INTIMATES

EFFIE, BIGNELL

THE LIBRARY

OF
THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

My Woodland
Intimates

By

EFFIE BIGNELL

Author of
"Mr. Cbupes and Miss Jenny"

The Baker & Taylor Company

33-37 East iyth St., Union Square North

Copyright, 1902, byTHE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

Published, February,

gotft

HENRIETTE EUGENIE

^345769

FOREWORD

IN writing the following sketches, I have had
in mind all to whom such simple thoughts
and quiet experiences might appeal, but my
dearest hope has been that, to some one in sick
room or city pent, these pages might perhaps
carry restful little messages from " God's out-
of-doors," or pleasing suggestions of woodland
friends ; and sharing the thought of one who
pleads for the cultivation of sweet herb gardens
that through them pleasure may be given to
" eyes debarred from any sight of beauty," * I
should be glad to think that among these little
records there may be found pictures which can
be seen by sightless eyes.

u The grove " is a real place; a goodly heritage
that adjoins our own modest estate. Through
its refreshing paths we may wander at will, and
within its precincts are to be found simple de-

* Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, in Old-Time Gardens.

[vii]

FOREWORD

lights beyond reckoning. No harassing thoughts
of taxes, repairs or property expenditures of any
kind disturb the serenity of our minds concerning
the enchanted region on whose borders we dwell,
for such responsibilities and inconveniences be-
long to so-called actual ownership and residence,
and we hold of the grove only "A Rambler's
Lease."

It is through this quiet, secluded, eastern New
Jersey haunt and its immediate neighborhood,
that I ask you to stroll with me now and then,
as the months succeed each other and our feath-
ered visitors come and go. Occasionally, as we
rest or saunter, you will permit me to relate to
you incidents that concern a wider range of terri-
tory, and for our closing interview I would trans-
port you to a beloved nook among the Laurentian
Mountains of Canada : a blessed spot where the
noisy voice of progress has not yet been heard,
and where nature speaks without let or hin-
drance.

CONTENTS

PAGE

FOREWORD vii

AUGUST MOODS AND CONTRASTS ... n

GOOD-BY TO SUMMER 27

EN ROUTE 43

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS . . . 61
IN THE SOLEMN MIDNIGHT .... 85
WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN 95
THE LOOSING OF THE FETTERS . . .115
WELCOME THE COMING GUEST . . .123
LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING . .139

AT PEEP OF DAY 159

A JUNE DAY CHAT . . . . . . . 193

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY .221

[ix]

August Moods and Contrasts

" Woods that wear a garb of summer green;
Knee-deep ferns, and nooks of shady stillness."
WILLIAM LEIGHTON.

WoocUttovl Nbok

WINDING woodland path always
has its own peculiar charm. There
is in each of its curves a suggestion
of mystery, as well as a promise of reve-
lation, and one is lured ever onward in the
eager desire to see the blessed vision which may
be awaiting one just beyond the next enticing
bend. But for the lover of nature the fascina-
tion does not cease even when the path has been
explored and its waywardness learned by heart ;
for surprises are certain to come with each wend-
ing of the way, and an ever-deepening sense of
friendship — of kinship, I might say — is estab-
lished between the familiar things along the route
and the one who loves and haunts it.

I think it must be some subtle recognition of
this fact which causes me to turn instinctively into
this narrow, shady, unmolested, and apparently

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

interminable path, in preference to the broad,
well-kept avenue which unfolds its entire length
before us as we stand under the sentinel pines at
the entrance to the grove. For unless darkness
encompasses the winding way, or snow-drifts
block its passage, I seldom lose an opportunity of
wandering through it.

You will find the paths feather-strewn and the
grove comparatively silent to-day, for this is the
height of the trying moulting season, and few of
our little friends have the courage to sing while
the change of raiment is being made. Now and
then you may hear the brave song-sparrow's in-
spiring hymn, or the happy little indigo bunting's
rhapsody; and the joyous goldfinch carols mer-
rily, and the pewee's plaint has lost none of its
early summer sweetness. Occasionally the crude,
uncertain notes of a beginner fall upon your ear,
and again you hear an attempt pathetically sug-
gestive of a passe tenor or a worn-out baritone,
but with these exceptions the great bird orchestra
is silent, and the little feathered friends keep
themselves in hiding much of the time.

Far beyond, where this winding path meets
the old-fashioned garden, the music of the foun-
tain may be heard ; and, in its near neighborhood,

AUGUST MOODS AND CONTRASTS

trickles the shallow little stream which here
and there widens out into bathing-places for
the birds. All through the day thirsty little
feathered visitors find refreshment in these wa-
ters, and even at dusk they may still be seen
taking cooling plunges and preening ragged
plumage.

On this still, intense August day how wel-
come the shelter of these arching, interlacing
boughs and the comparative coolness of the for-
est! Hardy flowers are drooping by the way-
side, stout-hearted trees furl their thirsty leaves,
willows trail their boughs through tepid water-
courses, and out in the open stretches, where the
sun beats pitilessly down, one can see the breath
of the heated earth as it rises in thin, tremulous
waves from the parched surface.

Let us rest here under these hospitable pines.
Their delicate, all-pervading fragrance is at its
very best in such an atmosphere as this ; but what
a terrible amount of heat is represented by this
superlatively successful extraction of the delicious
aroma.

There is at least one little creature, however,
to whom the scorching day brings bliss unalloyed.
Listen to the loud, penetrating, crescendo drum-

[IS]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

ming of the harvest-fly : the locust, as he is usually
miscalled.

" I love he-e-e-e-e-e-e-eat ! I love he-e-e-e-e-e-e-
eat! " he huskily trills in his glee. The voice of
August par excellence is he.

Do you see that muddy, empty, beetle-like case
clinging to the tree-trunk beside you ? Or rather
do you see the dozens of phantom-like shells, each
with a tell-tale opening in its back? In obedience
to the summons of the mysterious law of life,
these sluggish creatures recently made their way
up from the subterranean homes where they had
dwelt for three years or more. Through little
tunnels of their own excavating they emerged
into the light; then slowly toiled up the tree-
trunks, where they halted and awaited the great
transformation.

I witnessed the marvel an evening or so ago.
First came the little split in the upper part of the
shell; then through this tiny door emerged grad-
ually a head, shoulders, folded-up wings, and
finally an entire body. The harvest-fly, mature,
complete, but needing still a few minutes in which
to face life, to get its bearings, and to let its com-
pressed members expand. One little instant
after the full-fledged fly had stepped out of its
[16]

AUGUST MOODS AND CONTRASTS

shell no power on earth could have returned it
in safety to the small dingy house it had just
left. In an incredibly short space of time it had
entered into the joys of existence in a new and
higher sphere, and, with hundreds of happy com-
panions, it was drumming out its ecstasy.

And now the little life-cycle begins anew. A
sharp incision is made by the parent in a twig or
branch, and in this little niche the egg is depos-
ited. Here the offspring remains until it springs
to the ground in its first stage of activity. Next
comes the journey into the heart of the earth, and
the life of darkness and mystery begins. But it
is only for a time, for at the appointed season the
mature insect will emerge into the light and life
of the upper world, and the outgrown shell will
be cast aside.

The cicada chorus is composed of male voices
only, for the female is the silent partner. No
resounding instrument falls to her portion,
though the male is furnished with a strange at-
tachment called a drum; a scale-like structure
which he wears underneath and which he has
power to trill and snap at will.

There was a certain old Greek philosopher, of
whom the majority of us would probably never

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

have heard but for his oft-quoted and not over-
chivalrous couplet:

Happy the cicadas' lives,

Since they all have voiceless wives.

Was it the presence of a shrew in his own
household or the sharp tongue of a neighbor's
wife that evoked the cynical exclamation?

Now and then the song breaks off with a splut-
tering, crackling expostulation, which probably
represents the cicada's last words ; for the indica-
tions are that his enemy has found him and that
his singing days are ended.

I thought it an act of neighborly kindness when
I first caught sight of a cicada making its way
along through the air with a sand-hornet on its
back, but a little observation revealed the fact that
the hornet was the transporter and the cicada the
transported ; for when the hornet captures a cica-
da it is his custom to sting the insect into helpless-
ness, in order to carry it to an underground store-
house prepared for its reception by the sand-hor-
net or " digger-wasp " itself. But the provision-
room is intended to serve as a nursery also; as,
when the hornet has safely stowed away its vic-
tim, it deposits a single egg on the prey and gives
[18]

AUGUST MOODS AND CONTRASTS

itself no further concern as to the future of the
offspring. By means of the strange poison in the
sand-hornet's sting, animation is indefinitely sus-
pended in the cicada, and whenever the wasp
larva hatches, it finds itself in the midst of a sup-
ply of living food.

With what eagerness memory seizes upon even
the slightest available happening of the present to
forge new links in the chain of the past. A crow
flies over the hemlock, at whose base you note a
little scattering of pebbles, and straightway an
August memory of a dozen or more years ago
presents itself before me in its most minute de-
tails. It is no story, hardly an incident; not
much more than a picture, indeed.

I go back in remembrance to a time when we
were summering in a beautiful, remote quarter
among northern mountains; a region where Au-
gust seldom makes even an attempt at dog-days,
and where, on the occasion of which I would
tell you, though the month was no older than the
one upon which we have entered, each breath
brought with it such a sense of exhilaration as is
known to us here only on bracing autumn days.

With a little country-loving lad from the town
and our faithful four-footed follower, a midget

[19]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

" King Charlie," I wended my way along a
mountain-side road. We belonged to an honora-
ble band of foragers wTho had been despatched in
all directions in search of food ; for certain prom-
ised and greatly needed supplies had been de-
tained on the way and could not reach us until
the following morning. One of the foragers
shouldered his fishing-rod and went in quest of
the jewel-bedecked trout with which the lake and
the small streams of the neighborhood were
stocked. A little company of two or three made
their way to the tract where the raspberry bushes
flourished among the charred remains of fire-rav-
aged forest-trees. Others pushed on through the
bear-haunted bush to the one little store of the
entire region; while still other foragers, not
among the food-providers, but public benefac-
tors nevertheless, dragged from near-by forest re-
cesses the fragrant balsam fir boughs, which were
to blaze and snap and crackle on the great hearth-
stone of our camping-house dining-room, and bid
a merry defiance to the cool August evening of
the mountains.

The little boy and I were bound for a farm-
house some two miles distant from our camping
quarters, the charge entrusted to us being to ob-

[20]

AUGUST MOODS AND CONTRASTS

tain a generous supply of luscious cream for
which this particular dairy was, and is still, fa-
mous.

How refreshing is even the thought of that
walk! Down below at the mountain's base the
beautiful lake rippled and danced, and now and
then from some occupant of a boat speeding over
the sparkling waters a greeting was wafted to us
travellers on the highway. But apart from this
we saw no one, and only at certain outlook points
did we catch glimpses of distant dwellings. Yet
for all this we were not lonely, nor were we alone
indeed; for friendly wayside trees caressed us as
we passed, golden-rods and asters greeted us fa-
miliarly, delicate ferns looked out approvingly
from their cool, moist haunts, strands of the beau-
tiful prince's pine crept to the forest's edge and
welcomed us right royally, while from scarlet pig-
eon-berries and other little floral folk of the wood
came friendly glances and salutes; and suddenly,
with a loud, urgent cawing, an imperious " wait
for me," a glossy crow came sailing over the tree-
tops and alighted on the little boy's hat.

Everyone at the settlement knew and loved
Corny, as this sable intimate was named.
Through an accident in his babyhood he came into

[21]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

the possession of a kind-hearted little country lad,
who ministered so successfully to the wounded
bird that he recovered entirely from his injuries.
When old enough to fly Corny was given his
freedom, but his love for and trust in humankind
led him to seek their society rather than that of
his fellows. He would fly from house to house
of the settlement, receiving at each of his stop-
ping-places a welcome and a repast, unless — as
sometimes happened — his loud caw made itself
heard as early as three or four in the morning, on
which occasions we tried to turn a deaf ear to his
appeals.

He was an eminently sociable fellow, and fre-
quently, when he saw his human friends starting
out for a walk, the fancy would take him to ac-
company them. Sometimes he would fly a little
in advance of the pedestrians, again he would lin-
ger behind to investigate wayside charms or ex-
change greetings with feathered acquaintances,
while often, as on the present occasion, he would
elect to make the journey on the hat of one of his
friends.

The picture that memory conjures up for me
to-day is of this little company of four, wending
their way along the mountain-side road. There

[22]

AUGUST MOODS AND CONTRASTS

is nothing to tell of adventure by the way. We
were successful in our quest, and returned when
the valleys were purpling and the golden lights
lingering on the hill-tops only. The other for-
agers had arrived in advance of us — I must con-
fess that we loitered by the way — and the royal
feast awaited us. With appetites whetted to the
keenest edge we sat down to the savory viands,
and I venture to say that never was imperial ban-
quet the equal of this mountain repast of our own
serving and providing.

Next came the blissful, dreamy hour in the fire-
light glow, and the happy day was ended.

And now for the link between this August
memory and the little scattering of pebbles at the
foot of the hemlock yonder. Under those stones
of remembrance the beloved little spaniel sleeps,
having lived out the measure of her happy life.
You know now why a crow flying above the
little grave brought the friendly Corny to my
thoughts.

Poor Corny! Fate was less kind to him than
to the little dog. One morning, when a party of
so-called sportsmen arrived at our settlement,
the poor fellow took his last journey. He was on
his usual larder-visiting tour, and he turned out

[23]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

of his way to investigate the new-comers. He
had never met with unkind treatment, and, in this
instance as usual, looked only for a welcome, so
he flew directly to the men, when one of them
raised his gun and shot the friendly fellow.

We picked him up cold and stiff and buried
him among the beloved scenes, and ever since the
day of his death we have wondered how anyone
could so treacherously reward even the trust of a
crow.

The hours have sped unheeded as we mused
and talked, and now all the time-pieces of Arden
tell of declining day. Shadows are lengthening,
flocks of grackles and other rovers are making
their homeward way, other little feathered
friends are mounting to their sleeping apartments,
and voices that have been silent through the day
are now heard in eager chatter. Listen to the
commotion in the tree-tops. What is it all
about? Quarrels over the selection of the most
advantageous places? Reproofs and discipline
for deeds of trespass? "Tut, tut, tut," says the
liquid-voiced wood-thrush, as if in gentle expostu-
lation.

The glow in the western sky is paling rap-

[24]

AUGUST MOODS AND CONTRASTS

idly. The refreshing night dews are already fall-
ing. Except for an occasional sleepy remon-
strance all will soon be quiet in the tree-tops.
The cicada is no longer heard, but other voices
are now taking up the song of the woods. Do
you hear the cree, cree, cree of the cricket, and
the penetrating call of the tree-toad ? And hark !
the net-veined katydid is rapidly chirring out her

Brek-ek-ek-ex,
Life is complex.

While the true katydid, solemn, slow, and dis-
tinct, is telling dwellers in lands a little north of
us that winter's herald — the frost — may be ex-
pected to paint the trees and nip the flowers in
about six weeks.

Frost! Is it possible that the Ice-King will
ever again wave his sceptre over this summer-
land?

The leaves and branches are outlined on the
ground in silver now, and the fairy tracery
sways in the evening wind as the beautiful moon
looks down through the tree-tops. Only night
influences are at work; let us go. In the grove
the day is done.

[25]

Good-by to Summer

The year smiles as it draws near its death."

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

AUGUST overran her latest boundaries by
at least two weeks, after which October
sent out an advance cluster of days; but at last
all intruders are routed and September enters tri-
umphantly, though tardily, upon her legal in-
heritance.

Do you remember the feather-strewn condition
of these paths as we strolled through them a
month ago? The wind and the gardener's rake
have long since removed all moulting evidences,
but a picturesque disorder of another kind pre-
vails; for nature has begun her autumn grand
menage, and this first scattering of the leaves
represents the opening of the gigantic undertak-
ing.

At the season of farewells she is particularly
partial to brilliant effects, as you see by these
occasional gay evidences among the shrubs and

[29]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

trees. But they are only preparatory touches,
mere indications of what is to come; for, with. the
march of autumn, one summer decoration after
another will take on glowing tints; and thus the
radiance will grow until the gay season closes
and the dead leaves flutter to the ground.

A few weeks hence the summer trees will stand
thoroughly denuded, but no wholesale disrobing
awaits the evergreens. Portions of their old
coat have grown brown and are dropping off, but
the new growth, that in the spring and early sum-
mer was of so tender a hue, has gone on darken-
ing, until at last it has the appearance of rich
green velvet, as it proudly matches itself against
the dying foliage of the summer trees.

Yes, autumn has come! Even if you close
your eyes, scent and hearing still testify unmis-
takably to the fact. The fragrance of mellow
leaves, of late flowers, and of dead-ripe fruits, and
the rallying calls of feathered leaders eager to
marshal their forces and to set out on their
southern expeditions — these are all distinctively
autumn indications.

Several bird families have already left us, and
others are on the eve of departure. In this beau-
tiful secluded corner a pair of wood-thrushes

[30]

GOOD-BY TO SUMMER

have held a perpetual At Home from early in the
season. It is just the wild, unmolested spot to
take the fancy of those ardent wood-lovers.
Broken boughs have piled themselves up undis-
turbed under the interlocking branches from
which they fell, and moist, rich leaf -mold, boast-
ing of layers and layers, generations and genera-
tions of decay, mats itself around the deeply
shaded tree-bases. Think of the luscious larder
this represents!

Ever since the early summer day when the
wonderful four-fold note, echoing and re-echoing
through these green aisles, announced the arrival
of the gentle visitors, I have haunted the spot.
The little foragers soon learned to know me, and
even during nesting-time they did not resent my
presence. With the instinct of true hospitality
they allowed me to follow my own devices while
they pursued their daily avocations, and in this
way they made me feel, not like an intruder, but
as if I were one of the family. Would that our
well-meaning but alas too often over-zealous hu-
man hosts could learn from these little beings the
secret of successful entertainment.

It is with a dread of finding the wood-thrush
corner deserted that I visit it nowadays. " The

[31]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

little friends have taken their departure at last,"
I say to myself if I do not sight them speedily.
But they are still here. Do you see the soft
brown backs and the lovely dotted breasts in the
pile of brush yonder? In and out, in and out
among the broken boughs they come. " Such a
gentle, high-bred air [the wood-thrush] has, and
such inimitable composure in his flight and move-
ment! Was he a prince in the olden time, and
do the regal grace and mien still adhere to him in
his transformation ? "*

If by any chance the little friends are not to be
found here I look for them just over the way
where that tall, graceful Norway spruce sweeps
the ground. They are generally in the act of
swallowing some wriggling dainty as they emerge
from under the upward curving branches, for the
beautiful Norway spruce guards a fine grub and
insect preserve.

Now let us stroll on toward the open grassy
stretches. On their borders, as if not quite cer-
tain of an invitation to closer intimacy and ready
to retire to the woods in case of a rebuff, stands
an array of little wild asters; the good-by to
summer, as the flower is called in lands of early

* Mr. John Burroughs, in Wake Robin.

[32]

GOOD-BY TO SUMMER

winters. September evidences indeed are these,
but if you would see hosts of such come with me
to the most remote part of the grove — the portion
overlooking the river — and take a peep at the
meadows visible from that point.

In the general blending of color you may not
be able to distinguish all the varieties of plant-life
represented; but the troops, the armies of asters
— white, lavender, and purple — are recognizable
in their abundance. Clusters of red-brown su-
mach berries are peeping out from their radiant
foliage setting; milkweed pods are opening to re-
lease their shimmering contents, and groups of
wild-mustard plants nod cheerily toward beds of
chicory. Little wild sunflowers — Clyties in dis-
guise, it is whispered,- following the course of the
beloved sun-god — scarlet hawthorn berries, tas-
selled golden-rods, gorgeous iron weeds, belated
daisies, stray dandelions, aggressive Scotch thistles
— some still purple-crowned, others in the brown
and desolate seed-shedding state — pert little clus-
ters of " butter and eggs," yellow-buttoned groups
of tansy, bouncing Bets, classical yarrows, and
even the despised burdocks — all have their place
in the September procession.

Across the river you see what is usually sup-

[33]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

posed to be the completion of a picture of this
kind. A sportsman emerging from the cover, of
the trees; and, in advance of him, coming occa-
sionally to view among the long meadow grasses,
a dog in eager search of the little being whose
happy world darkened with that sudden flash
from the gun.

I spent a delightful hour yesterday afternoon
under that old locust-tree on the far river-bank.
For some reason or other — an abundance of grub
and insect life, probably — it is an extremely pop-
ular haunt just now. While I watched, wood-
peckers of two or three varieties busily investi-
gated its trunk; flycatchers made lightning-like
sallies and lunges at small winged prey in its
neighborhood ; worm-eating warblers — their little
striped heads coming constantly to view during
the conscientious journeys — went carefully from
leaf to leaf, scrutinizing each possible lurking-
place of vegetation enemies ; and up aloft, forming
a sort of exclusive haute societe, was a company
of bluebirds.

The locust-tree had many other visitors that
afternoon — shy little creatures that kept well in
the sheltering arms of the branches while I
watched, and took their departure from the side

[34]

GOOD-BY TO SUMMER

opposite my outlook point; but suppose we were
to base a calculation only on the presence of the
birds that I could enumerate, would our com-
bined knowledge of mathematics enable us to esti-
mate the amount of plant and tree destruction
which that one busy hour's work has prevented ?

What beautiful harmony exists ever between
earth and sky! What sympathy with each oth-
er's moods! Watch those great, soft, dreamy-
looking clouds as they float along in their majes-
tic whiteness. How near they seem compared
with the remoteness of the blue depths, yet how
distant, how vast in its solitude, is even the near-
est point of the heavens.

Ah, here is one of the beautiful rewards of
looking up! See that flock of wild geese far
overhead, making their way southward by the
course of the very river near whose banks we
stand. They are silent just now; each long neck
is stretched forward to its fullest extent; each
pair of wings sways in perfect measure with
every other pair. A geometrical figure in motion,
one might say, so perfectly is the outline of the
triangle preserved even in flight. What body of
trained soldiery could move with greater regular-
ity or precision than do these winged troops!

[35]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

Now they are but faint specks on the distant
horizon, and now, like creatures conjured up to
Invite sleep, they fade away in the dreamy dis-
tance, and the sky again seems vast, untenanted,
and remote. But who can tell how many winged
travellers, either silent or too far away for their
voices to reach us, have passed our way this very
afternoon, all unsuspected by us? Perhaps even
as we stood here, giving utterance to our small
impressions and opinions, they were looking down
upon us from their great, solemn heights.

What wonderful beings birds are! Earth,
tree-tops, and sky are at their service, and, for
some of their number, even surging waves make
a safe resting-place and deep snows a warm cov-
ering. How pitiful and small and labored do
even the swiftest and most extensive of our voy-
ages seem in comparison with the free, untram-
melled journeyings of these " brothers of the
air."

A toilsome ascent of a mountain may open up
to us such glorious vistas as our lowland minds
never conceived, but what are the views that
greet our wondering eyes compared with the
sights upon which the winged traveller gazes as
he wends his way on his marvellous and momen-

[36]

GOOD-BY TO SUMMER

tous migration journeys? And he sees, not from
one outlook post merely, but with an ever-chang-
ing point of view. He looks upon the earth, not
from earthly heights, but from the standpoint of
the heavens. The sky, no longer distant and un-
fathomable, admits him to the intimacy of its
heart.

Yet, even were it granted to us to gaze from a
standpoint in space representing the most advan-
tageous height these feathered travellers can
reach, we should view nothing like the expanse
visible to a bird's eyes, with their wonderful
side range of vision and their marvellous tele-
scopic powers. Yet we speak with authority of
" bird's-eye views," and even attempt their repre-
sentation !

But let us turn again to the homely, familiar
scenes of the grove. With our feet still planted
on the friendly earth, the sky, beautiful as it is
to contemplate, seems vast and strange for habi-
tation. We may gaze wonderingly and rever-
ently into its glorious depths, but earth is home to
us now.

We return just in time to catch a glimpse of
the beautiful red-headed woodpecker. What a

[37]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

striking costume he wears; dazzling blacks and
whites and reds. These brilliant creatures are be-
coming quite numerous in the neighborhood of
the grove.

Now for a look at the bird-baths. This
stream was well patronized a month ago, but vis-
itors are comparatively rare now ; nevertheless wre
may surprise a stray bather or two. I occasion-
ally see small companies of thrushes, robins, and
grackles taking hasty plunges, but there is no
such luxurious lingering as at the time of over-
whelming heat.

A few days ago, during a season of August en-
croachment. I came upon a water-thrush here.
The dainty little sprite was busily hunting along
that decayed log, now and then darting above it
in pursuit of winged insects; but when his hun-
ger was appeased, thoughts of toilet-making en-
tered his mind and he flew to the bath. For a
moment the dipping tail and speckled breast were
buried in the water, while a delicate spray was
tossed over the olive-green back. Then my dainty
little visitor emerged and disappeared in a leafy
dressing-room. During migrating periods mem-
bers of his family occasionally halt in the grove
for refreshments. I saw two of the graceful lit-

[38]

GOOD-BY TO SUMMER

tie creatures in the garden near the currant
bushes an afternoon or so ago.

My presence did not disturb them in the least,
and their greetings were of the friendliest, even
though I ventured within two feet of them.

There is a pretty sight. These lovely little
birds opening and closing their yellow-bordered
tails are redstarts, or yellow-tailed warblers, and
yonder are several others of their kind.

Birds are not numerous in this locality, but I
can conduct you to a most popular September
rendezvous. It was fairly thronged before nip-
ping nights came ; but owing to the fact that some
of the habitues have left for the south, the Wild
Cherry Tree Cafe is not quite so extensively pat-
ronized as it was a few days ago.

Approach quietly if you would have full
benefit of the frequenters' natural and unre-
strained conversation. I have often heard its
counterpart among eager human berry or cherry
pickers.

Listen to the delightful commotion. Utter-
ance is impeded by large and frequent bites, but
the eloquence of the exclamations is only empha-
sized by these interruptions.

There is an aerial sparring match ; the outcome

[39]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

of a dispute over a particularly luscious morsel
perhaps. A worm-flavored cherry, for instance;
or is it a quarrel regarding boundary lines and
right-of-way questions? Whatever the cause of
the contention, that feathered philosopher who
has just alighted at the scene of the dispute is de-
termined to turn the occasion to his own advan-
tage. Note the business-like way in which he
proceeds to dispose of the fruit which the combat-
ants have deserted in order to settle the quarrel.

The orchard represents one large cider-press,
and nearly every windfall apple and pear is a
wasp table d'hote. Beware, step cautiously, for
each of the bodies now swaying in ecstasy carries
a sharp wreapon for the punishment of trespassers.

Jolly golden pumpkins peer gayly out from
among their cornstalk wigwams, and long lines
of celery rise prosperously from newly raised in-
trenchments. The asparagus is decked in deli-
cate green feathers and scarlet berries, and the
parsley leaves are crimped to perfection. Corpu-
lent beets, golden carrots, purple egg-plants, ple-
beian turnips, argus-eyed potatoes — representa-
tives of the entire kitchen-garden tribe, in fact,
appear at this horn-of-plenty scene.

You notice that the chorus of insects is scarcely

[40]

GOOD-BY TO SUMMER

heard now, though a few small voices still pipe
at sunset. This morning I watched a little com-
munity of crickets as they drowsily emerged from
the long grass heavy with frosty moisture. They
already feel the influence of Nature's autumn lul-
laby, and in a short time they will fall asleep, an
occasional one only to awaken in the spring. All
the summer jousts and tournaments are forgotten
now, and the pugnacious little creatures, who
have perhaps slaughtered thousands of their kind
at some Ashby-de-la-Zouche, are gentle with the
docility that comes with numbness.

Spiders are spinning their fairy coverlets and
late caterpillars are hastening to wrap themselves
up in their cocoons. The only one of their kind
who would seem to run no cold-taking risks at
this season is that cosey-looking fellow in the red-
brown coat writh the black velvet tips. He is
speeding briskly enough on his way now, but at
our slightest touch he would halt and curl him-
self up into a plush ball.

Do you feel the sudden chill? Those golden-
leaved maples — the first of the grove-trees to
succumb to autumnal influences — have misled us
with a " sunshine of their own." But look
through the trees westward, at the crimson glory

[41]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

on the horizon. What old-world " rose- win-
dow " can compare in beauty with that glow !
But there is no mistaking the hour it indicates.
Already the glory is fleeting and the damp shad-
ows are falling. If we wrere busily digging like
yonder industrious robins, we might possibly com-
bat the autumn chill. The little creatures have
evidently determined to utilize every scrap of the
shortened day. For us, however, no such neces-
sity exists, and we would do well to seek the home
shelter. With departing day the delusive bright-
ness and color vanish, and in the twilight
gloom of late September we are brought face^b
face with the fact that the life and gladness of
summer have departed, and that the brilliant pa-
geant for which we have seen the earliest prepara-
tions is none other than a funeral in disguise —
the funeral of the year.

[42]

En Route

" Then followed the beautiful season;
Called by the pious Acadian peasants the Sum-
mer of All-Saints.
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical

light; and the landscape

Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of child-
hood."

LONGFELLOW.

Werdirvj Their Way

er Courjea

.HE grove is aglow with crimson
and gold, for autumn has reached
the zenith of its beauty ; but let
us make the most of this wonderful hour, for
the decline is at hand. There can be no tarry-
ing on Transfiguration Mounts.

See the burnished lights of that beautiful cop-
per beach and the crimson tints of this grand old
oak. Here stands a golden maple dashed with
scarlet, and there one in robes of flame with
touches of gold. Is it with a view of emphasiz-
ing the beauties of each of these autumn glories
that nature has allowed this intermediate maple
to retain its midsummer color and vigor ?

Last night, when the moonlight bathed the
grove as the sunshine floods it now, there was
vouchsafed to those who trod these transfigured
paths the sight of such a radiance as, in the days

[45]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

of prophetic revelation, might have ushered in a
vision of the very Presence itself. In that glori-
fied atmosphere the trees that are now ablaze
with the brilliant, tangible colors of earth were
luminous with a strange, mystical glow — a light
as from the unseen world. Even the darkest firs
shone with the dazzling whiteness, but upon the
great solemn pines — the forest's high-priests —
rested the light of the holy of holies. With one
of old we felt as if, caught up into paradise, we
were listening to " unspeakable words which it is
not lawful for a man to utter." Yet upon our
mortal ears fell no sound save that of the wind,
as it softly swayed the lustrous pine plumes and
gently caressed the dying leaves.

The green of the honeysuckle is still undimmed,
you note — it will hold its own for many a day to
come — and the green of the stately English ivy
only grows darker and richer with the advance of
autumn; but at Jack Frost's free-and-easy touch
deep blushes creep over the woodbine, and the
blackberry vines wreathe themselves in glowing
crimson.

In the garden, troops of chrysanthemums still
defy him, and, in spite of his nipping night
breath, frail, delicately tinted, star-like flowers

[46]

EN ROUTE

sway serenely at the tips of long, graceful cosmos
branches. Hardy geraniums are sturdily sending
out late blossoms, while dahlias, zinnias, China
asters, marigolds, ladies' slipper, larkspur, nastur-
tiums, and sweet alyssum make a brave show of
resisting frosty influences; but all the tenderer
flowers are dead, and darkened, drooping stalks
mark their graves.

In this locality October is, par excellence, the
month of brilliant contrasts, but I doubt if you
have ever seen a greater than the one that awaits
us at the turning of this path. Here we come
upon a community of hemlocks, and, hidden deep
in the heart of this exclusive circle, dwells a beau-
tiful, shy woodbine. No one noted its progress as
it crept up through the evergreen branches, but
one morning, as if at the touch of a magician's
wand, flaming garlands and crimson festoons
swayed triumphantly among the dark tree-tops,
and radiant suspension bridges swung from one
high, graceful branch to another. Not a hint or
a suggestion do you see down below of the splen-
dor that breaks upon the heads of these forest
monarchs. The lavish outburst was all reserved
for their crowns.

Let us turn into this sequestered hedge-lane.

[47]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

At its terminus we come upon another instance
of a vine and tree alliance. Here honeysuckle
arms encircle and weigh down an entire pear-
tree. It is slowly dying in their embrace; but
even in its apparently missed vocation, what a
wide sphere of usefulness it has, and how much
symmetry and beauty result from the thwarting
of its life-plan. For the dead and dying branches
are the supports on which the green canopy rises
and the fragrant blossoms rest, and to the vine-
covered boughs are confided the beautiful secrets
of many a precious bird-home.

Step into the little arbor which the strange
union forms, and look up among the vine tangles
at the nests which have been built in this sheltered
maze. This is a robin and catbird co-operative
establishment. Here, during nesting-times, rep-
resentatives of both families dwell happily side by
side ; and in the kindergarten of the old pear-tree,
all the robin and catbird youngsters of the arbor
receive their Froebel preparation for life's harder
lessons.

I have often heard that catbirds act as valua-
ble sentries among their feathered neighbors, and
opportunities for verifying this statement have
been numerous during my visits to the pear-tree

[48]

EN ROUTE

colony. Anxious, indignant meows are heard
whenever danger threatens the little community,
and at the first note of alarm a nervous terror
seems to take possession of all the menaced creat-
ures. Sometimes the panic is caused by the sight
of a serenely soaring hawk, or the stealthy ap-
proach of a cat. Again it may be the discovery
of a drowsy little screech-owl, with its glassy
stare and its wooden countenance, that causes the
violent tail-switching and pitiful mewing of the
catbird.

I remember well one June morning when the
wildest commotion was taking place around a cer-
tain tree where I suspected the screech-owl's
presence. Two of his kind had halted on our
veranda in the twilight of the preceding evening,
and some hours later their ghostly laughter came
back to us from the dark recesses of the grove.
So, on the morning in question, following the cat-
bird's lead, I went to the site of the disturbance
with a well-founded expectation of what I was to
find; yet it was only after much searching and
prying that I discovered the little owl, having
several times mistaken him for a part of his im-
mediate surroundings. The catbird's threaten-
ing tones and manner finally routed the intruder,

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MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

and he flew noiselessly away, probably with the
intention of resuming his nap in quieter regions.

I heard a rustle among the vines then : let us see
what it means. Ah, it is a member of the very
vigilance committee in question; a catbird with
whom we are on terms of great intimacy. He
is one of a friendly band which follows us from
tree to tree, but none of his companions carry
their fearlessness to quite such lengths as does
this bright-eyed little fellow. There is no re-
monstrance, you see, although my hand is now
within two or three inches of his pretty, gray
coat. Is not such confidence delightful !

You probably wonder what induces him to lin-
ger around the summer-home when all the other
members of his family have departed. Has he
missed his train, or his party rather, and is he
too exclusive to attach himself to any other com-
pany, even though its members may not belong to
his own particular set ?

We flatter ourselves that affection for his hu-
man friends is one of the influences at work in
the matter of his prolonged stay; yet we must
acknowledge that this consideration is only a
secondary one, and that a deep-rooted regard for
the material benefits accruing to him from the

[So]

EN ROUTE

acquaintance stands foremost among actuating
causes.

This catbird has a history. No doubt the same
assertion might be made with regard to every
other inmate of the grove, but unusual opportuni-
ties have put us in possession of the facts in his
case. Early in the season he was picked up
wounded, the victim of a successfully aimed sling-
shot in all probability. Gasping and bleeding, he
was taken to the Hotel des Invalides — a cold
grapery that has harbored many a wounded mem-
ber of the furred and feathered tribes; a crystal
palace from whose hospitable shelter many a
grateful little convalescent has gone forth to take
up anew the life so cruelly interrupted.

Here it was the catbird learned to know and
love the people of the grove, for here it was that
his wounds were bathed and dressed, and every
wise and loving attention bestowed upon him.
At first he received human advances timidly, but
after a time he learned to revel in the privileges
of invalidism ; and finally, like many a being reck-
oned far above him in the scale of development,
he became very exacting and seemed to demand,
as his due, all the attention which he at first re-
ceived with such touching humility. But the ex-

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

action that would be unbearable in a human being
is only captivating and amusing in a bird, and we
love the little fellow in spite of his domineering
ways.

It was during his stay in the infirmary that he
acquired the banana habit; a taste that has ever
since been respected by his admirers. Indeed
there is a certain old tree remnant known as " the
banana stump," where samples of the tropical
dainty daily await the ex-invalid. I think it
must have been the evident relish with which
he ate that first attracted the wood-thrushes, rob-
ins, and red squirrels to the spot. At any rate,
claimants for the banana of discord are now nu-
merous, and the once peaceable stump has been
transformed into a seat of war.

Over in yonder weedy section I see a busy com-
munity of sparrows. The heads that lift at our
approach disclose the white throats which make
identification such an easy matter, for these are
the white-throated sparrows. Now that they
have satisfied their curiosity regarding us they
fall to work again, and, although the distance be-
tween them and us is rapidly diminishing, they
continue their weed-seed gathering as unconcern-
edly as though we were not present. Surely this

[52]

EN ROUTE

great confidence results from the fact that the
catbird or some other grove representative has
vouched for our respectability. I cannot help
thinking that this is the case, for migrating birds,
when halting in the grove, seem to share the con-
fidence of season or permanent dwellers, although
at a few feet from the enclosure they may mani-
fest much timidity.

Let us make an observation halt under this old
apple-tree. Not that it promises immediate reve-
lations, but bark and leaf inspectors are certain
to come this way shortly. In out-door researches
one often gains more by simply standing still than
by covering much ground in active investigation.
" One cannot run and read the book of nature."

We have not had long to wait, you see, for
there is an arrival already. Nothing very dis-
tinctive or distinguished about the appearance of
the little brown bird, but perhaps he is travelling
incognito. So many feathered tourists don dis-
guising costumes at this season.

Now he halts as if for a leisurely survey of the
bark territory that he is facing, and now he low-
ers his wings ; and in this action we have the clue
to his identity and the reward of patient watch-
ing. For the drooping wings bring to view a yel-

[53]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

low mark at the base of his tail, enabling us to
recognize him as the myrtle or yellow-rumped
warbler. Quite a change from the costume in
which he passed us on his northward journey a
few months ago. All his colors are subdued now,
with the exception of this bright spot at the base
of the tail.

If the fancy takes this little fellow he may
remain in the grove throughout the entire winter,
for he is one of the feathered folk whose food
does not depend altogether on warm weather
conditions, and a fine crop of his favorite dainties
— the bayberries — awaits him here this year.

But the myrtle warbler is no longer the only
visitor at the old apple-tree. Several of his own
family have joined him and now still other for-
agers are flitting about among the skeletonized
leaves that sway and rustle on the old tree. The
destructive fall web worm has passed this way
and perhaps some of the pupae still lodge in the
folded-over recesses of the leaves; but they will
hardly escape the vigilant search of our feathered
friends. None of the foragers are more active
than the golden-crowned kinglets, those dainty
little greenish-backed sprites with whitish breasts.
Now and then we get glimpses of their prettily

[54]

EN ROUTE

striped heads — golden centres bordered by narrow
bands of velvety black — and just then, thanks to
the clever acrobatic feat by which one little fellow
remained suspended head downward a few sec-
onds, I caught sight of a glowing bit of deep
orange in the heart of the golden crown. This
last bit of adornment is the distinguishing mark of
the male's cap.

Let us loiter a little in the neighborhood of this
feu-de-joie. I love the smell of burning brush
and leaves; and the fine smoke that rises from
these fragrant pyres blends most harmoniously
with the delicate haze of our Indian summer at-
mosphere.

Indian summer ! Have you ever heard the red
man's story of the origin of the name? It was
brought to me from far-off northern lands where
the child of the forest still dwells; and with
every dreamy, hazy, mellow autumn day it comes
to my remembrance anew.

When summer days dawn on the land that for
so many long, dark, terrible months has been held
in winter's fierce grasp, the Indian — ever child-
like and improvident — gives himself up unreserv-
edly to the delights of the genial season. He
hunts and fishes as the fancy takes him, but with

[55]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

no thought of aught beyond the blissful present.
And so the days pass, as they do for happy, irre-
sponsible children, and the bright dream is dis-
pelled only when the Indian awakens to the sight
of a snow-covered world. The short summer has
departed, grim winter is at the door, and he has
gathered no store to keep him and his alive
through its awful rigors.

But the first snow always melts before the sun,
and, even as the rudely awakened Indian smokes
and ponders, patches of friendly brown earth re-
appear, and after a time genial days return.
They will be few in number, however. This
even he, the child-like red man, realizes, and after
them will come no mere flurrying forerunner,
but winter — fierce, biting, implacable winter it-
self.

The Indian heeds the warning, and in the
short time of respite he goes eagerly forth to
secure his supplies; and this summer aftermath,
this time of last opportunities, is called the Indian
summer.

And now for another saunter. Let us direct
our steps toward yonder wild corner. You rec-
ognize it? For me this nook possesses the same
sweet, sad charm that lingers around a deserted

[56]

EN ROUTE

home where dear human friends once dwelt. The
wood-thrushes have gone. In spite of scarcity of
provisions resulting from the autumn cold, they
lingered with us until two days ago. I fancy
that they bade adieu with real regret to the spot
where they have known such happy sheltered
days. Often toward dusk, as we sat quietly on
our veranda listening to the twilight voices, there
would come to us from this woodland corner all
the bed-time chatter of the little wood-thrushes
as they advanced from branch to branch. They
evidently had the sociable idea of drawing near
our neighborhood, and many a time the bright
eyes would peep at us from out the leafy cover-
lets, as if with a real interest in us and an affec-
tionate desire for our companionship. Even when
we strolled under the branches where the soft,
speckled breasts were visible the trusting little
creatures manifested no alarm. Surely in their
happy southern haunts they do not lose the re-
membrance of this waiting forest nook.

I miss the twilight twitter of the chimney-
swifts, and it is with a feeling of genuine loneli-
ness that I note the almost universal falling-off,
even among the late-stayers' ranks. The first
robin flight has left us, yet hosts of the dear red-

[57]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

breasts still remain. A few days ago I counted
nearly three hundred in the circle formed by. the
carriage drive. But the ranks will soon thin rap-
idly, for the cheery fellows, as a body, do not
remain with us much later.

I heard a great and unmistakable commotion in
the tree-tops at daybreak this morning. It was
evidently a twenty-minutes-for-refreshments ar-
rangement. There was the rapid, excited chat-
ter of arriving tourists — too much din to permit
my unpractised ear to distinguish what families
were represented — then a great whirring of
wings, and, by the time I was dressed warmly
enough to venture out, the tourists were distant
specks and the voices inaudible.

But by far the noisiest and largest of all the
flights that have come to my notice, was an enor-
mous body of grackles which passed this way yes-
terday. Shortly before six in the morning I
heard a sound as of rain descending in torrents. I
went to my window with the expectation of seeing
drenched trees and a deluged earth, but lo, all was
dry, and in the west were none but fair weather
indications. Overhead, however, the sky was
black, but with a grackle flight, not threatening
clouds. I estimated the number of birds roughly
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EN ROUTE

— first by batches of tens, then hundreds — and,
though my calculation was necessarily very im-
perfect, I can confidently assert that thousands
and thousands passed my way as I gazed.

When the sky was once more clear I withdrew
from my window only to hear, a moment or so
later, another sound as of a torrent and to see a
migrating company of thousands of grackles.
Four of these enormous detachments passed in,
perhaps, eight or ten minutes; the first somewhat
the largest, the remaining three in slightly dimin-
ishing ratios.

But to see detachments of the great south-
ward-wending feathered procession is now an
every-day occurrence. " Night and day, week
days and Sundays, they will be flying; now singly
or in little groups, and flitting from one wood or
pasture to another, now in great companies, and
with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Could
one ask a better stimulus for his imagination than
the annual southing of this mighty host? Each
member of it knows his own time and his own
course. On such a day the snipe will be in such
a meadow and the golden plover in such a field.
Some no doubt will lose their way. Numbers un-
counted will perish by storm and flood ; numbers

[59]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

more, alas, by human agency. . . . But the
army will push on ; they will come to their desired
haven : for there is a spirit in birds, also, ' and the
Almighty giveth them understanding.' "

* Mr. Bradford Torrey, in The Foot-Path Way.

[60]

Gray Days and Merry W^ays

Now goes the golden autumn far away;
Now nearer comes the winter to my door.1

IN the garden are spectral flower-stalks
and ghosts of former bloom. On the
hill-sides, dreary brown stretches made more
dreary and sombre by occasional gayly contrasting
patches of vigorous winter wheat. Down in the
meadows, low-lying grasses, dead rushes, and de-
nuded shrubs. Along the river-banks, desolate-
looking trees waving bare branches against leaden
skies. Among the wind-swept pine-tops, a wailing
and a moaning like the sobbing of the sea; and
through their trunks a solemn sound as of the deep
notes of an organ.

No sun — no moon !

No morn — no noon.

No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day,

No sky — no earthly view,

No distance looking blue,

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MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no birds, no leaves,
November ! *

But surely no one within sight or sound of yon-
der dainty little optimist could possibly echo the
poet's mournful sentiments. Gay-gay-gay sings
the friendly, light-hearted chickadee, and, as if in
response to his cheery call, several of the little
black-capped sprites are already hurrying our way.
For them this gray day is filled to overflowing
with delight.

Perhaps leafless trees, more directly than any
other autumnal influences, are responsible for im-
pressions of sadness at this season. Yet bare
boughs have their beauties no less than those in
full leaf, and one cannot really make the ac-
quaintance of a tree until it has been stripped of
its foliage. The beautiful evergreens are con-
servatives who guard their secrets jealously.
There is ever about them a touch of mystery, of
solemnity. But an everyday, intimate acquaint-
ance with deciduous trees is possible when nature
has laid away their summer wrappings and sent
the life-blood to their protected roots. Then

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

trunks, main branches, and sub-branches, with
their infinite variety of extensions, of smaller,
finer shoots, offshoots, and terminals, come to
view; and the sky, in all its aspects, from the
dullest of gray-day effects to the most gorgeous of
sunset or sunrise lights, has new meanings when
seen through these delicate traceries.

During its denuded state the individuality of a
tree is recognized as at no other time ; for in riven
trunk, seamed bark, and twisted bough, or even in
general symmetry of growth, is each history re-
corded; just as, in human countenances, joys and
sorrows, failures and successes leave their im-
print and tell life's story.

During leafless seasons there comes to view the
tender, delicate green of moss-covered trunks,
which is lost in the wealth of summer foliage,
and many a forest secret is revealed when boughs
are bare. Then, for instance, one is enabled to
take a comparatively correct inventory of the
habitations that have been built among the
branches, and, to the lover of nature, how sug-
gestive, how eloquent is even the very silence of
these deserted dwellings!

Even in the dullest of November skies there are
sometimes beautiful surprises. Look, for instance,

[65]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

at that gold-bordered rift in the grayness, where
the sun is attempting to peer out at our sombre
world. But he is withdrawing already; yet,
though the gray curtain hides him once more, the
veil is less heavy than it was; and now, as at all
times when the sky is visible, we may heighten
color effects — the dullest and dimmest as well as
the most brilliant — by looking upward from a
horizontal point of view. Even if we try the
well-known plan of leaning our heads as nearly
as possible on our own shoulders, all sorts of hith-
erto-unnoticed shades and tints will be revealed
to us. In nature's realm, as well as elsewhere,
there is gain in viewing things from different
standpoints.

Here are some engaging little fellows on whose
regular autumn appearance we may safely rely.
They are juncos, or slate-colored snowbirds, and
they come with the intention of remaining until
spring. Do you not find their simple costume be-
witching? To me they have the appearance of
gentle Quakers who have yielded to worldly
suggestions to the extent of allowing their gar-
ments to be cut in the most elegant and modish
manner, all the while adhering strictly to ortho-
dox colors. That remonstrating little st-st is
[66]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

no doubt addressed to the English sparrows, with
whom they mingle freely throughout the entire
season. Here, at least, we have a successful
socialistic blending of plebeians and patricians.

I hear a plaintive sound from the river-side re-
gion— the meadow-lark's minor notes. The little
touch of melancholy harmonizes well with the
mood of this gray day ; but it is offset by the sight
of this handsome sapsucker, not an every-day
guest at this season. He is investigating an apple-
tree in the poultry yard. I wonder if he has taken
note of Theodore, the magnificent white turkey
who was appointed to grace the festal board on
Thanksgiving day. You see the proud fellow
over in yonder sheltered portion of the yard. Is
he not the personification of haughty scorn, as,
with arrogantly spread tail, stiffly lowered wings,
and neck arched until his bill is almost buried in
his beautiful tassel, he proudly stalks around
among the awe-stricken fowls and hisses out his
disapproval of them all. His death-warrant was
signed two or three days ago, but at the moment
when the proud head was to have been laid low,
the executioner, his heart softened by the creat-
ure's extraordinary beauty, begged for a reprieve
and suggested a substitute. And thus it comes to

[67]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

pass that, on the eve of the feast, Theodore still
struts triumphantly about the poultry yard, while
the virtuous substitute, denuded of his feathers,
his wings closely clasped to his sides and his
drumsticks folded over his highly seasoned inte-
rior, awaits in the cellar of the grove-house the
hour when he is to take his place in the roasting
pan en route for the heated oven.

The friendly catbird still remains, you see. He
has just alighted on a bunch of celery that the
gardener is carrying to the kitchen. The celery
is no doubt one of the accompaniments of the
Theodore feast.

Day after day I meet a few song-sparrows over
in the sheltering brush-heap near the entrance to
the flower-garden. Several of the little fellows
are coming our way now, probably in anticipation
of the daily seed and grain supply that we scatter
in the neighborhood. All our pensioners seem
most grateful for attentions of this kind.

That dear little brown sprite with the finely
barred coat and the jauntily retroussee tail is a
winter wren. How easy it would be to over-
look him as he bobs in and out among the bushes.
Wonderfully like a bit of his autumn settings
is he.

[68]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

Listen to the loud, happy, discordant chatter of
those busy English sparrows. How self-satisfied
they seem! How unconscious of the opprobrium
that attaches itself to their very name! Their
harsh voices are susceptible oi great improvement,
it seems, however. Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller re-
lates an instance of a wounded English sparrow
who was rescued and placed in a cage in the neigh-
borhood of a canary, and in a short time the little
street arab had not only acquired the canary's
song, but, in successful rendering and sweetness
of voice, he actually surpassed his feathered model.
In Mr. Thompson-Seton's " Fifth Avenue Trou-
badour " we have another instance of an English-
sparrow musician. Who can tell what beneficial
results might follow the establishment of avian
St. Cecilia societies in English sparrow circles ?

Here we come upon a group of cedar-birds.
In these beautifully crested, elegantly clad, high-
bred little creatures we have the Lord Chester-
fields of birds — always on etiquette and never
guilty of a breach of good breeding nor of the
slightest carelessness in the matter of dress. No
one ever came upon them in the deshabille of
moulting time, for it is said that they are always
in full toilette. Their low, modest notes corre-

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

spond with the general elegance of their deport-
ment, for they seldom speak loud enough to at-
tract attention.

An idea of their superlative politeness is given
in a frequently cited statement made by Nuttall,
who tells us that he once saw a little company of
cedar-birds passing on, from one to another, an
insect that one of them had captured. Each
seemed unselfishly anxious that one of his neigh-
bors should have the benefit of the tid-bit.

Not only are they kind and helpful to mem-
bers of their own family, but several sweet in-
stances of their tender treatment of outsiders
have been cited. Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller re-
lates the story of a cedar-bird who fed and cared
for a family of orphaned robins until they were
old enough to leave the nest.

Add to good looks and amiable qualities the
cedar-bird's great usefulness in the matter of de-
stroying hurtful insects, and you will see what
desirable visitors they are. Surely one would be
ashamed to grudge them the cherry lunch they
sometimes take between insect - exterminating
raids.

Judging from the quantities of nut-shells
strewn about in all directions, it is evident that

[70]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

we are nearing- a favorite squirrel resort. And
now listen to the noisy chatter of the red-coats as
they career among the branches and scurry about
the tree-trunks. I doubt if at any season of the
year you could find wilder merriment than in
yonder rollicking company.

In the confusion of the throng it is impossible
for me to distinguish my particular friends, yet I
have several acquaintances among the red squir-
rels of the grove, and one little couple I claim as
my intimates. Let me tell you their story as we
gather our winter drift-wood. My selections are
made from just such stores as you see lying all
around us. Resinous cones and fragrant fir-tips;
dry twigs and mossy boughs; pine needles and
dead leaves; bits of bark, scraps of fungous
growths, empty seed-pods, remnants of old nests,
nibbled nuts — anything and everything in the
way of forest flotsam and jetsam that will kindle
the enthusiasm of the hard-hearted back logs or
tell in flames the sweet story of the woods finds
a place in my drift-wood collection.

And now for the chronicle of Mr. Rufus and
Madame Jolie-Queue, as we call the little squir-
rel couple with whom we are on such intimate
terms.

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

The friendship began when Mr. Rufus, terri-
fied by the advent of a snowy owl in the grove,
appeared at one of my windows. Protection and
provisions insured for me his lasting regard; for
— although the owl fright was a matter of a few
days merely — Mr. Rufus has been my constant
visitor for more than two years. During the ear-
lier period of his coming, a gentle little wife ac-
companied him occasionally, attracted also by the
supply of good things spread out on the window-
sills ; but her husband treated her so unkindly and
repulsed her so frequently that her visits finally
ceased.

Not long after her disappearance the autocratic
Rufus conducted to one of my restaurants a dash-
ing, independent-looking squirrel lady, who is evi-
dently Mrs. Rufus Number Two; that is to say,
the second wife he has had since I made his ac-
quaintance. For aught I know to the contrary
he may have the record of a Blue Beard.

I often speculate with regard to the fate of
Number One. Did Rufus basely desert her?
Did he become an orthodox, out-and-out widow-
er, or did the gentle little creature, weary-
ing of his tyrannical ways, leave him for some
loving, chivalrous mate? With regard to all

[72]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

these possibilities we can only conjecture, but if
the first wife is still in the flesh, I trust that she
has the satisfaction of watching the retributive
workings of the mills of the gods; for poetic jus-
tice has overtaken Mr. Rufus in the shape of
Madame Jolie-Queue, the independent little lady
who succeeded Number One. The whilom des-
pot now occupies the position of subordinate in
the establishment of which he is nominally the
head, and he is as humble and subservient as he
was formerly arbitrary and tyrannical.

Madame Jolie-Queue received her foreign title
on the occasion of her presentation as a bride.
The name is a tribute to her magnificent brush,
in comparison with which Rufus's tail looks thin
and almost apologetic. She is evidently older
than he, for while his face is almost youthful, hers
bears certain marks which I take for crows' feet
equivalents; and an indentation in her right ear,
a scar on her left shoulder, and a general mar-
tial, independent bearing proclaim her a fighter
and a genuine Amazon.

In the olden days Rufus used occasionally to
indulge in reveries and moments of relaxation,
but no such luxuries are permitted him in the
presence of Madame Jolie-Queue. Being herself

[73]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

superlatively active and energetic, she demands
almost incessant and vigorous action from those
under her control ; and whether it suits Rufus or
not, he must be up and doing at her command. I
have often watched the funny little couple chas-
ing each other around the tree-trunks till they
looked like revolving red belts instead of quad-
rupeds, or springing through the branches at a
rate that could hardly be surpassed by the flying
members of their family. After a prolonged ex-
ercise of this kind even the vigorous Madame
Jolie-Queue is obliged to halt for breath, and
Rufus — gratefully taking advantage of the respite
granted him — stretches himself out on a hori-
zontal branch and allows his little legs to hang in
the abandon of relaxation. But while his sides
are still palpitating from the violence of his re-
cent exertions Madame Jolie-Queue compels him
to gather himself together for renewed action.
I have even seen her slap his face playfully
when he seemed inclined to hesitate about obey-
ing.

This remarkable little lady is a very thrifty
squirrel ; a creature of expedients evidently. She
seems to have an idea of utilizing every available
object, and she stows away, for times of emer-

[74]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

gency, articles for which one would suppose
squirrels could have no use. I saw her, one day,
toiling and tugging at a dark object which she
had managed to carry high up among the
branches of a maple-tree. The treasure fell to the
ground just when it seemed to be satisfactorily
lodged ; but, nothing daunted by the failure of her
undertaking, Madame Jolie-Queue immediately
set about raising it again. Rufus, appearing on
the scene at this critical juncture, was pressed into
service, and through their combined efforts the
mysterious object was once more lodged high up
in a tree-fork. After chatting a while over the
affair the little couple scampered gayly away, evi-
dently well satisfied with the result of their la-
bors; but they had hardly disappeared among the
swaying branches when a gust of wind sent their
treasure to the ground. It was unfortunate from
their point of view, but not an ill wind for me, as
through this occurrence I was enabled to investi-
gate the dark object, which proved to be merely a
lump of coal.

By a remarkable coincidence this event oc-
curred during a coal strike, and one member of
our household insists that the provident Jolie-
Queue had some intimation or premonition of the

[75]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

threatened dearth in fuel, and was taking precau-
tions accordingly.

Her favorite stowaway places are in the trees
nearest one of my most convenient window-sill
restaurants. There evidences of her thrift and
acquisitiveness may be seen constantly. For ex-
perimental purposes all sorts of objects are
placed within her reach, and, as a result of this
liberal proceeding, I have seen, distributed around
among the forks and crotches of the trees in the
stowaway region, whole slices of bread, as well as
smaller pieces, bits of banana, sections of apples
and pears, strings of raw potato peelings, scraps
of cake and biscuits, bits of rope, fragments of
paper, strips of cloth, old bones, and, on one occa-
sion, this very practical little lady even carried off
a dead mouse and hung it over a limb. Nuts are
to be seen at almost every branch angle of the
trees in the restaurant neighborhoods, and pine-
cones are sometimes wedged in between the slats
of our blinds, or among the trimmings of the
house. Indeed Madame Jolie-Queue will appro-
priate for her treasures any hiding-place that
takes her fancy.

You will see that my claim to a close acquaint-
ance with this little furry couple is not without

[76]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

foundation, but it is with Jolie-Queue that I am
on terms of the greatest intimacy. Her insatia-
ble curiosity leads her to enter my rooms and to
critically inspect both myself and my belongings
whenever closed windows or wire screens do not
place the matter beyond her option. But, even on
the occasions when all barriers are removed and
promiscuous visitors are admitted, Mr. Rufus sel-
dom ventures beyond window-sill precincts nowa-
days. Perhaps his better half has put her veto on
any greater familiarity, but it was otherwise in
the days of the earlier partnership.

It was one beautiful, balmy afternoon during
my siesta hour that Madame Jolie-Queue made
her first inspecting tour of my sleeping-room. I
was comfortably settled on my lounge, and was
looking toward the maples that fairly caress my
windows, when the little lady suddenly appeared
among the yellow leaves. The windows were
open and the screens removed — a happy combina-
tion of circumstances with which fortune had not
previously favored her. She could not afford to
lose the golden opportunity. Through disarming,
half-closed eyes I watched her, as, with many
tail-jerkings and switchings and much suspicious
chattering and frequent pauses, she advanced

[77]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

toward my desk. After a comparatively long halt
at the first of the reconnoitring points, she pro-
ceeded toward my open grate. In it, awaiting
the first cool day to be lighted, was a generous
supply of cones and other forest gleanings. Ma-
dame Jolie-Queue appeared to feel much at home
among such surroundings, but her curiosity soon
took her up the chimney. During this stage of
the journey she was of course hidden from view;
nevertheless, it was easy for me to follow her
progress, as various sooty sneezes and sniffs gave
reliable clues to her whereabouts. When, at the
close of the return journey, which she evidently
made head downward, the little rat-like nose ap-
peared, it was as black as ink and most disreputa-
ble looking.

The chimney investigation over, Madame
Jolie-Queue started off toward the adjoining
apartment, where she speedily discovered a bag of
walnuts and several other precious bird and squir-
rel stores. Here was good fortune indeed, and
she immediately proceeded to turn it to advan-
tage. Taking one of the hickory nuts in her
mouth, she rushed through my room and out the
window, and then made her way toward the
grove, where I knew she had gone to deposit her

[78]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

spoil. After a short absence she returned for a
new supply, and I dare say she would have kept
up this performance for an hour or more; but,
finding the game rather monotonous after a dozen
repetitions, I concluded to vary it. During one
of her absences I shut off the supply-room. I had
barely time to close the door, to arrange a trail
of nuts from the window to my lounge, and to
resume my recumbent position when the busy
creature reappeared. At first she seemed some-
what disconcerted by changed conditions, but my
stratagem worked successfully after a time; for
when she sighted the decoy nuts she began carry-
ing them off as eagerly as in the earlier instance.

The success of this ruse so encouraged me that
I ventured on another experiment. I drew a
table to the side of the lounge when one of her
short absences enabled me to do so, and on this
table I rested a hand in which were two or three
hickory nuts. Madame Jolie-Queue came bound-
ing along the usual route — this time apparently
undisturbed by a new arrangement — and, advanc-
ing toward my hand, she took a nut from between
my unresisting fingers, evidently looking upon
me as a piece of furniture merely.

Another expedition across the room, out the

[79]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

window, and off among the branches, and back
she came to my hand again. But on this occasion
she found the fingers nearly closed and the nuts
almost inaccessible. Nothing daunted, however,
she proceeded to gnaw away the barriers. I felt
a preparatory nibble or two, then a decided bite,
and I had just about made up my mind that the
limit of the experiment had been reached when
Madame Jolie-Queue paused. In the taste of
human flesh she had detected something alarming-
ly foreign. For a moment she was silent, eying
me all the time with the greatest suspicion and
the keenest disapproval, and at the close of the
survey she stood up on her little hind legs, clasped
her forepaws to her breast, and while fairly danc-
ing with indignation and alarm she squeaked and
chattered and rattled forth a volley of vitupera-
tive remarks. They were easy to interpret :

" You cheat you ; you cheat! You mean,
mean, mean, mean cheat! You're alive, you
know you are. Alive, I say, alive! Do you
hear me? You cheat, you great big ugly human!
You mean, mean cheat!"

This was the theme upon which endless em-
phatic, explosive variations were played to the ac-
companiment of the most amusing little prancings

[80]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

and stampings, ridiculously suggestive of the per-
formances of a miniature dancing bear.

The creature who was denouncing me was so
small and her indignation was so great that, even
at the risk of driving her away I could not re-
strain my mirth. I uttered no sound and re-
mained with half-closed eyes, but I fairly shook
with laughter. To my surprise the slight earth-
quake did not disturb her. She continued her de-
nunciations until the theme was exhausted or the
indignation spent, when she subsided and jumped
to the floor. I expected to see her pursue her way
toward the desk and out the window, but, instead
of taking the usual route, she began ascending the
lounge at the point just back of my head. Her
idea was evidently to investigate me closely.
Again she was beyond the range of vision, but,
as on the occasion of her visit to the chimney,
I was able to follow her, squeaks of apprehension
and curiosity punctuating each step of her jerky
course.

It was my turn to be apprehensive when she
arrived at my head. Remembering an occasion
on which a pet robin had thought my hair worthy
of consideration for a nest-lining, I braced my-
self to meet Madame Jolie-Queue's possible re-
[81]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

quirements for sample locks. She did not halt at
my head, however, but proceeded directly over my
face until she reached my shoulder. Here she
sat up, as if for a critical survey of the situation.
It was a relief to me when, at the end of what
seemed like a small age, though in reality it was
only about a minute, she continued her journey;
for the rank, greasy odor which, to a greater or
less extent, characterizes all the furry forest-folk,
is the atmosphere that immediately surrounds
Madame Jolie-Queue. All out-doors is none too
spacious for her and her kind.

Arrived at my feet she evidently saw great pos-
sibilities in my boots, for she darted back to the
nuts from which I had slowly and cautiously with-
drawn my fingers, and carrying the treasures to
my feet, she stowed them away under my heels.
Then, with nose and paws, she carefully pushed
and patted the nuts into place, after which she
drew the soft, yielding folds of my dress over the
secret store.

A moment or two of complacent contemplation
and she withdrew. On her return she found me
seated at my desk, a liberty which she was at first
inclined to resent, as various demonstrations of
the dancing-bear order attested, but her annoy-

[82]

GRAY DAYS AND MERRY WAYS

ance was short-lived. She soon learned to ac-
cept me as a necessary evil ; and from that time to
this Madame Jolie-Queue enters my room fear-
lessly whenever the fancy takes her and circum-
stances permit. She has generally been honorable
with regard to my possessions, but there are cer-
tain considerations which lead me to keep a close
watch on my furry visitor whenever she honors
me with her presence. Said considerations are
that she once abstracted a small toilet article
from my bureau ; that she occasionally has a fancy
for continuing the scallops and heightening the
open-work effect of lace curtains, and that she is
very partial to all woollen materials, and has no
scruples about cutting out and carrying away for
her snug little apartments samples of any warm
garment on which her eye may fall.

Whenever I see poor little squirrel prisoners
peering out from behind cruel bars or treading
the dreary, interminable road of the revolving
wheel, I think of Rufus and Jolie-Queue in the
blessed free region of green trees and open skies;
and I realize that the worst fate that can overtake
them in the course of their life in the woods
would be kind when compared with the desolation
of imprisonment.

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

How early the short November day draws to
its close! All the joyous touches that relieve the
grayness have vanished, and cheery song and lively
chatter alike have ceased, for the merry little
wood-folk have gone to their shelter. Now we
hear no sound save the beautiful, mournful strains
of the sonata pathetique among the wind-swept
pine-tops, and into the deeper recesses of the for-
est the gloom of dusk has already made its way.

But in our drift-wood harvest we have that
which will bring back to us not only the solemn
influences of this twilight hour, but all the cheer
and brightness that preceded it. Season after sea-
son will pass before us while merry sparks fly
and dancing flames enfold our forest gleanings.
We shall hear again the hum of insects and the
songs of birds. We shall breathe the sweet air
of the pines and the fragrance of violets will reach
us; and thus through days of cold and storm or
long winter evenings, as treasure after treasure is
given to the flames, the story of the woods will be
told anew and the happy forest days lived again.

In the Solemn Midnight

" The angels came through the forest — and
sang. And their song was about the Child, the
Child, the Child that had been born. Then the
starf came down from the skies and danced and
hung upon the branches of the tree, and they, too,
sang that song — the song of the Child."

EUGENE FIELD.

HOW eloquent the silence of this starry
night! How marvellous the hush of
" the listening earth." In this calm moment, it
would almost seem as if there might reach us
some echo of the music of the distant spheres or
some strains of the song that watching shepherds
heard

In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago.

Look up through the dark pines at the splen-
dors of the sky. In the deep, boundless blue,
myriads and myriads of heavenly bodies, each
glowing with a radiance of its own, each differ-
ing from the other in glory, but each, whether
" bright in beauty " or " faint and small," telling
anew the story of the guiding star of the East.

And now on the fragrant breath of spruce and
fir and " goodly cedar," come to us visions of

[87]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

happy children around gift-laden trees; of joyous
reunions in holly-decked homes, and of blessed
sanctuaries where evergreen garland and wreath
and text proclaim the coming of the " peaceful
Prince of earth and heaven."

In this quiet hour — the earnest of a time when
all discord shall cease, and universal peace and
harmony reign — a quaint legend comes to my
mind. A story of the long, long ago, when the
gates of heaven stood open and the golden light
streamed down upon the earth, and mortals could
look up at the saints in their abode of bliss, and
greetings came from heaven to earth and rose
from earth to heaven. Sometimes strains of the
most marvellous music were heard. Before these
sounds the wind held its breath and the rivers
stood still, and the children of earth silently
pressed each other's hands as they listened; for,
though their hearts overflowed with holy joy, it
was not in mortal speech to tell what they felt,
for God Himself had written the music and the
angel choir sang it.

So it was in the golden long ago; but, when

discord came to earth, the gates of heaven were

closed, and mortals could no longer greet the holy

ones or gaze up into the abode of bliss. And as

[88]

IN THE SOLEMN MIDNIGHT

for the scroll on which the beautiful music was
written, the angels in sorrow tore it in thousands
of pieces and scattered it to the four winds of
heaven. Thus it was brought to earth, and
wherever the precious fragments fell men rushed
to pick them up, and each mortal obtained for
himself a bit of the heavenly music.

But alas, about this they quarrelled also. One
asserted that he alone possessed the true heavenly
music. Another despised the fragment his neigh-
bor held. Some interpreted their notes amiss,
others added a flourish or two. Oh! it was a
clamor, a discord, a din !

And so it is yet ; but a day is to come in which
the stars shall fall to the earth and the sun into
the sea. Then the children of men will crowd
eagerly to the gates of heaven, as now our little
ones press to our door for a sight of the Christmas
tree ; and then will God send the angels to gather
up all the fragments of the marvellous music ; and
the pieces will be put together once more — each
in its own place and in its right relation to the
others — and again the heavenly music shall ring
out true and clear.

And as the wondering children of earth pass in
through the open gates of heaven one will whisper

[89]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

to the other in humiliation and amazement:
" How wonderful, how marvellous ! There is the
bit you had, and here is my portion. I thought it
greatest of all, and lo, it is but a single note.
But listen to that rapturous strain ! What can it
be ? Behold it is the despised fragment that yon-
der little one held. Oh ! how clear and true and
beautiful is the heavenly music, rid of false flour-
ishes, interpreted aright, and each fragment —
even to the smallest — in the very place God
planned for it."

I had fancied that our passing might startle the
little feathered sleepers, or that our paths might
intersect those of other nocturnal ramblers, but
all is still. Here and there through the trees we
see the late lights of the town, and over the river
we catch meteor-like glimpses of swiftly speeding,
brightly lighted trains, but on our path falls no
light save that of the stars, and from the intense
stillness we might fancy ourselves the only wak-
ing creatures in the grove.

Yet no doubt at this very moment scores of
bright, wondering eyes are peering out at us from
ivy-vines and sheltering hedges ; from hollow trees
and thick evergreens ; and even by the light of the
stars we see that this thin covering of snow is

[90]

IN THE SOLEMN MIDNIGHT

crossed and recrossed by hosts of small footprints.
They mark the recent passing of nimble rabbits.
Perhaps the little creatures were disporting them-
selves here at the very time of our appearance, for
they are partial to nocturnal rambles; and no
doubt, from the security of their shelter, they are
watching our course with curious gaze.

How strange do even every-day, familiar wood-
land paths appear, when entered during the hours
of the night ! To the forest's midnight utterance
may be applied what has been said of the voice of
the pines: " It whispers to us of things we have
never said and never can say — things that lie deep-
er than words, deeper than thought. Blessed are
our ears if we hear, for the message is not to be
understood by every comer, nor indeed by any ex-
cept at happy moments. In this temple all hear-
ing is given by inspiration, for which reason the
language of [the forest] is inarticulate, as Jesus
spoke in parables." *

At last I hear a faint murmur ; the slightest of
rustlings among the dead leaves that cling to the
boughs of this old beech. Of all the summer trees
of»the grove only the oaks and the beeches still
keep some of their foliage. The latter trees are

*Mr. Bradford Torrey, in The Foot- Path Way.

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

" very slow in unfolding their leaves " and " ex-
tremely loath to part with them ; for that matter
the beeches often hold their faded, ghostly, brown-
white leaves through the winter." *

In sunset lights this old tree takes on a delicate
pink flush, not unlike the faint bloom one some-
times sees on aged checks ; but in the starlight the
dead leaves have an almost spectral appearance.

Here you see the dim, faint outline of a bare
tree from near whose base long, slender brier
shoots rise. When I first saw the brier it was
covered with leaf and bloom, and one long, fra-
grant, graceful arm — its skeleton still clings to
the leafless maple — carried flowers far up the
trunk of the tree, even into its very branches.
Thus was hidden a great scar which days of Au-
tumn despoiling bring to view; for a lightning-
dart once smote the beautiful tree and seamed its
strong trunk. Then it was that the sweetbrier
crept into the wounded heart and shared with it
her leaf and bloom and fragrance. After many
days much of the old vigor returned to the strick-
en tree and the wound was healed ; but the scar
remains.

Tree and brier sleep together now, but when

* Mr. F. Schuyler Mathews, in Familiar Trees and Their Leaves,

[92]

IN THE SOLEMN MIDNIGHT

the spring comes they will awake to old joys and
new gladness. For again little lovers will hold
their trysts among the branches of the maple;
again wTill gentle wyinds caress it, and the warm
sun kiss it, and soft showers bathe its leaves and
moisten its roots; and once more the sweetbrier
arms will conceal the scarred trunk, and the
wounded tree shall blossom as the rose.

Now the wee, small hours are drawing near,
and from yonder hedge come expostulating twit-
terings; faint sounds of sleepy remonstrance and
petition, as if some little feathered creature were
putting in a plea for a chance to rest without far-
ther alarm from passing footstep or shadowy hu-
man form. With the first glimmer of day these
little people must be astir. Their safety, their
very lives depend upon their early vigilance.
Then let us withdraw that they may take their
rest while the hours of darkness remain.

So good-night, little ones,

Good-night,
Slumber till the morning light.

Sleep without or fear or fright.

Our Father wakes. Good-night, good-night.

[93

When the Days Begin to
Lengthen

And often now when the skies are wild,

And hoarse and sullen the night winds blow,

And lanes and hollows with drifts are piled,
I think of the violets under the snow."

T. HEMPSTEAD.

ALF of the month had ex-
pired and the old adage still seemed
all astray in its assertion, for, in
spite of the fact that the days had
passed the decreasing point and
were gradually gaining in duration, the cold, in-
stead of strengthening, gave place to a spring-like
mildness; and many a deluded bud began to swell
under the influence of the misleading warmth.

But January has asserted itself at last. Day
before yesterday, toward nightfall, the heavy skies
began sending out feathery scouts, the earliest of
which fluttered aimlessly about as if undecided
whether to alight or to float back to their cloud-
homes. But after a time these few irregular fore-
runners were reinforced by myriads of their fairy
companions, until, at length, nothing was to be

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MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

seen but a world of merry snowflakes dancing
their way down to a whitening earth.

A certain seriousness of purpose, a determina-
tion not to loiter, characterized later comers ; for
I watched the noiseless procession until darkness
fell, and even in the blackness of the night I stole
to my window now and then, in the hope of ascer-
taining something of the progress of the storm.
But only over the way where a solitary street-
lamp cast a faint, nickering light could I distin-
guish anything. There, against the dim flame, I
saw the white army ever hurrying on its earth-
ward way, and when morning broke it was still
through a veil of falling snow that I caught
glimpses of the outer world.

In the light of day I saw that all the hollows
and irregularities of field and road had vanished,
and that each roof was represented by a snowy
mound. Trunks and limbs of leafless trees were
delicately outlined in white, while all the ever-
green boughs drooped with the weight of their
fair burdens, and every branch of the Norway
spruces formed a cradle for the snow. We had
already received from the clouds good measure,
pressed down and running over, and still the soft
flakes fell.

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WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN

No paths were broken at this early hour, and a
visit to the grove would have entailed both risk
and discomfort; but I knew that I had only to
wait a short time for hosts of grove representa-
tives to come to me. " The little friends must
not find me unprepared, however," I said to my-
self. " A welcome as warm as circumstances will
allow shall await the very earliest of the guests."
So I began scattering my supplies over the veran-
da roof: bird peppers, bread crumbs, grain, waste
canary-seed, cracked hickory nuts and powdered
or crushed dog-biscuit; but in less than a minute
the rapidly falling flakes had sealed each tiny
tunnel made in the soft snow by the provisions,
and my entire feast was obliterated.

The veranda roof is only a Dependance, how-
ever; so in my failure at this point, I turned to
the winter tavern proper, At the Sign of the
Balsam Bough. I must acknowledge that the
name is more alliterative than exact, seeing that
not even a sprig of balsam figures in the construc-
tion of the hostelry; but its habitues are not
hard, cold, matter-of-fact sticklers for exact terms
and expressions. I may call their tavern what I
will, provided I keep it well provisioned.

The corner-stone of this establishment was laid

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one frosty day when a sturdy little maiden came
into my den laden with pine and spruce branches
" for the birds." How to utilize the donation
was a puzzle at first; but even as I pondered the
matter fancy pictured them to me forming
themselves into the shelter they afterward be-
came. I have since heard of a number of bird
restaurants conducted on various plans, but it so
happened that none of them were known to me
when I embarked on what I supposed to be a
unique and original undertaking.

Making choice of a window that looks south-
ward toward the grove into the very heart of the
wood-thrush corner — one whose sill had formerly
been one of my ordinary bird and squirrel res-
taurants— I wedged the branches firmly between
the fastened-back shutters and the house in such
a wray that the tips met in front of the window;
while long, curving boughs fell outward over the
eaves, and two strong perches extended entirely
across from one side of the casement to the other.
Thus, you see, a perfect bower was formed ; a de-
lightful shelter and perching-place at the very
table d'hote itself. Of course the boughs have
since been many times replaced, yet to-day the
tavern stands practically as it stood at the time
fiool

WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN

of its establishment, and unless you have made the
experiment of such an arrangement, you cannot
picture to yourself the great advantages that re-
sult from this simple protective measure. It af-
fords the little pensioners a shelter in which to
lunch comfortably, to arrange fur or feathers lei-
surely, and to rest without fear of attack or pur-
suit; while, to onlookers like ourselves, there re-
sult from the arrangement opportunities for the
most delightful and intimate acquaintance imag-
inable with the natural life of these happy little
people. I can almost delude myself into the be-
lief that I also am a tree-top dweller, as I hob-nob
with the little feathered friends among the
branches hardly two feet distant from my writ-
ing-table.

At first the nearness of human beings caused
them some anxiety, but a short probation sufficed
to put them entirely at their ease with us; and
now we have the rare privilege of seeing and
studying the little wild things as they appear
without a shadow of disguise or shyness.

Sometimes the sun shining through the frail
little legs reveals each vein and fibre of their deli-
cate structure. As for the study of claws, it can
be carried to great lengths under such favorable

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MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

circumstances. Malformations and other individ-
ual peculiarities are sure to come to light in this
close scrutiny, and Jack Frost, his mark, is seen
in many a pitiful stump of a leg or an incomplete
supply of toes. Damages from other sources can
also be traced at the clinic of the tavern. Here it
was, for instance, that I diagnosed the case of a
junco with an injured wing, and a sparrow with
a broken leg. These two little creatures lodge in
the lattice-enclosed shelter under the veranda.
One of my pensioners has a white eye, an indica-
tion of blindness, I suppose; but the other eye is
so bright and keen that it appears equal to the
performance of double duty.

The tavern is the scene of feasts and jollifica-
tions, and toilet-makings and cosey moments of
nestling among the evergreen branches; but there
are also times when the poor little guests bear evi-
dences of having been storm-buffeted and nearly
frozen, and the tiny claws appear too numb to
grasp the perches. Often only one foot at a time
is able to serve owing to the fact that the other
is drawn up among the protecting feathers in the
effort to thaw it out. Think of the comfort of
the well-provisioned Balsam Bough Tavern at
times of such great distress; for even in driving

[102]

WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN

storms my hostelry boasts of snow and wind-
proof nooks and corners.

Now that you understand the situation, you
will not wonder that I did not waste a second
supply of food on the veranda roof. Coming at
once to the evergreen branch window, I cleared
the sill, scattered the snow that had accumulated
on the boughs, and then, in the most sheltered
corners of the establishment, I placed abundant
supplies of my stores.

You should have seen the eager crowd that
flocked to the feast. All day long, whenever I
looked out, I saw detachments of j uncos, chicka-
dees, pine-siskins, song-sparrows, white-crowned,
white-throated, and English sparrows contending
for the supplies, and down below, in their lattice-
enclosed fortress under the veranda, the disabled
junco and sparrow were partaking of an olla
podrida, the exact counterpart of the spread at
the Balsam Bough Tavern.

Later in the day when the flakes no longer fell
and the snow had begun to harden, Madame
Jolie-Queue came dancing through the whitened
branches, scattering sprays of the glistening pow-
der at each touch of her nimble feet. Then,
springing over the porte-cochere and bounding

[ 103]

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across the veranda roof, she brought up at the
window-sill with a triumphant flourish of her
beautiful tail. First she sampled the entire stock
of provisions and then settled down to a feast of
those that pleased her best ; after which she picked
up all that she could carry and scampered home
again.

It was only late in the afternoon that the snow
was firm enough to bear even such a sprite as
Madame Jolie-Queue ; and when the sun set, pale
green lights appearing among the belts of gold
and shafts of flame told of the coming of great
cold. And even as I watched the glowing sky
delicate little traceries, fairy-like designs, began to
creep over my window panes ; miniature trees and
vines, flowers and ferns, tropical growths and jun-
gle tangles, all done in an exquisite filigree of
frost.

During the day the sleigh-bell tinkle had been
of an intermittent order, owing to frequent com-
pulsory halts in the soft, deep snow, but at night-
fall one continuous merry jingle told of sharp
runners gliding smoothly and swiftly over a firm,
even surface, while responsive creakings and
crunchings from the hard-pressed snow added
their testimony to other frosty evidences.
[104]

WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN

" To-day will be a day of days in the grove,"
I said to myself. " The perfection of a mid-win-
ter walk will be ours."

When I again inspected the landscape daylight
had come, and the work of clearing away the
snow had already begun ; but instead of the feath-
ery mounds which path-breakers so lightly heaped
up yesterday, clear, firm squares were being
marked out by strong shovels, while a dazzling
breastwork of solid white blocks rose between the
road and the sidewalk.

The way to the grove is open to us now, and I
ask you to accompany me through it on a walk
brisk enough to circumvent Jack Frost's deepest
designs.

Think of the " treasures of the snow " repre-
sented in even a tiny fragment of one of these
compressed blocks; and what hosts and hosts of
exquisite snow-flowers we crush at every step. I
caught a few of the falling crystals yesterday in
the hope of being able to trace the wonderful law
of sizes as exemplified in each of the tiny forms,
whether star, prism, pyramid, wheel, or any other
of the fanciful shapes they assume — we are told
that nearly a thousand varieties have been noted

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

— but in each instance delicate spikes, bars,
points, and all the fairy fretwork vanished before
I had time for anything but the most superficial
of inspections.

Although the wind has relieved the branches
of much of their snowy drapery, enough still
remains for a universal Christmas-tree effect.
Santa Claus and his reindeer careering through
the pine-tops would not seem at all incongruous
in this Arctic setting.

This winding path always rewards those who
enter it with seeing eyes. What will it reveal to
us of furred or feathered life on this icy day when
our warmest wraps are called into requisition and
our well-protected feet and fingers tingle with
the cold ?

My question is immediately answered, for
there goes a brown creeper on his plodding, spiral
way. Watch for what looks like a piece of mov-
ing bark on that nearest elm if you would recog-
nize him. How do the numb claws maintain
their grasp, and what insect life can the little
bird possibly dislodge on this frozen day? Yet he
seems to be finding something very satisfactory in
the elm-bark crevices. Larvae a la glace is perhaps
a favorite dish with insectivorous feathered folk.

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WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN

In the woods in winter one is more apt to hear
chirpings or twitterings and prosaic calls than
song. But hark! there is a genuine carol. Not
of a very high order perhaps, but a song neverthe-
less ; bright and cheery and evidently of great sat-
isfaction to the performer himself. It proceeds
from the throat of that happy little chickadee over
in the hedge just opposite. See him as he sways
with all the airs of a conservatory graduate.
Bless his little heart, I believe he is carolling a
greeting to us. Chickadees are among the most
sociable of my restaurant guests. They frequent-
ly take advantage of the open window to step
from Balsam Bough Tavern precincts right into
my den.

Here is a little group of visitors not to be met
with every winter day. They are crossbills, and
I occasionally have the honor of welcoming them
to my little hostelry. The sight of the twisted bill
always recalls to one's mind the tender legend of
the little bird striving to draw the ruthless iron
nail from the Saviour's pierced palm.

Stained with blood and never tiring,
With its beak it doth not cease.

From the cross 'twould free the Saviour,
Its Creator's Son release.

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And the Saviour speaks in mildness ;

Blest be thou of all the good !
Bear as token of this moment

Marks of blood and holy rood !

And the bird is called the crossbill ;

Covered all with blood so clear,
In the groves of pine it singeth

Songs like legends strange to hear.^

If you wish to see what it is that attracts the
crossbill to coniferous trees, shake one of these
spruce cones. Tiny winged seeds flutter out
from among the scales, and the twisted bill is the
best kind of an implement with which to reach
these stowaway stores.

A flock of snow-buntings, or snow-flakes, as
they are sometimes called, is always a delightful
sight to me. " Whirling about in the drifting
snow to catch the seeds on the tallest stalk that
the wind in the open meadow uncovers, the snow-
flakes suggest a lot of dead leaves being blown
through the all-pervading whiteness. Beautiful
soft brown, gray, and predominating black and
white coloring distinguish these capricious visit-

* Longfellow, in the Legend of the Crossbill.

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WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN

ors from the slaty junco, the ' snow-bird ' more
commonly known. They are indeed the only
birds we have that are nearly white; and rarely,
if ever, do they rise far above the ground their
plumage so admirably imitates."*

The merry little creatures have discovered a
tract that was seed-strewn this morning for the
benefit of needy feathered folk. And now juncos
join them and a brownish gray stranger alights
among them. This stranger is a bird who has
appeared several times at my restaurant since the
great snow-storm set in; the only one of its kind
I have ever seen in the grove, and a good deal of
a puzzle to me when I at first sighted it. I
thought the creature was an overgrown, freak-
ishly colored sparrow until I discovered that it
walked instead of hopping. A female cow-bird
it proves to be, evidently a waif, whom stress of
circumstances has driven to my winter tavern.
You may imagine that this lady was an unex-
pected guest, especially at this season. What-
ever charges one may bring against her during
the nesting period, no fault can be found with
her behavior at the restaurant. She pays no at-
tention to matters that do not concern her; she

* Neltje Blanchan, in Bird Neighbors.

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participates in none of the contentions or dis-
putes that may be going on around her, and she
has the good sense to simply ignore the occasional
digs and pecks that fall to her share as a member
of an eager, hungry crowd.

How much the cow-bird gives the wise men
to think about, in her habit of stealthily deposit-
ing her eggs in the nests of other birds! She
usually selects for her purpose the homes of little
creatures, such as chippies, song-sparrows, war-
blers, and vireos. " But one egg is usually de-
posited in a single nest; the presence of two eggs
probably indicates . . . the visits of two
cow-birds rather than a visit from a single indi-
vidual." It may be that in thus distributing her
family the cow-bird mother has a thought of se-
curing a generous share of food and attention for
each foster child. At any rate, because of its
bulk and its enormous demands for food, the in-
truder is generally the cause of the rightful occu-
pants being starved or crowded out of their own
homes.

" To me," says Mr. Bradford Torrey, in " A
Rambler's Lease," " I must confess, it is inexpli-
cable that any bird should be either so unobserv-
ant as not to recognize a foreign egg at sight,
[no]

WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN

or so easy-tempered as not to insist on straight-
way being rid of it; though this is no more in-
scrutable, it may be, than for another bird per-
sistently, as it were on principle, to cast her own
offspring on the protection of strangers; while
this in turn is not more mysterious than ten thou-
sand every-day occurrences all about us. After
all, it is a wise man that knows what to wonder
at; while the wiser he grows the stronger is
likely to become his conviction that, little as may
be known, nothing is absolutely unknowable;
that in the world, as in its Author, there is prob-
ably ' no darkness at all/ save as daylight is dark
to owls and bats."

If it were not for the rigors of the day we
might stand and examine at our leisure the
make-up an'd movements of this little downy
woodpecker, for his fearlessness permits a very
close approach. Take one look at the conven-
ient arrangement of his toes; two back and two
front. Here we have the secret of the ease with
which he takes his perpendicular walk; also the
solution of his being able to sleep resting against
a tree-trunk. The hind toes act as props and
the stiff tail-feathers may serve as additional sup-
ports whenever he chooses to press them into the

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

tree. Like all of nature's children, he is well
equipped for his work. His strong bill makes an
excellent chisel, and his long, barbed tongue is
admirably suited to spearing insect prey. Listen
to the vigorous rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat of the
little bill. It always seems to me as if a neu-
ralgic headache must be the natural outcome of
such an energetic hammering and probing of the
bark.

But remarkable as are the downy woodpecker's
acrobatic feats, they are easily surpassed by those
of that little gray neighbor of his who is walking
— not backing — down the trunk of the opposite
tree. This is the white-breasted nut-hatch.
" Quank, quank, you can't do this," he seems to
be saying to the industrious, upward-travelling
woodpecker. Would it not seem as if all the
blood in the little gray body must rush to its
owner's head during this state of inversion!

His name tells us that he is not altogether
dependent on larvae and insects for his food.
Chestnuts, beech-nuts, and even nuts with hard
shells may form part of his menu. His strong
little bill is the hatchet with which he splits the
nuts open as they lodge in the tree-crannies where
he himself has wedged them; or again he holds
[112]

WHEN THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN

them in the firm clasp of his little claw, while
hammering away to break them open.

Now I hear a pine-siskin, though none of the
little creatures are in sight, and there is a whole
chorus of chickadees. Now the white-throat's
sweet notes reach us, and, like the echo of this
strain, the white-crown's plaintive whistle fol-
lows. I have mentioned both these handsome
sparrows as patrons of my restaurant, but the
white-crowns greatly outnumber their cousins.
On two or three occasions, when all the other
habitues had retired for the night, I found a
white-crown snugly settled among the branches
of the tavern, which fact leads me to suppose
that I have one lodger, as well as many boarders.

During these days of unusual cold and heavy
storm, supplies disappear so rapidly at the Balsam
Bough Tavern that the dishes need frequent re-
plenishing, and I daresay a hungry, clamorous
crowd awaits me even now. Before embarking
on the undertaking of keeping a bird-hotel I
asked myself, " Can I offer the little creatures
a shelter where they will be beyond the reach of
their enemies? Am I both able and willing to
continue providing for my charges day after day,
day after day, until the rigors of winter are over,

["31

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

and the withdrawal of my protection and bounty
can do no harm ? "

For we may feed our feathered friends fitfully
or not at all in summer if we will,^but after hav-
ing once taught the little pensioners to resort
to crumb and seed strewn localities in cold
weather, and to rely on the bounty of their
human friends in winter, forgetfulness or care-
lessness in the matter of providing for them may
cause the death of scores of the trusting little
creatures.

Come with me now, and make the acquaint-
ance of my interesting little guests. You will
have ample opportunity, for they will linger long
after the pink glow has fallen on the glittering
snow and the rosy lights appear among the tree-
tops. The warmth of the house will be most
welcome after our frosty walk, and from the
sheltered den we may watch the restaurant until
the last boarder departs and the white-crown
tucks himself up in his evergreen cot.

The Loosing of the Fetters

"A world where the leaping fountains glance,
And the buds expand, is waiting its hour"

T. HEMPSTEAD.

YESTERDAY the world was enveloped in
dreariness and mist; to-day jewel-lights
flash out on every side. From the tiniest shrub
to the tallest pine, come sparkle and glitter and
dazzling glow. Each tree-trunk is diamond-
veneered by the frost; each spruce-cone glitters
to the point of every scale; each cluster of pine-
needles is held at its tip by a jewel-clasp. Fringes
of diamonds hang from arbors and eaves of
dwellings, opalescent lights play around empty
nests, and where, only yesterday, a bit of rag
drooped from one of these deserted homes, like
a signal of distress, a jewelled pennant now ap-
pears. Here glows a topaz, yonder gleams a
ruby, and on beyond, through a tangle of dia-
mond-coated twigs, an emerald flashes and an

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

amethyst throbs. In the full light of the sun all
the colors of the rainbow come and go among the
jewel-bedecked branches. But when, in the ear-
liest of the morning hours, the moon looked down
upon this fair scene, it was as if the trees were
hung with tiny twinkling stars, while a soft,
pearly radiance fell upon our whole earth.

The gorgeousness of this glitter is almost more
than our eyes can endure, but it is the glory of
the transient. For see ! from yonder maple-spray
the drops are already falling. The jewels are
dissolving. The world has begun to weep for the
release of Baldur, the Good, the Bright, the
Beautiful. All the fierce giants of ice and cold
and darkness are once more to be banished, and
the gentle summer gods will reign in their stead.
We feel this and exult. There is in our hearts
the new old joy that comes year after year, year
after year, when the genial sun awakens the
earth to the promise of a new life. But the joy-
ful influences are no less keenly felt by the army
of little wild creatures who share with us the
happiness of this hour. In that soft, dreamy little
song which comes to us from yonder leafless
hedge the tree-sparrow tells of the joy that is
in store for him and his beloved, in some far-off
[118]

THE LOOSING OF THE FETTERS

land where stunted trees break the dreary monot-
ony of barren fields, and the sun shines far into
the short night of a brief, unproductive summer.

That beautiful joyous carol, the bluebird's
warble, is another expression of the delight in-
spired by the gentle influences of the day. The
song-sparrows, who have perhaps been with us
unnoticed throughout the entire winter, now rav-
ish our ears and gladden our hearts as they carol
out their joy in the beautiful time of promise.

And there is Chanticleer adding his loud, em-
phatic testimony to that of all the other creatures
who are proclaiming the fact that winter's reign
is almost over. His wives are clucking and mut-
tering in their usual discontented and uncertain
manner. It may be their way of expressing satis-
faction, but to me there is nothing but anxiety
and suspicion in the ordinary tones of a hen.
Quite different is it when she soothingly talks to
her little ones at bedtime or animatedly and en-
ticingly summons them to some choice tid-bit of
her own discovering, or fussily and noisily pro-
claims to the world that she has contributed an
egg to its treasures.

But in the crowing of a cock there is a cheery,
friendly ring, though it may be a trifle too posi-

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

tive and patronizing. And although his motif
is somewhat monotonous and restricted, yet so
artistic is he in the matter of producing telling
crescendo and diminuendo, or presto and rallen-
tendo effects, that his renderings always appear to
have a certain fitness for any occasion he may be
celebrating.

We hear the soft drip, drip, drip, on all sides
now. Delicate little perforations are appearing
in the snow — so firm and glittering a short time
ago, so dull and soft already. Tiny rivulets are
beginning to run down the slopes where the sun's
rays fall most directly; little bubbles are oozing
up from the softened ground, and the dissolving
red shale will soon color even the purest of the
snow.

Sometimes in the heart of a crowded city the
sight of a bit of this red dust adhering to my
garments will banish, for a moment, the recogni-
tion of the mad haste and rush and roar, and
will transport me in fancy to the quiet, familiar
home-scenes through which the picturesque red-
earth belt runs.

The snow-buntings, as well as some other
lovers of far northern haunts, have left us, but
flickers and other woodpeckers still greet us,

[120]

THE LOOSING OF THE FETTERS

while nut-hatches, j uncos, chickadees, white-
throated and white-crowned sparrows — in fact,
nearly all the birds we saw during our January
walk — are still here. But there is in their twit-
terings and notes and songs something that we
did not hear on that beautiful frosty day.
" There is a mystery in the air — some great con-
certed movement on hand."

" Something's coming. Something's coming.
We feel it, we know it," they call and chirp and
sing and twitter.

" What is it, what is it? " I ask, eagerly.

And one small voice makes answer:

" Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee. You'll soon
see-see-see-see-see."

Welcome the Coming Guest

'' O Spring-time sweet,
Over the hills come thy lovely feet.
The earth's white mantle is cast away,
She clothes herself all in green to-day;
And the little flowers that hid from the cold
Are springing anew from the warm, fresh
mould."

Translated by J. F. CLARKE.

FEBRUARY'S whispered promise is ful-
filled, for spring has come at last. Ma-
ple buds are swelling; lilac leaves are preparing
to unfold; elms are decking themselves out in
delicate little red-brown tufts; strawberry vines
are feeling their way cautiously over the face of
the newly awakened earth ; tender green blades
are peeping up through last year's dry, brown
grasses; early shrubs are hastening toward the
time of blossoms, and tangled honeysuckle vines
are taking on the brownish tints that tell of
coursing sap and coming leaves. Now and then
we hear the droning of a solitary honey-bee;
again a tiny gnat hovers near, or an early moth
flutters by, and the atmosphere is filled with the
delicious fragrance of sun-warmed dead leaves,
and tender beginnings of vegetation.

English sparrows are flying about with an air
of the greatest importance, carrying in their beaks

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straws and strings and other official announce-
ments of their intentions. The grackle croaks
and creaks in the swaying spruce-tops. The
chickadee calls plaintively, " Come sweet, come
sweet." The song-sparrow's throat ripples and
swells as he breaks into ecstatic little outbursts of
melody, the fox-sparrow deluges the thickets with
rapturous song, and the woodpecker laughs in his
glee. Juncos, white-crowned and white-throated
sparrows trill and whistle and warble, as they
tell of the good world, the beautiful world, the
glad springtime, and the joy of living.

And oh! the delight of the day on which I
sighted our first robin guests! The great, hand-
some fellows (the earliest comers are always
males) went chattering about through the trees ;
some of them inspecting familiar haunts, others
evidently making the acquaintance of our neigh-
borhood.

Much excited calling and chattering goes on
among the red-breasts through the day, but at
dawn and twilight on the warmest of these late
March days, before labor has begun, or when the
busy tasks are ended, all worldly thoughts are
banished and their voices rise in joyous, triumph-
ant hymns of praise.

WELCOME THE COMING GUEST

Now and then, in strolling along country
roadsides, we catch glimpses of beautiful blue-
birds flying over the fields or halting on fence
rails and posts. But, even while halting, they
lift their wings again and again, as if reluctant
to forego for one little moment the joy and free-
dom of flight. They also — these birds of heaven's
own hue — tell, in happy warbles, of resurrection,
gladness, and the joy of living.

And hark, from down among the sheltered
streams of the meadows come other voices. We
hear them faintly and at long intervals now ; but
in the evening, when all other sounds are hushed,
the air is filled with the high, but not inharmo-
nious, peeping of the earliest frogs.

So it is now ; but stormy winds have raged and
heavy snows have fallen since the day when we
watched the ice-jewels vanishing before the pow-
erful February sun. And cold nights may come
again, and biting frosts may chill these buds of
promise and silence these joyous notes ; but it can
be only for a time, a very little time. Spring is
striding forward now, and winter's hold is surely
broken.

The tide of northward travel has already set
in, but, as usual, much of the passing takes place

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

during the night, and only occasionally are we
fortunate enough to sight the migrators. An
evening or so ago a strange chance revealed to
us the passing of a flock of wild geese. The
travellers were completely hidden by a heavy fog,
and we should never have suspected their pres-
ence but for the anxious calls and cries of a de-
tached portion of the company which had gone
astray in the fog.

" Where, where? Where, where? " we heard
from the separated members.

" Here, here ! Here, here ! " answered the
firm voice of the leader; but it was not with one
or two directions that he rallied his scattered
forces. There was a great deal of calling and
much answering before the listeners heard the
regular movement of wings announcing the com-
pany assembled and once more under way.

You look in vain for the evergreen shelter at
the window-sill tavern. With the coming of
spring the establishment closes for the season,
being altogether too modest an hostelry to ac-
commodate the multitude of guests which the
warmer weather brings. So, until wintry days
come again, the table d'hote proper will be served
out under the hospitable maples whose branches

WELCOME THE COMING GUEST

shade our own dining-room. In this neighbor-
hood are several large, rough flower-pot saucers,
with their frequently renewed fresh-water sup-
plies. This, for the bathing accommodation of
my feathered visitors, although even in winter
they are not without drinking opportunities.
Elevated posts are always recommended for the
distribution of one's bounty to birds, and you will
remember that, in making you acquainted with
the workings of my window-sill restaurant, I
laid great stress on the necessity for choosing a
site where the little pensioners would be secure
from the attacks of prowling enemies. Yet when
spring comes, I scatter my provisions out on the
grass under the maples without the slightest fear
of marauders; for the warmer season table d'hote
boasts of a formidable guardian, in the shape of
a vigilant little Chihuahuan; and such is the
power of valor that all the cats of the neighbor-
hood flee in terror before this redoubtable little
creature; three pounds and a half of dog! Dur-
ing the winter my little Mexican takes her out-
ings in the middle of the day only ; and these are
either short, brisk expeditions for the sake of ex-
ercise, or excursions taken in protecting arms;
therefore, in cold weather she cannot fill any out-

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door position of trust. But unless the spring be
a very backward one, she enters upon her office
as guardian of the table d'hote quite early in
March, and she holds the position until late in
the autumn, which is the time of the window-sill
inn reopening. Nor is her perpetual presence
needed to produce the desired effect. The fact
that she may appear at any time seems to be recog-
nized by all four-footed bird enemies of the neigh-
borhood, and suffices to keep them at a distance.

The little dog evidently realizes to the utmost
the importance of her office, for at the very men-
tion of danger, her beautiful eyes, so tender and
gazelle-like in their natural expression, assume a
look of sternest watchfulness; and the soft, flexi-
ble ears that quiver and droop so responsively at a
word or a glance of affection, rise to formidable
heights of aggressiveness and alertness when harm
threatens her charges.

Sometimes she walks demurely in and out
among the guests, daintily sampling bits of moist-
ened bread (an article which, by the way, she
would scorn if it appeared in her own menu, but
for which she has a predilection at the birds'
table), but the little creatures heed neither her
coming nor her going. Again she sits down in

WELCOME THE COMING GUEST

the midst of the assemblage, and gazes with
friendly interest at the proceedings of its quaint
members; but her presence causes not even an
anxious flutter among them. Sometimes her little
satin coat of dazzling white and rich tan brushes
against the rather dingy garment of a cottontail
rabbit, and frequently Mr. Rufus and Madame
Jolie-Queue inspect her closely, or dance around
her as if inviting her to join in their frolics. But
even when the graceful little sprite frisks and
gambols in the very neighborhood of the banquet
her merriment causes no uneasiness among her
proteges, for its friendly nature is thoroughly un-
derstood.

In order not to harm my feathered visitors by
interfering with their regular quest for food, I
serve the meals at scheduled hours only. But at
periods of untimely frosts, I spread an all-day
feast. None of my pensioners approve of the lat-
ter plan more highly than do the robins. Mrs.
Mabel Osgood Wright it was who discovered
that powdered or moistened dog-biscuit and bread
are a very satisfactory temporary substitute for
worms stowed away in ice-locked larders. With
genial days the dog-biscuit disappears from my
bill of fare, but moistened bread is the summer

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

piece de resistance. Apart from the latter article
of diet, however, the supplies that I put out for
my pensioners are such as they would be likely to
pick up in their roadside, meadow, or garden
gleanings, and cannot be injurious to them.

At this season my regular patrons are cotton-
tail rabbits, squirrels, robins, grackles, chickadees,
juncos, white-crowned, song, tree, and — of course
— English sparrows. I occasionally have a visit
from a \vhite-throat, and now and then my un-
usual winter guest, the cow-bird lady, partakes of
the feast. Later, cat-birds, chipping sparrows,
wood-thrushes, goldfinches, and sometimes or-
chard orioles join the party, but usually not until
the juncos, the white-crowds, white-throats and
other birds partial to nesting in cool northern re-
gions have left us. At any time I may have rep-
resentatives of the most exclusive families in bird-
land among the transients, but these eat a la carte
or merely halt, much after the manner of humans
who stop a moment at the sight of a small or a
great assemblage of their kind, and who continue
their way as soon as their curiosity regarding the
cause of the gathering is satisfied.
. My pensioners appear many times a day ; and at
the hours for serving meals — morning, noon, and

WELCOME THE COMING GUEST

toward six o'clock in the evening — there are vo-
ciferous calls for me if I am at all behindhand
with my preparations. On high days and holidays
the bread is moistened with milk instead of water,
and such an Epicurean gloating as there is over
the festival dish ! Even the seed-eating birds pat-
ronize it, though they usually show a very natural
preference for the diet of sunflower and other
seeds. Bits of apple, intended for the cottontails,
and nuts for the squirrels, complete the bill of
fare, but the Jolie-Queue and Rufus tribe appro-
priate portions of all the supplies, and carry away
far more than they can eat. These acquisitive lit-
tle creatures seem greatly to enjoy patting and fit-
ting pieces of moist bread into convenient branch
crotches; proceeding much after the manner of
moulders in clay. At nearly all angles of the
table d'hote trees these strange little bread-pud-
dings may be seen. There are also various other
unnatural and uncanny maple-tree decorations
suggestive of the work of an insane Santa Claus,
but at least on one occasion they served an ex-
cellent purpose.

Summer before last toward the close of the
season, a sudden and violent anti-grackle crusade
was organized in our neighborhood. It was the

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outcome of a raid of some of my proteges on poul-
try yards at a little distance from us, where food
was strewn, apparently, after the hospitable man-
ner of the table d'hote. Perhaps the grackles
looked upon the poultry yards as annexes to my es-
tablishment ; at any rate they probably partook of
the provisions with the same feeling of security
with which they ate at my table. But alas, their
confidence was one day rudely shaken, for a show-
er of shot fell in among them as they ate, and sev-
eral were killed. Of course some escaped unhurt,
while others made their way back to the grove,
only in time to die among their beloved haunts.

You will not be surprised to hear that I looked
in vain for grackles among my guests during the
days that immediately followed the slaughter,
though now and then I caught glimpses of their
glistening coats as they stealthily passed from one
sheltered part of the grove to another. I had
about made up my mind that they would never
again venture to join the happy little party at my
restaurant, when, arising one morning at dawn, I
surprised a flock of them in the table d'hote trees.
Not one ventured to the ground, but in among the
protecting branches they were eagerly devouring
the luscious bread-puddings with which Mr.

['34]

WELCOME THE COMING GUEST

Rufus and Madame Jolie-Queue had so indus-
triously stocked the trees on the previous evening.
This stealthy performance continued for some
days, the squirrels unwittingly serving meals up-
stairs for the frightened grackles; but the birds'
confidence in me was finally restored, and this
year they were among the earliest of my spring
guests.

I know that various charges are brought against
grackles (is anyone or anything free from as-
persions, I wonder?) — the most serious, to my
way of thinking, being that they eat young birds
and eggs. Yet year after year robins and grackles
nest harmoniously in the same tree near my win-
dows, and I certainly have excellent opportunities
for observing both the dear red-breasts and the
black beauties. Only in one instance have I seen
what suggested an unpleasantness between a
grackle and some robins; and this was near the
large bird-baths of the grove, at some distance
from the homes in my tree. I have often specu-
lated as to the exact meaning of the occurrence.

A grackle appeared at the bath, unmistakably
in the custody of two robins; one on each side.
Under their strict surveillance he was allowed to
bathe, the robins waiting at the brink of the basin

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and eyeing him sternly as he performed his ablu-
tions, and when he emerged the three disappeared
as they had come; the grackle in the centre and
the robin guard on each side.

Over in the honeysuckle vines, at a little dis-
tance from the table d'hote, you will see a curious-
looking object fastened, cocoon-like, in among a
cluster of leafless twigs. My sister came upon it
a few days ago while carefully inspecting the
vines, and some little nature-loving friends of
mine enlightened me as to its meaning. It is the
egg-mass of the praying mantis; not our Ameri-
can species, but a foreigner recently introduced
experimentally in our neighborhood. This is no
doubt the very mantis religiosa which appeared
to the devout St. Francis Xavier as he walked in
his garden. " A great, winged insect, walking
with head bent down, and forelegs stretched out
and elevated in an attitude of prayer."

" He was much astonished at this circum-
stance," says the narrator of the incident, " but
much more so on hearing the humble creature
chant a beautiful canticle, after the custom of
that period, with great solemnity." *

It was thus that the saint and mystic saw and

* E. Van Bruyssel, in The Population of an Old Pear-Tree.

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WELCOME THE COMING GUEST

heard the praying mantis, " but prayer is far from
the object in view, as any small insect that hap-
pens within reach learns to his cost," says our ac-
curate, scientific entomologist. " A sudden clasp
wounds and crushes it into helplessness, and the
mantis religiosa then leisurely devours its victim,
the forelegs serving admirably as hands in the
operation." *

Of course the entomologist is right, and the
predacious little creature is bent only on securing
its food, yet, when the praying mantis appears
among the " Green Things upon the Earth," I
shall try to hear with the mystic's ears the " beau-
tiful canticle " blending with the songs of the
" Powers of the Lord " that " praise Him and
magnify Him forever."

* Prof. J. B. Smith, in Economic Entomology.

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Love- Making and Home-
Building

" Then the fields grew green with the springing

corn,

And some with flowers were bright;
And each day came ivith an earlier dawn
And a fuller, sweeter light."

WHAT an indescribable tenderness charac-
terizes this beautiful April day! Light
and shade are dreamily following each other over
green hillsides, while soft white clouds drift about
in azure depths. Summer trees are robed in deli-
cate young leaves or attired in feathery, flower-
like leaf-heralds. Spruces are hung with embryo
cones — tiny pink buds in which a blush rose might
exult — and tips of lightest, softest hue relieve the
sombreness of the dark evergreen boughs. Horse-
chestnut leaves have emerged from their varnished
casings and cast aside the fleecy coverings in which
the baby buds were so carefully enveloped. With-
out any leafy forewarning, the forsythias — like
clusters of miraculous rods — have burst into a
wealth of yellow blossoms; and scarlet buds are
opening among the pyrus japonica leaves, while

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modest little white flowers begin to peep from
curving spirea arms. Dandelions dot the grassy
stretches, and violets lift their heads in woodland
places. The delicate fragrance of early blossom-
ing fruit-trees mingles with the rich odor of mag-
nolias, and the soft young grass in the neighbor-
hood of these voluptuous beauties is strewn with
petals scattered lavishly at the wind's call for lar-
gesse.

What tender things one hears among the birds
during these beautiful wooing days. But not only
in eager chirp and musical twitter, low warble
and tender trill, may the sweet old story be told ;
for hoarse croak and plaintive squeak, discordant
as they may sound to the ear of the uninitiated,
may voice the sublimest sentiments of some little
feathered lover's soul.

Up in yonder lofty pine is a purple grackle's
nest. I watched the beautiful couple as they co-
quetted and wooed, and surveyed the premises;
spluttering, squeaking, and screeching out their
sentiments. Now and then, by way of extra em-
phasis, hunching their shoulders and swelling out
their feathers until neck, wings, body, and tail
seemed hopelessly out of joint. But with what
amazing ease do they subside after one of these

LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING

astounding acrobatic feats. It would seem as if
a preening of an hour would hardly suffice to re-
store the ruffled costume to its usual sleekness and
trimness. Yet even as the croak or squeak dies
away, the feathers fall into place again, and the
beautiful violet and green and purple and bronze
lights play once more over the smoothest and
glossiest of coats.

It was with a strange sense of exultation that
I saw bits of nest-material of my own providing —
small strips of muslin and short strings — disap-
pearing among the highest of these pine-branches
— a subtle link between the children of the air
and a dweller on the earth. Day after day I
watched the skilful masons and builders as they
gathered the soft mud from the roadside and car-
ried it to their tree-top home. But though the
beautiful pine-tassels nod and sway as if in friend-
ly approval of my interest, they keep the secret of
what goes on within their shelter.

Only a few moments ago all seemed peaceful
and harmonious in the grove. What is, then, the
meaning of this sudden uproar? Who are these
wild skirmishers and whither are they bound ?

I recognize this commotion. It is what Mr.
Burroughs calls a " robin racket." " Trains of

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three or four birds rushing pell-mell over the lawn
and fetching up in a tree or bush, or occasionally
upon the ground, all piping and screaming at the
top of their voices, but whether in mirth or anger
it is hard to tell. The nucleus of the train is a fe-
male. One cannot see that the males in pursuit of
her are rivals ; it seems rather as if they had united
to hustle her out of the place. But somehow the
matches are no doubt made and sealed during
these mad rushes. Maybe the female shouts out
to her suitors, * Who touches me first wins/ and
away she scurries like an arrow. The males shout
out, ' Agreed ! ' and away they go in pursuit, each
trying to outdo the other. The game is a brief
one. Before one can get the clue to it the party
has dispersed." *

Those interesting manifestations which Mr.
Burroughs calls " robin duels " are much in
vogue earlier in the season. I have frequently
heard hasty observers speak of them as courtship
parades ; being under the mistaken impression that
the promenaders were male and female ; but these
" pretty sparring matches " are participated in by
males only. " You may see two robins apparently
taking a walk or a run together over the sward

* Mr. John Burroughs, in Riverby.

[H4]

LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING

or along the road ; only first one bird runs and
then the other. They keep a few feet apart, stand
very erect, and the course of each describes the
segment of an arch about the other.

" How courtly and deferential their manners
toward each other are. Often they pipe a shrill,
fine strain, audible only a few yards away. Then
in a twinkling one makes a spring and they are
beak to beak and claw to claw as they rise up a
few feet into the air. But usually no blow is de-
livered; not a feather is ruffled ; each, I suppose,
finds the guard of the other perfect. Then they
will settle down and go through with the same
running challenge as before. Often they will
run about each other in this way for many
rods." *

The " racket " has subsided and the quieter
voices may again be heard, but above them all
rises a sound as of vigorous hammering and rapid
drilling. Let us follow the resounding clue to see
if we can discover the little carpenters in the very
act of constructing their home. We must pro-
ceed with caution, however, for even the most
fearless of woodland folk are apt to become wary
and stealthy when it is a question of concealing

* Mr. John Burroughs, in Riverby.

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the little habitations they are preparing, or of
shielding their young from discovery.

Now we are very near the sound. I think an
observation halt will be of advantage to us at
this stage of the proceedings. Here is a hospita-
ble spruce in whose strong lower arms I have
many a time found a comfortable resting-place
and the seclusion required for just such investi-
gating occasions as the present.

High up on the main trunk of yonder half-de-
cayed old maple I see a brownish-gray bird. He
is flattened against the tree, and he rests on his
dark, stiffly spread tail, which is firmly braced
against the bark. A red crescent at the back of a
gray head moves rapidly as hammer and drill are
called into requisition. We have often sighted
the handsome flicker as he flew about the grove
and searched for food in the tree-trunks or on the
ground. Now we are fortunate enough to come
upon him while he is at work on the opening that
represents the front door of his house.

There is life in the old maple yet, as a few bud-
ding branches still testify, but there is decay
enough to make the puncturing of the bark and
the work of excavation a comparatively easy task
for these powerful bills. The woodpeckers arc

LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING

too wise to select for their homes a tree with a
natural cavity. Their choice falls upon one that
" has been dead just long enough to have become
brittle throughout."

How wonderful is the economy of nature!
After the woodpeckers have had their one-season
lease of a house their cousins, the nut-hatches,
chickadees, and brown creepers " fall heir " to the
nests. " These birds, especially the creepers and
nut-hatches, have many of the habits of the pic-
idae, but lack their powers of bill, and so are una-
ble to excavate a nest for themselves. Their hab-
itation, therefore, is always second-hand. But
each species carries in some soft material of va-
rious kinds, or, in other words, furnishes the ten-
ement to its liking." *

Now our feathered friend halts and examines
his work. See him as with head drawn back he
critically surveys the growing excavation, first
from this side and then from that, as a Turner
might inspect a painting or a Worth a " creation."
I fancy that no little complacency enters into the
architect's contemplation of his own workman-
ship. False humility will not interfere with his
appreciation of its good points, neither will foolish

* Mr. John Burroughs, in Wake Robin.

[H7]

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pride keep him from recognizing and rectifying
any errors he may have made in constructing the
abode which is to shelter his dear ones. Their
comfort and safety are his first consideration.

But see; although he still remains flattened
against the tree, he suddenly looks away from his
work and seems to be gazing in our direction.
Has he discovered us, and does he resent our pres-
ence ? Is that prolonged stare a gentle intimation
that the neighborhood is not large enough to ac-
commodate us all ?

Ah, no, he heeds us not. It is of another voice
that he is taking note. He is listening to that
loud rapid quick-quick-quick-quick-quick-quick.
And now a bird with widespread, golden-lined
wings makes its way toward the old maple. Is
this the architect's mate? Yes, she alights beside
him — before closing her wings giving us an op-
portunity to note the distinctive family mark, a
conspicuous white patch at the base of the tail.
Now two red crescents appear beside the opening
in the tree. Two gray heads turn from side to
side in affectionate inspection of the progress of
the work ; but only on the cheeks of the first work-
er do we see the black patches by which one recog-
nizes the male. Yet I fancy that, even had we not

LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING

sighted these masculine badges, the husband's lov-
ing, chivalrous demeanor would have enabled us
to place him.

Listen to their pleasant confidential chat. How
unlike the rapid, business-like call of a moment
ago. The conversational notes of a flicker may
not be altogether musical — to me they always sug-
gest the rapid rubbing of a moistened finger over
smooth glass — but there is a certain sweetness, a
mellowness about them, nevertheless, and how
much congeniality of taste and harmony of opin-
ion are represented in the discussion under way!
It is as if he were saying, " Now do not hesitate to
advise or criticise, dear. The house is to be con-
structed according to your liking, and I shall be
satisfied only when you are pleased."

But evidently she has no fault to find. I think
I hear her cooing out a loving approval of every-
thing; perhaps bestowing an especial measure of
praise on our architect's last touches.

Now we hear more rubbing of the smooth glass
— at this juncture it probably represents kissing
— and away he flies, while she takes up the work
of hammering and drilling.

Let us mark the tree for future observation ; it
will be interesting to follow the fortunes of this

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

happy couple; and now, as noiselessly as possible,
let us steal away from our hiding-place and fol-
low on toward the wildest part of the grove.

In this bit of the forest there is no interference
with the wild bent of either tree or underbrush,
and nature liberally rewards this reverent regard
for her moods and fancies. Here we find such
harmony, such restfulness, such a sense of re-
moteness, such suggestions of forest depth, as one
rarely obtains except in the genuine wilds. It is
like Anthony Trollope's ideal wood, " purpose-
less." The mind can conceive that it has " never
been planted by hands, but has come here from
the direct beneficence of the Creator — as the first
woods did come — before man had been taught to
recreate them systematically." *

Here and there you note that several boughs
have been gathered into large heaps; but even in
this assemblage of the storm-broken branches — an
apparently inconsistent orderly touch — there is a
thought of preserving the manners and customs of
wild life. The shy little creatures who frequent
this region rejoice in these forest-like shelters;
these vantage-points from which they may safely
see without being seen.

* Anthony Trollope, in A Walk in a Wood.
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LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING

And behold, is it not, as if in considerate cor-
roboration of my statement, that that forest re-
cluse, the hermit-thrush, suddenly appears among
the piled-up branches just before us? He is no
doubt making his way to some forest north of us,
but what an honor to have had him even halt
here. His very presence breathes calm and mys-
tery. One feels instinctively that his dwelling is
in holy places.

" I know that I have fallen upon the sacred
hour when the song of the woods is a prayer," says
one in speaking of this voice as heard in forest sol-
itudes. " There is a strain in this note that was
never caught under blue skies and in the safe nest-
ing of the familiar fields. It is the voice of soli-
tude suddenly breaking into sound ; it is the
speech of that other world so near our doors and
yet removed from us by uncounted centuries and
unexplored experiences." *

Not here, lest we disturb our rare little guest,
but as we move slowly on toward the secular,
every-day portions of the grove, I will tell you of
some of the homely purposes served by the brush-
heaps at my summer feeding site.

You noted them, one under the dining-room

* Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, in Under the Trees and Elsewhere.

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maples, another at the foot of a large spruce not
far distant from the first shelter. Both brush-
heaps rest on a carpet of dead leaves — a method
of furnishing entirely to the wood-thrushes' lik-
ing— and the broken branches are so heavily
packed and so closely intertwined that none but
the little people of the wood can penetrate them.
I do not think it would be possible for a cat or the
smallest dog to enter this maze ; and birds of prey
seem averse to venturing so near our dwelling.
Occasionally, while the little friends are all as-
sembled at the table d'hote some watchful mem-
ber of the feathered company will sight an enemy
taking observations from sky or tree-top vantage-
points. Instantly a note of alarm will be sounded,
when presto, as if by enchantment, every bird dis-
appears and nothing but an innocent-looking, non-
committal brush-heap is to be seen.

After a time a cautious delegate peeps out from
the shelter, and if nothing formidable is in sight
he gives a reassuring call ; whereupon again, as if
by magic, the banqueting hall is furnished with
guests and the interrupted chatter and feasting
are resumed.

I may be mistaken, but I think that a certain
little song-sparrow couple are considering one of

LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING

my brush-heaps as a possible building-site. And
the junco with the injured wing seems also favor-
ably impressed with the advantages of the shelter,
and inspects it frequently in company with an
able-bodied junco lady, whom he has evidently
persuaded to abandon foreign travel and induced
to settle down with him as a grove permanent.
This is indeed an innovation, but I can fancy how
a bird of impaired wing-power would appreciate
the advantages of an all-the-year residence such
as the grove affords. No doubt visions of north-
ern forest freshness and coolness appeal powerful-
ly to these little creatures — one the victim of a
misfortune, the other evidently an exile for love's
sake — but I am certain that no time will be
wasted in useless regrets or foolish complaints.
Birds are Spartans and philosophers.

The white-crowns, although registered as rare
winter migrants, still patronize the table d'hote,
and are among the most confiding of my visitors.
Great English-sparrow disciplinarians are these
same sturdy little fellows of the handsome head-
dresses. Indeed, to the frequent and vigorous
feather-tweakings — hair-pulling equivalents, no
doubt — which the white-crowns administer im-
partially to all English-sparrow habitues of the

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

table d'hote, I am inclined to attribute the pres-
ent chastened demeanor and humble behavior of
the latter feathered folk. Even the chippies —
who, by the way, have appeared in full force —
seem to know that they may safely assert them-
selves in the presence of any little Briton of the
neighborhood.

To return to the mention of the brush-heaps.
Welcome as their shelter is to the little people of
the wood in general, by none is it more appre-
ciated than by the defenceless cottontails. At
the slightest alarm the startled creatures will
make for the protecting mounds, one white-lined
tail after another disappearing in the intricacies of
the brush tangle, until not a trace of the silent
little creatures remains.

But even as I say silent there comes to my re-
membrance the words of the prophet of the Wild
Things regarding this very matter.

" Truly rabbits have no speech as we under-
stand it, but they have a way of conveying ideas
by a system of sounds, signs, scents, whisker
touches, movements, and examples that answer
the purpose of speech." *

*Mr. Ernest Seton-Thompson, in Wild Animals I Have
Known.

[154]

LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING

I must tell you that even the shy flickers have
appeared at my table d'hote recently. I cannot
say that they partake of my provisions, but at any
rate they mingle with the guests and carefully in-
spect the sward under our windows. After all, it
does not seem as if my practice of regular feeding
can be working harm to any form of vegetation
in our neighborhood. New birds are constantly
appearing, and the staff of tree and shrub inspect-
ors increases daily.

Over in yonder larch-tree — the one with the
picturesque couvre-pied of scilla — I see a pair of
robins with housekeeping intentions. Evidently
the prerogative of selecting a site belongs to the
lady in this case, for Mrs. Redbreast goes in ad-
vance, testing twigs and examining branches,
while her mate meekly follows in her wake.

Judging by indications of this kind, I am to
have robins for very near neighbors. The birds
have not proceeded beyond mere preliminaries, as
the leafy covering is still too scant; but it is evi-
dent that the maples near my front windows have
found favor with one couple at least.

Do you note that light and shade no longer fol-
low each other over the green hillsides? Every-
thing lies in shadow now, for soft gray clouds

[155]

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brood over the earth and showers are on their
way.

Here are the first rain-drops, the earliest of the
gentle heralds. Let us take refuge under this lit-
tle summer shelter and wait for the clearing. It
cannot be long delayed.

Even though you and I are watching closely,
we cannot detect that any change is taking place
in leaf or bud or blade of grass; yet after the
shower is over we will exclaim : " What strides
vegetation has taken ; what a marvel has occurred.
Leaves have expanded, buds have opened, the
grass has grown as if by miracle. How was the
wonder brought about ? "

Now and then, as if in playful condescension,
nature shows us a sudden marvel. The flower of
the moon plant opens with a tiny explosion. The
evening primrose " leaps " from " buds into ripe
flowers," and the night-blooming cereus unfolds
before our eyes, but as a rule the great mother's
workings are so stealthy, so secret, that we can-
not tell how or when results are achieved.

How pleasant the smell of the moistened earth.
How musical the sound of the gently falling rain.
Its cadence is like an echo from an old Hebrew
poem:

LOVE-MAKING AND HOME-BUILDING

Thou visitest the earth and waterest it: thou
greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which
is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when
thou hast so provided for it.

Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly:
thou settlest the furrows thereof : thou makest it
soft with showers: thou blessest the springing
thereof.

Thou crownest the year with thy goodness;
and thy paths drop fatness.

They drop upon the pastures of the wilder-
ness: and the little hills rejoice on every side.

The pastures are covered with flocks; the val-
leys also are covered over with corn; they shout
for joy, they also sing.

[157]

At Peep of Day

" The phantom flood of dreams has ebbed and

vanished with the dark,
And like a dove the heart forsakes the prison

of the ark;
Now forth she fares through friendly woods

and diamond-fields of dew,
While every voice cries out ' Rejoice ' as if the
world were new!'

DR. HENRY VAN DYKE.

The High Prieata

of€heFlowcr.i

THE reveille has sounded. That single
clear, penetrating robin note announces
the opening of day in bird-land. Only half-past
three of the clock as hours are reckoned with us,
but it is time to be stirring if we would attend
matins in the grove. The forms of the celebrants
are shrouded in the misty gray of early morning,
but no shadowy veil can intercept the glorious
voices. For one brief instant only the intoner's
notes were heard ; now his voice blends with the
songs of hundreds of his kind. But even in the
swelling of the chorus it is possible to recognize
many distinct bands of musicians, and an occasion-
al lull or ebb of song secures a hearing for the
sweet small voices whose value is not recognized
in the universal chorus, though the great harmo-
nious whole would be incomplete without them.
Those wonderful flute-like notes with their
[161]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

tremulous accompaniment so suggestive of the lin-
gering vibrations of stringed instruments, repre-
sent the wood-thrush portion of the choir ; for the
friendly little travellers have returned to the wait-
ing forest-nook.

Now we hear the Baltimore oriole's ringing,
clarion-like notes, and a rippling, rollicking, musi-
cal outburst from a cat-bird. There is an ex-
quisite orchard oriole rhapsody, and now, thanks to
a momentary lull, an aria from a warbling vireo
reaches us, and we hear a gentle song-sparrow's
ecstatic hymn and an enthusiastic little trill from
a chippie. But the chorus-tide turns again, and
stronger voices once more overpower the weaker
in the great volume of song that even the grackles'
harsh notes cannot make inharmonious. In fact
they serve as a species of sub-structure; a sort of
rough but substantial foundation for the beautiful
edifice that rests upon them.

Hosts of transients making a halt of a few
hours, or perhaps a few days, in the grove, add
their hymns of praise to the joyful songs of birds
that are nesting with us ; but above and beyond all
other voices rise the redbreasts' familiar notes.
Lowell pronounced- a chorus of robins " unri-
valled, as like primitive fire worshippers they hail

AT PEEP OF DAY

the return of light and warmth to the world."
They are telling only of cheer and of present glad-
ness: " Singing like the poets without an after-
thought," and it is no minor chord in the carol it-
self, but some subtle association with the robin's
song, that so often fills the human listener's heart
with wistful sadness.

And now, are you not conscious of another mel-
ody blending with the songs of birds? It is the
harmony of fragrance. The flower-forms are still
indistinct in the grayness, but their musical greet-
ings are wafted to us on the dewy air. There is
a general mingling of fragrance as there was of
song, but with the flowers, as with the birds,
an occasional voice more potent than its fel-
lows reaches us with unusual distinctness. Even
the tender grass has its own fragrant little
utterance.

How fleeting the glories of the beautiful " lilac-
tide." No perfume of either purple or white blos-
som reaches us now from yonder hedge where, but
a short time ago, both beauties appeared in such
profusion. The magnolia-trees have cast aside
their bloom and clad themselves in luxuriant fo-
liage, while upon the fruit-trees, so recently cov-
ered with a " foam of blossoms," scarcely a flower

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

is to be found. Would we love the time
of " riotous blossoming " so well were it less
brief?

Noiselessly but steadily the day has been ad-
vancing, but now it is almost with haste that
night's shadows disappear before the pale light in
the east. The mist that but a short time ago en-
veloped us, and in its passing touched with silvery
moisture each leaf, blossom, and blade of grass,
now lingers around the river only. And see, writh
the lifting of the shadows both flower and bird-
forms come to view. In the woodsy wildness just
behind us little spring beauties are sleeping, but
violets — open-eyed and watchful — look up from
sheltering tree-bases; and on beyond, under the
last of the pines that line the path to the flower-
garden, we see spreading sweet shrubs, with their
exquisitely fragrant little brown blossoms nestling
close to the mother twig. How delightfully sug-
gestive of sun-warmed pineapples and strawber-
ries and all sorts of enticing spicy and elusive
odors are these same inconspicuous little brown
blossoms.

A few proud tulips — gorgeous reds and yellows
— still hold their court in yonder striped grass tan-
gle; and, over the way on the other side of the

AT PEEP OF DAY

fountain, as if in rebuke for such a barbaric dis-
play of color, the delicately tinted flower-de-
luce lifts its stately head. But stationed midway
(as if to keep the peace) are graceful spireas in
feathery bloom and companies of peonies, some
bursting into blossom, others displaying only buds
among their rich leaf masses.

From the shelter of their cool, protecting,
shrine-like leaves, the spotless lilies-of-the-valley
rise, as if for prayerful meditation ; but just be-
yond their precincts I see an array of dear, mis-
chievous, roguish little faces; the winning, af-
fectionate johnny- jump-ups or ladies' delights.
These are flowers upon which I never again can
look without a sympathetic thought of the touch-
ing mention made of them by the author of
" Old-Time Gardens." She says: " Ladies' de-
lights and ambrosia tell us, without words, of
their love for us and longing to be by our side;
just as plainly as a child silently tells of his
love and dependence on us by taking our hand
as we walk side by side. There is not another
gesture of childhood, not an affectionate word
which ever touched my heart as did that trust-
ful holding of the hand. One of my children
throughout his brief life never walked by my

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

side without clinging closely — I think without
conscious intent — with his little hand in mine.
I can never forget the affection, the trust of that
vanished hand." *

The feathered folk are flitting about among the
branches now; a happy> harmonious company.
But hark! What is the meaning of that sudden
commotion in yonder tree-top? What stranger
has alighted there ? The occasional unwieldy flap-
ping of large wings suggests that their owner finds
it difficult to steady himself on the slender bough
that he has chosen for a halting-place. A grackle
makes a graceful finish for the steeple branch of
a spruce, but a crow seems all out of place on such
a delicate perch.

Yet after all there is a certain fitness in our
sable friend's selection of a commanding post, for
he comes in an official capacity. As town-clerk or
court-crier he calls out, in loud, peremptory
tones :

WORK! WORK! WORK!

Is it because his discordant notes are a discour-
agement to the musicians, or because a great, fiery
ball in the east announces the full opening of day,

* Mrs. Alice Morse Earle.

[166]

AT PEEP OF DAY

that there is a sudden and decided falling off in
the chorus, a very perceptible lessening in the
great volume of song?

I realize now that I had almost unconsciously
arranged for myself a sort of forecast of this sun-
rise. As the monarch's earliest heralds I had
looked for long, slender, rose-colored streaks,
which were to grow and grow until the heavens
became one effulgence, while the river was to have
caught and held the glory till it vanished before
the sun's full glow.

But instead of this, without any intimation of
his coming other than the vanishing grayness, the
glorious red ball suddenly looks out through the
rapidly retreating mists.

Though nature's laws are in a sense inviolable,
though seed-time and harvest, sunrise and sunset
will succeed each other as long as the world lasts,
yet the great mother has constant surprises in
store for us, and no one can anticipate her moods
or her movements where her fixed laws are not
concerned. The individuality that characterizes
even the most obscure of her creatures is one of
her own greatest attributes ; and it has been said
that, during all the ages in which the sun has run
his course, the sky-settings have not been identical

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

on any two occasions either of his coming or his
going.

Less and less song; more and more work.
There a robin redbreast halts to sing his

Cheery, cheery,

Be cheery, be cheery.

I like cherries.

Don't you, Deary ?

but nearly all his little companions are looking
around for food-supplies. The oriole still utters
his sweet, clear notes, but they come like musical
drops now, singly or in couplets, and they are ut-
tered during leaf and twig investigations. The
great food-quest, the grub and insect exterminat-
ing crusade has begun.

How much of woodland life the full light re-
veals. Just overhead I catch a glimpse of a yel-
low-billed cuckoo ; and there, against the trunk of
that nearest maple, a sapsucker's beautiful red
crown appears. Now a sight of the goldfinch in
his undulating flight accompanies those waves of
song. As for this plump little object, which a
few moments ago we might have passed unheeded
or mistaken for a small stump, it now develops
into a friendly cottontail. How very worn and
moth-eaten the remnant of the winter coat looks

[.'68]

AT PEEP OF DAY

in comparison with the fine new fur, showing here
and there among the old.

Seeing these demure little creatures in their
guarded attitudes only, one would never imagine
what fun-loving sprites they are. I sometimes
come upon them in the moonlight hours, at which
time they are said to be particularly partial to
gambols and frolics; but the wildest rabbit tour-
nament I ever witnessed was in the mid-afternoon
of a gray day a week or so ago. I was entirely in
evidence, but for this they seemed not to care in
the least. The joust took place directly over in
the grassy, shady space which the carriage-drive
encircles. There were about a dozen participants,
I should say, though their continual and rapid
changing of position made accurate counting a
difficult, not to say an impossible, matter. I fan-
cied that the company was divided into aggressive
and defensive parties; at any rate, from opposite
directions they came, jumping and bounding tow-
ard each other; sometimes leaping three feet or
more into the air, a particularly valiant knight oc-
casionally vaulting clean over the head of his an-
tagonist. Short, low bounds were also in vogue,
and there were chases and skirmishes and boxing
matches, and exuberant, kitten-like demonstra-

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

tions of playfulness, but of all the merry sports
the running high-jump was certainly the most
popular.

The more secluded brush-heaps are favorite
rabbit nurseries, but now and then an innocent-
looking little roughness in the turf of the open
represents the fur-lined nest of some happy cotton-
tail couple. On rare occasions, when we are cer-
tain that our investigations will not cause a panic,
we give ourselves the treat of a peep at the plump
little furry balls in their cosy shelter. But usual-
ly the parents have the satisfaction of thinking
their sweet secret undiscovered.

You remember our carpenter friends the flick-
ers ? Let us wander toward the old maple where
we saw them working so industriously. There is
a surprise in store for you in that quarter. You
think you anticipate it? A sight of the devoted
parents carrying food to a family of funny, awk-
ward, half-clad babies, hidden safely away in the
heart of the tree ? But that is not what I would
show you. About two and a half feet below the
excavation at which the flickers were working
with such apparent pride and satisfaction when
you saw them last, you note another opening, a
more recent excavation. The little carpenters

AT PEEP OF DAY

have abandoned the earlier site, and are now de-
voting all their energies to the construction of this
newer home. The male is working at present, you
see, and now and then he appears at the door with
a chip in his beak. Sometimes he recklessly casts
his shavings away and gives no heed to their
course, but at other times he puts his head far out
and carefully watches the falling chips. Is this
idle curiosity merely, or is he anxious to note
whether the tell-tale bits of wood land in betray-
ing places or in paths suspiciously near the home
tree?

It was by tokens of this kind — an abundance of
tiny chips strewn around a maple-tree base — that
I discovered a cleverly hidden flicker nest a few
days ago. The lord and master of the establish-
ment was evidently not a bird of honor like our
earlier acquaintance. I watched this newer friend
for fully ten minutes as he sat idly looking out his
front door — an action not necessarily blame-
worthy in itself, but reprehensible in view of
what followed. During his wife's absence he was
taking a complete holiday, but when her loud
quick - quick - quick - quick - quick - quick - quick
gave warning of her approach he fell to work
with deceitful energy, and when she appeared on

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

the scene the chips were flying at an astonishing
rate. Perhaps she accosted him with : " You
you must not work so recklessly, dear; you will
be ill. Now take your well-earned rest and leave
all thought of toil to me for the present."

But to return to the case of our own flickers;
the constructors of the two homes. What caused
them to abandon the earlier site after having be-
stowed so much time and labor on its excavation ?
When the interior was finally reached did it prove
unsatisfactory ? Were the walls unsound? Did
the roof leak? These and many other like ques-
tions I have asked myself again and again without
being able to arrive at any definite conclusion.
Had the builders gone to an entirely new locality,
their departure might have been ascribed to panic
or the presence of troublesome neighbors, or per-
haps to a general dissatisfaction with the old
maple. But what can be the meaning of a sec-
ond excavation in the self-same shaft, removed
from the first opening by about two feet only ?

Yet this is not the first instance in which a
flicker has been known to drill superfluous cavi-
ties. In " Riverby " Mr. Burroughs tells us of
a flicker who " drills- into buildings and steeples
and telegraph poles."

AT PEEP OF DAY

•" One season the large imitation Greek col-
umns of an unoccupied old-fashioned summer
residence near me were badly marred by these
birds," he writes. A flicker " bored into one col-
umn, and finding the cavity — a foot or more
across — not just what it was looking for, cut into
another one and still into another. Then he
bored into the icehouse on the premises, and in
the sawdust filling between the outer and inner
sheathing found a place to his liking."

Another flicker " seemed like a monomaniac,
and drilled holes up and down and right and left
as if possessed of an evil spirit. ... It may
have been that he was an unmated bird, a bache-
lor whose suit had not prospered that season, and
who was giving vent to his outraged instincts in
drilling these mock nesting places." *

A tin leader at the northwest corner of our
house — one of several pipes that conduct rain-
water from the roof — was recently selected by a
flicker for his drumming purposes. This rapid,
rolling tattoo, played upon some resounding sub-
stance, is the male woodpecker's courtship call.
It was perhaps half-past four in the morning
when I was awakened by a reverberating noise

* Mr. John Burroughs, in Riverby.

[173]

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proceeding from the corner where the leader
runs. The strange sound suggested the dragging
of heavy, casterless furniture over bare floors, and
was accompanied by something of a vibration not
unlike that which marks the course of a slight
earthquake. I was at first much perplexed by
the occurrence, but before I could reach the win-
dow I heard the rapid call of a flicker, and a mo-
ment later I saw the handsome stranger. At
sight of me he ceased drumming and flew away,
so whether his suit prospered or not I cannot say.
We are told that in bird-land the males outnum-
ber the females, and that bachelors are a possibil-
ity; but a bird spinster is said to be a rara avis
indeed.

Mr. Burroughs says it is probable that the
male woodpecker accepts the first female that
offers herself in response to the drum-call.
" Among all the birds the choice, the selection,
seems to belong to the female. The males court
promiscuously; the females choose discreetly.
. . . What determines the choice of the fe-
male it would be hard to say. Among song-birds
it is probably the best songster, or the one whose
voice suits her taste best. Among birds of bright
plumage it is probably the gayest dress; among

AT PEEP OF DAY

the drummers she is doubtless drawn by some
quality of the sound. Our ears and eyes are too
coarse to note differences in these things, but
doubtless the birds themselves note differences."*
A beautiful bronzed grackle has just disap-
peared in the hemlock beyond the flicker maple.
His beak was filled to overflowing with dainties
for his hungry babies. Wait and they themselves
will reveal their whereabouts.

Squawk, Squawk, Squeak !
Croak, croak, creak !

Strange to say, these agonizing sounds repre-
sent eager anticipation, delightful realization,
and every other pleasant thing you may choose to
picture to yourself in the line of happy, clamor-
ous nursery table-talk.

A stealthy stirring in that blossom cascade
yonder would suggest the presence of a bird-
home in the wistaria-vine, and as for these hedges,
in bird-land they seem to be the equivalent of a
popular residence quarter among human beings.
The gardener told me recently that he plies his
huge shears with positive dread around these
great walls of osage orange and privet. Little

* Riverby.

[175]

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homes are so plentiful here that it requires the
greatest watchfulness not to harm them during a
trimming tour.

Take a peep through the stubbly, thickly mat-
ted shoots and branches at these four mites in the
little hair-lined nest. Unlike the great majority
of young birds they are not all heads, and the tiny
beaks that open so confidingly at our approach
are quite in proportion to the dainty frames. But
see, peeping out through the green arch through
which we have just passed is an anxious little
chippy mother begging us to go our way that she
may give her babies their breakfast. We will
not investigate any more hedge-homes at present.
This is a busy and important hour in the nurser-
ies of featherdom, and it would be cruel to keep
the little ones waiting for their food.

Those fluffy dandelion balls seem to have great
attractions for the English and chipping spar-
rows. See how cleverly the little creatures nip
the seeds and cast aside the miniature sails that
would have floated away with the tiny germs to
some other corner of nature's garden.

But there is a little bird who seems to have
other than food purposes for the dandelion top.
With one swoop he gathers a beakful of the fluffy

AT PEEP OF DAY

stuff, and the pale button at the top of the hol-
low stem is now quite bare. This wholesale
gathering represents somebody's nest-lining.

Let us take a stroll toward the front entrance
of the grove in order to obtain a glimpse of the
deserted street. It is not probable that anyone
is stirring at this hour.

But instead of solitude we find a host of busy
little folk. Would you have believed it possible
that, right out upon a public sidewalk where by
and by scores of hurried human feet will pass,
such an assemblage of comparatively shy birds
could have made themselves so thoroughly at
home?

True, the robin is ever fearless and friendly,
but now he is almost intrusive. And there are
orchard orioles examining critically the lowest
branches of the maples that line the public thor-
oughfare ; while Baltimore orioles calmly view us
from their halting-places on the fence, bronzed
grackles strut complacently around the grassy
borders, and wood-thrushes are inspecting crev-
ices in the brick pavement. One of the little
brown beauties is deeply interested in a large, soft
bit of Japanese wrapping-paper that has drifted
in among the fence-railings. See her as she turns

[177]

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it over and examines it carefully. Now she takes
her flight, but the paper trails through the air
after her. Back into the grove she goes, over tow-
ard the wood-thrush corner; let us follow her.
That flaunting bit of paper is to be the founda-
tion for her nest. A strange choice, is it not? But
Mr. Burroughs tells us that the wood-thrush has
a curious habit " of starting its nest with a frag-
ment of newspaper or other paper. Except in
remote woods I think it always puts a piece of
paper in the foundation of its nest."

This is certainly a secret-disclosing hour. The
little creatures of the woods seem wonderfully
off their guard. Perhaps they have some intui-
tion of the love and reverence with which we
look upon these sacred scenes. A beautiful robin
carrying a beakful of building material has just
entered that tall elm; and a cat-bird on a sim-
ilar errand disappears in the intricacies of the
hedge.

But on beyond is a nook of revelations to
which I would lead you. It is a place that I have
fairly haunted since our April-day stroll. Its
trees, its hedges, its low underbrush tangle, its
shade, its security, -and its nearness to the little
pools where feathered bathers congregate — all

[178]

AT PEEP OF DAY

these qualifications serve to make it the most de-
sirable of halting-places. The little junco couple
appear rarely at the table d'hote nowadays, but
I come upon them frequently in this forest-corner.
They are no doubt influenced by the shyness of
nesting-time, and in this shelter they probably
find many of the conditions to which they are ac-
customed in summer sites of northern lands. A
pair of white-crowned sparrows have remained
with us, but all their friendly little fellows, as
well as their genial white-throated cousins, have
left for the north. It was when this month was
very young that I last heard the white-throat's
sweet plaintive whistle. It seemed to say, fare-
well till the snows, till the snows, till the
snows.

This little bird's note always conjures up for
me a strange, sweet picture. I see a great stretch
of rolling prairie upon which the shades of even-
ing are gently falling. A clear little stream
ripples and dances over a pebbly bed, and toward
this stream, cropping the long dewy grass as she
goes, a tired horse slowly makes her way. She
is riderless and free from harness trammels. She
may wander far over the grassy stretches during
the cool night hours, but her quick ear will catch

[179]

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her beloved master's first call, and back she will
hasten at his bidding, no matter how far she may
have strayed.

The master lies on the ground over yonder,
wrapped in his protecting blanket, for the heavy
dews are falling and he has no shelter. His hat
is drawn down over his brow, but from under the
soft rim he gazes up into the sky from which the
last of the sunset lights are fading. Never has
it seemed so vast to him as now, and, though he
knows no fear, a great sense of loneliness takes
possession of him. An overpowering conscious-
ness of remoteness, of vastness, and aloneness.
Here he was to have found shelter and human
companionship, but through some misunder-
standing his comrades have failed him. Like
himself, they are searchers for treasure hidden in
the earth's heart, and they are perhaps not many
miles away, but a night search for them would be
perilous and fruitless. The traveller must wait
for the day.

As the twilight deepens, the loneliness grows
more intense and oppressive. No sound breaks
the solemn stillness. The man hears not even
the ripple of the dancing stream ; it is too remote.
If sleep would only come!
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AT PEEP OF DAY

But see, there is movement. A little bird
alights on a twig beside him. The human form
is dusky in the twilight and for a time the little
creature views the stranger in wondering silence,
but suddenly the prairie stillness is broken.
Swreet and clear rings out the white-throat's
song. The traveller had often heard the voice
and ever greeted it gladly, but never before was
it half so welcome as now.

Traveller, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.
Heaven its watch doth keep, watch doth keep,
watch doth keep,

sang again and again the sweet, trustful, little
voice ; but how often the tired man never knew,
for sleep came as he listened, and when he awoke
the morning had dawned and the gloom had de-
parted.

And so had the little bird, yet the traveller was
not alone ; for, gazing down upon him in wonder
and perplexity, stood a strange company : a large
herd of antelopes. They were probably on their
way to the little stream when the unusual ob-
ject met their view. The man's hat, his gar-
ments, and even his blanket were of the soft dun
color of an antelope. " Who is this creature so
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strangely like ourselves?" may have been the
question the beautiful eyes were asking, as they
gazed and gazed upon the prostrate form.
" Will he harm us? Are we foolish to linger? "
Yet, with the curiosity of wild things concern-
ing unusual objects, they came nearer and nearer
until they almost touched the man.

The hunter's instinct stirred mightily within
the traveller as he looked at the lovely creatures.
His gun lay beside him; his hand was almost
upon it. Should he fire?

He gazed a moment longer into the beautiful,
wondering, innocent eyes, then suddenly raised a
harmless, empty hand. At the quick gesture the
frightened creatures turned and fled. The man
rose and watched until the last of the flock had
disappeared, and the feeling that he experienced
as he gazed was something nobler than the exul-
tation of a successful hunter.

A long, loud whistle was answered by a fa-
miliar whinny; and in a short time the horse,
refreshed and eager to continue the journey,
came galloping up to her master.

After the usual greetings were over the trav-
eller mounted, and his horse bore him to the top
of the highest eminence of the entire region.

AT PEEP OF DAY

From this point, miles away, he could see the
peaks of his companions' tents.

One backward glance at the spot where he
had passed the night, then horse and rider went
on their way, and the place saw them no more;
but the memory of the little ministering bird and
of the beautiful wild visitors of the morning re-
mains with the traveller, and, though the story
takes some time in the telling, the whole pano-
rama passes before my mind's eye in the space of
a white-throat's song.

But I must tell you of other visions that have
come to me in this nook of revelations. One day
it was a little bird of glowing orange and strik-
ing black, with white markings: the beautiful
Blackburnian warbler, a creature once seen never
to be forgotten. Other members of the warbler
family — palm, magnolia, blackpoll, worm-eat-
ing, black-and-white creeping, yellow, and I can-
not say how many others — have visited the spot
as I sat and watched. And oh! the hopeless
number that I have not been able to identify!
Sometimes I brought from my upward-gazing
quest nothing but an aching neck, yet who can
tell what foundation for future success was laid
in these apparently fruitless investigations. Our

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pioneer woman bird-student says: "One must
be content to let some things remain unknown,
and enjoy what he can understand if he would
be happy with nature. And if at some future
time — as often happens — the mystery is solved,
the joy is great enough to pay for waiting." *

The redstarts have been so numerous that op-
portunities for observing them have been ex-
cellent. Mr. Chapman says that " in Cuba
most of our wood warblers are known as * Mari-
posas ' — butterflies ; but the redstart's bright plu-
mage has won for him the name of * Candelita,'
the little torch that flashes in the gloomy depths
of tropical forests."

A pair of Maryland yellow- throats seem to be
nesting here — their " witchery, witchery " is fre-
quently heard in this sequestered nook — and yes-
terday I listened to a delightful vaudeville per-
formance from a yellow-breasted chat, who was
passing this way.

But the most gorgeous of all the visions came
with a company of scarlet tanagers. I fairly held
my breath as I saw the palpitating red of the
beautiful creatures against the pale young green

* Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller, in Upon the Tree-Tops.

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AT PEEP OF DAY

of the low trees among which they were flitting.
They were like scarlet flowers in motion. I have
sometimes seen in a geranium or a gladiolus some-
thing of the wonderful tint of this glowing little
body. In the sunlight it is positively dazzling.

I followed the brilliant company from one
point to another, until at last they flew over to
the maples of my table d'hote. Ah, what distin-
guished guests I had that day ! A maid who has
recently come to us from the Emerald Isle and
whose mind and heart are filled with tender
memories of thrushes and linnets, " Jenny
Wrens " and " real redbreasts," skylarks and
" stone crackers," and all the familiar feathered
folk of the old country, was within call when
the tanagers alighted in the table d'hote trees.
I summoned her and pointed out the glowing
beauties. First awed silence, then low, rapturous
exclamations! Never, never before had she seen
such a wonderful sight. No old-world bird
could compare with these glorious American
strangers. We gazed and gazed until they left
us to return to this quiet forest-nook, and after
a few days they were no more to be seen in any
part of the grove.

Perhaps a little less than a week ago, as I sat

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quietly watching from this inviting rustic seat,
a dainty little humming-bird flew by and alighted
on the brier-bush just opposite; and I had the
satisfaction of seeing the little jewel make her
toilet. It was the daintiest, most fairy-like per-
formance imaginable. First she darted out a
long, bristle-like tongue, and then she proceeded
to preen the exquisite plumage. Sometimes, with
the long beak, separating the tiny breast-feath-
ers, again smoothing and putting them in place
as the bristle-like tongue darted in and out among
them. Suddenly she darted off, and gave chase
to a tiny insect, which she captured; then re-
turned to her post and resumed her toilet-mak-
ing. I watched her until she flew away and was
lost to sight among the trees, and I can assure
you that on my return to the house it was with
no small sense of exultation that I reported my
good fortune in having seen a humming-bird in
her dressing-room.

One other little vision I must mention ; such a
simple thing that you will perhaps wonder why I
place it among the rare sights of this nook. You
see a cluster of violets over at yonder pine-tree's
base? As I sat here yesterday a wood-thrush
halted just at the point where a bunch of the
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AT PEEP OF DAY

little wild flowers rested against his soft dotted
breast. The blending of the wood-thrush color-
ings with the violet was one of the most har-
monious combinations on which my eyes have
ever rested. It is nothing to tell, but the vision
is one to remember with gladness.

The great-crested flycatchers love this haunt,
and from this point they also fly over to the
table d'hote. I heard a loud call among the
brush-heap maples some days ago, and hurried to
the window for a glimpse of the visitor. It was
the great-crest. For a while he investigated the
trees, then alighted on the roof of the piazza just
in front of my outlook window. Such a delight-
ful show of innocent vanity and artless self-appre-
ciation as I witnessed during the few moments
that he halted! With his handsome crested
head at an angle to enable him to look over his
shoulder at his widespread, drooping tail, he was
viewing himself with charming complacency. It
might have been a young girl parading up and
down in her first ball-gown and turning back in
gleeful contemplation of her own train. I have
no doubt the dear fellow was congratulating
himself on his bewitching courting costume.

But now for our onward stroll. A tiny sus-

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pension bridge has been swung across this path
since we entered it a few moments ago. Some
industrious little spider has spun its silken web
in that short time. I am always on the watch
for a fascinating horror in this realm. I hope
some day to come upon the scene so thrillingly
portrayed by Alphonse Karr. An Amazon of a
spider beckoning to some trembling, insignificant
little suitor to approach that she may see if he
suits her fancy. Brave indeed is he to respond,
for he knows that she will eat him — not merely
reject him — if he falls short of her standard!

Over yonder in the spruces and hemlocks the
honey-bees are hard at work. They find some-
thing very attractive at the sections where the
tender, light-green shoots of the new growth
meet the dark, firm portions of the old. These
bees are no doubt members of communities that
have sprung from a colony of waifs. Last sum-
mer a swarm coming from some unknown quar-
ter located in one of the squirrel houses which
you see high up among the trees. The little, old,
weather-beaten tree-top home, with its entire bee
population, has been safely lowered from its perch
among the branches, and now it stands on a
broad, low shelf at the head of five fine patent

AT PEEP OF DAY

hives. Some of the new dwellings are tenanted,
while others await inmates.

In early childhood my knowledge of the bee
was confined to Dr. Watts's admiring mention
of the busy insect, to a hearty appreciation
of the luscious sweets sealed in the little waxen
cells, and to a painful encounter with an enraged
member of a hive on whom I accidentally trod
while indulging in the delights of a bare-footed
ramble among white clover blossoms. It was
not until the time of the transfer of the little
squirrel house, with its incongruous inhabitants
and its store of sweet treasure, that I gained a
little conception of the depth of meaning in the
life of a bee.

We are told that these little sisters, the work-
ers, toil night and day, in darkness and in light,
during their entire short lives, for the benefit of
the generation that is to come, and that they
themselves reap merely enough for sustenance;
the finest of their gathering being devoted to
community interests, and in particular to the in-
terests of the yet unborn or dormant republics.
At the time when the sacrifice is required they
willingly abandon the beautiful, well-stocked
homes and go forth in search of some bare, un-

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furnished dwelling, where they will immediately
proceed to lay the foundation of a new republic.

I came here the other day with the intention
of making a close study of the little creatures,
but although the owner of the hives could sit
with impunity almost at the door of the little
dwellings, an angry delegation greeted even my
distant advances, and I retreated hastily and ig-
nominiously before the fierce little insects' wrath.
I now take my observations from a somewhat re-
mote point.

The wonderful process known as swarming
took place here three or four days ago, and a sec-
ond exodus is looked for at almost any time. I
should be glad to think that this beautiful day is
to be for some portion of this little community
what Maeterlinck calls a " festival of honey."
" The one day of forgetfulness and folly, the
only Sunday known to the bees. It would ap-
pear to be also the solitary day upon which all
eat their fill and revel to their hearts' content in
the delights of the treasure themselves have
amassed. . . . They have left trouble be-
hind and care. They no longer are meddling
and fierce, aggressive, suspicious, untamable,
angry. On this day man can approach them,

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AT PEEP OF DAY

can divide the glittering curtain they form as
they fly round and round in songful circles; he
can take them up in his hands and gather them
as he would a bunch of grapes, for to-day in
their gladness, possessing nothing but full of
faith in the future, they will submit to everything
and injure no one, provided only they be not sep-
arated from the queen who bears that future
within her." *

But the golden hours of the early morning
have been speeding as we talked, and the time
is not far distant when shrill whistles and
hoarse gongs will arouse the workingman to the
knowledge of the fact that day has begun in the
great, indispensable world of human labor.
Soon streets not far from this quiet grove will re-
sound with the tread of hastily passing feet, and
the rushing tide of human travel will have set
in. Flowers will bloom as bravely as now, but
birds will become comparatively shy and silent;
yet every now and then some heart in the great
throng less preoccupied or more in tune than oth-
ers will take note of sweet sounds and fragrant
flowers, fresh trees and limpid skies, and will
praise God for His beautiful world ; but you and

* Maeterlinck, in The Life of the Bee.

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I know that these are mere shadows of the reve-
lations one may have, and that nature's holy of
holies can be entered only while the outer world
sleeps.

[ 192 1

A

Day Chat

' Soar with the birds, and flutter with the leaf;

Dance with the seeded grass in fringy play;

Sail with the cloud; wave with the dreaming

pine,
And float with nature all the livelong day.

' Call not such hours an idle waste of life;

Land that lies fallow gains a quiet power;
It treasures from the brooding of God's wings

Strength to unfold the future tiee and
flower.

' So shall it be with thee if, restful still,

Thou rightly studiest in the summer hour;
Like a deep fountain which a brook doth fill,
Thy mind in seeming rest shall gather
power."

MRS. H. B. STOWE.

THIS is summer's zenith. To-day she stands
in the full beauty, the perfection of her
young womanhood. " With June our cup is full,
our hearts are satisfied, there is no more to be
desired."

Fulness of joy is also the portion of the little
woodland folk. Listen to their merry chatter
and happy songs! What activity, what alert-
ness, what superabundance of delight! Kind
chance or wondering impulse will lead many of
the little forest creatures our way to-day; we
need not saunter to find them. So let us rest and
watch under these sheltering pines, where the soft
breezes will visit us, and the fragrance of honey-
suckles and roses will be wafted to us, and all the
delights of a perfect June day will be ours.

Over yonder, pressed against an old elm-trunk,
I see four young flickers ; the children of our ac-

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quaintances of the double house perhaps. Is ft
not wonderful that these little ones, in their ap-
parently perilous position, should be as safe and
comfortable as are our human children in their
early travels over carpeted floors and level grassy
stretches. As in the parent flickers' case, the
strong, bracing hind toes and the firmly planted
tails form the supports.

There is much uncertain hammering and ama-
teur bark-searching going on among the young-
sters, but I fancy that the meal proper will be
furnished by the adult pair foraging so indus-
triously among the ant-hills yonder.

Over wThere the overflow of the bird-bath
makes such soft, superior mud, I see a robin gath-
ering material for plastering a nest. Prepara-
tions for a second brood, or even a third, perhaps ;
as many of the youngsters of the first families
have already overtaken their parents in size, and
broods succeed each other rapidly in robin house-
holds.

Judging from the tree-top commotion at twi-
light, I think yonder thickly wooded portion of
the grove must represent a " robin roost ; " and
to this bird dormitory or " robin academy " the
fathers seem to resort nightly with the elder chil-

A JUNE DAY CHAT

dren, while the mothers remain on or near the
nests with the eggs or young of the previous
family.

Some years have elapsed since Mr. Bradford
Torrey and Mr. William Brewster drew the at-
tention of bird-observers to the fact that, even
during the breeding season, great companies of
robins congregate nightly at some given point
more or less remote from the nesting-site. Mr.
Torrey acknowledges that he at first entertained
a suspicion that these birds were adult males
shirking nursery responsibilities. Husbands and
fathers who " thus unseasonably went off to bed
in a crowd, leaving their mates to care for eggs
and little ones." But farther investigations —
his own and Mr. Brewster's — proved that the in-
dividuals who composed the assembly were nearly
all young birds, with " a sprinkling of adult
males." The latter were evidently the fathers
assuming charge of the elder children, in the
laudable desire to lighten the mothers' nursery
cares and responsibilities.

In a walk through the grove, or during a stroll
around the table d'hote, one meets with babies of
the furred or feathered tribes at nearly every
step nowadays. Parents conduct their children

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to my restaurant from the time the little creat-
ures leave the nest, and I have the delight of
watching them all through the various stages
that lead to complete emancipation. One young
robin, easily recognizable by a slight peculiarity
of plumage, shows such an obstinate predilection
for the table d'hote as to cause his parents no lit-
tle anxiety and discomfort. When they first
brought him to the restaurant, he was at the age
of senseless diving and lunging after twigs and
pebbles and other equally indigestible articles,
which, human infant-like, he did his best to
swallow. Now he is a handsome, well-developed
fellow, but a baby still in many respects notwith-
standing his size. In spite of his parents' expos-
tulations and entreaties, and in spite of the duti-
ful example of his brothers and sisters, he often
persists in spending entire days at the table d'hote,
and I fancy that his father and mother sometimes
regret having ever introduced him to the fasci-
nating quarter. All day long he chatters and
coos contentedly to himself, samples goodies,
bathes, flits in and out among the brush-heap
boughs, makes short tours through the maple-tree
branches, and enjoys himself as thoroughly as if
he were a model of obedience. Were it not for

A JUNE DAY CHAT

the Mexican — the faithful little guardian of the
table d'hote — the fate his parents have no doubt
frequently prophesied for him would long ago
have overtaken him. He would have made a
breakfast for a cat. Let us hope that when the
newness of the hostelry charms has, in a measure,
worn off, he may be willing to leave this little
nook in order to meet the wider experiences
necessary for life's preparation.

It was early in May that the first squirrel baby
appeared at my table d'hote. I had been expect-
ing this visit for several days, having thoroughly
understood the meaning of the unusual activity
around the snug little quarter which represents
home to Mr. Rufus and Madame Jolie-Queue,
as well as the significance of their wholesale and
barefaced appropriation of every available bit of
nest-lining material for some time previous to the
baby's appearance. As I am in a measure con-
sidered responsible for my proteges' depredations,
they and I were equally in disgrace during this
petty larceny period. But the theft which, in its
consequences, was most humiliating and far-
reaching was the abstraction of a bit of clothes-
line. The magnitude of the evil was not connect-
ed with the intrinsic value of a bit of rope, but

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

with the fact that in attacking this particular cor-
ner in hemp Madame Jolie-Queue severed the
connection between a post and a taut line full of
spotless linen fresh from the laundry-tubs. There
have been strained relations between the laun-
dress and Madame Jolie-Queue since the event.

I have never before witnessed such heroic
bringing up, such Spartan training, as that be-
stowed on her offspring by this little squirrel
lady during the one day the baby spent in the
table d'hote neighborhood. Early in the morn-
ing I saw her leading the tender, inexperienced
little creature to perilous heights among the
maples; eminences from which on every occasion
he promptly fell to the ground with a thud sug-
gestive of the destruction of his entire internal
economy. Over and over I went to the little
flattened-out creature, expecting to find him dead ;
but he never failed to pick himself up as soon as
his scattered wits and suspended breath returned.
Once or twice he approached me and took refuge
in my lap, but at his mother's angry call and
chatter he left me and returned to her.

We saw her vigorously training and disciplin-
ing the poor baby throughout the entire day, and
one of our number insists that on two or three

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A JUNE DAY CHAT

halting occasions the Spartan mother slapped her
child to give him confidence! But as this state-
ment was made by a person who entertains a
prejudice against Madame Jolie-Queue, the as-
sertion must be taken with several grains of salt.

When the twilight hour came, I looked out
toward the table d'hote region to see if any needy
little creatures were stranded there. Two small
figures were barely discernible on the summit of
the brush-heap. The larger was evidently re-
monstrating, urging, and threatening, but the
smaller remained unresponsive and impassive.
You have already guessed that the forms repre-
sented the energetic disciplinarian, Madame
Jolie-Queue, and the poor, bruised, exhausted
baby. In vain she urged him to mount to the
home shelter. In vain she related to him grue-
some stories of the wilful little squirrels who,
through late staying-out, had become the prey of
owls or cats. He was too wretched, too worn
out, to care what became of him, and he positively
refused to stir from the brush-heap. Why his
mother did not pick him up and carry him away
in her mouth, cat and squirrel fashion, I cannot
understand.

As much as possible I pursue the non-interfer-

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ence plan in such encounters, feeling assured that
generally the little wild creatures need no assist-
ance of mine in the management of their affairs.
But in this instance I departed from my usual
policy, for darkness was coming on, and the
weather had suddenly changed from warm to
cold — there were even frosty suggestions in the
air — and the baby would certainly perish from
one cause or another if left out on the brush-
heap. But one course remained for me to pursue.
I went out to the scene of the disturbance, and,
in spite of Madame Jolie-Queue's expostulations,
I picked her child up and carried him into the
house, where he was admired and caressed and
sympathized with, and promised protection from
his over-zealous and tyrannical mother.

He manifested no fear, but snuggled down
gratefully into my warm hands while a cosey bas-
ket was being prepared for him. He fell asleep
as soon as deposited in his creche, and was not
even conscious of an important transfer that took
place not long after, when I carried him over to
the house in the grove, and generously presented
him to its inmates. The training he has received
from that time to this is the reverse of the Jolie-
Queue method, but the present system appears
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A JUNE DAY CHAT

highly satisfactory to the subject of the experi-
ment. He has developed into a handsome, fas-
cinating tyrant, and is as playful as a kitten, and
as much at home on his owners' heads and shoul-
ders as among the trees which he now visits daily ;
reserving to himself the right to lodge in the
grove-house and to enter his own particular part
of the establishment as often during the day as
the fancy takes him. He makes his entrance and
exit through a window in the ivy-covered tower,
and during a daylight stroll in that direction
one is almost certain to come upon him. Had
not the spirit of dreamy summer indolence taken
possession of us — that blessed indolence which
Dr. Henry Van Dyke classes among the virtues
— we might even now set out in search of him;
but this is a day on which one feels inclined to
abide by one's first choice of a resting-nook un-
der the trees, satisfied with whatever comes with-
in its range. And listen, is it not, as if in gentle
expostulation at the very thought of moving, that
our sweet little neighbor, the pewee, exclaims:
" Leave me-e-e?"

Do you see the friendly squirrel viewing us
from the small stump elevation at the foot of
those old willows? Fortune is kind to have sent

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him this way, for his is the history I would like
to relate to you now, it having a close connection
with the earlier chronicle.

Although this little squirrel is full grown, he
is very young, you see; for his face still has the
roundness of contour which characterizes extreme
youth among squirrels as well as human beings.
I recognize him by his great friendliness, also by
a peculiarity of tail, general paucity of covering,
with a perfectly barren space and a knot-like
twist about midway in the caudal appendage.
Now he draws nearer, and you are enabled to
observe that his nose is slightly damaged; an-
other distinguishing mark if farther identifying
evidences be needed.

Do you hear that loud chattering of squirrels
overhead? A violent dispute it seems to be, and
you note that our little friend has taken alarm
and has fled at the angry sounds. Perhaps he
recognizes the voice of a certain shrew among the
disputants, and thinks it well to avoid an encoun-
ter with its vigorous owner. At any rate he has
taken himself to the depths of the stump, and
there he will probably remain till the stormy
discussion is over. -

Three days after I had rescued the first squir-
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A JUNE DAY CHAT

rel baby, Madame Jolie-Queue made her appear-
ance at the brush-heap with a second infant, the
little fellow who has just disappeared in the old
stump. As a youngster he was even more un-
steady on his feet and more uncertain in his
movements than was the earlier debutant.
Whether the three days of grace were granted
him in consideration of his evident delicacy of
constitution, or whether, according to squirrel
nursery tactics, babies are launched singly, I can-
not say. Perhaps Madame Jolie-Queue con-
nected the kidnapping of Number One with her
energetic training, and concluded to modify her
bringing-up principles in behalf of the second
child. At any rate, at the close of the first day
he was able to follow her up to the nest, and I
have never seen him in quite so desperate a con-
dition as was his brother on the evening of the
rescue.

Yet Baby, as we term the second offspring, has
had his days of severe disciplining, of falling from
the tree-tops and other heights, and of coming in
audible contact wTith substances even less sympa-
thetic than mother earth. More than once the
alarm has gone out that Madame Jolie-Queue
had killed her child, and I have several times

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picked him up stunned and apparently irremedia-
bly flattened out; but he has survived all the ac-
cidents that have befallen him in the course of
this Spartan training and has graduated from the
Jolie-Queue school, somewhat battered in appear-
ance, it is true, but with the lovely, chastened
disposition which is the usual compensating por-
tion of those who know how to turn to best ad-
vantage a residence with a shrew.

You observe that Rufus does not figure in the
account of the nursery campaign; yet he used to
appear now and then ; but I always saw him on
a housetop corner! A post which, during this
stormy period, he seemed infinitely to prefer to
the comfortable dwelling which sheltered the
contentious Madame Jolie-Queue.

Perhaps the hardest lesson the baby had to
learn was the art of turning around on a branch,
or any other elevated and insecure perch. Many
a time, when he was creeping safely and cautious-
ly along a swaying bough, he would lose his bal-
ance and topple to the ground at the sudden or-
der, " Right about face."

Early in the course of the training the mother
led the little one to the bathing-dishes and taught
him how to drink. His first efforts were not

[206]

A JUNE DAY CHAT

successes; vigorous snortings and sputterings ac-
companying the performance and testifying to
deep sea-soundings instead of surface sips, but he
now has to perfection the art of drinking quietly
and politely.

About half way up the trunk of the central
table d'hote maple is a convenient hollow where,
during summer months, I daily place a small
supply of nuts for my squirrel proteges. This
hollow is one of many souvenirs of a terrible
sleet and wind storm, during which great ice-
coated boughs — wrenched from the trees by their
own weight, or snapped off like dry twigs by the
fierce wind — went crashing to the ground with
sounds suggestive of universal destruction.

You may fancy that, on account of being daily
provisioned, this storm-hewn hollow is a favorite
squirrel lunch-counter; but it has served more
than one peaceful purpose lately, for it was the
cradle in which Madame Jolie-Queue used to
place her baby for his day-naps — his well-earned
times of rest between trapeze performances and
other strenuous exercises. And while he slept
she would station herself, always face outward,
on the little ledge in front of the hollow, con-
cealing him so completely that it was only by
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compelling her to move that one could get a
glimpse of the furry ball in the tree-cradle. As
she sat thus — sometimes quietly nibbling nuts,
sometimes rapidly rubbing and smoothing her fur
from the tip of her rat-like nose to the end of her
handsome tail — she always had a severe expres-
sion of " don't wake the baby."

I think it is just about two weeks since the
youngster bade farewell to his mother and set
out in life on his own responsibility. But though
he goes no more to nursery haunts, he is never-
theless not shelterless. Such snug quarters as he
has found for himself! I am certain that his
mother wrould drive him from them and secure
them for herself did she but know of their su-
perior charms and advantages.

It was shortly after he left the paternal roof,
during a day of severe wind and heavy rain, that
I discovered Baby on our roomy veranda — our
bungalow, as we call it. Tables, chairs, and
couches had been drawn back from exposed places
and packed into a sheltered corner, while the en-
tire collection of veranda rugs and cushions had
been heaped upon them ; and high and dry on the
summit of this structure sat our friend, Baby.
The little fellow was looking out complacently

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A JUNE DAY CHAT

on the dreary, wet world beyond, and was such
a picture of cosiness and comfort as I have seldom
seen equalled.

I prepared for him a nice little breakfast of
nuts, bananas, and sunflower-seeds and placed his
tray of supplies on a table beside him ; then from
behind the slats of the bay-window, near which
he was stationed, I watched him as he ate. At
the close of the feast, he stowed the remnants in
various veranda nooks, then snuggled down into
the depths of the rugs and cushions for his nap.
What a blissful, luxurious one it must have been.

But this was no solitary experience, I assure
you; and as the rainy-day arrangement of the
veranda furnishings is also the usual nightly one,
I strongly suspect that Baby has frequently
adopted these quarters for his sleeping apart-
ments. He is wonderfully fearless, and our
presence never seems to interfere either with his
comfort or the carrying out of his plans.

No other squirrel visits this delightful nook,
but it has a goodly number of patrons among the
feathered folk. They seem to entertain a pro-
found admiration, a genuine fondness for people
who have the good sense to live out-doors as
much as the weather permits, and who even take
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their meals in the bungalow on all propitious oc-
casions. Then such benefits as birds reap from
the crumb-scattering propensities of human beings
— the economical woodland life has no such
wasteful counterpart, though, as you may fancy,
more scraps fall from our table by design than
by accident.

I think it would be impossible for the most in-
veterate of English-sparrow haters to withstand
the friendly charms of a certain little cock-spar-
row friend of ours — Monsieur Sans Gene, he
is called — who not only hops around our table
and perches fearlessly on our chair-rungs, but
who also accompanies us on short walks, and fre-
quently comes to meet us on our return from
longer expeditions. When I reappear, after an
absence either long or short, he flutters gleefully
around my shoulders and is evidently strongly
tempted to alight. At times he hovers over the
Mexican, and I think he will some day take a
ride on her back. It is evident that he and many
others among the bird-friends connect both the
little dog and myself with food-supplies, as they
fly in a body to meet her, even when she appears
alone, and they settle down all around her in
the unmistakable expectation of receiving bounty
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A JUNE DAY CHAT

from her. A clever bit of reasoning this; the
following out of the recognition that the dog and
I are almost inseparable and that provisions ap-
pear when we do.

The bungalow is a place of delight all summer
long. Before it is the apparently interminable
forest, the very heart of the woods. Beside and
around it, even outlining its railings — are flow-
ers and plants of the dear, old-fashioned kind,
and, tenderly screening the only side of the
veranda that looks out toward the world where
people pass, honeysuckle vines climb and riot
and, during blossom time, almost intoxicate us
with their luscious, all-pervading fragrance.
From early in the morning, when the grass and
flowers sparkle with dew and bird-songs fill the
air, until the peaceful hour when the twilight
shades fall and the good-nights of the feathered
folk are being said or sung, this place has its own
peculiar charm.

And when the last day-voice has been stilled
are heard sounds that fit in with the coolness and
mystery of night. Then the flowers speak a lan-
guage never heard in sunlit hours, and, flitting
in and out among the dark places of the forest
or glowing among the lowly grasses- appear the

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tiny forms of merry fireflies and modest glow-
worms.

The bungalow is so situated that it catches
every air-current, hence breezes sweep through
it almost constantly. To this fact, as well as to
its nearness to the woods, we attribute the veran-
da's unusual immunity from mosquitoes ; the little
pests always manifesting a preference for regions
where the trees grow thickly, or the bushes crowd
together. But even in the forest-nook which we
have chosen for our resting-place this morning,
you note that we are not molested. True there
are days — not many of them, however — in which
mosquitoes are numerous here, and nights when
their sharp voices and sharper stings are peace-
disturbing factors, but these are the exceptional
times, for this is not a mosquito-infested quarter.
There is no stagnant water in which the egg-
masses may float comfortably about or the " wrig-
glers " disport themselves. Even the bird-bath
overflow — which has sluggish inclinations — is
daily flushed and made to hurry on its way
through a carefully constructed pipe.

And now, if hearing of another favorite nook
will not tax your .patience, I would tell you of a
haunt which shares with the bungalow both my
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A JUNE DAY CHAT

affections and my patronage. Like the veranda
it is a shelter which finds general favor during
the season when people break free, as much as
possible, from conventional trammels and eschew
living in houses; but it is, nevertheless, no mere
summer harborage, for its hospitality has been
tested in times of rain and storm, and has with-
stood all but the excessive cold.

I speak of a tiny, Walden-like hut, visible from
a* point just beyond our present halting-place. It
nestles down among the vines and flowers, while
protecting maple-boughs droop low over its hos-
pitable doors and caress its humble roof; but from
the window at the back one looks out over wide
fields and on beyond the river valley till the sky
is met by a long line of wooded hillsides.

The hut is far enough removed from any
dwelling to impress its frequenters with a de-
lightful sense of remoteness and solitude ; yet near
enough for protection and a certain amount of
sociability. I never enter the quiet little cabin
without recalling the words of Mr. Hamilton
Gibson anent his delightful and comparatively
isolated country studio.

" Solitude? Where under trees and sky shall
you find it? The more solitary the recluse and

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the more confirmed and grounded his seclusion
the wider and more familiar becomes the circle
of his social environment, until at length, like a
very dryad of old, the birds build and sing in his
branches and the ' wee wild beasties ' nest in his
pockets." *

To the hut come birds and squirrels and cot-
tontails, as well as hosts of other little creatures
much more difficult to enumerate than are these
well-known everyday folk. Sometimes the guests
perch upon the window-sills or halt at the thresh-
old, but the more fearless enter the little dwell-
ing and calmly investigate its furnishings, among
which they evidently include both the little dog-
gie and myself.

A house-wren gave away her secret a few days
ago by chattering at me from the roof, and from
the top of the outward-opening side door of the
hut. Her nest is in the cabin's little sham chim-
ney, the summit of which was a favorite halt-
ing-place for robins, song-sparrows, cat-birds,
thrushes, flickers, and other feathered gentry in
former summers, but it is not patronized by them
since the wren's appropriation of the snug little
box. Birds of all - these families, and I cannot
* Mr. W. Hamilton Gibson, in My Studio Neighbors.

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A JUNE DAY CHAT

say how many others, nest in the vines and trees
around the little hut. Humming-birds come daily
to sip sweets from the flowers at the door — the
saucy plants send reconnoitring vines and blos-
soms into the very hut itself wherever aiding and
abetting knot-holes can be found — and I fre-
quently hear the little birds' voices during these
familiar visits. A not unpleasing, frequently re-
peated, but very commonplace utterance is all
that has come to my notice.

Sometimes, on crisp autumn or early winter
days, an oil-stove is lighted in the hut, for the
sheer coseyness of a cold-day experience in the
snug little dwelling. Children highly approve of
such experiments, and I have more than once
overheard my little visitors bewailing the fate
that compelled them to live in large, comfort-
able houses instead of dear, little one-roomed
huts.

The cabin is a very desirable retreat when un-
usual quiet is required for evening study or read-
ing. Though standing well back, it is clearly vis-
ible from the street, and I have been told by
those who have passed it on cold, dark evenings,
when the snug little dwelling was occupied and
a bright light streaming out through its windows,

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

that no more cheery influence could be imagined
than this unlooked-for bit of brightness in the
midst of the surrounding darkness.

Several years ago I learned what the lights of
a home may mean to those who view them from
a cheerless outer world. It was while we were
summering in the beautiful Canadian region
where I made the acquaintance of Corny, the
friendly crow. On either side of our house, be-
tween us and our nearest neighbors, were many
wooded acres; back of us were the mountains;
before us a long lake stretch, and on the opposite
side of the lake more mountains, with only two
inhabited dwellings at their base. The house we
occupied — standing as it did on an eminence —
commanded a wide view, and was visible nearly
the entire length of the lake. The window-shut-
ters, great, thick wooden structures, made with a
view to resisting possible bear attacks, were at
first arbitrarily left open or closed during the
evening without a thought of our illumination
serving a double purpose. But when we learned
what our lights might mean to outsiders, a proc-
lamation went forth to the effect that the shut-
ters were to be left wide open at night until the
hour for retiring and extinguishing the lights.

A JUNE DAY CHAT

Later than that country people would hardly be
abroad.

" You would never shut us out from your
cheery home-lights," said a farmer neighbor on
his way to a remote field across the lake, " did
you but know what beacons they may be to poor,
belated, storm-tossed fellows rowing home in the
darkness. And even on fine evenings it does
us good to see their pleasant gleam. Indeed, it
seems to me that the sight of a home-light can
never come amiss."

From that time until, at the approach of win-
ter, we closed the old house and turned our faces
cityward, our evening lights were allowed to
stream out through the broad windows for the
benefit of anyone to whom they might serve as
guides or carry a heartening message.

A beautiful ceremony is taking place over yon-
der in the little open place visible between the
tree-trunks. The bumble-bee is performing the
marriage-rites of the red clover blossoms. With-
out his humble ministrations the plant would
never come to fruition. A most conclusive proof
of this fact is cited by Mr. Hamilton Gibson in
" My Studio Neighbors." Many years ago the
grangers of Australia determined to introduce

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

our red clover into their country, and, for this
purpose, imported a large quantity of the Ameri-
can seed. A magnificent crop, both of foliage and
bloom, was the result, but not a single seed was
to be found among the entire blossom yield.
This, owing to the fact that the plant was sep-
arated from " its inseparable counterpart," the
bumble-bee. When the little insect was intro-
duced into Australia " the transplanted clover
became reconciled to its habitat, and now flour-
ishes in fruition as well as bloom."

There is an orchard oriole father leading his
little one from limb to limb of yonder old elm;
gathering leaf-destroying insects or larvae on his
way and dropping them in the youngster's beak,
and withal managing to give us delightful little
scraps of song in between the feeding and food-
capturing periods.

There was a wild storm here two days ago
during which an orchard oriole nestling — perhaps
the very little one now before us — was torn from
the nest and carried beyond grove precincts near-
ly as far as our veranda. For some days pre-
vious to this I had noticed much orchard-oriole
activity around a certain cedar-tree not far from
here, and I thought it possible that the baby

A JUNE DAY CHAT

might belong in that circle. So I brought him
back to the grove, and there, clinging to a low
bough of the cedar in question, were two other
young orioles; little yellow-breasted, greenish-
backed, bright-eyed creatures — exact counter-
parts of the downy ball I had in my hand, and
all three were the picture of their mother, who,
with the father, was hovering anxiously around
the nest site. Now and then the parents flew
down to the babies and coaxed them to mount.
I placed the foundling on a branch beside the
other wrecked nestlings, and then, from a reas-
suring distance, I watched the old birds as they
carefully led the little ones to a higher, safer
perching-place ; and when all was quiet I with-
drew from the scene.

There were tragedies that day — how many we
cannot say — and bird-songs were hushed while
the wild winds raged and the rain fell in torrents.
What an angry face nature can wear even in
June! But no sooner was there a little diminu-
tion of the fury, a slight promise of better things
on the way, than the glad wood voices rang out
in a grateful Te Deum and life was thankfully
taken up in whatever shape the storm had left it.

I picked up many a broken egg after the tem-

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

pest had spent itself, and thought sympathetically
of the shattered hopes represented by these frag-
ments. But even stormy winds fulfil the Crea-
tor's word and nature's balance is kept through
tempest as well as calm.

The noonday lull has already set in. No sound
now save the bees' drowsy droning and the soft
rustling of wind-swayed leaves. In the wild gar-
den daisies and buttercups are nodding to each
other, and soft waves and ripples are playing
over the tops of the tall grasses. How caressing,
how soothing the fragrance-laden breeze as it
fans one's brow and lightly touches one's hair,
whispering all the time of beautiful, mystical
things to which the heart responds though it but
dimly understands.

And now — with a vague consciousness of the
bliss of living — we float peacefully, unquestion-
ingly, on with the June-day tide. Whither are
we bound ?

I think for the blessed port of happy summer
dreams.

[220]

In the North Country

" Up in a wild, where few men come to look,
There lives and sings a little lonely brook, —
Liveth and singeth in the dreary pines,
Yet creepeth on to where the daylight shines'9

nto join.
Che Mighty River

IT is to a point far removed from the familiar
paths through which we have wandered
month after month that I would summon you to-
day. For a little while we exchange the grove,
the veranda, the hut, and all the dear home-nooks
for a sojourn on the banks of a north-country
river. Here, in the shadow of the great trees
that line the cliff-top, is my favorite outlook
point. In flood-time the swollen stream rages by
and does its best to wrench the huge bowlders
from the encircling grasp of the half-bared roots ;
but, though the trees resist bravely, the river will
win some day, for each year, as the bank recedes
before the angry spring torrent, the grasp of the
old roots grows weaker and weaker.

Far up on the forest-clad mountain-side the
river springs into life. On and on the little
stream glides past the haunts of solitude-loving,

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human-fearing creatures, ever gaining strength
and volume as it advances, until at last, over at
the mountain-base yonder, it breaks from forest
confines, and, with a triumphant leap, dashes in
among the scattered bowlders and hurries along
to join the majestic St. Lawrence.

How many phases of its character the stream
reveals to us from the time it comes in sight at
the forest's border until it loses itself in the
great river beyond. Here it rushes merrily along
through rocky, hollow stretches, occasionally, at
a repulse from a giant bowlder or an encounter
with a sharp, projecting stone, curling back in
soft, white, glittering foam. Chattering, gur-
gling, rippling, leaping, laughing as it goes.
There, at a sudden shelving of its bed, it glides
serenely on, far above the rocks and stones visi-
ble in its clear, sandy depths; and the fishes dart
playfully in and out among the rocky crevices
or lodge in the cool, quiet shelter of the great
stones.

On the opposite side is a pebbly beach, where
the stream leaps and eddies around the shore.
Here the little children come to wade and to sail
their tiny ships, and farther down in a shallow

[224]

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

bend is a reedy stretch where the cattle seek im-
munity from persecuting flies and rest and rumi-
nate in the cool, grateful shade.

But here and there in this same gleeful river
we see dark, silent pools with thread-like cur-
rents running through their black waters, and
suggestions of mystery and treachery and peril
even in their quiet.

No boats save the frail barks launched by little
children attempt to struggle with the uneven
stream before us ; but down below, at the meeting
of the waters, it grows calmer and clearer, and
there the musical dipping of oars may be heard
keeping time to the plaintive strains of Canadian
boat-songs.

Where the pines and the birches part on be-
yond you may get a glimpse of the noble St. Law-
rence. To-day skies are fair and winds are propi-
tious and the river flows on in its calm majesty,
but it is not always thus. There are times when
tempest and storm rend its mighty heart and aw-
ful darkness broods over its deeps; yet now, as
then, it breathes only of things unfathomable, of
mysteries inscrutable, and in the names by which
the sentinel capes of one of its tributaries are

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known, we seem to hear some of its oft-repeated
solemn utterances:

Trinity, Eternity. Trinity, Eternity.

We are not the only watchers by the river-side
to-day. Over yonder, gazing silently down from
a projecting limb into the depths of the stream
below, I see a belted kingfisher. Perhaps it was
his home that I discovered in the bank a few
days ago, not far from where we are seated. I
would not investigate the mysteries of the deep
entrance for fear of disturbing possible nestlings ;
yet this was perhaps an unnecessary precaution,
as the young halcyons were probably launched
some time ago.

Now our silent friend rises; he hovers above
the stream. " It needs only the glint of a shin-
ing fin or scale just beneath the surface to catch
his watchful eye." Now, like a lightning-dart,
he drops to the stream, and now, as suddenly, he
rises again; but he is silent no longer. With a
loud, triumphant rattle he flies away, for in his
beak he bears his writhing, glistening prey.

Kingfishers are numerous here and kingbirds
are abundant, but I see few of my best beloved
among birds — the robins. Whether the whole

[226]

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

family would have been quite so dear to me but
for a constant, loving, intimate, five-years' com-
panionship with two of their number I cannot
say; but certain it is that with each glimpse of
an American redbreast there come to me tender
memories of two dear, devoted little robin
friends, who not only shared our home shelter
and followed me affectionately about through the
grove — refusing to accept their daily chance of
freedom — but who were also my most sympathet-
ic and harmonious companions during many a
stroll in Canadian woods, and whose little bod-
ies now rest in a peaceful northern haunt near
which Canadian waters flow.

" Quee-vit, quee-vit," the swallows call as they
dip and skim over the river. Perhaps now and
then to some discontented little fir-tree, longing
to exchange his safe forest-shelter for a place in
the great, uneasy world beyond, they tell of the
marvellous things they have seen in their jour-
neys over land and sea.

Both earlier and later in the season cedar-
birds appear in companies among the tree-tops
and down near the docks, where they fly and
wheel over the water and dart in and out among
the crevices of the wharfs ; but at this season the

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flocks disband and the gentle little waxwings go
off in couples, for housekeeping cares engross
them in July.

But cedar-birds are not the only feathered folk
who are thus tardily constructing their homes
and preparing for families. Over in the mead-
ows, among the thistle patches, one sees troops of
joyous goldfinches — chardonnerets, as they are
called here — busily gathering thistle-down for the
linings of their nests. " Few birds seem to enjoy
life more than these merry rovers. . . . Their
flight is expressive of their joyous nature, and as
they bound through the air they hum a gay ' per-
chic-o-ree, per-chic-o-ree.' " *

Alas that bird-trappers should be so successful
in this region, and that before one out of every
five or six houses in the village, and a larger pro-
portion among the straggling dwellings on the
outskirts, one sees poor little prisoners in black
and yellow uniforms beating their wings against
cage-bars or gazing longingly out toward the
blessed stretches where their companions riot and
exult in the joys of freedom.

One sees other bird-prisoners before the little
houses of the Canadian villagers and habitants.

* Mr. Frank Chapman, in Birds of Eastern North America.

[228]

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

My heart has ached over robins and " topneys "
(cedar-birds), over indigo buntings and vesper-
sparrows, grackles and meadow-larks, warblers
and vireos, and I cannot say how many other
feathered innocents under sentence of imprison-
ment for life; but the male goldfinches stand to
the other prisoners in about the ratio of three to
one.

I do not think the custom is permitted nowa-
days, but years ago captured song-birds were
among the commodities trundled over the long,
weary miles intervening between the outlying vil-
lages and farms and the market-stands in Quebec.
With flowers and fruits and vegetables and
dairy and poultry-yard products — conspicuous
among the latter expostulating fowls tied by the
legs in bunches of half a dozen — with straw hats
and spruce gum and maple sugar and Indian
hay and brilliantly colored home-made toys —
with the whole heterogeneous stock of a Canadian
market-woman's cart, in short — the poor, terrified
little prisoners made the journey to the beautiful
city set on a hill. No doubt many of the fright-
ened creatures died before the glittering roofs
came in sight, but unfortunately others sur-
vived, and if not sold were trundled back to

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await death or the terrors of the next market-
day.

I know a woman who often looks back with
unalloyed gladness to a certain day of her early
childhood, a bright, summer morning on which,
armed with a generous supply of copper coins,
she wended her way to the Fabrique Street Mar-
ket— a place that lives now only in Quebec's
memories.

The coins represented a long abstention from
sweets and toys, as for months previous the little
girl had been preparing for the season when the
captive goldfinches were to appear on the market-
stands. A large cage full of the terrified little
creatures came into her possession in exchange
for the money — not many farthings apiece were
they — but no sooner was the transfer made than,
to the horror of the vendor and the amazement
of the bystanders, the child opened the door of
the cage and set the prisoners free. It must have
been with a heart as glad and thankful as their
own that she watched them as they flew away
from the market-place out toward the region of
green fields and freedom. Let us hope that their
bitter experience taught them wisdom — which, in
cases like this, is synonymous with the fear of

[230]

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

man — and that whatever the fate that finally
overtook them they never again knew the agonies
of imprisonment.

I cannot tell you how often during my strolls
through the village and beyond its precincts I am
tempted to emulate the kind-hearted little girl's
example to the extent, at least, of opening the
prison-doors and setting all but the disabled or
aged captives free. To buy the trapped birds
would only be to encourage the wretched traffic,
while to liberate them would perhaps discourage
it. I have reasoned and expostulated with the
owners of these unfortunate prisoners, doing my
best to represent the misery of being compelled
to gaze from behind prison-bars upon the joy and
happiness of companions in freedom, but all to no
purpose. "Croyez-moi, Madame, Us ne sont pas
malhereux, ces oiseaux-la" is the not-at-all reas-
suring assurance I invariably receive.

Speaking of strolls beyond village precincts,
I must tell you of a walk I recently took, ac-
companied by my little Chihuahuan, the guardian
of the table d'hote. We could not think of ex-
cluding her from our party when planning for
this northern outing; and the joys that are hers in
the companionship of her dear ones, to say noth-

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ing of certain pleasures peculiar to this region,
amply compensate her for all fatigues of travel
and the loss of many home comforts. She never
strays far from my side, and you may see her
now, over in the open beyond the old stump at
your right. What her perpetual quest among
the grasses may mean I cannot determine. Now
and then she finds a wild strawberry ; sometimes
she goes on a butterfly chase — happily in the lat-
ter case the objects of the hunt are always just
beyond her reach — but on all these occasions her
purpose is evident. I find the puzzle in the care-
ful sniffing of the ground ; the slow, cautious fol-
lowing along some intangible line; the sudden
pausing, and equally sudden drawing back as if
to avoid attack; then the settling down and gaz-
ing intently, perhaps for minutes, at an apparently
untenanted bit of soil. WTiat does it all mean?
Is it a feint ? A mere harmless pretence at hunt-
ing ? Or is she following the course of some un-
derground creature, some invisible dweller in the
soil?

I have no doubt that her passing startles many
a little denizen of the fields, but I have never
known her to harm anything.

But now of the walk of which I have spoken.

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IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

It was early one morning of a festival day that
the Chihuahuan and I set out for a pilgrimage
place distant from our landlady's dwelling about
three miles and a half. A friend was waiting to
greet me there, and all sorts of pleasant anticipa-
tions filled my mind, but for the little doggie the
joys of the present were quite sufficient. ' 'Tis
luck enough to live," she perhaps said to herself
as we pursued our way, which led, first through
the pleasant village, where friendly faces met us
on all sides, and generous hands held out flowers
as we passed, and kindly voices wished us God-
speed and a safe return (my expostulations re-
garding the bird-trapping practices were all too
soon forgotten and forgiven, you see), then out
on the highway where the houses are few and
far apart, and the view of the great river, along
whose bordering meadows our route lay, is almost
uninterrupted. On our right was a beautiful
bank, and down its fresh, green sides many a
little rill courses. Now and then we walked in
the shadow of wide-spreading single trees, but
one rarely finds continued shade along Canadian
roadsides; the ruthless axe of the early settlers
having felled even the forest patriarchs that
would have shielded and protected the high-
ways.

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MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

Sometimes there passed us spruce young gal-
lants with their gayly dressed blondes; happy lit-
tle children in festival attire ; sedate, middle-aged
men and women, and even a few aged pilgrims.
Jaded steeds were urged to best endeavors, and
pedestrians stepped with a holiday gait, but at
sight of my fairy-like companion all paces
slackened and exclamations of wonder and de-
light greeted her on every side.

But there were long stretches where we saw
neither houses nor people, and in the beautiful se-
clusion of these golden moments nature revealed
her very heart. Friendly little vesper-sparrows
looked wonderingly at us from rude fence-rail-
ings or flew from post to post in advance of us.
Goldfinches wended their wavy way through the
fields, and a few dear robins wished us good
cheer. Once a gay purple finch and his little
sparrowy wife came out from the shelter of an
elderberry bush, and a warbling vireo sang of a
snug, little basket home where his precious babies
had lodged, while from a beautiful little indigo
bunting's heart welled up a song as full of joy
and sunshine as was the glad summer day itself.

But it was about midway in our walk, as I
rested on the hillside in the shade of a noble old

[234]

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

elm near the gentlest, most silvery-toned of little
brooks, that I felt the culmination of the har-
mony had been reached. From neighboring
thickets came the wood-thrushes' cool, melodious
notes and the white-throat's " Swee-et Canada,
Canada, Canada."

And with the breath of the summer breeze a
musical murmur swept through the corn-fields,
the stately grain bowed its beautiful head, and
every leaf of our sheltering elm swayed in re-
sponse to the mysterious influence that comes we
know not whence, and departs no one can say
whither.

It was partly with a view of prolonging the
harmonious hour and partly to secure rest and
refreshment for my little companion that I wait-
ed thus by the wayside. I parted the moist,
drooping grasses that grew beside the brook, and,
with my hand for a cup, I dipped from the cool,
sparkling depths and gave her to drink. For a
little while she lingered near me, sniffing the
breeze and gazing out over the meadow stretches,
but in a very short time she had taken up her fa-
vorite pursuit of searching among the grasses,
and to this occupation she devoted herself until
we resumed our journey.

[235]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

What with loitering and lingering — pausing
to rest or enjoy or investigate — it was nearly
noon of that beautiful day when we approached
the pilgrimage place. But, though the sun was
high, and its ray beat directly down on us, the
heat was not unpleasant. It seldom is in this re-
gion of bracing, invigorating, tonic-laden air.

Pilgrims were coming and going, and near
each of the quaint, little flower-surrounded homes
were groups of villagers discussing the problems
of the day as represented by the interests of their
simple and primitive little world. An occasional
friendly greeting had hitherto been the share of
attention I received when passing this way alone
or with human companions, but very different
was it when my little, four-footed friend was
sighted. On entering the village I had picked
her up, fearing a bewildering effect for her if
she was left to thread her way after me through
pilgrim bands and among passing vehicles, but
from the safe shelter of my arm she looked out
undismayed and with deepest interest on the
strange new world before her.

An old man leaning on the fence in front of a
cottage overshadowed by poplars was the first
of the villagers to spy my little Mexican. Slow-

[236]

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

ness of speech and dulness of hearing hindered
him from keeping pace with the animated con-
versation going on around him, but there are
compensations along all lines ; his vision was still
clear and he had ample opportunity for observa-
tion. No doubt many a long day had passed since
he had been able to contribute any but the merest
of commonplaces to the conversation of the vil-
lagers, but his was the prestige of introducing the
bewitching little stranger from tropical lands to
the circles at the entrance of the pilgrim village.

So engrossed were they in their own particu-
lar discussions that they did not notice the old
man as he hobbled forward to meet us, and so
loud and animated were their tones that they
heard neither his eager questions nor my neces-
sarily high-pitched answers.

" Ahj la belle p'tite bete que vous-avez la,
madame! Et comment est-ce quelle s'appelle
done? "

Unbounded delight on hearing that her name
is Fifine. Its selection no doubt appeared to him
like a tribute to his entire nation.

" Mais elle est fine pour le sure'1 he exclaimed,
laying a caressing hand on the soft, little head.
" And her age, madame? "

[237]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

" Two years."

" Bonte, then she will grow no more! Was
there ever before such a wonderful little beast.
But whence comes she, may I ask? "

" From Mexico."

" Mexico? That is very far away, is it not?
Beyond the seas perhaps. Near where the Holy
Father dwells, it may be. And she has walked
all the way from your village to-day? B'en qa
cest i' creyable. Ces cheres p'tites pattes-la.
C'est i creyable!"

Then turning to his friends, who were still en-
grossed in home matters and pilgrimage interests,
he eagerly drew their attention to the little
Chihuahuan, and as rapidly as his halting speech
would allow made known to them the situation.

" But pepere is old and no longer hears well,"
said a pleasant-faced young woman, drawing
near. " No doubt he has misunderstood madame.
It surely is not possible that the little beast has
her growth."

The old man's triumphant importance when I
corroborated all his statements (with the excep-
tion of the one regarding the geographical situa-
tion of Mexico) was really delightful to wit-
ness. I have no doubt that he has risen in im-

[238]

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

portance in village circles since the day of our
meeting, and as time goes on and the story grows
in the telling, the " belle p'tite bete " will proba-
bly dwindle away to scarcely perceptible dimen-
sions.

Astonishment and admiration increased rather
than diminished as we wended our way through
the village, and nowhere did my little compan-
ion create a greater sensation than in the neigh-
borhood of the booths, where the objets de piete
were being displayed. All along the route a
shower of admiring exclamations greeted and fol-
lowed her ; the chorus generally consisting of two
apostrophes: " Oh, le beau p'tit chien! Ah, la
chere p'tite bete! "

It was as the sun sank behind the mountains
and the hush of evening was falling on the world
that we turned our faces homeward; the friend
with whom I had spent the happy day accompany-
ing us as far as the half-way elm. Farther than
this I refused to let her go, for she would have
to make the return journey alone. As for myself
I knew that friends had already set out from the
village to meet me, though there were no wayside
dangers or alarms to fear.

We stood awhile at the parting of our ways,

[239]

MY WOODLAND INTIMATES

my friend and I, and gazed on the glories of earth
and sky. Time is forgotten in moments like
these, and thoughts wander far into mystical
realms; but a sweet, familiar voice led us gently
back to things of earth. It was the little brook
calling and gurgling from its bed among the
grasses: "Good-night, Good-night."

In Nature's open book,

An epic is the sea ;
A lyric is the brook.

Lyrics for me.*

You have no doubt speculated more than once
regarding the fate of the little people at the far-
off table d'hote. In the absence of their faithful
four-footed guardian they are being well protect-
ed and the provision supply continues as when
we were with them. I hear that the bungalow
has its usual frequenters, and circles generally are
much as they were when we left.

But in the grove, as here, the beautiful sum-
mer is already on the wane. Bird-songs are ceas-
ing, the days are shortening — although almost
imperceptibly — and the golden-rod is in bloom.
The moon of the falling leaves is not many weeks

* Frank Dempster Sherman, in Lyrics for the Lute.
[240]

IN THE NORTH COUNTRY

distant, and with it we turn our faces toward the
dear, familiar haunts of home.

Do you realize that nearly a twelvemonth has
elapsed since you and I took our first stroll
through the grove together? How rapidly the
" mounds of years " heap themselves up ! How
quickly the cycles pass! Oh, for unlimited lei-
sure, for unbounded opportunities for investiga-
tion, and the vision that penetrates to the heart
of the mysteries by which we are surrounded.

Look again, where the pines and the birches
part, at the majestic river wending its way to the
sea. Is it not as if with a promise of final har-
mony and infinite opportunities for the fulfilment
of heaven-born desires that it murmurs as it
flows:

Trinity, Eternity. Trinity, Eternity?

MR. CHUPES and
MISS JENNY

THE LIFE STORY OF TWO ROBINS

BY

Effie Bignell

Illustrated from photographs. $1.00

This is worth reading as a study of bird life, a
charming story, and a book that from a literary
standpoint reveals delicate impressionableness
and marvelous sympathy. The book is crowded
with humor, pathos, and adventure.

Ernest Thompson Seton writes :

" I have just received and read through, without a
stop, the charming story of ' Chupes and Jenny.'
It is a valuable study in bird psychology as well
as one of the very best bird stories I ever read.
It will take but little work like this to put an
end to bird-killing for sport. With many thanks
for the great pleasure you have given me, and
congratulations to Mrs. Bignell, etc."

"'Mr. Chupes and Miss Jenny ' despite the unsuggestive-
ness of the main title, is one of the most fascinating bits of
popular natural history writing" we have met with in many a
day."— The Nation and New York Evening Post.

K Would one imagine that the life story of two robins makes
interesting reading? Read ' Mr. Chupes and Miss Jenny.' It
is a story as full of romance and tragedy, sorrow and song as
could be crowded into your or my life."— Atlanta Journal.

The Baker & Taylor Co., Publishers

33-37 East i yth St., Union Sq. North, New York

WITH THE TREES

BY

Maude Going

Author of " With the Wild Flowers" and "Field,
Forest and Wayside Flowers "

Small i2mo, illustrated, net, $1.00

Miss Going's fascinating, untechnical studies of
flowers have had a wide sale. In this book she
writes of the trees, with the same charm of style
which has marked her previous books. The
books are excellent from a botanical standpoint
and the best of reading besides.

The botanical names of the flowers are given, but
the groups and families are not classified under
unpronounceable terms. In a word the book con-
sists of tree biographies, with many charming
little woodland incidents thrown in. Like all of
her books this one is excellent country or park
company.

The Baker & Taylor Co., Publishers

33-37 East i yth St., Union Sq. North, New York