I Can
Faintly Remember To Have Seen This Same Fisher In My Earliest
Youth, Still As Near The River As
He could get, with uncertain
undulatory step, after so many things had gone down stream,
swinging a scythe in the
Meadow, his bottle like a serpent hid in
the grass; himself as yet not cut down by the Great Mower.
Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's laws are more
immutable than any despot's, yet to man's daily life they rarely
seem rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer
weather. He is not harshly reminded of the things he may not
do. She is very kind and liberal to all men of vicious habits,
and certainly does not deny them quarter; they do not die without
priest. Still they maintain life along the way, keeping this side
the Styx, still hearty, still resolute, "never better in their
lives"; and again, after a dozen years have elapsed, they start
up from behind a hedge, asking for work and wages for able-bodied
men. Who has not met such
"a beggar on the way,
Who sturdily could gang? ....
Who cared neither for wind nor wet,
In lands where'er he past?"
"That bold adopts each house he views, his own;
Makes every pulse his checquer, and, at pleasure,
Walks forth, and taxes all the world, like Caesar"; -
as if consistency were the secret of health, while the poor
inconsistent aspirant man, seeking to live a pure life, feeding
on air, divided against himself, cannot stand, but pines and dies
after a life of sickness, on beds of down.
The unwise are accustomed to speak as if some were not sick; but
methinks the difference between men in respect to health is not
great enough to lay much stress upon. Some are reputed sick and
some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse
to the sounder.
Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River at Lowell,
where they are said to be a month earlier than the Merrimack
shad, on account of the warmth of the water. Still patiently,
almost pathetically, with instinct not to be discouraged, not to
be _reasoned_ with, revisiting their old haunts, as if their
stern fates would relent, and still met by the Corporation with
its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? When Nature gave thee
instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate? Still
wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the
mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to
enter. By countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile, merely
stemming the tide there, in danger from sea foes in spite of thy
bright armor, awaiting new instructions, until the sands, until
the water itself, tell thee if it be so or not. Thus by whole
migrating nations, full of instinct, which is thy faith, in this
backward spring, turned adrift, and perchance knowest not where
men do _not_ dwell, where there are _not_ factories, in these
days.
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