"When will my training begin?" said the acorn to itself, as it unfolded its delicately-carved cup and saucer on the branch of an old oak on the edge of a forest. "I understand I am to be an oak one day, like my father. All the acorns say that is what we are to be, but there certainly seems little chance of it at present. I have been sitting here for no one knows how many days, and I feel no change, except that I look less pretty than I did when I was young and green, and begin to feel rather dry, and shrivelled, and old. At this rate, I do not see much chance of my becoming an oak, or anything else but an old, dry acorn.
When will my training begin?"
As it meditated thus, a strong breeze sighed mournfully through the autumn woods, and shook down many brown leaves from the old oak, and with them the acorn.
"This will hinder my progress again," thought the acorn; "for it is evident such a downfall as this can have nothing to do with my education. When will my training begin?"
A day or two afterwards a drove of hogs was turned into the forest, and they began grunting and grubbing among the dead leaves for acorns. Many of its brethren did our acorn see ruthlessly hurried into those voracious snouts. It kept very quiet under the dead leaves to avoid a similar fate, but it thought--"This is a sad delay. It is too plain that being trampled on and tossed about in this way can teach no one anything. When will my training begin?"
Meanwhile, the swine rummaged among the dead leaves, and trod them under foot, and tossed the decaying mould hither and thither with their snouts and feet, until one of them by accident rolled our acorn down a little hill, where it lay buried under some stray leaves many yards from the edge of the forest, in the outskirts of a park. There it lay un.o.bserved all the rest of the winter. Even this was a pleasant change after having been tossed about and trodden under foot so long; but in its fall its shrivelled brown skin had cracked, and the acorn thought--"This is a sad disaster. How ever am I to grow into an oak when I am so crushed and cracked that scarcely any one would recognize me for an acorn? When will my training begin?"
All the winter the rain pattered on it, and sank it deeper and deeper under the dead leaves and under the earth-clods, until all its acorn beauty was marred and crushed out of it, and it fell asleep in the dark, under the cold, damp earth; and the snows came and folded it in under their white eider-down pillows. At last, the warm touch, that comes to all sleeping nature in the spring, came softly on it, and it awoke.
"What a pity," it said, "I should have lost so much time by falling asleep! I can scarcely make out what I am like, or where I am. What a sad waste of time! It is clear no one can go on with his education in sleep. When will my training begin?"
With these thoughts, it stretched out two little green things on each side of it, which felt like wings; and tried to peep out of its hole, and, to its delight, it succeeded, and, with a few more efforts, even contrived to keep its head steadily above ground, and look around it.
"There is my father, the old oak," it said. "He looks quite green again.
But I am a long way off from him, and how very small and close to the ground! When shall I begin to be like him?"
But meantime it was very happy. It felt so full of life, although so small; and the sun shone so graciously on it, and all the showers and dews seemed so full of kindly desires to help and nourish it; and more and more little green leaves expanded from its sides, and more and more little busy roots shot down into the earth; and the leaves breathed and drank in the sunshine, and the roots were great chemists and cooks, and concocted a perpetual feast for it out of the earth and stones. But it thought sometimes, "This is all exceedingly pleasant, and I am very happy; but, of course, this is not education; it is only enjoying myself. When will my training begin?"
The next spring the early frosts had much more power over it, in its detached, exposed situation, than over the saplings in the shelter of the forest, and it saw the trees in the wood growing green, and tempting the song-birds beneath their leafy tents, whilst the sap still flowed feebly upward through its tiny cells, and its twigs and leaf-buds were still brown and hard.
"This must be a great hindrance to me," it thought--"this, no doubt, will r.e.t.a.r.d my education considerably. What a pity I stand here so detached and unprotected! When will my training begin?"
But in the late spring came some days of bitter east wind and black frost, and it saw the more forward leaves in the wood turn pale and shrivel before they unfolded, and then fall off, nipped and lifeless, to join the old dead leaves of the past autumn, whilst its own little buds lay safe within their hard and glossy casings, protected by one enemy against a worse. And when the east wind and the black frosts were gone, the little sapling shot up freely. In that summer, and the next, and the next, it made great progress; but in the fourth autumn a great disappointment awaited it. The owner of the park in which it grew came by, and stood beside it, and said to his forester,--
"That sapling is worth preserving, it is so vigorous and healthy; and, standing in this detached position, it will break the line of the wood, and look well from my house. We will watch it, and set a fence around it to guard it from the cattle. But it has thrown out a false leader. Take your knife and cut this straggling shoot away, and next year, I have no doubt, it will grow well."
Then the forester applied his knife carefully to the false leader, and cut it off. But the sapling, not having understood the master"s words, nor observed with what care and design the knife was applied, felt wounded to the core.
"My best and strongest shoot," it sighed to itself. "It was a cruel cut.
It will take me a long time to repair that loss. I am afraid it has lost me at least a year. When will my training begin?"
But the next year the master"s words were fulfilled.
Thus years pa.s.sed on. And slowly, twig by twig, and shoot by shoot, the sapling grew. Sunbeams expanded its leaves; rains nourished its roots; frosts, checking its early buds, hardened its wood; winds swaying it hither and thither, as if they were determined to level it, only rooted it more firmly. And year by year the top grew a little higher, and the wood a little firmer, and the trunk a little thicker, and the roots a little deeper; but so slowly, that summer by summer it said,--
"This is very pleasant; but it is only breathing, and being happy. It certainly cannot be the discipline which forms the great oaks. When will my training begin?"
And autumn by autumn, as the sap flowed downward, and the buds ceased to expand, and the branches grew leafless and dry, it thought,--
"This is a sad loss of time. Now I am falling into torpor again, and shall make not an inch of progress for six long months. When will my training begin?"
And winter by winter, as the winds bent it to and fro, and made its branches creak, and threatened its very existence, and the heavy snows sometimes broke its boughs,--
"These are sore trials. I may be thankful if I barely struggle through them! In days like these existence is an effort, and endurance the utmost one can attain. When will my training begin?"
And in the spring, when the frosts nipped its finest buds,--
"These little nips and checks are very annoying; but one must bear them patiently. They are certainly hindrances; and it is disheartening, when one does one"s best, to be continually thrown back by these trifling checks. When will my training begin?"
But, one summer day, a little girl and an old man came and seated themselves under its shade. By this time it had seen some generations of men, and had learned something of human language.
The old man said--"I remember, when I was a very little boy, my grandfather telling me how, when he was young, he had marked this tree, then a mere sapling, and pruned it of a false shoot, which would have spoiled its beauty, and had it fenced and preserved. And now my little grand-daughter and I sit under its shade! The fence has long since decayed; but it is not needed. The cattle come and lie under its shadow, as we do. It is a n.o.ble oak-tree now, and gives shelter instead of needing it."
Then the oak rustled above them; and the old man and the child thought it was a summer breeze stirring the branches. But in reality it was the oak laughing to itself, as it thought,--
"Then I am really a tree! and, whilst I was wondering when my training would begin, it has been finished, and I am an oak after all!"
_Pa.s.sages from the Life of a Fern._
My life has been one of such extraordinary vicissitudes as might have made many almost doubt their own ident.i.ty. But it is only to-day that I have learned its real purpose. To-day, for the first time, I am content.
A light has dawned on me which makes all the dark pa.s.sages of my former life clear and luminous, and unites the whole into one harmonious picture. I will narrate a few of my adventures to you while I am full of this happy discovery.
The first thing I can remember is being in a world over-flowing with life in every form. It was a tropical forest. Gigantic palms rose above me so high that I could not see their feathery crowns. From one erect stem to another hung tangled festoons of parasites and climbing plants, broad, rich, green leaves, which fell into stately crowns with their own weight, enormous gorgeous flowers, delicate wreaths of intertwined many-coloured blossoms and many-shaped foliage; so that when I looked up I could scarcely see one point of the deep blue sky, except when a strong wind made rifts in my fretted roof. Scarcely one ray of light fell on me pure, but broken, and green, and tremulous, softly shaded, or tinted like a rainbow through the flowers. The animals which lived in our forest depths I cannot distinctly recall. I have not seen any like them for so many thousand years. But all were gigantic, and many would seem misshapen monsters to us now. Yet then it was quite natural, and an every-day thing, to hear the great tree-eaters tramping each like an army through the forest shades, cropping the tops of the highest trees, and devouring branches as our animals crop the herbage. Trees crackled under them like brambles. We dreaded much, we smaller creatures, to see these approach, for they trampled down a generation of us under the tread of their ponderous feet. There were lizards whose scales glittered like the waves of the sea in the sunshine, each scale a ma.s.sive prismatic metallic plate. And from the lower reaches of the forest, where the hot mist steamed up from the marshy hollows, monstrous creatures, half fish, half forest-climbers, occasionally strayed among us.
I cannot recall if there was music in the forest; yet I think I hear across these countless years the dim echoes of strange voices, which have been silenced for ages on the earth, a confusion of wild calls and cries in the mornings and evenings,--weird bell-notes tolling through the sultry noonday silences, and a confused whir, and buzzing, and croaking, and whizzing, and rustling of countless smaller animals which have perished and left no trace of their existence behind.
But the creatures which impressed the restless character on my being, which only to-day the sun has smiled away, were some near relations of my own. For, although I was but a little fern, many of my race were among the lords of the forest. Their roots spread into magnificent curved pedestals; their stems rose, decorated, and erect as the palms, to the height of the tallest trees; and their fronds expanded into ribbed and fretted roofs, beneath which hundreds like me could find shade and shelter, yet every frond as delicately fringed and edged as any of ours.
I thought--"These are my elder sisters. One day I shall grow like them."
Thus my own daily life seemed empty and shadowy to me, because of the strong yearning that possessed me to be great like them. It did not make me discontented or desponding, but filled me with a wild and feverish expectation which made the present appear nothing to me. I stretched out my little fronds, and caught every sunbeam and rain-drop I could; and when a shower came, and the life-giving waters circulated through my veins, I throbbed with vague desire, and thought, "Now I am to be something."
But with all my efforts I never could grow to be anything but a little fern! So the summer pa.s.sed, and then I felt myself growing shrivelled and old. My limbs contracted, my fronds curled up and turned dry and brown, and in a few weeks I was scarcely visible. But the spring revived me and my yearnings, and I grew certainly very handsome and tall for one of my branch of our family; but still only a little fern!
The forest decayed, I know not how. The marsh extended, and instead of the world of varied exuberant life, we lay a long time a ma.s.s of steaming, mouldering decay. And then, through millenniums more, we stiffened and hardened, and grew black and shapeless, and were buried in the dark, no one can say how long, for to us, throughout those changeless ages, there were no days and no seasons to measure time.
At last a light came to us, not the sun, but a little trembling light, in the hand of a living creature, such as we had never seen. I know now it was a man. Then followed a time of stir and noise and knocking about, such as I shall never forget. We were hewn with pick-axes, and tossed into buckets, and at last lifted into the real old sunlight we had not seen for countless ages. The sun was the same as ever, as young and bright, it seemed, as he had been thousands of years before; but we did not bask long in his beams.
A period followed of darkness and cold and silence, in which all the world seemed to have forgotten my existence, although I had been dragged out of my native bed, and stored in this den with so much pains. But they remembered us at last. One evening, after pa.s.sing through a great deal of commotion, I found myself in an open place, with many of my brethren. A light like that we had first seen after our ages of darkness in the heart of the earth was applied to us, and then the strangest transformation pa.s.sed over me. Just as the water had streamed through my green veins in the forest of old, a new element began to course through all my black and stony heart. That light ran through and through me, until I became, not a receiver, but actually a giver of light. Instead of my green fronds, delicate pencils of red and golden flame streamed from me, until I became one glowing substance; and, in my own light, I actually saw living faces looking thankfully at me, and human hands stretched out to feel my warmth, just as of old I had spread my fronds in the rays of the sun. But I was too full of my old vague longings to enjoy or observe any of those things much; for I thought, with glowing confidence, "Now, I am to be something great at last!"
It was the last glimmer of that vague ambition in me. My light faded, I grew cold, and, which was worse, I fell to pieces, became mere dust, and was wafted about by the slightest breath, so that I had the greatest difficulty in preserving my own ident.i.ty. I was even ignominiously swept away by the very hands which had spread so gratefully in my light only a few hours before, and tossed contemptuously out into a rubbish-heap behind the house. But there, happily for me, I was once more in the sunshine; and the sun and all heavenly creatures think scorn of no one.
They smiled on me, a poor heap of ashes, as if I had been a tree-fern; and the gentle dews descended on me, as if I had been a flower; and the birds and winds scattered seeds amongst us, until I began to feel once more something like the stirrings of life within me. I had blended my being with a little seed, and in the spring green tufts of life burst out from my shrivelled heart. I grew, and spread, and drank in rain and sunshine, until at length I waved and expanded in the summer breeze--a little fern!
Then a bright, transforming thought flashed through me. In the tropical forest, in the black coal-beds, on the glowing hearth, I had not been an imperfect likeness and a vague promise of something else, but myself, in my little degree, pleasant and serviceable; exactly the best thing it was possible for me to be, filling up my tiny measure of service in the world, so that the world would have been the poorer for that tiny measure of pleasure and good without me. How happy I might have been always if I had known this before! How happy I am to know it now!
I begin life again, but I have learned my lesson. I _am_ something; not something great, but something I was meant to be--a little green happy fern. At this moment I tremble with joy in the soft breezes, I thrill with life, I drink the rain-drops; and the next moment and to-morrow will bring each its store of work and joy for me; and I shall be the highest thing I could wish to be--the thing I was made to be. And now I am here near the tall trees, and among the many-coloured flowers, a little happy, lowly fern.
_Thorns and Spines.[3]_