Among the earliest, would soon stand
like a wreath of smoke along the edge of the meadow. Already the
cattle were heard to low wildly in the pastures and along the
highways, restlessly running to and fro, as if in apprehension of
the withering of the grass and of the approach of winter. Our
thoughts, too, began to rustle.
As I pass along the streets of our village of Concord on the day
of our annual Cattle-Show, when it usually happens that the
leaves of the elms and buttonwoods begin first to strew the
ground under the breath of the October wind, the lively spirits
in their sap seem to mount as high as any plough-boy's let loose
that day; and they lead my thoughts away to the rustling woods,
where the trees are preparing for their winter campaign. This
autumnal festival, when men are gathered in crowds in the streets
as regularly and by as natural a law as the leaves cluster and
rustle by the wayside, is naturally associated in my mind with
the fall of the year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds
like a hoarse symphony or running bass to the rustling of the
leaves. The wind goes hurrying down the country, gleaning every
loose straw that is left in the fields, while every farmer lad
too appears to scud before it, - having donned his best pea-jacket
and pepper-and-salt waistcoat, his unbent trousers, outstanding
rigging of duck or kerseymere or corduroy, and his furry hat
withal, - to country fairs and cattle-shows, to that Rome among
the villages where the treasures of the year are gathered. All
the land over they go leaping the fences with their tough, idle
palms, which have never learned to hang by their sides, amid the
low of calves and the bleating of sheep, - Amos, Abner, Elnathan,
Elbridge, -
"From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain."
I love these sons of earth every mother's son of them, with their
great hearty hearts rushing tumultuously in herds from spectacle
to spectacle, as if fearful lest there should not be time between
sun and sun to see them all, and the sun does not wait more than
in haying-time.
"Wise Nature's darlings, they live in the world
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled."
Running hither and thither with appetite for the coarse pastimes
of the day, now with boisterous speed at the heels of the
inspired negro from whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and
Guinea Coast have broke loose into our streets; now to see the
procession of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as august and grave as
Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and milch cows as unspotted
as Isis or Io.
