ST 4TR 
384 
SEDGE- 
yas avo, when there was time 
enough, and when nobody had 
rheumatism except very old people, the 
“Fresh Pond marshes” was a name 
that called up far other associations 
than any that can attach, I should think, 
to the dreary waste of brickfields, shan- 
ties, and ice-ponds now occupying that 
region. In those days it was a wil- 
derness, encompassed to be sure on all 
sides by civilization, yet of indefinite 
extent, full of mystery, of possibilities, 
and invaded only by the Concord turn- 
pike, — a lonely road with a double row 
of pollard willows causewayed above 
the bog. Here the Florida Gallinule 
had been seen; here were the haunts of 
the Rails, the Least Bittern, the Short- 
billed Wren, then newly discovered 
and perhaps seen only here, —a saucy, 
chuckling sprite, flitting from bush to 
bush in front of you ; and here was his 
nest, a ball of grass with no apparent 
opening, snug-hid in a tussock of sedge, 
in the midst of treacherous depths pa- 
tiently waded over by feet not wonted 
to such punctual assiduity at more ac- 
credited tasks. Dida more heartfelt rap- 
ture hail the adventurer’s first or great- 
est nugget in Californian or Australian 
gold-fields than welcomed, after uncount- 
ed disappointments, the rounded wisp 
that at last did not deceive? Here, al- 
so, in the remote recesses of the marsh 
was the ancient heronry of the Kwa- 
birds, the Jew’s quarter of the feathered 
community, where this persecuted tribe 
made their nests, and huddled in shady 
seclusion and squalid comfort during 
daylight, sallying forth at dusk in quest 
of prey. Perhaps I am dwelling too 
much upon what to most of us was, 
after all, a secondary interest for the 
off-seasons, or the intervals of more 
regular pursuits. These the brook 
allured, with its steady, tranquil stream 
— then, alas! curtained with stooping 
alders and willows — of devious course, 
allowing the silent paddler, cautiously 
Sedge-Dirds. 
[ March, 
BILD, 
peeping round the point, to surprise the 
black- duck or wood-duck with up- 
stretched neck for an instant before, 
spurning the surface, she rushed into the 
air. An enchanted stream, not the dull 
ditch that now meets the passer-by, but 
broad and deep, leading to Menotomy 
Pond, to Mystic River, to the ends of 
the world! For had not “the old Cap- 
tain” passed down this way in his sail- 
boat to the Harbor, to Cape Cod? So, 
at least, it was said, and we believed it. 
Though how he passed the bridge at 
the Fresh Pond outlet? No doubt his 
masts unshipped, or perhaps at that 
day Concord turnpike was not. At 
this outlet, where the brook left the 
pond, all attractions centred. What it 
was then is easier imagined without 
seeing it now. Not merely are all the 
objects changed, but there is not room 
enough on the ground for what it then 
contained. Where now is a meagre 
bit of mangy pasture and a row of ice- 
houses, a vast army of reeds and bul- 
rushes and wild rice encompassed the 
shore, tenanted throughout the year by 
muskrats (for the water was deep at the 
edge), and at the right times by throngs 
of feathered visitors. The height of 
the season was about the end of Octo- 
ber, when the pond-holes began to 
skim over and the mud to stiffen in the 
marsh. Then of some clear, frosty morn- 
ing, the youth whose eyes, sometimes 
heavy at prayer-bell, had unclosed that 
day punctual as the second-hand of his 
watch, shouldering with an alacrity in 
itself deserving of all praise his mani- 
fold impediments, made his way by 
starlight up the white, stony turnpike, 
—all silent and deserted save, perhaps, 
a slow-moving wain creaking placidly 
along like some cosmic phenomenon re- 
gardless of village times and seasons, — 
past the lonely farm-house, last outpost 
on the bleak hill overlooking the pond 
(now the centre of a village), and so on 
to the boat and the ambush at the edge 
