Randall Parrish

When Wilderness Was King Randall Parrish

SURELY it was no longer ago than yesterday. I had left the scythe lying at the edge ofthe long grass, and gone up through the rows of nodding Indian corn to the house, seeking adraught of cool water from the spring. It was hot in the July sunshine; the thick forest onevery side intercepted the breeze, and I had been at work for some hours. How pleasantand inviting the little river looked in the shade of the great trees, while, as I paused amoment bending over the high bank, I could see a lazy pike nosing about among thetwisted roots below. My mother, her sleeves rolled high over her round white arms, was in the dark interiorof the milk-house as I passed, and spoke to me laughingly; and I could perceive my fathersitting in his great splint-bottomed chair just within the front doorway, and I marked howthe slight current of air toyed with his long gray beard. The old Bible lay wide open uponhis knee; yet his eyes were resting upon the dark green of the woods that skirted ourclearing. I wondered, as I quaffed the cool sweet water at the spring, if he was dreamingagain of those old days when he had been a man among men. How distinct in each detailthe memory of it remains! The blue sky held but one fleecy white cloud in all its wide arch;it seemed as if the curling film of smoke rising from our chimney had but gathered thereand hung suspended to render the azure more pronounced. A robin peeked impudently atme from an oak limb, and a roguish gray squirrel chattered along the low ridge-pole, withseeming willingness to make friends, until Rover, suddenly spying me, sprang hastilyaround the corner of the house to lick my hand, with glad barkings and a frantic effort towave the stub of his poor old tail. It was such a homely, quiet scene, there in the heart of thebackwoods, one I had known unchanged so long, that I little dreamed it was soon towitness the turning over of a page of destiny in my life, that almost from that hour I was tosever every relation of the past, and be sent forth to buffet with the rough world alone.