Wake-Robin | Page 5

book is an
actual transcript of his mind, and is wise or foolish according as he
made it so. Hence I trust my reader will pardon me if I shrink from any
discussion of the merits or demerits of these intellectual children of
mine, or indulge in any very confidential remarks with regard to them.
I cannot bring myself to think of my books as "works," because so little
"work" has gone to the making of them. It has all been play. I have
gone a-fishing, or camping, or canoeing, and new literary material has
been the result. My corn has grown while I loitered or slept. The
writing of the book was only a second and finer enjoyment of my
holiday in the fields or woods. Not till the writing did it really seem to
strike in and become part of me.
A friend of mine, now an old man, who spent his youth in the woods of
northern Ohio, and who has written many books, says, "I never thought
of writing a book, till my self-exile, and then only to reproduce my
old-time life to myself." The writing probably cured or alleviated a sort

of homesickness. Such is a great measure has been my own case. My
first book, "Wake-Robin," was written while I was a government clerk
in Washington. It enabled me to live over again the days I had passed
with the birds and in the scenes of my youth. I wrote the book sitting at
a desk in front of an iron wall. I was the keeper of a vault in which
many millions of bank-notes were stored. During my long periods of
leisure I took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from the iron
wall in front of me, and sought solace in memories of the birds and of
summer fields and woods! Most of the chapters of "Winter Sunshine"
were written at the same desk. The sunshine there referred to is of a
richer quality than is found in New York or New England.
Since I left Washington in 1873, instead of an iron wall in front of my
desk, I have had a large window that overlooks the Hudson and the
wooded heights beyond, and I have exchanged the vault for a vineyard.
Probably my mind reacted more vigorously from the former than it
does from the latter. The vineyard winds its tendrils around me and
detains me, and its loaded trellises are more pleasing to me than the
closets of greenbacks.
The only time there is a suggestion of an iron wall in front of me is in
winter, when ice and snow have blotted out the landscape, and I find
that it is in this season that my mind dwells most fondly upon my
favorite themes. Winter drives a man back upon himself, and tests his
powers of self-entertainment.
Do such books as mine give a wrong impression of Nature, and lead
readers to expect more from a walk or a camp in the woods than they
usually get? I have a few times had occasion to think so. I am not
always aware myself how much pleasure I have had in a walk till I try
to share it with my reader. The heat of composition brings out the color
and the flavor. We must not forget the illusions of all art. If my reader
thinks he does not get from Nature what I get from her, let me remind
him that he can hardly know what he has got till he defines it to himself
as I do, and throws about it the witchery of words. Literature does not
grow wild in the woods. Every artist does something more than copy
Nature; more comes out in his account than goes into the original

experience.
Most persons think the bee gets honey from the flowers, but she does
not: honey is a product of the bee; it is the nectar of the flowers with
the bee added. What the bee gets from the flower is sweet water: this
she puts through a process of her own and imparts to it her own quality;
she reduces the water and adds to it a minute drop of formic acid. It is
this drop of herself that gives the delicious sting to her sweet. The bee
is therefore the type of the true poet, the true artist. Her product always
reflects her environment, and it reflects something her environment
knows not of. We taste the clover, the thyme, the linden, the sumac,
and we also taste something that has its source in none of these flowers.
The literary naturalist does not take liberties with facts; facts are the
flora upon which he lives. The more and the fresher the facts the better.