882 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Dec. 28, 1895. 



HOPKINS'S POND. 



Echo hiding up among the rocks quietly reproved the 

 boy who yelled too loudly when he pulled the croaking 

 bullhead out of the warm pond water, and with a low, 

 forbearing voice showed with nice modulation how the 

 sound of joy ought to be made next time. 



It was a quiet pond, without a single bad trait, except- 

 ing that it smelted rather pondy in summer when the 

 water was low, but that is nothing to a boy. Its tran- 

 quility was in keeping with the tranquil farms that ex- 

 tended part way around it, but it nevertheless had certain 

 subdued sounds of its own, for in the spring the honest 

 toad sat in a leaky bog and trilled a serenade to his love 

 who was largely immersed in the cool water below. 

 Little frogs chuckled and big frogs rumbled in bass, while 

 the old mill wheel, which labored irregularly, mingled its 

 thumpings with the sound of water plunging over the 

 low woouen dam. Such sounds were very different, 

 though, from the rattle and bang of a noisy engine and 

 the screech of a steam saw that one is in danger of hear- 

 ing nowadays if he is not judicious about his selection of 

 ponds. "We never heard anything of that sort about old- 

 fashioned Hopkins's Pond, which was very dear to the 

 heart of the boy, and very dreadful in the mind of his 

 mother, who imagined that its eager depths were always 

 yawning for her dirty little darling, who had safely out- 

 grown the cistern and the well. 



As a matter of fact it was about as good a pond as we 

 could imagine, though it really was rather deep, down by 

 the flume where the water silently moved underground 

 in a slow, portentous current, and the sticks and rusty bait 

 boxes that we boys^threw in there disappeared forever. If 

 such things went as completely out of sight in the bonfire 

 in the garden it was a different matter. When the 

 agrostis ghosts and dead leaves had all been raked out 

 from under the currant bushes and piled upon the heap of 

 trimmings from the grapevines and apple trees, a cloud 

 of crackling smoke rolled up into the balmy spring air 

 that was more fitted to receive the bluebirds' song, and 

 into the fire we threw various garden rakings: a tail 

 from a wornout buffalo robe, and the heavy dried paint- 

 pot, a chicken's foot, a recently unearthed spool that little 

 sister begged us to spare for her wagon, a piece of bagging 

 with plaster on it, the remnant of a hoop-skirt, an old 

 tow chignon that the pup had dragged over from the 

 minister's yard, a sole from grandfather's boot, the 

 wooden cover of a Webster's spelling book, a cabbage 

 stalk with roots deeply entwined in a hunk of dirt, a 

 mouldy corncob, a rusty screw, and a good new clothes- 

 pin if nobody was looking. We watched the disappear- 

 ance of these things in the fire with great glee, and there 

 was none of thej sober feeling that came over us when 

 the sticks and bait boxes went out of sight in the flume, 



A large part of the pond was spread with lilypads 

 which shaded the reticulated pickerel, and round about 

 the margins amphibious arrow weeds lifted themselves up 

 high enough to whisper to the companionable willows 

 which leaned over the water as far as they dared, and 

 which canopied the nest of the woodthrush when she 

 pressed her warm spotted breast over the satin-lined blue 

 eggs that held hours and hours of coming song. 



Twittering swallows slid in graceful curves over the 

 surface of the pond, dipped their bills into the water as 

 they flew, circled out over the hayfield and back to the 

 pond again as lightly as mere allusive emblems of flight. 

 Gaudy opercled sunfish built round nests in the yellow 

 sand where the quawk waded with his phosphorescent 

 breast lantern at night, and gauzy winged dragon flies no 

 heavier than mid day air balanced upon the tippiest tips 

 of the sedges. Archippus and argynnis butterflies drifted 

 about over the clustered asclepias on the bank and the 

 colias fleet luffed on the half dried mud. 



In the autumn the muskrats built cosy houses of cal- 

 amus and cat tails at the head of the pond, and one could 

 find a raccoon trac<i under the button bushes if he knew 

 just where to pull the branches aside to look for it. Wood 

 ducks floated among fallen leaves in the shallow cove 

 where sere and brown grasses hung their loads of rich 

 nutritious seeds within easy reach, and sometimes a black 

 duck spent two or three days among the frost killed 

 weeds on the low islands where splashy waves and autumn 

 rains had made good woodcock ground under the alders. 

 Katydids and tree crickets katydided in the venerable 

 and respected maple tree, while the disbanded chorus 

 of hylas piped with solitary voices in the woods which 

 had been littered by n departing season. The old 

 rickety bridge lay slanting upon its abutments. Its beams 

 had been obliged to yield a little in the spring freshet 

 when the ice had jammed against them. The chestnut 

 planking of the bridge was warped, and where horses' 

 feet had punctured the rotting boards pine slabs were 

 nailed as a provision against accident and unwise expen- 

 diture. Hay seed that had sifted down from August 

 loads sprouted in the dust on the girders, and it rattled 

 down into the water when we turned up a plank in order 

 to slyly poke a copper wire noose in front of the unsus- 

 picious white-nosed suckers as they patiently worked 

 from rock to rock along the bottom under the fancied 

 protection of the bridge. 



When winter came over the pond the hemlocks sighed 

 very often, for they loved rivalry with other trees in 

 foliage, and the blue jays went to them to offer sympathy. 

 Green and blue added a bright bit of color to the white 

 landscape and persuaded the distant winter sky to come 

 nearer. Soft-footed rabbits carelessly left whole rows of 

 rabbit trackB in the snow where blackberry briers offered 

 tempting nipping, and the thick rushes were as full of 

 quail tracks as an egg is full of meat. In the cold, still 

 winter midnight, when the belated traveler blew his 

 frosted finger tips and trudged noiselessly along through 

 the fluffy snow in the lonely pond road, allowing super- 

 stition to keep one eye on the lookout, the muffled quunk, 

 quunk, quunk, of uncaused ice sounds suddenly admon- 

 ished him to take longer steps and to get some kind of a 

 door behind him. 



There was nothing mysterious about the pond in the 

 daytime, and it was great fun to kick a stone out of the 

 frozen ground and send it bounding across the ice; to hear 

 the musical whunk, whenk, whink, ink, inkle, inkle, 

 inkle, inkle, until the stone bounced into the bushes on 

 the further bank. How the ice did ring to the clipping 

 skate strokes when we youngsters, red-mittened and with 



flying tippet ends, played Bhinny in the moonlight until 

 the driftwood fire burned low and we realized that we 

 had been out three hours later than the time when we 

 had promised to be at home, where our good parents 

 were consoling themselves with the thought that we 

 always had come home previously. No matter how 

 frosty the night, or how keenly the wind blew, we knew 

 nothing of that while the fun lasted, but it began to 

 feel chilly when Susie had chosen to go home with Dave, 

 and it became shivery when Ed had been accepted as 

 escort for Nellie. Pretty brown-eyed Nellie with warm 

 home-knitted woolen stockings and glowing cheeks, her 

 mirthful eyes shining out through a loosened lock of dark 

 hair under her fur-lined hood. We knew that Ed would 

 bashfully steal a cold-nosed hurried kiss at the gate, and 

 that Nellie would hit him with her skates, but not very 

 hard — not as hard as we would have done it. We knew 

 what would happen because Ed had looked sheepish for a 

 whole week after he had gone home with Nellie the last 

 time, but we told each other that we didn't care if Nellie 

 did like Ed the best. We didn't care a darn bit, 'cos he 

 wa'n't nobody n ohow. Couldn't set rabbit t witch-ups, nor 

 snare Buckers, nor play nibs for fair, and he only knew 

 'rithemtick and school things. A feller like that wa'n't 

 no good and nobody 'ceptin' the teacher and Nellie liked 

 him. How little did we realize in those early days that 

 there was something green-eyed as well as something 

 brown-eyed out for an outing when the weather was right, 

 but boys who are supposed to have no troubles at all are 

 all full of them, because they have the emotions of older 

 folks without the training to discover the locality of a 

 thorn. Many are their troubles which make a lasting im- 

 pression through life. 



One of us boys was so enthusiastic about trapping 

 muskrats that he got up at 4 o'clock every morning all 

 through the winter and tramped miles along the streams 

 before breakfast, watching the habits of the warmer 

 coated denizens of the brook, hunting for their holes 

 under the banks and the paths where they came up into 

 the meadow for grass. A heap of unio shells had for 

 him a meaning. A burrow under the snow to a certain 

 apple tree showed which frozen apples the muskrats 

 liked best. A soggy, decayed log in the water always 

 carried a definite evidence of their fondness for that spot, 

 and the boy knew that his trap would be sprung and the 

 sweet apple pulled from its stick when he went to that 

 log in the morning. The boy's interest and labor were 

 well rewarded, and he caught more muskrats than any 

 of the "other boys who went to their traps when it was 

 convenient and who did not set them in very good places 

 anyway. It was a matter of so much pride to the boy to 

 be successful that he told all of the other boys about his 

 luck, and expected that they would pat him on the back 

 and sing his praises as a famous hunter; but, ah! how 

 much more had he learned about muskrats than about 

 human nature. The other boys simply would not believe 

 at first that he had such luck as he described, but he made 

 them believe it by taking them out to the barn and show- 

 ing them the skins carefully stretched upon shingles with 

 flat tails all in a row. Did that end the difficulty? No in- 

 deed I The other boys straightway got ugly about it and 

 said that if he had such luck as that he must have taken 

 the muskrats out of their traps, and they told Nellie and 

 Susie what they thought about it. Nellie and Susie re- 

 sponded with that sympathy which is the sweetest of 

 feminine characteristics, and promptly sided with the 

 injured ones. Such was the boy's first experience in 

 competing for gains; but in later life he found that when- 

 ever perseverance and work made him successful over 

 others who were less interested than be they at first 

 refused to believe, and when forced to believe decided 

 that he must have employed unfair means. 



The boy was very much grieved at the attitude of his 

 companions) whose esteem and good fellowship were more 

 to him than the muskrat skins or the powder and shot 

 that they would buy. The problem at one time seemed to 

 end at nothing short of his giving up the profitable trap- 

 ping and letting the other boys do it all; but finally he hit 

 upon the plan of telling them of his best tricks, and show- 

 ing them the good trapping places that he had discovered 

 at times when they were comfortably snoozing in bed. 

 That eased the strained relations somewhat, but as the 

 best luck, unfortunately, continued to pursue the boy, his 

 companions persisted in showing their disapproval. 

 Innocently looking for praise, knowing that he had earned 

 it, there was not only no praise forthcoming, but actual 

 antagonism. 



One day while lying upon the ground by the dam, listen- 

 ing to the roar of the water and thinking of the ways of 

 different animals, like a flash the thought came to the boy 

 that this antagonism on the part of the other fellows was 

 just simply one of the habits of the boy animal. All at 

 once it was just as clear to him as were the habits of the 

 woodchucks and of the partridges, and he remembered that 

 the perspicuousness of their leading traits had been as 

 unexpectedly revealed to him. So firmly did this thought 

 seize the boy that he did not go home to dinner or to 

 supper, but lay there in the grass by the dam and for- 

 mulated an hypothesis which to this day has made him 

 happy and contented, even though successful in life. 

 That hypothesis assumed that if one made the habits of 

 antagonists a matter of interest from a natural history 

 standpoint, there would be no necessity for defense or 

 revenge, and all of the energy that would otherwise be 

 diverted into such channels could be utilized for accom- 

 plishing something of real importance. One would expect 

 of course to defend principles, but separately from self. 

 Under the hypothesis there was no need to care for either 

 praise or blame, and one could laugh up his sleeve and 

 watch unmerited praise and unwarranted blame striking 

 a balance with each other while he was engaged in doing 

 something useful. 



The more disagreeable a person was, the more interest- 

 ing he became as a specimen, but the most beautiful 

 feature of the hypothesis was the ability which it gave 

 one to forgive his worst enemies for anything at any 

 time and to find that insults could neither be given nor 

 received. 



If it had not been for the muskrat crisis, which took 

 place at Hopkins's Pond, the boy might to this day be 

 wasting energy in complicated strife instead of enjoying 

 comfort and pleasure while working for himself and for 

 others. The boy lives • a long way from the pond now, 

 and his hair is grayer than it was in muskrat days, but it 

 i 8 a pleasure when visiting the old homestead to go over 

 to the pond and hunt for the heaps of unio shells and the 

 burrows under the bank, Ed and Nellie are married and 



have_sons and daughters of their own, and he as a man of 

 wide renown has proven that fraudulent estimates were 

 furnished to us boys by the green-eyed dealer in the game 

 of life. Dave and Susie drifted away from each other 

 when Dave went off to college, and while his tastes were 

 ascending hers remained stationary, so that after a few 

 years they were not companions for each other at all. She 

 as a household drudge is very different from the happy 

 Susie whose skates rang merrily with ours on the black 

 ice under the winter stars. Joe and Pete, who failed to 

 do much with the muskrats and who were ugly about it, 

 have failed to get up early in any of their undertakings, 

 and they often go for aid to the boy who tried to show 

 them how to succeed in former days, but it is of no use. 

 They still grumble and complain of their lot and are ever 

 ready to impugn the motives and the methods of any man 

 who is prosperous. Jerry, who was about the dullest boy 

 in school, went West and has made a fortune in railroads, 

 so that it seems as though almost anybody could do that; 

 but Henry, who was one of the very best scholars, is an 

 extremely respectable clerk in Jerry's employ, and he has 

 never as yet perceived opportunity standing out in as bold 

 relief as a fly in the milk. Tom was drowned at sea, and 

 no one seems to know what has become of George. 

 Everything has changed excepting Hopkins's Pond, but 

 to-day the water pours over the dam as of old, and the 

 cricket's sharp chirp finds its way through the duller 

 sound. The muskrat makes a rippling wake in the moon- 

 light, but I do not know whose boy eagerly marks its 

 course now. Pickerel still suspend themselves under the 

 lilypads, and a bullhead will pull any one's cork 'way 

 down under water on almost any warm, misty evening. 

 The pond that once entered bo much into the boys' life is 

 now entering into the lives of a new generation of boys. 



One day recently Echo up among the rocks was heard 

 protesting more loudly than ever before, and soon a coach- 

 ing party of sightseers with four bang-tailed horses and a 

 brazen horn came rolling along the road. One of the 

 ladies touched a gentleman on the arm and said, "There 

 is a pond." The gentleman answered, "Yes." And the 

 coach rolled on. 



That was all that it meant to them, for they were sight- 

 seers. Egbert T. Morris. 



A BEE HUNTER'S REMINISCENCES. 



"So you like to hunt bees, Uncle Jerry?" I asked my 

 old friend, who had mentioned that pastime with a glow 

 of animation. 



"Of course I du," he answered, "anything that's huntin' 

 an' that comes the fust on't when the' hain't no other 

 huntin'. It's a pleasant time o' year tu be a shootin' 'raound 

 the aidge o' the woods an' intu 'em, an' you're like tu run 

 ontu litters o' young partridges an' l'arn their ha'nts an' 

 come ontu signs o young foxes bein' raised, that '11 be 

 hendy tu know 'baout, come fall. An' it hain't every 

 dodunk 'at c'n hunt bees, le' me tell ye. If you think so, 

 you jest try it. 



"A feller's got tu hev sharp eyes, an' use 'em, an' be 

 pooty well l'arned in the critter's ways, an' hev some 

 gumption, in a gin'ral way. An' it hain't all lazin' 'raound 

 nuther. I've fined bees nigh ontu three mild, an' when 

 a feller's done that an' fetches up ag'in a tame swarm in 

 someb'dy's do' yard it makes him feel kinder wamble- 

 cropped. 



"O, bee-huntin' hes its disappointments julluk all 

 huntin' an ev'y thing else in this airth. Oncte I got some 

 bees tu workin' an' come along towards night, I'd got 

 'em lined up clus tu where the tree was. I knowed, 'cause 

 the' was a dozen on 'em comin' back tu the box in no 

 time, but it waB gittin' tew late tu foller 'em, so I set a 

 chunk o' comb on a rock, an' quit an' went hum, 'spectin' 

 tu make a short job on't next mornin'. But come tu git 

 hum, word hed come 'at my ol' womern's mother, Mis' 

 Perry, was a hevin' one o' her spells, an' wa'n't 'spected tu 

 live, an' so we hypered off tu Goshen in the mornin' an' 

 didn't git back for a week, an' then when I went tu 

 finish findin' my bee tree, darned if someb'dy er 'nuther 

 hadn't got ahead o' me an' took up the tree, an' a big 

 one it was tew. An' by grab, ol' Mis' Perry didn't die 

 arter all." 



Uncle Jerry drew his pipe from one pocket and from 

 another a great oval japanned tin tobacco box, bearing on 

 its cover the device of a bee-hive and the legend, "Indus- 

 try brings plenty," on which his eyes rested with an 

 abstracted, retrospective gaze. He continued after a 

 pause: 



"I allers thought it was Hi Perkins an' Joe Billin's 'at 

 got that honey, but I got square wi' 'em. That very same 

 day I lined a swarm stret tu a tree an' put my mark on't, 

 an' as I went moggin' along back towards home on the 

 line I met the critters a-workin' up on it, an' they looked 

 cheaper'n dirt when I told 'em 'at I'd faound the tree, for 

 they'd be'n a-workin' the line ever sence mornin'." 



Uncle Jerry filled his pipe and found a time-worn match 

 out of his vest pocket, which he succeeded in lighting 

 after repeated scratchings with both ends on his trousers. 

 Then having got his pipe in blast he resumed his remi- 

 niscenses. 



"Yes, bee huntin' hes its disapp'intmenta an' oncertain- 

 ties, an' mebby that's what makes all sorts o' huntin' in- 

 terestin'. One time I was goin' tu Ch'lotte, on the New 

 Rwud, an' as I druv along past Wheeler's woods a gawp- 

 in' up int' the trees, I see a swarm o' bees a skivin' in an' 

 aout of a hole abaout Soft, up a big ellum, an' thinks, says 

 I, there's luck for ye, a-findin' a bee tree 'thaout huntin' a 

 minute, an' it's big 'nough for a hunderdweight o' honey. 

 So nex' day I took my hired man an' each on us an axe 

 an' hitched on t' the one-hoss lumber box waggin an' 

 lwuded a big brass kittle into 't, an' off we went tu take 

 up the tree 'fore anybody else diskivered it. 



"The on'y way we c'ld fall it was right across the 

 rwud, but hev that honey we must, and so at it we went, 

 hammer an' tongs, an' it hotter 'n blazes. In 'baout an 

 haour daown she come, ker-onch, right acrost the rwud. 

 An' haow much honey du ye su pose we got?" 



"Well, 501bs.," I guessed, after considering the size of 

 the tree, and meaning to get within reasonable limits. 



"Not a tarnal dropl Not one speckl" cried Uncle Jerry. 

 "By grab, they wa'n't bees; they was abaout a hatf'l o' 

 blasted yaller-jackets. An' there we hed that tree tu git 

 aouten the rwud an' them a sockin' on't tu us red hot, an' 

 whilst we was a choppin' an' a boostin' an' a fightin' hor- 

 nets, along come the fust s'lec' man an' faound the high- 

 way blocked up, an' that made him mad an' he give me 

 Hail Columby, an' I was mad tew, but tew 'shamed tu 

 say anything back, but it done me some good when a 



