Wolfgang
August 25th, 2005, 07:00 PM
From:
FISHERMAN'S LUCK AND SOME OTHER UNCERTAIN THINGS*
by Henry van Dyke
DEDICATION TO MY LADY GRAYGOWN
Here is the basket; I bring it home to you. There are no great fish
in it. But perhaps there may be one or two little ones which will
be to your taste. And there are a few shining pebbles from the bed
of the brook, and ferns from the cool, green woods, and wild flowers
from the places that you remember. I would fain console you, if I
could, for the hardship of having married an angler: a man who
relapses into his mania with the return of every spring, and never
sees a little river without wishing to fish in it. But after all,
we have had good times together as we have followed the stream of
life towards the sea. And we have passed through the dark days
without losing heart, because we were comrades. So let this book
tell you one thing that is certain. In all the life of your
fisherman the best piece of luck is just YOU.
__________________________________________
A LAZY, IDLE BROOK
Part 1. A CASUAL INTRODUCTION
On the South Shore of Long Island, all things incline to a natural
somnolence. There are no ambitious mountains, no braggart cliffs, no hasty
torrents, no hustling waterfalls in that land,
"In which it seemeth always afternoon."
The salt meadows sleep in the summer sun; the farms and market-gardens
yield a placid harvest to a race of singularly unhurried tillers of the
soil; the low hills rise with gentle slopes, not caring to get too high in
the world, only far enough to catch a pleasant glimpse of the sea and a
breath of fresh air; the very trees grow leisurely, as if they felt that
they had "all the time there is." And from this dreamy land, close as it
lies to the unresting ocean, the tumult of the breakers and the foam of
ever-turning tides are shut off by the languid lagoons of the Great South
Bay and a long range of dunes, crested with wire-grass, bay-bushes, and
wild-roses.
In such a country you could not expect a little brook to be noisy, fussy,
energetic. If it were not lazy, it would be out of keeping.
But the actual and undisguised idleness of this particular brook was another
affair, and one in which it was distinguished among its fellows. For almost
all the other little rivers of the South Shore, lazy as they may be by
nature, yet manage to do some kind of work before they finish the journey
from their crystal-clear springs into the brackish waters of the bay. They
turn the wheels of sleepy gristmills, while the miller sits with his hands
in his pockets underneath the willow-trees. They fill reservoirs out of
which great steam-engines pump the water to quench the thirst of Brooklyn.
Even the smaller streams tarry long enough in their seaward sauntering to
irrigate a few cranberry-bogs and so provide that savoury sauce which makes
the Long Island turkey a fitter subject for Thanksgiving.
But this brook of which I speak did none of these useful things. It was
absolutely out of business.
There was not a mill, nor a reservoir, nor a cranberry-bog, on all its
course of a short mile. The only profitable affair it ever undertook was to
fill a small ice-pond near its entrance into the Great South Bay. You could
hardly call this a very energetic enterprise. It amounted to little more
than a good-natured consent to allow itself to be used by the winter for the
making of ice, if the winter happened to be cold enough. Even this passive
industry came to nothing; for the water, being separated from the bay only
by a short tideway under a wooden bridge on the south country road, was too
brackish to freeze easily; and the ice, being pervaded with weeds, was not
much relished by the public. So the wooden ice-house, innocent of paint,
and toned by the weather to a soft, sad-coloured gray, stood like an
improvised ruin among the pine-trees beside the pond.
It was through this unharvested ice-pond, this fallow field of water, that
my lady Graygown and I entered on acquaintance with our lazy, idle brook.
We had a house, that summer, a few miles down the bay. But it was a very
small house, and the room that we like best was out of doors. So we spent
much time in a sailboat,--by name "The Patience,"--making voyages of
exploration into watery corners and byways. Sailing past the wooden bridge
one day, when a strong east wind had made a very low tide, we observed the
water flowing out beneath the road with an eddying current. We were
interested to discover where such a stream came from. But the sailboat
could not go under the bridge, nor even make a landing on the shore without
risk of getting aground. The next day we came back in a rowboat to follow
the clue of curiosity. The tide was high now, and we passed with the
reversed current under the bridge, almost bumping our heads against the
timbers. Emerging upon the pond, we rowed across its shallow,
weed-encumbered waters, and were introduced without ceremony to one of the
most agreeable brooks that we had ever met.
It was quite broad where it came into the pond,--a hundred feet from side to
side,--bordered with flags and rushes and feathery meadow grasses. The real
channel meandered in sweeping curves from bank to bank, and the water,
except in the swifter current, was filled with an amazing quantity of some
aquatic moss. The woods came straggling down on either shore. There were
fallen trees in the stream here and there. On one of the points an old
swamp-maple, with its decrepit branches and its leaves already touched with
the hectic colours of decay, hung far out over the water which was
undermining it, looking and leaning downward, like an aged man who bends,
half-sadly and half-willingly, towards the grave.
But for the most part the brook lay wide open to the sky, and the tide,
rising and sinking somewhat irregularly in the pond below, made curious
alternations in its depth and in the swiftness of its current. For about
half a mile we navigated this lazy little river, and then we found that
rowing would carry us no farther, for we came to a place where the stream
issued with a livelier flood from an archway in a thicket.
This woodland portal was not more than four feet wide, and the branches of
the small trees were closely interwoven overhead. We shipped the oars and
took one of them for a paddle. Stooping down, we pushed the boat through
the archway and found ourselves in the Fairy Dell. It was a long, narrow
bower, perhaps four hundred feet from end to end, with the brook dancing
through it in a joyous, musical flow over a bed of clean yellow sand and
white pebbles. There were deep places in the curves where you could hardly
touch bottom with an oar, and shallow places in the straight runs where the
boat would barely float. Not a ray of unbroken sunlight leaked through the
green roof of this winding corridor; and all along the sides there were
delicate mosses and tall ferns and wildwood flowers that love the shade.
At the upper end of the bower our progress in the boat was barred by a low
bridge, on a forgotten road that wound through the pine-woods. Here I left
my lady Graygown, seated on the shady corner of the bridge with a book,
swinging her feet over the stream, while I set out to explore its further
course. Above the wood-road there were no more fairy dells, nor easy-going
estuaries. The water came down through the most complicated piece of
underbrush that I have ever encountered. Alders and swamp maples and
pussy-willows and gray birches grew together in a wild confusion.
Blackberry bushes and fox-grapes and cat-briers trailed and twisted
themselves in an incredible tangle. There was only one way to advance, and
that was to wade in the middle of the brook, stooping low, lifting up the
pendulous alder-branches, threading a tortuous course, now under and now
over the innumerable obstacles, as a darning-needle is pushed in and out
through the yarn of a woollen stocking.
It was dark and lonely in that difficult passage. The brook divided into
many channels, turning this way and that way, as if it were lost in the
woods. There were huge clumps of OSMUNDA REGALIS spreading their fronds in
tropical profusion. Mouldering logs were covered with moss. The water
gurgled slowly into deep corners under the banks. Catbirds and blue jays
fluttered screaming from the thickets. Cotton-tailed rabbits darted away,
showing the white flag of fear. Once I thought I saw the fuscous gleam of a
red fox stealing silently through the brush. It would have been no surprise
to hear the bark of a raccoon, or see the eyes of a wildcat gleaming through
the leaves.
For more than an hour I was pushing my way through this miniature wilderness
of half a mile; and then I emerged suddenly, to find myself face to face
with--a railroad embankment and the afternoon express, with its
parlour-cars, thundering down to Southampton!
It was a strange and startling contrast. The explorer's joy, the sense of
adventure, the feeling of wildness and freedom, withered and crumpled
somewhat preposterously at the sight of the parlour-cars. My scratched
hands and wet boots and torn coat seemed unkempt and disreputable. Perhaps
some of the well-dressed people looking out at the windows of the train were
the friends with whom we were to dine on Saturday. BATECHE! What would
they say to such a costume as mine? What did I care what they said!
But, all the same, it was a shock, a disenchantment, to find that
civilization, with all its absurdities and conventionalities, was so
threateningly close to my new-found wilderness. My first enthusiasm was not
a little chilled as I walked back, along an open woodland path, to the
bridge where Graygown was placidly reading. Reading, I say, though her book
was closed, and her brown eyes were wandering over the green leaves of the
thicket, and the white clouds drifting, drifting lazily across the blue deep
of the sky.
___________________________________________
End, Part 1.
*Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1899.
FISHERMAN'S LUCK AND SOME OTHER UNCERTAIN THINGS*
by Henry van Dyke
DEDICATION TO MY LADY GRAYGOWN
Here is the basket; I bring it home to you. There are no great fish
in it. But perhaps there may be one or two little ones which will
be to your taste. And there are a few shining pebbles from the bed
of the brook, and ferns from the cool, green woods, and wild flowers
from the places that you remember. I would fain console you, if I
could, for the hardship of having married an angler: a man who
relapses into his mania with the return of every spring, and never
sees a little river without wishing to fish in it. But after all,
we have had good times together as we have followed the stream of
life towards the sea. And we have passed through the dark days
without losing heart, because we were comrades. So let this book
tell you one thing that is certain. In all the life of your
fisherman the best piece of luck is just YOU.
__________________________________________
A LAZY, IDLE BROOK
Part 1. A CASUAL INTRODUCTION
On the South Shore of Long Island, all things incline to a natural
somnolence. There are no ambitious mountains, no braggart cliffs, no hasty
torrents, no hustling waterfalls in that land,
"In which it seemeth always afternoon."
The salt meadows sleep in the summer sun; the farms and market-gardens
yield a placid harvest to a race of singularly unhurried tillers of the
soil; the low hills rise with gentle slopes, not caring to get too high in
the world, only far enough to catch a pleasant glimpse of the sea and a
breath of fresh air; the very trees grow leisurely, as if they felt that
they had "all the time there is." And from this dreamy land, close as it
lies to the unresting ocean, the tumult of the breakers and the foam of
ever-turning tides are shut off by the languid lagoons of the Great South
Bay and a long range of dunes, crested with wire-grass, bay-bushes, and
wild-roses.
In such a country you could not expect a little brook to be noisy, fussy,
energetic. If it were not lazy, it would be out of keeping.
But the actual and undisguised idleness of this particular brook was another
affair, and one in which it was distinguished among its fellows. For almost
all the other little rivers of the South Shore, lazy as they may be by
nature, yet manage to do some kind of work before they finish the journey
from their crystal-clear springs into the brackish waters of the bay. They
turn the wheels of sleepy gristmills, while the miller sits with his hands
in his pockets underneath the willow-trees. They fill reservoirs out of
which great steam-engines pump the water to quench the thirst of Brooklyn.
Even the smaller streams tarry long enough in their seaward sauntering to
irrigate a few cranberry-bogs and so provide that savoury sauce which makes
the Long Island turkey a fitter subject for Thanksgiving.
But this brook of which I speak did none of these useful things. It was
absolutely out of business.
There was not a mill, nor a reservoir, nor a cranberry-bog, on all its
course of a short mile. The only profitable affair it ever undertook was to
fill a small ice-pond near its entrance into the Great South Bay. You could
hardly call this a very energetic enterprise. It amounted to little more
than a good-natured consent to allow itself to be used by the winter for the
making of ice, if the winter happened to be cold enough. Even this passive
industry came to nothing; for the water, being separated from the bay only
by a short tideway under a wooden bridge on the south country road, was too
brackish to freeze easily; and the ice, being pervaded with weeds, was not
much relished by the public. So the wooden ice-house, innocent of paint,
and toned by the weather to a soft, sad-coloured gray, stood like an
improvised ruin among the pine-trees beside the pond.
It was through this unharvested ice-pond, this fallow field of water, that
my lady Graygown and I entered on acquaintance with our lazy, idle brook.
We had a house, that summer, a few miles down the bay. But it was a very
small house, and the room that we like best was out of doors. So we spent
much time in a sailboat,--by name "The Patience,"--making voyages of
exploration into watery corners and byways. Sailing past the wooden bridge
one day, when a strong east wind had made a very low tide, we observed the
water flowing out beneath the road with an eddying current. We were
interested to discover where such a stream came from. But the sailboat
could not go under the bridge, nor even make a landing on the shore without
risk of getting aground. The next day we came back in a rowboat to follow
the clue of curiosity. The tide was high now, and we passed with the
reversed current under the bridge, almost bumping our heads against the
timbers. Emerging upon the pond, we rowed across its shallow,
weed-encumbered waters, and were introduced without ceremony to one of the
most agreeable brooks that we had ever met.
It was quite broad where it came into the pond,--a hundred feet from side to
side,--bordered with flags and rushes and feathery meadow grasses. The real
channel meandered in sweeping curves from bank to bank, and the water,
except in the swifter current, was filled with an amazing quantity of some
aquatic moss. The woods came straggling down on either shore. There were
fallen trees in the stream here and there. On one of the points an old
swamp-maple, with its decrepit branches and its leaves already touched with
the hectic colours of decay, hung far out over the water which was
undermining it, looking and leaning downward, like an aged man who bends,
half-sadly and half-willingly, towards the grave.
But for the most part the brook lay wide open to the sky, and the tide,
rising and sinking somewhat irregularly in the pond below, made curious
alternations in its depth and in the swiftness of its current. For about
half a mile we navigated this lazy little river, and then we found that
rowing would carry us no farther, for we came to a place where the stream
issued with a livelier flood from an archway in a thicket.
This woodland portal was not more than four feet wide, and the branches of
the small trees were closely interwoven overhead. We shipped the oars and
took one of them for a paddle. Stooping down, we pushed the boat through
the archway and found ourselves in the Fairy Dell. It was a long, narrow
bower, perhaps four hundred feet from end to end, with the brook dancing
through it in a joyous, musical flow over a bed of clean yellow sand and
white pebbles. There were deep places in the curves where you could hardly
touch bottom with an oar, and shallow places in the straight runs where the
boat would barely float. Not a ray of unbroken sunlight leaked through the
green roof of this winding corridor; and all along the sides there were
delicate mosses and tall ferns and wildwood flowers that love the shade.
At the upper end of the bower our progress in the boat was barred by a low
bridge, on a forgotten road that wound through the pine-woods. Here I left
my lady Graygown, seated on the shady corner of the bridge with a book,
swinging her feet over the stream, while I set out to explore its further
course. Above the wood-road there were no more fairy dells, nor easy-going
estuaries. The water came down through the most complicated piece of
underbrush that I have ever encountered. Alders and swamp maples and
pussy-willows and gray birches grew together in a wild confusion.
Blackberry bushes and fox-grapes and cat-briers trailed and twisted
themselves in an incredible tangle. There was only one way to advance, and
that was to wade in the middle of the brook, stooping low, lifting up the
pendulous alder-branches, threading a tortuous course, now under and now
over the innumerable obstacles, as a darning-needle is pushed in and out
through the yarn of a woollen stocking.
It was dark and lonely in that difficult passage. The brook divided into
many channels, turning this way and that way, as if it were lost in the
woods. There were huge clumps of OSMUNDA REGALIS spreading their fronds in
tropical profusion. Mouldering logs were covered with moss. The water
gurgled slowly into deep corners under the banks. Catbirds and blue jays
fluttered screaming from the thickets. Cotton-tailed rabbits darted away,
showing the white flag of fear. Once I thought I saw the fuscous gleam of a
red fox stealing silently through the brush. It would have been no surprise
to hear the bark of a raccoon, or see the eyes of a wildcat gleaming through
the leaves.
For more than an hour I was pushing my way through this miniature wilderness
of half a mile; and then I emerged suddenly, to find myself face to face
with--a railroad embankment and the afternoon express, with its
parlour-cars, thundering down to Southampton!
It was a strange and startling contrast. The explorer's joy, the sense of
adventure, the feeling of wildness and freedom, withered and crumpled
somewhat preposterously at the sight of the parlour-cars. My scratched
hands and wet boots and torn coat seemed unkempt and disreputable. Perhaps
some of the well-dressed people looking out at the windows of the train were
the friends with whom we were to dine on Saturday. BATECHE! What would
they say to such a costume as mine? What did I care what they said!
But, all the same, it was a shock, a disenchantment, to find that
civilization, with all its absurdities and conventionalities, was so
threateningly close to my new-found wilderness. My first enthusiasm was not
a little chilled as I walked back, along an open woodland path, to the
bridge where Graygown was placidly reading. Reading, I say, though her book
was closed, and her brown eyes were wandering over the green leaves of the
thicket, and the white clouds drifting, drifting lazily across the blue deep
of the sky.
___________________________________________
End, Part 1.
*Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1899.