses seem to be growing scarce, and young ladies becoming alarmingly numerous. The early date at which the cry comes for long skirts, parties, balls, and late hours, for lace, jewelry, and gold watches, threatens to rob our homes of one of their sweetest charms,—the bright presence of joyous, gentle, and modest lasses, willing to be happy children for as many years as their mothers were, on their way to maidenhood and womanhood.

Punch is a reformer,—and of the right type, too; not destructive, declamatory, vituperative; not a monomaniac, snarly, and ill-natured,—as if zeal in riding a favorite hobby excused exclusiveness of soul and any amount of bad temper. He would not demolish the social system and build on its ruins a new one; being clearly of the opinion that the growths of ages and the doings of six thousands of years are to be respected,—that progress means improvement upon the present, rather than overthrow of the entire past. Calm, hopeful, cheerful, and patient, he is at the same time bold and uncompromising, and a bit radical into the bargain. In his own delicious way, he has been no mean advocate of liberal principles and measures. He has argued for the repeal of the corn and the modification of the game laws, the softening of the cruelties of the criminal code, and the fair administration of law for all orders and conditions of men and women. He has had no respect for ermine, lawn, or epaulets, in his assaults upon the monopolies and sinecures of Church and State, circumlocution offices, nepotism, patronage, purchase, and routine, in army or navy. He wants the established religion to be religious, not a cover for aristocratic preferments and dog-in-the-manger laziness,—and government administered for the whole people, and not merely dealing out treasury-pap and fat offices for the pensioned few. Punch is loyal, sings lustily, "God Save the Queen," and stands by the Constitution. He is a true-born Englishman, and patriotic to the backbone; but none are too high in place or name for his merciless ridicule and daring wit, if they countenance oppressive abuses. It is a tall feather in his fool's-cap, that his fantastic person is a dread to evil-doers on thrones, in cabinets, and red-tape offices. Crowned tyrants, bold usurpers, and proud statesmen are sensitive, like other mortals, to ridicule, and know very well how much easier it is to cannonade rebellious insurgents than to put down the general laugh, and that the point of a joke cannot be turned by the point of the bayonet. "Punch" was seized in Paris on account of the caricature of the "Sphinx," but after twenty-four hours' consideration the order of confiscation was rescinded, and the irreverent publication now lies upon the tables of the reading-rooms. So, iron power is not beyond the reach of the shafts of wit; once make it ridiculous, and it may continue to lie dreaded, but will cease to be respected.

Limits permitting, it would be pleasant to refer at length to various other marked graces of Punch,—such, for example, as his care for true Art, by exposing to merited contempt the abortions of statuary, painting, and architecture that come under his accurate eye,—his concern for good letters, exhibited in fantastic parodies of affectations, mannerisms, absurdities of plot, and vices of style in modern poets and novelists,—his "nil nisi bonum," and, where there is no "bonum," his silent "nil," of the dead, whom when living he pursued with unrelenting raillery,—his cool, eclectic judgments, freedom from extremes, and other manifestations of clear-headedness and refined sentiment, glimmering and shooting through his rollicking drollery, quick wit, and quiet humor. But we must pass them by, to emphasize a quality that out-tops and outshines them all,—his humanity.

This is Mr. Punch's specialty, generating his purest fun and consecrating his versatile talents to highest ends. Wherever he catches meanness, avarice, selfishness, force, preying upon the humble and the weak, he is sure to give them hard knocks with his baton, or home-thrusts with his pen and pencil. His practical kindness is charmingly comprehensive, too. He speaks for the dumb beast, pleads for the maltreated brutes of Smithfield Market, craves compassion for skeleton omnibus-horses, with the same ready sympathy that he fights for cheated fellow-mortals. In the court of public opinion, he is volunteer counsel for all in any way defrauded or kept in bondage by pitiless pride, barbarous policy, thoughtless luxury, or wooden-headed prejudice. His sound ethics do not admit that the lower law of man's enactment can, under any circumstances, override or abrogate the higher laws of God. Consequently, he judges with unbiased, instinctive rectitude, when he shows up in black and white the Model Republic's criminal anomaly, by making the African Slave a companion-piece to the Greek Slave, among "Jonathan's" contributions to the great Crystal Palace Exhibition. In this same vein of a wide-ranging application of the Golden Rule, he is ever on the alert to brand inhuman deeds and institutions, wherever found. You cannot very often hit him with the "tu quoque" retort, insinuate that he lives in a house of glass, or charge him with visiting his condemnation upon distant iniquities whilst winking at iniquities of equal magnitude directly under his nose.

Punch is no Mrs. Jellyby, brimful of zeal for Borrio boolas in far-off Africas, and utterly stolid to disorders and distresses under his own roof. Proud of the glory, he feels and confesses the shame of England; and the grinding injustice of her caste-system, aristocracy, and hierarchy does not escape the lash of his rebuke. He is the friend of the threadbare curate, performing the larger half of clerical duty and getting but a tittle of the tithes,—of the weary seamstress, wetting with midnight tears the costly stuff which must be ready to adorn heartless rank and fashion at to-morrow's pageant,—of the pale governess, grudgingly paid her pittance of salary without a kind word to sweeten the bitterness of a lonely lot. He is the friend even of the workhouse juveniles, and, as their champion, castigates with cutting sarcasm and stinging scorn the reverend and honorable guardians, who, just as, full of hope, they had reached the door of the theatre, prohibited a band of these wretched orphans from availing of a kind-hearted manager's invitation to an afternoon performance of "Jack and the Bean-Stalk." Truly, Punch is more than half right, as, in his indignation, he declares, "It will go luckily with some four-faced Christians, if, with the fullest belief in their own right of entry of paradise, they are not 'stopped at the very doors'"; and the parson, in the case, gets but his deserts, when at his lugubrious sham-piety are hurled stanzas like these:—

"Their little faces beamed with joy Two miles upon their way, As they supposed, each girl and boy, About to see the play. Their little cheeks with tears were wet, As back again they went, Balked by a sanctimonious set, Led by a Reverend Gent.

"And if such Reverend Gents as he Could get the upperhand, Ah, what a hateful tyranny Would override the land! That we may never see that time, Down with the canting crew That would out of their pantomime Poor little children do!"

Punch is the friend of all who are friendless, and, with a generous spirit of protection, gives credit to whom credit is due, whatever conventionality, precedent, monopoly, or routine may say to the contrary. During the Crimean War, he took care of the fame of the rank-and-file of the army. The dispatches to Downing Street, reporting the gallantry of titled officers, were more than matched by Punch's imitative dispatches from the seat of war, setting forth the exploits of Sergeant O'Brien, Corporal Stout, or Private Gubbins. He saw to it that those who had the hardest of the fight, the smallest pay, and the coarsest rations, should not be forgotten in the gazetting of the heroes. Indeed, our comic friend's fellowship of soul with the humblest members of the human family is a notable trait; it is so ready, and yet withal so judicious. It is no part of his philosophy, as already intimated, violently and rashly to disturb the existing order of things, and set one class in rebellion against other classes. He simply insists upon the recognition of the law of mutual dependence all round. This is observable in his dealing with the vexed question of domestic service. The prime trouble of housekeeping comes in frequently for a share of his attention; and underneath ironical counsels, you may trace, quietly insinuating itself into graphic sketches, the genial intent fairly to adjust the relations between life above and life below stairs. Accordingly, Punch sees no reason why Angelina may have a lover in the parlor, whilst Bridget's engagement forbids her to entertain a fond "follower" in the kitchen; and he perversely refuses to see how it can be right for Miss Julia to listen to the soft nonsense of Captain Augustus Fitzroy in the drawing-room, and entirely wrong for Molly, the nursery-maid, to blush at the blunt admiration of the policeman, talking to her down the area. Punch is independent and original in this respect. His strange creed seems to be, that human nature is human nature,—whether, in its feminine department, you robe it in silk or calico, and, in its male department, button a red coat over the breast of an officer of the Guards, or put the coarse jerkin on the broad back of the industrious toilsman. And according to this whimsical belief, he writes and talks jocosely, but with covert common sense. His warm and catholic humanity runs up and down the whole social scale with a clear-sighted equity. His philanthropy is what the word literally signifies,—the love of man as man, and because he is a man. Without being an impracticable fanatic, advocating impossible theories, or theories that can grow into realities only with the gradual progress of the race,—without indulging in fanciful visions of unapproached Utopias,—without imagining that all, wherever born and however nurtured, can reach the same level of wealth and station,—he holds, not merely that

"Honor and shame from no condition rise,"

but also, be the condition high or low, the worthy occupant of it, by reason of the common humanity he shares with all above and all beneath and all around him, has a brother's birthright to brotherly treatment, to even-handed justice and open-handed charity.

We have taken it for granted that Punch is a household necessity and familiar friend of our readers; and, resisting as far as possible the besetting temptation to refer in detail to the many pictorial and letter-press illustrations of his merits, have spoken of him as "a representative man,"—the universally acknowledged example of the legitimate and beneficent uses of the sportive faculties; thus indirectly claiming for these faculties more than toleration.

The variety in human nature must somehow be brought into unity, and its diversified, strongly contrasted elements shown to be parts of a symmetrical and harmonious whole. The philosophy, the religion, which overlooks or condemns any of these elements, is never satisfactory, and fails to win sincere belief, because of its felt incompleteness. All men have an instinctive faith that in God's plan no incontestable facts are exceptional or needless facts. Science assumes this in regard to the phenomena of the natural world; and, in its progressive searches, expects to discover continual proof that all manifestations, however opposite and contradictory, are parts of one beneficent scheme. Accordingly, Science starts on its investigations with the conviction that the storm is as salutary as the sunshine,—that there is utility in what seems mere luxury,—and that Nature's loveliness and grandeur, Nature's oddity and grotesqueness, have a substantial value, as well as Nature's wheat-harvests. Now the same principle is to be recognized in dealing with things spiritual. It may not be affirmed that anything appertaining to universal consciousness—spontaneous, irresistible, as breathing—is of itself base, and therefore to be put away; since so to do is to question the Creative Wisdom. The work of the Infinite Spirit must be consistent; and you might as truly charge the bright stars with malignity as denounce as vile one faculty or capacity of the mind. Consequently, there is a use for all forms of wit and humor.

Punch represents a genuine phase of human nature,—none the less genuine because human nature has other and far different phases. That there is a time to mourn does not prove there is no time to dance. Punch has his part, and his times to play it, in the melodrama, the mixed comedy and tragedy, of existence. What we have to do is to see that he interferes with no other actor's role, comes upon the stage in fitting scenes, keeps to the text and the impersonations which right principle and pure taste assign him. His grimaces are not for the church. He may not sing his catches when penitent souls are listening to the "Miserere," drop his torpedo-puns when life's mystery and solemnity are pressed heavily upon the soul,—be irreverent, profane, or vulgar. He must know and keep his place. But he should have his place, and have it confessed; and that place is not quite at the end of the procession of the benefactors of the race. Punch, as we speak of him now, is but a generic name for Protean wit and humor, well and wisely employed. As such, let Punch have his mission; there is ample room for him and his merry doings, without interfering with soberer agencies. Let him go about tickling mankind; it does mankind good to be tickled occasionally. Let him broaden elongated visages; there are many faces that would be improved by horizontal enlargement, by having the corners of the mouth curved upward. Let him write and draw "as funny as he can"; there are dull talking and melancholy pictures in abundance to counterbalance his pleasantry. Let him amuse the children, relax with jocosity the sternness of adults, and wreathe into smiles the wrinkles of old age. Let him, in a word, be a Merry Andrew,—the patron and promoter of frolicsomeness. To be only this is nothing to his discredit; and to esteem him for being only this is not to pay respect to a worthless mountebank.

But Punch is and can be something more than a caterer of sport. Kings, in the olden time, had their jesters, who, under cover of blunt witticisms, were permitted, to utter home-truths, which it would have cost grave counsellors and dependent courtiers their heads to even whisper. Punch should enjoy a similar immunity in this age,—and society tolerate his free and smiling speech, when it would thrust out sager monitors. If it be true that

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,"

something like the converse of this saying is also true. Not fools exactly, but wisdom disguised in the motley of wit, often gains entrance to ears deaf to angelic voices. There are follies that are to be laughed out of their silliness and sinfulness. There are tyrants, big and little, to be dethroned by ridicule. There are offences, proof against appeals to conscience, that wince and vanish before keen satire. Even as a well-aimed joke brings back good-humor to an angry mob, or makes mad and pugnacious bullies cower and slink away from derision harder to stand than hard knocks,—even so will a quizzical Punch be efficient as a philanthropist, when sedate exhortations or stern warnings would fail to move stony insensibility.

As an element in effective literature, a force in the cause of reform, the qualities Punch personifies have been and are of no slight service. And herein those qualities have an indefeasible title to regard. Let there be no vinegar-faced, wholesale denunciation of them, because sometimes their pranks are wild and overleap the fences of propriety. Rather let appreciation of their worthiness accompany all reproving checks upon their extravagances. Let nimble fun, explosive jokes, festoon-faced humor, the whole tribe of gibes and quirks, every light, keen, and flashing weapon in the armory of which Punch is the keeper, be employed to make the world laugh, and put the world's laughter on the side of all right as against all wrong. If this be not done, the seriousness of life will darken into gloom, its work become slavish tasks, and the conflict waged be a terrible conflict between grim virtues and fiendish vices. If you could shroud the bright skies with black tempest-clouds, burn to ashes the rainbow-hued flowers, strike dumb the sweet melodies of the grove, and turn to stagnant pools the silver streams,—if you could do this, thinking thereby to make earth more of a paradise, you would be scarcely less insane than if you were to denounce and banish all

"Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, Sport, that wrinkled care derides, And laughter, holding both his sides."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: See Parton's Humorous Poetry.]



THE SUBJECTIVE OF IT.

Toward the close of a dreamy, tranquil July day, a day made impressive beyond the possible comprehension of a dweller in civilization by its sun having risen for us over the unbroken wilderness of the Adirondack, a mountain-land in each of whose deep valleys lies a blue lake, we, a party of hunters and recreation-seekers, six beside our guides, lay on the fir-bough-cushioned floor of our dark camp, passing away the little remnant of what had been a day of rest to our guides and of delicious idleness to ourselves. The camp was built on the bold shore of a lake which yet wants a name worthy its beauty, but which we always, for want of such a one, call by that which its white discoverer left it,—Tupper's Lake,—whose waters, the untremulous mirror of the forests and mountains around and the sky above, gleamed to us only in blue fragments through the interstices of the leafy veil that intervened. The forest is unbroken to the water's edge, and even out over the water itself it stretches its firs and cedars, gray and moss-draped, with here and there a moisture-loving white-birch, so that from the very shore one sees only suggestive bits of distance and sky; and from where we were lying, sky, hills, and the water below were all blue alike, and undistinguishable alike, glimpses of a world of sunlight, which the grateful shadow we lay in made delicious to the thought. We were sheltered right woodsman-like;—our little house of fresh-peeled bark of spruces, twelve feet by nine, open only to the east, on which side lay the lake, shielded us from wind and rain, and the huge trees shut around us so closely that no eye could pierce a pistol-shot into their glades. There were blue-jays all about us, making the woods ring with their querulous cries, and a single fish-hawk screamed from the blue overhead, as he sailed round and round, watching the chances of a supper in the lake. Between us and the water's edge, and a little to one side of the path we had bushed out to the shore, was the tent of the guides, and there they lay asleep, except one who was rubbing up his "man's" rifle, which had been forgotten the night before when we came in from the hunt, and so had gathered rust.

Three of our party were sleeping, and the others talked quietly and low, desultorily, as if the drowsiness had half conquered us too. The conversation had rambled round from a discussion on the respective merits of the Sharp's and the Kentucky rifles (consequent on a trial of skill and rifles which we had had after dinner) to Spiritualism,—led to this last topic by my relation of some singular experiences I had met in the way of presentiments and what seemed almost like second-sight, during a three-months' sojourn in the woods several summers before. There is something wonderfully exciting to the imagination in the wilderness, after the first impression of monotony and lonesomeness has passed away and there comes the necessity to animate this so vacant world with something. And so the pines lift themselves grimly against the twilight sky, and the moanings of the woods become full of meaning and mystery. Living, therefore, summer after summer, as I had done, in the wilderness, until there is no place in the world which seems so much like a home to me as a bark camp in the Adirondack, I had come to be what most people would call morbid, but what I felt to be only sensitive to the things around, which we never see, but to which we all at times pay the deference of a tremor of inexplicable fear, a quicker and less deeply drawn breath, an involuntary turning of the head to see something which we know we shall not see, yet are glad to find that we do not,—all which things we laugh at as childish when they have passed, yet tremble at as readily when they come again. J., who was both poet and philosopher, singularly clear and cold in his analyses, and at the same time of so great imaginative power that he could set his creations at work and then look on and reason out the law of their working as though they were not his, had wonders to tell which always passed mine by a degree; his experiences were more various and marvellous than mine, yet he had a reason for everything, to which I was compelled to defer without being convinced. "Yes," said he, finally knocking out the ashes from his meerschaum, as we rose, at the Doctor's suggestion, to take a row out on the lake while the sun was setting,—"Yes, I believe in your kind of a 'spiritual world,'—but that it is purely subjective."

I was silenced in a moment;—this single sentence, spoken like the expression of the experience of a lifetime, produced an effect which all his logic could not. He had rubbed some talismanic opal, pronouncing the spirit-compelling sentence engraved thereon, and a new world of doubts and mysteries, marvels and revelations burst on me. One phase of existence, which had been hitherto a reality to me, melted away into the thinness of an uncompleted dream; but as it melted away, there appeared behind it a whole universe, of which I had never before dreamed. I had puzzled my brains over the metaphysics of subjectivity and objectivity and found only words; now I grasped and comprehended the round of the thing. I looked through the full range of human cognitions, and found, from beginning to end, a proclamation of the presence of that arch-magician, Imagination. I had said to myself,—"The universe is subjective to Deity, objective to me; but if I am his image, what is that part of me which corresponds to the Creator in Him?" Here I found myself, at last, the creator of a universe of unsubstantialities, all of the stuff that dreams are made of, and all alike unconsciously evoked, whether they were the dreams of sleep or the hauntings of waking hours. I grew bewildered as the thought loomed up in its eternal significance, and a thousand facts and phenomena, which had been standing in the darkness around my little circle of vision, burst into light and recognition, as though they had been waiting beyond the outer verge for the magic words. J. had spoken them.

Silent, almost for the moment unconscious of external things, in the intense exaltation of thought and feeling, I walked down to the shore. Taking the lightest and fleetest of our boats, we pushed off on the perfectly tranquil water. There was no flaw in the mirror which gave us a duplicated world. Line for line, tint for tint, the noble mountain that lifts itself at the east, robed in primeval forest to its very summit, and now suffused with rosy light from the sun, already hidden from us by a low ridge in the west, was reproduced in the void below us. The shadow of the western ridge began to climb the opposite bluffs of the lake shore. We pulled well out into the lake and lay on our oars. If anything was said, I do not remember it. I was as one who had just heard words from the dead, and hears as prattle all the sounds of common life. My eyes, my ears, were opened anew to Nature, and it seemed even as if some new sense had been given me. I felt, as I never felt before, the cool gloom of the shadow creep up, ridge after ridge, towards the solitary peak, irresistibly and triumphantly encroaching on the light, which fought back towards the summit, where it must yield at last. It drew back over ravines and gorges, over the wildernesses of unbroken firs which covered all the upper portion of the mountain, deepening its rose-tint and gaining in intensity what it lost in expanse,—diminished to a handbreadth, to a point, and, flickering an instant, went out, leaving in the whole range of vision no speck of sunlight to relieve the wilderness of shadowy gloom. I had come under a spell,—for, often as I had seen the sun set in the mountains and over the lakes, I had never before felt as I now felt, that I was a part in the landscape, and that it was something more to me than rocks and trees. The sunlight had died on it. J. took up the oars and our silently-moving boat broke the glassy surface again. All around us no distinction was visible between the landscape above and that below, no water-line could be found; and to the west, where the sky was still glowing and golden, with faint bands of crimson cirrus swept across the deep and tremulous blue, growing purple as the sun sank lower, we could distinguish nothing in the landscape. Neither sound nor motion of animate or inanimate thing disturbed the scene, save that of the oars, with the long lines of blue which ran off from the wake of the boat into the mystery closing behind us. A rifle-shot rang out from the landing and rolled in multitudinous echoes around the lake, dying away in faintest thunders and murmurings from the ravines on the side of the mountain. It was the call to supper, and we pulled back to the light of the fire, which was now glimmering through the trees from the front of the camp.

Supper over, the smokers lighted their pipes and a rambling conversation began on the sights and sounds of the day. For my own part, unable to quiet the uneasy questioning which possessed me, I wandered down to the shore and took a seat in the stern of one of the boats, which, hauled part of their length upon the sandy beach, reached out some distance among the lily-pads which covered the shallow water, and whose folded flowers dotted the surface, the white points alone visible. The uneasy question still stirred within me; and now, looking towards the northwest, where the sky yet glowed faintly with twilight, a long line of pines, gaunt and humanesque, as no tree but our northern white-pine is, was relieved in massy blackness against the golden gray, like a long procession of giants. They were in groups of two and three, with now and then an isolated one, stretching along the horizon, losing themselves in the gloom of the mountains at the north. The weirdness of the scene caught my excited imagination in an instant, and I became conscious of two mental phenomena. The first was an impression of motion in the trees, which, whimsical as it was, I had not the slightest power to dispel. I trembled from head to foot under the consciousness of this supernatural vitality. My rational faculties were as clear as ever they had been, and I understood perfectly that the semblance of motion was owing to two characteristics of the white-pine, namely,—that it follows the shores of the lakes in lines, rarely growing back at any distance from the water, except when it follows, in the same orderly arrangement, the rocky ridges,—and that, from its height above all other forest-trees, it catches the full force of the prevalent winds, which here are from the west, and consequently leans slightly to the east, much as a person leans in walking. These traits of the tree explained entirely the phenomenon; yet the knowledge of them had not the slightest effect to undeceive my imagination. I was awe-struck, as though the phantoms of some antediluvian race had arisen from the valleys of the Adirondack and were marching in silence to their old fanes on the mountain-tops. I cowered in the boat under an absolute chill of nervous apprehension.—The second phenomenon was, that I heard mentally a voice which said distinctly these words,-"The procession of the Anakim!"—and at the same time I became conscious of some disembodied spiritual being standing near me, as we are sometimes aware of the presence of a friend without having seen him. Every one accustomed to solitary thought has probably recognized this kind of mental action, and speculated on the strange duality of Nature implied in it. The spiritualists call it "impressional communication," and abandon themselves to its vagaries in the belief that it is really the speech of angels; men of thought find in it a mystery of mental organization, and avail themselves of it under the direction of their reason. I at present speculated with the philosophers; but my imagination, siding with the spiritualists, assured me that some one spoke to me, and reason was silenced. I sat still as long as I could endure it, alone, and then crept back, trembling, to the camp,—feeling quiet only when surrounded by the rest of the party.

My attendant daemon did not leave me, I found; for now I heard the question asked, half-tauntingly,—"Subjective or objective?"

I asked myself, in reply,—"Am I mad or sane?"

"Quite sane, but with your eyes opened to something new!" was the instantaneous reply.

On such expeditions, men get back to the primitive usages and conditions of humanity. We had arisen at daybreak; darkness brought the disposition to rest. We arranged ourselves side by side on the couch of balsam and cedar boughs which the guides had spread on the ground of the camp, our feet to the fire, and all but myself soon slept. I lay a long time, excited, looking out through the open front of the camp at the stars which shone in through the trees, and even they seemed partakers of my new state of existence, and twinkled consciously and confidentially, as to one who shared the secret of their own existence and purposes. The pine-trees overhead had an added tone in their meanings, and indeed everything, as I regarded it, seemed to manifest a new life, to become identified with me: Nature and I had all things in common. I slept, at length,—a strange kind of sleep; for when the guides awoke me, in the full daylight, I was conscious of some one having talked with me through the night.

In broad day, with my companions, and in motion, the influences of the previous evening seemed to withdraw themselves to a remote distance,—yet I was aware of their awaiting me when I should be unoccupied. The day was as brilliant, as tranquil as its predecessor, and the council decided that it should be devoted to a "drive," for we had eaten the last of our venison for breakfast. The party were assigned their places at those points of the lake where the deer would be most likely to take the water, while my guide, Steve M——, and myself went up Bog River, to start him. The river, a dark, sluggish stream, about fifty feet wide, the channel by which the Mud Lakes and Little Tupper's Lake, with its connected lakes and ponds, empty into Tupper's Lake, is a favorite feeding-ground with the deer, whose breakfast is made on the leaves of the Nuphar lutea which edge the stream. We surprised one, swimming around amongst the leaves, snatching here and there the choicest of them, and when he turned to go out and rose in the water, as his feet touched bottom, I gave him a ball without fatal effect, and landing, we put Carlo on the track, which was marked by occasional drops and clots of blood, and hearing him well off into the woods, and in that furious and deep bay which indicates close pursuit, we went back to our boat and paddled upstream to a run-way Steve knew of, where the deer sometimes crossed the river. We pushed the boat into the overhanging alders which fringe the banks, leaning out into and over the water, and listened to the far-off bay of the hound. It died away and was entirely lost for a few minutes, and then came into hearing from the nearer side of the ridge, which lay back from the river a hundred rods or so, and I cocked my rifle while Steve silently pushed the boat out of the bushes, ready for a start, if the deer should "water." The baying receded again, and this time in the direction of the lake. The blood we had found on the trail was the bright, red, frothy blood which showed that the ball had passed through the lungs, and, as we knew that the deer would not run long before watering, we were sure that this would be his last turn and that he was making in earnest for the lake, where some of the boats would certainly catch him.

The excitement of the hunt had brought me back to a natural state of feeling, and now, as I lay in the stern of the boat, drifting slowly down-stream, and looked up into the hazy blue sky, in the whole expanse of which appeared no fragment of cloud, and the softened sunshine penetrated both soul and body, while the brain, lulled into lethargy by the unbroken silence and monotony of forest around, lost every trace of its midsummer madness,—I looked back to the state of the last evening as to a curious dream. I asked myself wherein it differed from a dream, and instantly my daemon replied, "In no wise." The instant reply surprised me, without startling me from my lethargy. I responded, as a matter of course, "But if no more than a dream, it amounts to nothing." It answered me, "But when a man dreams wide awake?" I pondered an instant, and it went on: "And how do you know that dreams are nothing? They are real while they last, and your waking life is no more; you wake to one and sleep to the other. Which is the real, and which the false? since you assume that one is false." I only asked myself again the eternal question, "Objective or subjective?" and the daemon made no further suggestion. At this instant we heard the report of a gun from the lake. "That's the Doctor's shot-gun," said Steve, and pulled energetically down-stream; for we knew, that, if the Doctor had fired, the deer had come in,—and if he had missed the first shot, he had a second barrel, which we should have heard from.

Among the most charming cascades in the world is certainly that which Bog River makes where it falls into Tupper's Lake. Its amber water, black in the deep channel above the fall, dividing into several small streams, slips with a plunge of, it may be, six feet over the granite rocks, into a broad, deep pool, round which tall pines stand, and over which two or three delicate-leaved white-birches lean, from which basin the waters plunge in the final foamy rush of thirty or forty feet over the irregularly broken ledge which makes the bold shore of the lake. Between the two points of rock which confine the stream is thrown a bridge, part of the military road from the Mohawk settlements to those on the St. Lawrence, built during the war of 1812. On this bridge I waited until Steve had carried the boat around, when we reembarked for the camp.

Arriving at the landing, we found two of the guides dressing the Doctor's deer, and the others preparing for dinner. As night came on my excitement returned, and I remained in the camp while the others went out on the lake,—not from fear of such an experience as I had the night before, for I enjoyed the wild emotions, as one enjoys the raging of the sea around the rocks he stands on, with a kind of tremulous apprehension,—but to see what effect the camp would produce on the state of feeling which I had begun to look at as something normal in my mental development. The rest of the party had gone out in two boats, and three of the guides, taking another, went on an excursion of their own; the two remaining, having cleared the supper-things away and lighted their pipes, were engaged in their tent, playing old sledge by the light of a single candle. There was a race out on the lake, and a far-off merriment, with an occasional halloo, like a suggestion of a busy world somewhere, but all so softened and toned down that it did not jar on my tranquillity. There was a crackling fire of green logs as large as the guides could lift and lay on, and they simmered in the blaze, and lit up the surrounding tree-trunks and the overhanging foliage, and faintly explored the recesses of the forest beyond. I lay on the blankets, and near to me seemed to sit my daemon, ready to be questioned.

At this instant there came a doubt of the theological position of my ghostly vis-a-vis, and I abruptly thought the question, "Who are you?"

"Nobody," replied the daemon, oracularly.

This I knew in one sense to be true; and I replied, "But you know what I mean. Don't trifle. Of what nature is your personality?"

"Do you think," it replied, "that personality is necessary to existence? We are spirit."

"But wherein, save in the having or not having a body, do you differ from me?"

"In all the consequences of that difference."

"Very well,—go on."

"Don't you see that without your circumstances you are only half a being?—that you are shaped by the action and reaction between your own mind and surrounding things, and that the body is the only medium of this action and reaction? Do you not see that without this there would have been no consciousness of self, and consequently neither individuality nor personality? Remove those circumstances by removing the body, and do you not remove personality?"

"But," said I, "you certainly have individuality, and wherein does that differ from personality?"

"Possibly you commit two mistakes," replied the daemon. "As to the distinction, it is one with a difference. You are personal to yourself, individual to others; and we, though individual to you, may be still impersonal. If spirit takes form from having something to act on, the fact that we act on you is sufficient, so far as you are concerned, to cause an individuality."

I hesitated, puzzled.

It went on: "Don't you see that the inertia of spirit is motion, as that of matter is rest? Now compare this universal spirit to a river flowing tranquilly, and which in itself gives no evidence of motion, save when it meets with some inert point of resistance. This point of resistance has the effect of action in itself, and you attribute to it all the eddies and ripples produced. You must see that your own immobility is the cause of the phenomena of life which give you your apparent existence;—our individuality to you may be just as much the effect of your personality; you find us only responsive to your own mental state."

I was conscious of a sophistry somewhere, but could not, for the life of me, detect it. I thought of the Tempter; I almost feared to listen to another word; but the daemon seemed so fair, so rational, and, above all, so confident of truth, that I could not entertain my fears.

"But," said I, finally, "if my personality is owing to my physical circumstances, to my body and its immobility, what is the body itself owing to?"

"All physical or organic existence is owing to the antagonism between certain particles of matter, fixed and resistant, and the all-pervading, ever-flowing spirit; the different inertiae conflict, and end by combining in an organic being, since neither can be annihilated or transmuted. Perhaps we can tell you, by-and-by, how this antagonism commences; at present, you would scarcely be able to comprehend it clearly."

This I felt, for I was already getting confused with the questions that occurred to me as to the relations between spirit and matter.

I asked once more, "Have you never been personal, as I am?—have you never had a body and a name?"

"Perhaps," was the reply,—"but it must have been long since; and the trifling circumstances which you call life, with all their direct and recognizable effects, pass away so soon, that it is impossible to recall anything of it. There seems a kind of consciousness when we have something to act against, as against your mind at the present moment; but as to name, and all that kind of distinctiveness, what is the use of it where there is no possibility of confusion or mistake as to identity? We have said that we are spirit; and when we say that spirit is one and matter one, we have gone behind personal identity."

"But," asked I, "am I to lose my individual existence,—to become finally merged in a universal impersonality? What, then, is the object of life?"

"You see the plants and animals all around you growing up and passing away,—each entering its little orbit, and sweeping through this sphere of cognizance back again to the same mystery it emerged from; you never ask the question as to them, but for yourself you are anxious. If you had not been, would creation have been any less creation?—if you cease, will it not still be as great? Truly, though, your mistake is one of too little, not of too much. You assume that the animals become nothing; but, truly, nothing dies. The very crystals into which all the so-called primitive substances are formed, and which are the first forms of organization, have a spirit in them; for they obey something which inhabits and organizes them. If you could decompose the crystal, would you annihilate the soul which organized it? The plant absorbs the crystal, and it becomes a part of a higher organization, which could no more exist without its soul; and if the plant is cut down and cast into the oven, is the organic impulse food for the flames? You, the animal, do but exist through the absorption of these vegetable substances, and why should you not obey the analogical law of absorption and aggregation? You killed a deer to-day;—the flesh you will appropriate to supply the wants of your own material organization; but the life, the spirit which made that flesh a deer, in obedience to which that shell of external appearance is moulded,—you missed that. You can trace the body in its metamorphoses; but for this impalpable, active, and only real part of the being,—it were folly to suppose it more perishable, more evanescent, than the matter of which it was master. And why should not you, as well as the deer, go back into the great Life from which you came? As to a purpose in creation, why should there be any other than that which existence always shows,—that of existing?"

I now began to notice that all the leading ideas which the daemon offered were put in the form of questions, as if from a cautious non-committalism, or as if it dared not in so many words say that they were the absolute truth. I felt that there was another side to the matter, and was confident that I should detect the sophistry of the daemon; but then I did not feel able to carry the conversation farther, and was sensible of a readiness on the part of my interlocutor to cease. I wondered at this, and if it implied weariness on its part, when it was replied,—"We answer to your own mind; of course, when that ceases to act, there ceases to be reaction." I cried out in my own mind, in utter bewilderment,—"Objective or subjective?" and ceased my questionings.

The camp-fire glowed splendidly through the overhanging branches and foliage, and I longed for a revel of light. I asked the guides to make a "blaze," and, after a minute's delay and an ejaculation of "Game, to your high, low, jack," they emerged from the tent and in a few minutes had cut down several small dead spruces and piled the tops on the fire, which flashed up through the pitchy, inflammable mass, and we had a pyrotechnical display which startled the birds, that had gone to rest in the assurance of night, into a confused activity and clamor. The heat penetrated the camp and gave me a drowsiness which my disturbed repose of the night before rendered extremely grateful, and when the rest of the party returned from their row, I was asleep.

It was determined, the next morning, in council, to move; and one of the guides having informed us of a newly-opened carry, by which we could cross from Little Tupper's Lake, ten miles above us, directly to Forked Lake, and thence following the usual route down the Raquette River and through Long Lake, we could reach Martin's on Saranac Lake without retracing our steps, except over the short distance from the Raquette through the Saranac Lakes,—after breakfast, we hurriedly packed up our traps and were off as early as might be. It is hard boating up the Bog River, and hard work both for guides and tourists. All the boats and baggage had to be carried three miles, on the backs of the guides, and, help them as much as we could, the day had drawn nearly to its close before we were fairly embarked on Little Tupper's, and we had then nearly ten miles to go before reaching Constable's Camp, where we were to stop for the night. I worked hard all day, but in a kind of dream, as if the dead weight I carried with weariness were only the phantom of something, and I were a fantasy carrying it;—the actual had become visionary, and my imaginings nudged me and jostled me almost off the path of reason. But I had no time for a seance with my daemon. The next day I devoted with the guides to bushing out the carry across to Forked Lake, about three and a half miles, through perfectly pathless woods; for we found Sam's statements as to the carry being chopped out entirely false; only a blazed line existed; so all the guides, except one, set to work with myself bushing and chopping out, while the other guide and the rest of the party spent the day in hunting. At the close of the day we had completed nearly two miles of the path, and returned to Constable's Camp to sleep. The next day we succeeded in getting the boats and baggage through to Bottle Pond, two and a half miles, and the whole party camped on the carry,—the guides anathematizing Sam, whose advice had led us on this road. The next afternoon found us afloat on Forked Lake, weary and glad to be in the sunlight on blue water again. Hard work and the excitement of responsibility in engineering our road-making operations had kept my visitor from dream-land away, and as we paddled leisurely down the beautiful lake,—one of the few yet untouched by the lumbermen,—I felt a healthier tone of mind than I had known since we had entered the woods. As we ran out of one of the deep bays which constitute a large portion of the lake, into the principal sheet of water, one of the most perfectly beautiful mountain-views I have ever seen burst upon us. We looked down the lake to its outlet, five miles, between banks covered with tall pines, and far away in the hazy atmosphere a chain of blue peaks raised themselves sharp-edged against the sky. One singularly-shaped summit, far to the south, attracted my attention, and I was about to ask its name, when Steve called out, with the air of one who communicates something of more than ordinary significance,—"Blue Mountain!" The name, Steve's manner, and I know not what of mysterious cause, gave to the place a strange importance. I felt a new and unaccountable attraction to the mountain. Some enchantment seemed to be casting its glamour over me from that distance even. There was thenceforward no goal for my wanderings but the Blue Mountain. It is a solitary peak, one of the southernmost of the Adirondacks, of a very quaint form, and lies in a circlet of lakes, three of which in a chain are named from the mountain. The way by which the mountain is reached is through these lakes, and their outlet, which empties into Raquette Lake. I had determined to remain in the woods some weeks, and now concluded to return, as soon as I had seen the rest of the party on their way home, and take up quarters on Raquette Lake for the rest of my stay.

That night we camped at the foot of Forked Lake, and not one of the party will ever forget the thunder-storm that burst on us in our woods-encampment among the tall pines, two of which, near us, were struck by the lightning. I tried in vain, when we were quiet for the night, to get some information on the subject of my attraction to the Blue Mountain. My daemon appeared remote and made no responses. It seemed as if, knowing my resolution to stay alone there, it had resolved to be silent until I was without any cause for interruption of our colloquies. Save the consciousness of its remote attendance, I felt no recurrence of my past experience, until, having seen my friends on the road to civilization again, I left Martin's with Steve and Carlo for my quarters on the Raquette. We hurried back up the river as fast as four strong arms could propel our light boat, and resting, the second night, at Wilbur's, on Raquette Lake, I the next morning selected a site for a camp, where we built a neat little bark-house, proof against all discomforts of an elemental character, and that night I rested under my own roof, squatter though I was. The daemon seemed in no haste to renew our former intimate intercourse,—for what reason I could not divine; but a few days after my settling, days spent in exploring and planning, it resumed suddenly its functions. It came to me out on the lake, where I had paddled to enjoy the starlight in the delicious evening, when the sky was filled with luminous vapor, through which the stars struggled dimly, and in which the landscape was almost as clearly visible as by moonlight.

"Well!" said I, familiarly, as I felt it take its place by my side, "you have come back."

"Come back!" it replied; "will you never get beyond your miserable ideas of space, and learn that there is no separation but that of feeling, no nearness but that of sympathy? If you had cared enough for us, we should have been with you constantly."

I was anxious to get to the subject of present interest, and did not stop to discuss a point which, in one, and the highest sense, I admitted.

"What," I asked, "was that impulse which urged me to go to the Blue Mountain? Shall I find there anything supernatural?"

"Anything supernatural? What is there above Nature, or outside of it?"

"But nothing is without cause; and for an emotion so strong as I experienced, on the sight of those mountains, there must have been one."

"Very likely! if you go after it, you will find it. You probably expect to find some beautiful enchantress keeping her court on the mountain-top, and a suite of fairies."

I started, for, absurd as it may seem, that very idea, half-formed, undeveloped from very shame at my superstition, had rested in my mind.

"And," said I, at a loss what to say, "are there no such things possible?"

"All things are possible to the imagination."

"To create?"

"Most certainly! Is not creation the act of bringing into existence? and does not your Hamlet exist as immortally as your Shakspeare? The only true existence, is it not that of the Idea? Have you not seen the pines transfigured?"

"And if I imagined a race of fairies inhabiting the Blue Mountain, should I find them?"

"If you imagined them, yes! But the imagination is not voluntary; it works to supply a necessity; its function is creation, and creation is needed only to fill a vacuum. The wild Arab, feeling his own insignificance, and comprehending the necessity for a Creating Power, finds between himself and that Power, which to him, as to you the other day, assumes a personality, an immense distance, and fills the space with a race half divine, half human. It was the necessity for the fairy which created the fairy. You do not feel the same distance between yourself and a Creator, and so you do not call into existence a creative race of the same character; but has not your own imagination furnished you with images to which you may give your reverence? It may be that you diminish that distance by degrading the Great First Cause to an image of your personality, and so are not so wise as the Arab, who at once admits it to be unattainable. Each man shapes that which he looks up to by his desires or fears, and these in their turn are the results of his degree of development."

"But God, is not He the Supreme Creator?"

"Is it not as we said, that you measure the Supreme by yourself? Can you not comprehend a supreme law, an order which controls all things?"

In my meditations this doubt had often presented itself to me, and I had as often put it resolutely aside; but now to hear it urged on me in this way from this mysterious presence troubled me, and I shrank from further discussion of the topic. I earnestly desired a fuller knowledge of the nature of my colloquist.

"Tell me," said I, "do you not take cognizance of my personality?—do you read my past and my future?"

"Your past and future are contained in your present. Who can analyze what you are can see the things which made you such; for effect contains its cause;—to see the future, it needs only to know the laws which govern all things. It is a simple problem: you being given, with the inevitable tendencies to which you are subject, the result is your future; the flight of one of your rifle-balls cannot be calculated with greater certainty."

"But how shall we know those laws?" said I.

"You contain them all, for you are the result of them; and they are always the same,—not one code for your beginning, and another for your continuance. Man is the complete embodiment of all the laws thus far developed, and you have only to know yourself to know the history of creation."

This I could not gainsay, and my mind, wearied, declined to ask further. I returned to camp and went to sleep.

Several days passed without any remarkable progress in my knowledge of this strange being, though I found myself growing more and more sensitive to the presence of it each day; and at the same time the incomprehensible sympathy with Nature, for I know not what else to call it, seemed growing stronger and more startling in the effects it produced on the landscape. The influence was no longer confined to twilight, but made noon-day mystical; and I began to hear strange sounds and words spoken by disembodied voices,—not like that of my daemon, but unaccompanied by any feeling of personal presence connected therewith. It seemed as if the vibrations shaped themselves into words, some of them of singular significance. I heard my name called, and the strangest laughs on the lake at night. My daemon seemed averse to answering any questions on the topic of these illusions. The only reply was,—"You would be wiser, not knowing too much."

Ere many days of this solitary life had passed, I found my whole existence taken up by my fantasies. I determined to make my excursion to the Blue Mountain, and, sending Steve down to the post-office, a three-days' journey, I took the boat, with Carlo and my rifle, and pushed off. The outlet of the Blue Mountain Lakes is like all the Adirondack streams, dark and shut in by forest, which scarcely permits landing anywhere. Now and then a log fallen into the water compels the voyager to get out and lift his boat over; then a shallow rapid must be dragged over; and when the stream is clear of obstruction, it is too narrow for any mode of propulsion but poling or paddling.

I had worked several weary hours, and the sun had passed the meridian, when I emerged from the forest into a wild, swampy flat,—"wild meadow," the guides call it,—through which the stream wound, and around which was a growth of tall larches backed by pines. Where the brook seemed to reenter the wood on the opposite side, stood two immense pines, like sentinels, and such they became to me; and they looked grim and threatening, with their huge arms reaching over the gateway. I drew my boat up on the boggy shore at the foot of a solitary tamarack, into which I climbed as high as I could to look over the wood beyond.

Never shall I forget what I saw from that swaying look-out. Before me was the mountain, perhaps five miles away, covered with dense forest to within a few hundred feet of the summit, which showed bare rock with firs clinging in the clefts and on the tables, and which was crowned by a walled city, the parapet of whose walls cut with a sharp, straight line against the sky, and beyond showed spire and turret and the tops of tall trees. The walls must have been at least a hundred and fifty feet high, and I could see here and there between the group of firs traces of a road coming down the mountain-side. And I heard one of those mocking voices say, "The city of silence!"—nothing more. I felt strongly tempted to start on a flight through the air towards the city, and why I did not launch forth on the impulse I know not. My blood rushed through my veins with maddest energy, and my brain seemed to have been replaced by some ethereal substance, and to be capable of floating me off as if it were a balloon. Yet I clung and looked, my whole soul in my eyes, and had no thought of losing the spectacle for an instant, even were it to reach the city itself. The glorious glamour of that place and moment, who can comprehend it? The wind swung my tree-top to and fro, and I climbed up until the tree bent with my weight like a twig under a bird's.

Presently I heard bells and strains of music, as though all the military bands in the city were coming together on the walls; and the sounds rose and fell with the wind,—one moment entirely lost, another full and triumphant. Then I heard the sound of hunting-horns and the baying of a pack of hounds, deep-mouthed, as if a hunting-party were coming down the mountain-side. Nearer and nearer they came, and I heard merry laughing and shouting as they swept through the valley. I feared for a moment that they would find me there, and drive me, intruding, from the enchanted land.

But I must fathom the mystery, let what would come. I descended the tree, and when I had reached the boat again I found the whole thing changed. I understood that my city was only granite and fir-trees, and my music only the wind in the tree-tops. The reaction was sickening; the sunshine seemed dull and cold after the lost glory of that enchantment. The Blue Mountain was reached, its destiny fulfilled for me, and I returned to my camp, sick at heart, as one who has had a dear illusion dispelled.

The next day my mind was unusually calm and clear. I asked my daemon what was the meaning of the enchantment of yesterday.

"It was a freak of your imagination," it replied.

"But what is this imagination, then, which, being a faculty of my own, yet masters my reason?"

"Not at all a faculty, but your very highest self, your own life in creative activity. Your reason is a faculty, and is subordinate to the purposes of your imagination. If, instead of regarding imagination as a pendant to your mental organization, you take it for what it is, a function, and the noblest one your mind knows, you will see at once why it is that it works unconsciously, just as you live unconsciously and involuntarily. Men set their reason and feeling to subdue what they consider a treacherous element in themselves; they succeed only in dwarfing their natures, and imagination is inert while reason controls; but when reason rests in sleep, and you cease to live to the external world, imagination resumes its normal power. You dream;—it is only the revival of that which you smother when you are awake. You consider the sights and sounds of yesterday follies; you reason;—imagination demonstrates its power by overturning your reason and deceiving your very senses."

"You speak of its creations; I understand this in a certain sense; but if these were such, should not they have permanence? and can anything created perish?"

"Nonsense! what will these trees be tomorrow? and the rocks you sit on, are they not changing to vegetation under you? The only creation is that of ideas; things are thin shadows. If man is not creative, he is still undeveloped."

"But is not such an assumption trenching on the supremacy of God?" I asked.

"What do you understand by 'God?'"

"An infinitely wise and loving Controller of events, of course," I replied.

"Did you ever find any one whose ideas on the subject agreed with yours?"

"Not entirely."

"Then your God is not the same as the God of other men; from the Fee-Jeean to the Christian there is a wide range. Of course there is a first great principle of life; but this personality you all worship, is it not a creation?"

I now felt this to be the great point of the demon's urging; it recurred too often not to be designed. Led on by the sophistry of my tempter, I had floated unconsciously to this issue, practically admitting all; but when this suggestion stood completely unclothed before me, my soul rose in horror at the abyss before it. For an instant all was chaos, and the very order of Nature seemed disorder. Life and light vanished from the face of the earth; my night made all things dead and dark. A universe without a God! Creation seemed to me for that moment but a galvanized corse. What my emotions were no human being who has not felt them can conceive. My first impulse was to suicide; with the next I cried from the depths of my despair, "God deliver me from the body of this death!" It was but a moment,—and there came, in the place of the cold questioning voice of my daemon, one of ineffable music, repeating words familiar to me from childhood, words linked to everything loved and lovely in my past:—"Ye believe in God, believe also in me." The hot tears for another moment blotted out the world from sight. I said once more to the questioner, "Now who are you?"

"Your own doubts," was the reply; and it seemed as if only I spoke to myself.

Since that day I have never reasoned with my doubts, never doubted my imagination.



ALL'S WELL.

Sweet-voiced Hope, thy fine discourse Foretold not half life's good to me; Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force To show how sweet it is to be! Thy witching dream And pictured scheme To match the fact still want the power; Thy promise brave From birth to grave Life's boon may beggar in an hour.

Ask and receive,—'tis sweetly said; Yet what to plead for know I not; For Wish is worsted, Hope o'ersped, And aye to thanks returns my thought. If I would pray, I've nought to say But this, that God may be God still; For Him to live Is still to give, And sweeter than my wish his will.

O wealth of life beyond all bound! Eternity each moment given! What plummet may the Present sound? Who promises a future heaven? Or glad, or grieved, Oppressed, relieved, In blackest night, or brightest day, Still pours the flood Of golden good, And more than heartfull fills me aye.

My wealth is common; I possess No petty province, but the whole; What's mine alone is mine far less Than treasure shared by every soul. Talk not of store, Millions or more,— Of values which the purse may hold,— But this divine! I own the mine Whose grains outweigh a planet's gold.

I have a stake in every star, In every beam that fills the day; All hearts of men my coffers are, My ores arterial tides convey; The fields, the skies, And sweet replies Of thought to thought are my gold-dust,— The oaks, the brooks, And speaking looks Of lovers' faith and friendship's trust.

Life's youngest tides joy-brimming flow For him who lives above all years, Who all-immortal makes the Now, And is not ta'en in Time's arrears: His life's a hymn The seraphim Might hark to hear or help to sing, And to his soul The boundless whole Its bounty all doth daily bring.

"All mine is thine," the sky-soul saith; "The wealth I am, must thou become: Richer and richer, breath by breath,— Immortal gain, immortal room!" And since all his Mine also is, Life's gift outruns my fancies far, And drowns the dream In larger stream, As morning drinks the morning-star.



THE BIRDS OF THE PASTURE AND FOREST.

He who has always lived in the city or its suburbs, who has seldom visited the interior except for purposes of trade, and whose walks have not often extended beyond those roads which are bordered on each side by shops and dwelling-houses, may never have heard the birds that form the subject of this sketch. These are the birds of the pasture and forest,—those shy, melodious warblers, who sing only in the ancient haunts of the Dryads, and of those nymphs who waited upon Diana in her hunting-excursions, but who are now recognized only by the beautiful plants which, with unseen hands, they rear in the former abodes of the celestial huntress. These birds have not probably multiplied, like the familiar birds, with the increase of human population and the extension of agriculture. They were perhaps as numerous in the days of King Philip as they are now. Though they do not shun mankind, they keep aloof from cultivated grounds, living chiefly in the deep wood or on the edge of the forest, and in the bushy pasture.

There is a peculiar wildness in the songs of this class of birds, that awakens a delightful mood of mind, similar to that which is excited by reading the figurative lyrics of a romantic age. This feeling is, undoubtedly, to a certain extent, the effect of association. Having always heard their notes in rude, wild, and wooded places, they never fail to bring this kind of scenery vividly before the imagination, and their voices affect us like the sounds of mountain-streams. There is a little Sparrow which I often hear about the shores of unfrequented ponds, and in their untrodden islets, and never in any other situations. The sound of his voice, therefore, always enhances the sensation of rude solitude with which I contemplate this wild and desolate scenery. We often see him perched upon a dead tree that stands in the water, a few rods from the shore, apparently watching our angling operations from his leafless perch, where he sings so sweetly, that the very desolation of the scene borrows a charm from his voice that renders every object delightful. This bird I believe to be the Fringilla palustris of Wilson.

It is certain that the notes of the solitary birds, compared with those of the Robin and Linnet, excite a different class of sensations. I can imagine that there is a similar difference in the flavors of a cherry and a cranberry. If the former is sweeter, the latter has a spicy zest that is peculiar to what we call natural fruit. The effect is the same, however, whether it be attributable to some intrinsic quality, or to association, which is indeed the source of some of the most delightful emotions of the human soul.

Nature has made all her scenes, and the sights and sounds that accompany them, more lovely, by causing them to be respectively suggestive of a certain class of sensations. The birds of the pasture and forest are not frequent enough in cultivated places to be associated with the garden or village inclosure. Nature has confined particular birds and animals to certain localities, and thereby adds a poetic and a picturesque attraction to their features. There are also certain flowers that cannot be cultivated in the garden, as if they were designed for the exclusive adornment of those secluded arbors which the spade and the plough have never profaned. Here flowers grow which are too holy for culture, and birds sing whose voices were never heard in the cage of the voluptuary, and whose tones inspire us with a sense of freedom known only to those who often retire from the world, to live in religious communion with Nature.

When the flowers of early summer are gone, and the graceful neottia is seen in the meadows, extending its spiral clusters among the nodding grasses,—when the purple orchis is glowing in the wet grounds, and the roadsides are gleaming with the yellow blossoms of the hypericum, the merry voice of the Bobolink has ceased, and many other familiar birds have become almost silent. At this time, if we stroll away from the farm and the orchard into more retired and wooded haunts, we may hear, at all times of the day and at frequent intervals, the pensive and melodious notes of the Wood-Sparrow, who sings as if he were delighted at being left almost alone to warble and complain to the benevolent deities of the grove. He who in his youth has made frequent visits to these pleasant and solitary places, and wished that he could live and love forever among the wild-roses, the blushing azaleas, the red summer-lilies, and the thousands of beautiful and sweet-scented flowers that spring up among the various spicy and fruit-bearing shrubs which unite to form a genuine huckleberry-pasture,—he only knows the unspeakable delights which are awakened by the sweet, simple notes of this little warbler.

The Wood-Sparrow (Fringilla pusilla) is somewhat less than a Canary, with a chestnut-colored crown; above of a grayish brown hue, and dusky white beneath. Though he does not seem to be a shy bird, I have never seen him in cultivated grounds, and the inmates of solitary cottages alone are privileged to hear his notes from their windows. He loves the hills which are half covered with young pines, viburnums, cornels, and huckleberry-bushes, and feeds upon the seeds of grasses and wild lettuce, with occasional repasts of insects and berries.

His notes are sweet and plaintive, seldom consisting of more than one strain. He commences slowly, as if repeating the syllable, de de de de de de d' d' d' d' d' d' d' r' r' r',—increasing in rapidity, and at the same time rising as it were by semi-tones, or chromatically, to about a major fourth on the scale. In midsummer, when this bird is most musical, he occasionally lengthens his song by alternately ascending and descending, interposing a few chirping notes between the ascending and descending series. The song loses a part of its simplicity, and, as it seems to me, is not improved by this variation.

While listening to the notes of the Wood-Sparrow, we are continually saluted by the agreeable, though less musical song of the Chewink, or Ground-Robin,—a bird that frequents similar places. This is a very beautiful bird, elegantly spotted with white, red, and black,—the female being of a bright bay color where the male is red. Every rambler knows him, not only by his plumage and his peculiar note, but also by his singular habit of lurking about among the bushes, appearing and disappearing like a squirrel, and watching all our movements. Though he does not avoid our company, it is with difficulty that a marksman can obtain a good aim at him, so rapidly does he change his position among the leaves and branches. In this habit he resembles the Wren. While we are watching his motions, he pauses in his song, and utters that peculiar note of complaint from which he has derived his name, Chewink, though the sound he utters is more like chewee, accenting the second syllable.

The Chewink (Fringilla erythrophthalma) is a very constant singer during four months of the year, from the middle of April. He is very untiring in his lays, seldom resting for any considerable time from morning till night, being never weary in rain or in sunshine, or at noon-day in the hottest weather of the season. His song consists of two long notes, the first about a third above the second, and the last part is made up of several rapidly uttered notes about one tone below the first note.

There is an expression of great cheerfulness in these notes; but music, like poetry, must be somewhat plaintive in its character, to take strong hold of the feelings. I have never known a person to be affected by these notes as by those of the Wood-Sparrow. While engaged in singing, the Chewink is usually perched on the lower branch of a tree, near the edge of a wood, or on the top of a tall bush. He is a true forest-bird, and builds his nest in the thickets that conceal the boundaries of the wood.

The notes of the Chewink and his general appearance and habits are well calculated to render him conspicuous, and they cause him to be always noticed and remembered. Our birds are like our men of genius. As in the literary world there is a description of talent that must be discovered and pointed out by an observing few, before the great mass can understand it or even know its existence,—so the sweetest songsters of the wood are unknown to the mass of the community, while many very ordinary performers, whose talents are conspicuous, are universally known and admired.

As we advance into the wood, if it be near mid-day, or before the decline of the sun, the notes of two small birds will be sure to attract our attention. These notes are very similar, and as slender and piercing as the chirp of a grasshopper, being distinguished from the latter only by a different and more pleasing modulation. The birds to which I refer are the Red Start (Muscicapa ruticilla) and the Speckled Creeper (Sylvia varia). The first is the more rarely seen of the two, being a bird of the deep forest, and shunning observation by hiding himself in the most obscure parts of the wood. In general appearance, and in the color of his plumage, he bears a resemblance to the Ground-Robin, though not more than half his size. He lives entirely on insects, catching them while they are flying in the air.

His song is similar to that of the Summer Yellow-Bird, so common in our gardens among the fruit-trees, but it is more shrill and feeble. The Creeper's song does not differ from it more than the songs of different individuals of the same species may differ. This bird may be seen creeping like a Woodpecker around the branches of trees, feeding upon the grubs and insects that are lodged upon the bark. He often leaves the forest, and may be seen busily searching the trees in the orchard and garden. The restless activity of the birds of this species affords a proof of the countless myriads of insects that must be destroyed by them in the course of one season,—insects which, if not kept in check by these and other small birds, would multiply to such an extreme as to render the earth uninhabitable by man.

While listening with close attention to the slender notes of either of the last-named birds, often hardly audible amidst the din of grasshoppers, the rustling of leaves, and the sighing of winds among the tall oaken boughs, suddenly the wood resounds with a loud, shrill song, like the sharpest notes of the Canary. The bird that startles one with this vociferous note is the Oven-Bird, (Turdus aurocapillus), or Golden-Crowned Thrush. It is the smallest of the Thrushes, is confined exclusively to the wood, and when singing is particularly partial to noon-day. There is no melody in his song. He begins rather low, increasing in loudness as he proceeds, until the last notes are so loud as to seem almost in our immediate presence. He might be supposed to utter His words, I see, I see, I see, etc.,—emphasizing the first word, and repeating the words six or eight times, louder and louder with each repetition. No other bird equals this little Thrush in the emphasis with which he delivers his brief communication. His notes are associated with summer noon-days in the deep woods, and, when bursting upon the ear in the silence of noon, they disperse all melancholy thoughts, and inspire one with a vivid consciousness of life.

The most remarkable thing connected with the history of this bird is his oven-shaped nest. It is commonly placed on the ground, under a knoll of moss or a tuft of grass and bushes, and is formed almost entirely of long grass neatly woven. It is covered with a roof of the same materials, and a round opening is made at the side, for the bird's entrance. The nest is so ingeniously covered with grass and disguised with the appearance of the general surface around it, that it is very seldom discovered. The Cow-Bunting, however, is able to find it, and often selects it as a depository for its own eggs.

Those who are addicted to rambling in pursuit of natural curiosities may have observed that pine-woods are remarkable for certain collections of mosses which have cushioned a projecting rock or the decayed stump of a tree. When weary with heat and exercise, it is delightful to sit down upon one of these green velveted couches and take note of the objects immediately around us. We are then prepared to hear the least sound that invades our retreat. Some of the sweetest notes ever uttered in the wood are distinctly heard only at such times; for when we are passing over the rustling leaves, the noise made by our progress interferes with the perfect recognition of all delicate sounds. It was when thus reclining, after half a day's search for flowers, under the grateful shade of a pine-tree, now watching the white clouds that sent a brighter day-beam into these dark recesses, as they passed luminously overhead, and then noting the peculiar mapping of the grounds underneath the wood, diversified with mosses in swelling knolls, little islets of fern, and parterres of ginsengs and Solomon's-seals,—in one of these cloisters of the forest, I was first greeted by the pensive note of the Green Warbler, as he seemed to titter in supplicatory tones, very slowly modulated, "Hear me, Saint Theresa!" This strain, as I have observed many times since, is, at certain hours, repeated constantly for ten minutes at a time, and it is one of those melodious sounds that seem to belong exclusively to solitude.

The Green Warbler (Sylvia virens) is a small bird, and though his notes may be familiar to all who have been accustomed to strolling in the woods, the species is not numerous in Massachusetts, the greater number retiring farther north in the breeding-season. Nuttall remarks in reference to this bird, "His simple, rather drawling, and somewhat plaintive song, uttered at short intervals, resembled the syllables 'te de teritsca, sometimes te derisca, pronounced pretty loud and slow, and the tones proceeded from high to low. In the intervals, he was perpetually busied in catching small cynips, and other kinds of flies,—keeping up a smart snapping of his bill, almost similar to the noise made by knocking pebbles together." There is a plaintive expression in this musical supplication, that is apparent to all who hear it, no less than if the bird were truly offering prayers to some tutelary deity. It is difficult, in many cases, to determine why a certain combination of sounds should affect one with an emotion of sadness, while another, under the same circumstances, produces a feeling of joy. This is a part of the philosophy of music which has not been explained.

While treating of the Sylvias, I must not omit to notice one of the most important of the tribe, and one with which almost everybody is acquainted,—the Maryland Yellow-Throat (Sylvia trichas). This species is quite common and familiar. He is most frequently seen in a willow-grove that borders a stream, or in the shrubbery of moist and low grounds. The angler is greeted by his notes on the rushy borders of a pond, and the botanist listens to them when hunting for those rose-plants that hide themselves under dripping rocks in some wooded ravine. The song of the Yellow-Throat resembles that of the Warbling Vireo, delivered with somewhat more precision, as if he were saying, I see you, I see you, I see you. His notes are simply lively and agreeable; there is nothing plaintive about them. The bird, however, is very attractive in his appearance, being of a bright olive-color above, with a yellow throat and breast, and a black band extending from the nostrils over the eye. This black band and the yellow throat are the marks by which he is most easily identified. The Yellow-Throat remains tuneful till near the last week in August.

But if we leave the wood while those above described are the only singing-birds we have heard, we have either returned too soon, or we did not penetrate deeply enough into the forest. The Wood-Sparrow prepared our ears for a concert more delightful than the Red Start or the Yellow-Throat are capable of presenting, and we have spent our time almost in vain, if we have not heard the song of the Wood-Thrush (Turdus melodus). His notes are not startling or conspicuous; some dull ears might not hear them, though poured forth only a few rods distant, if their attention were not directed to them. Yet they are loud, liquid, and sonorous, and they fail to attract attention only on account of the long pauses between the different strains. We must link all these strains together to enjoy the full pleasure which the song of this bird is capable of affording, though any single strain alone is sufficient to entitle the bird to considerable reputation as a songster.

The song of the Wood-Thrush consists of about eight or ten different strains, each of considerable length. After each strain the bird makes a pause of about three or four seconds. I think the effect of this sylvan music is somewhat diminished by the length of the pauses or rests. It may be said, however, that during each pause our susceptibility is increased, and we are thus prepared to be more deeply affected by the next notes. Whether the one or the other opinion be correct, it is certain that any one who stops to listen to this bird will become spellbound, and deaf to almost every other sound in the grove, as if his ears were enchained to the song of the Siren.

The Wood-Thrush sings at almost all hours of the day, though seldom after sunset. He delights in a dusky retreat, and is evidently inspired by solitude, singing no less in gloomy weather than in sunshine. Late in August, when other birds have mostly become silent, he is sometimes the only songster in the wood. There is a liquid sound in his tones that slightly resembles that of a glassichord; though in some parts of the country he has received the name of Fife-Bird, from the clearness of his intonations. By many persons this species is called the Hermit-Thrush.

The Veery (Turdus Wilsonii) has many habits like those of the Wood-Thrush, and some similarity of song. He is about the size of a Blue-Bird, and resembles the Red Thrush, except that the brown of his back is slightly tinged with olive. He arrives early in May, and is first heard to sing during some part of the second week of that month, when the sons of the Bobolink commences. He is not one of our familiar birds; and unless we live in close proximity to a wood that is haunted by a stream, we shall never hear his voice from our doors or windows. He sings neither in the orchard, nor the garden, nor in the suburbs of the city. He shuns the exhibitions of art, and reserves his wild notes for those who frequent the inner sanctuary of the groves. All who have once become familiar with his song await his arrival with impatience, and take note of his silence in midsummer with regret. Until this little bird has arrived, I always feel as an audience do at a concert, before the chief singer has made her appearance, while the other performers are vainly endeavoring to soothe them by their inferior attempts.

This bird is more retiring than any other important singing-bird, except the Wood-Thrush,—being heard only in solitary groves, and usually in the vicinity of a pond or stream. Here, especially after sunset, he pours forth his brilliant and melancholy strains with a peculiar cadence, and fills the whole forest with sound. It seems as if the echoes were delimited with his notes, and took pleasure in passing them round with multiplied reverberations. I am confident this bird refrains from singing when others are the most vocal, from the pleasure he feels in listening either to his own notes, or to the melodious responses which others of his own kindred repeat in different parts of the wood. Hence he chooses the dusk of evening for his vocal hour, when the little chirping birds are mostly silent, that their voices may not interrupt his chant. At this hour, during a period of nine or ten weeks, he charms the evening with his strains, and often prolongs them in still weather till after dusk, and whispers them sweetly into the ear of night.

No bird of his size has more strength of voice; but his song, though loud, is modulated with such a sweet and flowing cadence, that it comes to the ear with all the mellowness of the softest warbling. It would be difficult to describe his song. It seems at first to be wanting in variety. I was long of this opinion, though I was puzzled to account for its pleasing and extraordinary effect on the mind of the listener. The song of the Veery consists of five distinct strains or bars. They might, perhaps, be represented on the musical staff, by commencing the first note on D above the staff and sliding down with a trill to C, one fifth below. The second, third, fourth, and fifth bars are repetitions of the first, except that each commences and ends a few tones lower than the preceding.