In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it we could see the top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the roar of the falls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all the ancient woods.It was a scene upon which one would think no thought of sin could enter.We were talking with old Phelps, the guide.Old Phelps is at once guide, philosopher, and friend.He knows the woods and streams and mountains, and their savage inhabitants, as well as we know all our rich relations and what they are doing; and in lonely bear-hunts and sable-trappings he has thought out and solved most of the problems of life.As he stands in his wood-gear, he is as grizzly as an old cedar-tree; and he speaks in a high falsetto voice, which would be invaluable to a boatswain in a storm at sea.
We had been talking of all subjects about which rational men are interested,--bears, panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, the tariff, the internal revenue (to wit, the injustice of laying such a tax on tobacco, and none on dogs: --There ain't no dog in the United States," says the guide, at the top of his voice, "that earns his living"), the Adventists, the Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion, the propagation of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, where were the seeds lying for ages that spring up into certain plants and flowers as soon as a spot is cleared anywhere in the most remote forest; and why does a growth of oak-trees always come up after a growth of pine has been removed?)--in short, we had pretty nearly reached a solution of many mysteries, when Phelps suddenly exclaimed with uncommon energy,--"Wall, there's one thing that beats me!"
"What's that?" we asked with undisguised curiosity.
"That's 'pusley'!" he replied, in the tone of a man who has come to one door in life which is hopelessly shut, and from which he retires in despair.
"Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it.It's in my garden; and I can't get rid of it.It beats me."About "pusley" the guide had no theory and no hope.A feeling of awe came over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of the stream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops.Then man can go nowhere that "pusley" will not attend him.Though he camp on the Upper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, and hear no sound save his own allegations, he will not escape it.It has entered the happy valley of Keene, although there is yet no church there, and only a feeble school part of the year.Sin travels faster than they that ride in chariots.I take my hoe, and begin;but I feel that I am warring against something whose roots take hold on H.
By the time a man gets to be eighty, he learns that he is compassed by limitations, and that there has been a natural boundary set to his individual powers.As he goes on in life, he begins to doubt his ability to destroy all evil and to reform all abuses, and to suspect that there will be much left to do after he has done.I stepped into my garden in the spring, not doubting that I should be easily master of the weeds.I have simply learned that an institution which is at least six thousand years old, and I believe six millions, is not to be put down in one season.
I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it.Iplanted them in what are called "Early Rose," --the rows a little less than three feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in the drought.Digging potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation, but not poetical.It is good for the mind, unless they are too small (as many of mine are), when it begets a want of gratitude to the bountiful earth.What small potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be! We don't plow deep enough, any of us, for one thing.Ishall put in the plow next year, and give the tubers room enough.Ithink they felt the lack of it this year: many of them seemed ashamed to come out so small.There is great pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil.
Life has few such moments.But then they must be picked up.The picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it.