cousin, Colonel Katy-did, had looked in to make her a morning visit. It
was a fine morning, too, which goes for as much among the Katy-dids as
among men and women. It was, in fact, a morning that Miss Katy thought
must have been made on purpose for her to enjoy herself in. There had
been a patter of rain the night before, which had kept the leaves awake
talking to each other till nearly morning; but by dawn the small winds
had blown brisk little puffs, and whisked the heavens clear and bright
with their tiny wings, as you have seen Susan clear away the cobwebs in
your mamma’s parlour; and so now there were only left a thousand
blinking, burning water-drops, hanging like convex mirrors at the end of
each leaf, and Miss Katy admired herself in each one.
“Certainly I am a pretty creature,” she said to herself; and when the
gallant colonel said something about being dazzled by her beauty, she
only tossed her head and took it as quite a matter of course.
“The fact is, my dear colonel,” she said, “I am thinking of giving a
party, and you must help me to make out the lists.”
“My dear, you make me the happiest of Katy-dids.”
“Now,” said Miss Katy-did, drawing an azalea-leaf towards her, “let us
see—whom shall we have? The Fireflies, of course; everybody wants them,
they are so brilliant,—a little unsteady, to be sure, but quite in the
higher circles.”
“Yes, we must have the Fireflies,” echoed the colonel.
“Well, then, and the Butterflies and the Moths. Now, there’s a trouble.
There’s such an everlasting tribe of those Moths; and if you invite dull
people they’re always sure all to come, every one of them. Still, if you
have the Butterflies, you can’t leave out the Moths.”
“Old Mrs. Moth has been laid up lately with a gastric fever, and that may
keep two or three of the Misses Moth at home,” said the colonel.
“Whatever could give the old lady such a turn?” said Miss Katy. “I
thought she never was sick.”
“I suspect it’s high living. I understand she and her family ate up a
whole ermine cape last month, and it disagreed with them.”
“For my part, I can’t conceive how the Moths can live as they do,” said
Miss Katy, with a face of disgust. “Why, I could no more eat worsted and
fur, as they do—”
“That is quite evident from the fairy-like delicacy of your appearance,”
said the colonel. “One can see that nothing so gross or material has
ever entered into your system.”
“I’m sure,” said Miss Katy, “mamma says she don’t know what does keep me
alive; half a dewdrop and a little bit of the nicest part of a rose-leaf,
I assure you, often last me for a day. But we are forgetting our list.
Let’s see—the Fireflies, Butterflies, Moths. The Bees must come, I
suppose.”
“The Bees are a worthy family,” said the colonel.
“Worthy enough, but dreadfully humdrum,” said Miss Katy. “They never
talk about anything but honey and housekeeping; still, they are a class
of people one cannot neglect.”
“Well, then, there are the Bumble-Bees.”
“Oh, I dote on them! General Bumble is one of the most dashing,
brilliant fellows of the day.”
“I think he is shockingly corpulent,” said Colonel Katy-did, not at all
pleased to hear him praised; “don’t you?”
“I don’t know but he _is_ a little stout,” said Miss Katy; “but so
distinguished and elegant in his manners—something quite martial and
breezy about him.”
“Well, if you invite the Bumble-Bees, you must have the Hornets.”
“Those spiteful Hornets! I detest them!”
“Nevertheless, dear Miss Katy, one does not like to offend the Hornets.”
“No, one can’t. There are those five Misses Hornet—dreadful old
maids!—as full of spite as they can live. You may be sure they will
every one come, and be looking about to make spiteful remarks. Put down
the Hornets, though.”
“How about the Mosquitoes!” said the colonel.
“Those horrid Mosquitoes—they are dreadfully plebeian! Can’t one cut
them?”
“Well dear Miss Katy,” said the colonel, “if you ask my candid opinion as
a friend, I should say not. There’s young Mosquito, who graduated last
year, has gone into literature, and is connected with some of our leading
papers, and they say he carries the sharpest pen of all the writers. It
won’t do to offend him.”
“And so I suppose we must have his old aunts, and all six of his sisters,
and all his dreadfully common relations.”
“It is a pity,” said the colonel; “but one must pay one’s tax to
society.”
Just at this moment the conference was interrupted by a visitor, Miss
Keziah Cricket, who came in with her work-bag on her arm to ask a
subscription for a poor family of Ants who had just had their house hoed
up in clearing the garden-walks.
“How stupid of them,” said Katy, “not to know better than to put their
house in the garden-walk; that’s just like those Ants.”
“Well, they are in great trouble; all their stores destroyed, and their
father killed—cut quite in two by a hoe.”
“How very shocking! I don’t like to hear of such disagreeable things; it
affects my nerves terribly. Well, I’m sure I haven’t anything to give.
Mamma said yesterday she was sure she didn’t know how our bills were to
be paid; and there’s my green satin with point-lace yet to come home.”
And Miss Katy-did shrugged her shoulders and affected to be very busy
with Colonel Katy-did, in just the way that young ladies sometimes do
when they wish to signify to visitors that they had better leave.
Little Miss Cricket perceived how the case stood, and so hopped briskly
off, without giving herself even time to be offended. “Poor extravagant
little thing!” said she to herself, “it was hardly worth while to ask
her.”
“Pray, shall you invite the Crickets?” said Colonel Katy-did.
“Who? I? Why, colonel, what a question! Invite the Crickets? Of what
can you be thinking?”
“And shall you not ask the Locusts, and the Grasshoppers?”
“Certainly. The Locusts, of course,—a very old and distinguished family;
and the Grasshoppers are pretty well, and ought to be asked. But we must
draw a line somewhere,—and the Crickets! why, it’s shocking even to think
of!”
“I thought they were nice, respectable people.”
“Oh, perfectly nice and respectable,—very good people, in fact, so far as
that goes. But then you must see the difficulty.”
“My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain.”
“Why, their _colour_, to be sure. Don’t you see?”
“Oh!” said the colonel. “That’s it, is it? Excuse me, but I have been
living in France, where these distinctions are wholly unknown, and I have
not yet got myself in the train of fashionable ideas here.”
“Well, then, let me teach you,” said Miss Katy. “You know we republicans
go for no distinctions except those created by Nature herself, and we
found our rank upon _colour_, because that is clearly a thing that none
has any hand in but our Maker. You see?”
“Yes; but who decides what colour shall be the reigning colour?”
“I’m surprised to hear the question! The only true colour—the only
proper one—is _our_ colour, to be sure. A lovely pea-green is the
precise shade on which to found aristocratic distinction. But then we
are liberal;—we associate with the Moths, who are gray; with the
Butterflies, who are blue-and-gold coloured; with the Grasshoppers,
yellow and brown; and society would become dreadfully mixed if it were
not fortunately ordered that the Crickets are black as jet. The fact is,
that a class to be looked down upon is necessary to all elegant society;
and if the Crickets were not black, we could not keep them down, because,
as everybody knows, they are often a great deal cleverer than we are.
They have a vast talent for music and dancing; they are very quick at
learning, and would be getting to the very top of the ladder if we once
allowed them to climb. But their being black is a convenience; because,
as long as we are green and they black, we have a superiority that can
never be taken from us. Don’t you see now?”
“Oh yes, I see exactly,” said the colonel.
“Now that Keziah Cricket, who just came in here, is quite a musician, and
her old father plays the violin beautifully;—by the way, we might engage
him for our orchestra.”
* * * * *
And so Miss Katy’s ball came off, and the performers kept it up from
sundown till daybreak, so that it seemed as if every leaf in the forest
were alive. The Katy-dids and the Mosquitoes, and the Locusts, and a
full orchestra of Crickets made the air perfectly vibrate, insomuch that
old Parson Too-Whit, who was preaching a Thursday evening lecture to a
very small audience, announced to his hearers that he should certainly
write a discourse against dancing for the next weekly occasion.
The good doctor was even with his word in the matter, and gave out some
very sonorous discourses, without in the least stopping the round of
gaieties kept up by these dissipated Katy-dids, which ran on, night after
night, till the celebrated Jack Frost epidemic, which occurred somewhere
about the first of September.
Poor Miss Katy, with her flimsy green satin and point-lace, was one of
the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad shower
of last year’s leaves. The worthy Cricket family, however, avoided Jack
Frost by emigrating in time to the chimney-corner of a nice little
cottage that had been built in the wood that summer.
There good old Mr. and Mrs. Cricket, with sprightly Miss Keziah and her
brothers and sisters, found a warm and welcome home; and when the storm
howled without, and lashed the poor naked trees, the Crickets on the warm
hearth would chirp out cheery welcome to papa as he came in from the
snowy path, or mamma as she sat at her work-basket.
“Cheep, cheep, cheep!” little Freddy would say. “Mamma, who is it says
‘cheep’?”
“Dear Freddy, it’s our own dear little cricket, who loves us and comes to
sing to us when the snow is on the ground.”
So when poor Miss Katy-did’s satin and lace were all swept away, the warm
home-talents of the Crickets made for them a welcome refuge.
_MOTHER MAGPIE’S MISCHIEF_.
OLD Mother Magpie was about the busiest character in the forest. But you
must know that there is a great difference between being busy and being
industrious. One may be very busy all the time, and yet not in the least
industrious; and this was the case with Mother Magpie.
She was always full of everybody’s business but her own—up and down, here
and there, everywhere but in her own nest, knowing everyone’s affairs,
telling what everybody had been doing or ought to do, and ready to cast
her advice _gratis_ at every bird and beast of the woods.
Now she bustled up to the parsonage at the top of the oak-tree, to tell
old Parson Too-Whit what she thought he ought to preach for his next
sermon, and how dreadful the morals of the parish were becoming. Then,
having perfectly bewildered the poor old gentleman, who was always sleepy
of a Monday morning, Mother Magpie would take a peep into Mrs. Oriole’s
nest, sit chattering on a bough above, and pour forth floods of advice,
which, poor little Mrs. Oriole used to say to her husband, bewildered her
more than a hard north-east storm.
“Depend upon it, my dear,” Mother Magpie would say, “that this way of
building your nest, swinging like an old empty stocking from a bough,
isn’t at all the thing. I never built one so in my life, and I never
have headaches. Now you complain always that your head aches whenever I
call upon you. It’s all on account of this way of swinging and swaying
about in such an absurd manner.”
“But, my dear,” piped Mrs. Oriole timidly, “the Orioles always have built
in this manner, and it suits our constitution.”
“A fiddle on your constitution! How can you tell what agrees with your
constitution unless you try? You own you are not well; you are subject
to headaches; and every physician will tell you that a tilting motion
disorders the stomach and acts upon the brain. Ask old Dr. Kite. I was
talking with him about your case only yesterday, and says he, ‘Mrs.
Magpie, I perfectly agree with you.’”
“But my husband prefers this style of building.”
“That’s only because he isn’t properly instructed. Pray, did you ever
attend Dr. Kite’s lectures on the nervous system?”
“No, I have no time to attend lectures. Who would sit on the eggs?”
“Why, your husband, to be sure; don’t he take his turn in sitting? If he
don’t, he ought to. I shall speak to him about it. My husband always
sits regularly half the time, that I may have time to go about and
exercise.”
“O Mrs. Magpie, pray don’t speak to my husband; he will think I’ve been
complaining.”
“No, no, he won’t. Let me alone. I understand just how to say the
thing. I’ve advised hundreds of young husbands in my day, and I never
gave offence.”
“But I tell you, Mrs. Magpie, I don’t want any interference between my
husband and me, and I will not have it,” says Mrs. Oriole, with her
little round eyes flashing with indignation.
“Don’t put yourself in a passion, my dear; the more you talk, the more
sure I am that your nervous system is running down, or you wouldn’t
forget good manners in this way. You’d better take my advice, for I
understand just what to do,”—and away sails Mother Magpie; and presently
young Oriole comes home all in a flutter.
“I say, my dear, if you will persist in gossiping over our private family
matters with that old Mother Magpie—”
“My dear, I don’t gossip. She comes and bores me to death with talking,
and then goes off and mistakes what she has been saying for what I said.”
“But you must _cut_ her.”
“I try to, all I can; but she won’t _be_ cut.”
“It’s enough to make a bird swear,” said Tommy Oriole.
Tommy Oriole, to say the truth, had as good a heart as ever beat under
bird’s feathers; but then he had a weakness for concerts and general
society, because he was held to be, by all odds, the handsomest bird in
the woods, and sung like an angel; and so the truth was he didn’t confine
himself so much to the domestic nest as Tom Titmouse or Billy Wren. But
he determined that he wouldn’t have old Mother Magpie interfering with
his affairs.
“The fact is,” quoth Tommy, “I am a society bird, and Nature has marked
out for me a course beyond the range of the commonplace, and my wife must
learn to accommodate. If she has a brilliant husband, whose success
gratifies her ambition and places her in a distinguished public position,
she must pay something for it. I’m sure Billy Wren’s wife would give her
very bill to see her husband in the circles where I am quite at home. To
say the truth, my wife was all well enough content till old Mother Magpie
interfered. It is quite my duty to take strong ground, and show that I
cannot be dictated to.”
So, after this, Tommy Oriole went to rather more concerts, and spent less
time at home than ever he did before, which was all that Mother Magpie
effected in that quarter. I confess this was very bad in Tommy; but then
birds are no better than men in domestic matters, and sometimes will take
the most unreasonable courses, if a meddlesome Magpie gets her claw into
their nest.
But old Mother Magpie had now got a new business in hand in another
quarter. She bustled off down to Water-Dock Lane, where, as we said in a
former narrative, lived the old music-teacher, Dr. Bullfrog. The poor
old doctor was a simple-minded, good, amiable creature, who had played
the double-bass and led the forest choir on all public occasions since
nobody knows when. Latterly some youngsters had arisen who sneered at
his performances as behind the age. In fact, since a great city had
grown up in the vicinity of the forest, tribes of wandering boys broke up
the simple tastes and quiet habits which old Mother Nature had always
kept up in those parts. They pulled the young checkerberry before it
even had time to blossom, rooted up the sassafras shrubs and gnawed their
roots, fired off guns at the birds, and on several occasions, when old
Dr. Bullfrog was leading a concert, had dashed in and broken up the choir
by throwing stones.
This was not the worst of it. The little varlets had a way of jeering at
the simple old doctor and his concerts, and mimicking the tones of his
bass-viol. “There you go, Paddy-go-donk, Paddy-go-donk—umph—chunk,” some
rascal of a boy would shout, while poor old Bullfrog’s yellow spectacles
would be bedewed with tears of honest indignation. In time, the jeers of
these little savages began to tell on the society in the forest, and to
corrupt their simple manners; and it was whispered among the younger and
more heavy birds and squirrels that old Bullfrog was a bore, and that it
was time to get up a new style of music in the parish, and to give the
charge of it to some more modern performer.
Poor old Dr. Bullfrog knew nothing of this, however, and was doing his
simple best, in peace, when Mother Magpie called in upon him one morning.
“Well, neighbour, how unreasonable people are! Who would have thought
that the youth of our generation should have no more consideration for
established merit? Now, for my part, _I_ think your music-teaching never
was better; and as for our choir, I maintain constantly that it never was
in better order, but—Well, one may wear her tongue out, but one can never
make these young folks listen to reason.”
“I really don’t understand you, ma’am,” said poor Dr. Bullfrog.
“What! you haven’t heard of a committee that is going to call on you, to
ask you to resign the care of the parish music?”
“Madam,” said Dr. Bullfrog, with all that energy of tone for which he was
remarkable, “I don’t believe it,—I _can’t_ believe it. You must have
made a mistake.”
“I mistake! No, no, my good friend; I never make mistakes. What I know,
I know certainly. Wasn’t it I that said I knew there was an engagement
between Tim Chipmunk and Nancy Nibble, who are married this very day? I
knew that thing six weeks before any bird or beast in our parts; and I
can tell you, you are going to be scandalously and ungratefully treated,
Dr. Bullfrog.”
“Bless me, we shall all be ruined!” said Mrs. Bullfrog; “my poor
husband—”
“Oh, as to that, if you take things in time, and listen to my advice,”
said Mother Magpie, “we may yet pull you through. You must alter your
style a little,—adapt it to modern times. Everybody now is a little
touched with the operatic fever, and there’s Tommy Oriole has been to New
Orleans and brought back a touch of the artistic. If you would try his
style a little,—something Tyrolean, you see.”
“Dear madam, consider my voice. I never could hit the high notes.”
“How do you know? It’s all practice; Tommy Oriole says so. Just try the
scales. As to your voice, your manner of living has a great deal to do
with it. I always did tell you that your passion for water injured your
singing. Suppose Tommy Oriole should sit half his days up to his hips in
water, as you do,—his voice would be as hoarse and rough as yours. Come
up on the bank and learn to perch, as we birds do. We are the true
musical race.”
And so poor Mr. Bullfrog was persuaded to forego his pleasant little
cottage under the cat-tails, where his green spectacles and honest round
back had excited, even in the minds of the boys, sentiments of respect
and compassion. He came up into the garden, and established himself
under a burdock, and began to practise Italian scales.
The result was, that poor old Dr. Bullfrog, instead of being considered
as a respectable old bore, got himself universally laughed at for aping
fashionable manners. Every bird and beast in the forest had a gibe at
him; and even old Parson Too-Whit thought it worth his while to make him
a pastoral call, and admonish him about courses unbefitting his age and
standing. As to Mother Magpie, you may be sure that she assured every
one how sorry she was that dear old Dr. Bullfrog had made such a fool of
himself; if he had taken her advice, he would have kept on respectably as
a nice old Bullfrog should.
But the tragedy for the poor old music-teacher grew even more melancholy
in its termination; for one day, as he was sitting disconsolately under a
currant-bush in the garden, practising his poor old notes in a quiet way,
_thump_ came a great blow of a hoe, which nearly broke his back.
“Hallo! what ugly beast have we got here?” said Tom Noakes, the
gardener’s boy. “Here, here, Wasp, my boy.”
What a fright for a poor, quiet, old Bullfrog, as little wiry, wicked
Wasp came at him, barking and yelping. He jumped with all his force
sheer over a patch of bushes into the river, and swam back to his old
home among the cat-tails. And always after that it was observable that
he was very low-spirited, and took very dark views of life; but nothing
made him so angry as any allusion to Mother Magpie, of whom, from that
time, he never spoke except as _Old Mother Mischief_.
_THE SQUIRRELS THAT LIVE IN A HOUSE_.
ONCE upon a time a gentleman went out into a great forest, and cut away
the trees, and built there a very nice little cottage. It was set very
low on the ground, and had very large bow-windows, and so much of it was
glass that one could look through it on every side and see what was going
on in the forest. You could see the shadows of the fern-leaves, as they
flickered and wavered over the ground, and the scarlet partridge-berry
and winter-green plums that matted round the roots of the trees, and the
bright spots of sunshine that fell through their branches and went
dancing about among the bushes and leaves at their roots. You could see
the chirping sparrows and the thrushes and robins and bluebirds building
their nests here and there among the branches, and watch them from day to
day as they laid their eggs and hatched their young. You could also see
red squirrels, and gray squirrels, and little striped chip-squirrels,
darting and springing about, here and there and everywhere, running races
with each other from bough to bough, and chattering at each other in the
gayest possible manner.
You may be sure that such a strange thing as a house for human beings to
live in did not come into this wild wood without making quite a stir and
excitement among the inhabitants that lived there before. All the time
it was building, there was the greatest possible commotion in the breasts
of all the older population; and there wasn’t even a black ant, or a
cricket, that did not have his own opinion about it, and did not tell the
other ants and crickets just what he thought the world was coming to in
consequence.
Old Mrs. Rabbit declared that the hammering and pounding made her
nervous, and gave her most melancholy forebodings of evil times. “Depend
upon it, children,” she said to her long-eared family, “no good will come
to us from this establishment. Where man is, there comes always trouble
for us poor rabbits.”
The old chestnut-tree, that grew on the edge of the woodland ravine, drew
a great sigh which shook all his leaves, and expressed it as his
conviction that no good would ever come of it,—a conviction that at once
struck to the heart of every chestnut-burr. The squirrels talked
together of the dreadful state of things that would ensue. “Why!” said
old Father Gray, “it’s evident that Nature made the nuts for us; but one
of these great human creatures will carry off and gormandize upon what
would keep a hundred poor families of squirrels in comfort.” Old
Ground-mole said it did not require very sharp eyes to see into the
future, and it would just end in bringing down the price of real estate
in the whole vicinity, so that every decent-minded and respectable
quadruped would be obliged to move away;—for his part, he was ready to
sell out for anything he could get. The bluebirds and bobolinks, it is
true, took more cheerful views of matters; but then, as old Mrs.
Ground-mole observed, they were a flighty set,—half their time careering
and dissipating in the Southern States,—and could not be expected to have
that patriotic attachment to their native soil that those had who had
grubbed in it from their earliest days.