Roof and Meadow | Page 9

Yet something very like these processes seemed to go on
within the scaly little reptile. He ceased all violent struggle, laid his
length upon the netting, and seemed to think, to weigh the chances, to
count the cost.
Soon he softly drew back into the cage. A series of severe contortions
followed; the obstructing bunch began to move forward, up, farther and
farther, until at last, dazed, squeezed, and half smothered, but entirely
alive and unhurt, the toad appeared and once more opened his eyes to
the blessed light.
The snake quickly put his head through the hole, slipped out again, and
glided away into his freedom. He had earned it. The toad deserved his

liberty too, and I took him into the strawberry-patch.
The minister looked on at it all. Perhaps he didn't learn anything. But I
did.

THE MARSH

[Illustration]
THE MARSH
And breathe it free, and breathe it free, By rangy marsh, in lone
sea-liberty.
I
It was a late June day whose breaking found me upon the edge of the
great salt-marshes which lie behind East Point Light, as the Delaware
Bay lies in front of it, and which run in a wide, half-land, half-bay
border down the cape.
I followed along the black sandy road which goes to the Light until
close to the old Zane's Place,--the last farm-house of the
uplands,--when I turned off into the marsh toward the river. The
mosquitos rose from the damp grass at every step, swarming up around
me in a cloud, and streaming off behind like a comet's tail, which
hummed instead of glowed. I was the only male among them. It was a
cloud of females, the nymphs of the salt-marsh; and all through that
day the singing, stinging, smothering swarm danced about me, rested
upon me, covered me whenever I paused, so that my black leggings
turned instantly to a mosquito brown, and all my dress seemed dyed
alike.
Only I did not pause--not often, nor long. The sun came up blisteringly
hot, yet on I walked, and wore my coat, my hands deep down in the

pockets and my head in a handkerchief. At noon I was still walking,
and kept on walking till I reached the bay shore, when a breeze came
up, and drove the singing, stinging fairies back into the grass, and
saved me.
I left the road at a point where a low bank started across the marsh like
a long protecting arm reaching out around the hay-meadows, dragging
them away from the grasping river, and gathering them out of the vast
undrained tract of coarse sedges, to hold them to the upland. Passing
along the bank until beyond the weeds and scrub of the higher borders,
I stood with the sky-bound, bay-bound green beneath my feet. Far
across, with sails gleaming white against the sea of sedge, was a
schooner, beating slowly up the river. Laying my course by her, I began
to beat slowly out into the marsh through the heavy sea of low, matted
hay-grass.
There is no fresh-water meadow, no inland plain, no prairie with this
rainy, misty, early morning freshness so constant on the marsh; no
other reach of green so green, so a-glitter with seas of briny dew, so
regularly, unfailingly fed:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the
intricate channels that flow Here and there, Everywhere, Till his waters
have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the
marsh is meshed with a million veins!
I imagine a Western wheat-field, half-way to head, could look, in the
dew of morning, somewhat like a salt-marsh. It certainly would have at
times the purple-distance haze, that atmosphere of the sea which hangs
across the marsh. The two might resemble each other as two pictures of
the same theme, upon the same scale, one framed and hung, the other
not. It is the framing, the setting of the marsh that gives it character,
variety, tone, and its touch of mystery.
For the marsh reaches back to the higher lands of fences, fields of corn,
and ragged forest blurs against the hazy horizon; it reaches down to the
river of the reedy flats, coiled like a serpent through the green; it
reaches away to the sky where the clouds anchor, where the moon rises,

where the stars, like far-off lighthouses, gleam along the edge; and it
reaches out to the bay, and on, beyond the white surf-line of meeting,
on, beyond the line where the bay's blue and the sky's blue touch, on,
far on.
Here meet land and river, sky and sea; here they mingle and make the
marsh.
A prairie rolls and billows; the marsh lies still, lies as even as a
sleeping sea. Yet what moods! What