restless warfare on Nature. In our forest solitudes hitherto how
peacefully, how quietly, how regularly has everything gone on! Not a
flower has missed its appointed time of blossoming, or failed to perfect
its fruit. No matter how hard has been the winter, how loud the winds
have roared, and how high the snow-banks have been piled, all has come
right again in spring. Not the least root has lost itself under the
snows, so as not to be ready with its fresh leaves and blossoms when the
sun returns to melt the frosty chains of winter. We have storms
sometimes that threaten to shake everything to pieces,—the thunder roars,
the lightning flashes, and the winds howl and beat; but, when all is
past, everything comes out better and brighter than before,—not a bird is
killed, not the frailest flower destroyed. But man comes, and in one day
he will make a desolation that centuries cannot repair. Ignorant boor
that he is, and all incapable of appreciating the glorious works of
Nature, it seems to be his glory to be able to destroy in a few hours
what it was the work of ages to produce. The noble oak, that has been
cut away to build this contemptible human dwelling, had a life older and
wiser than that of any man in this country. That tree has seen
generations of men come and go. It was a fresh young tree when
Shakespeare was born; it was hardly a middle-aged tree when he died; it
was growing here when the first ship brought the white men to our shores,
and hundreds and hundreds of those whom they call bravest, wisest,
strongest,—warriors, statesmen, orators, and poets,—have been born, have
grown up, lived, and died, while yet it has outlived them all. It has
seen more wisdom than the best of them; but two or three hours of brutal
strength sufficed to lay it low. Which of these dolts could make a tree?
I’d like to see them do anything like it. How noisy and clumsy are all
their movements,—chopping, pounding, rasping, hammering. And, after all,
what do they build? In the forest we do everything so quietly. A tree
would be ashamed of itself that could not get its growth without making
such a noise and dust and fuss. Our life is the perfection of good
manners. For my part, I feel degraded at the mere presence of these
human beings; but, alas! I am old; a hollow place at my heart warns me of
the progress of decay, and probably it will be seized upon by these
rapacious creatures as an excuse for laying me as low as my noble green
brother.”
In spite of all this disquiet about it, the little cottage grew and was
finished. The walls were covered with pretty paper, the floors carpeted
with pretty carpets; and, in fact, when it was all arranged, and the
garden walks laid out, and beds of flowers planted around, it began to be
confessed, even among the most critical, that it was not after all so bad
a thing as was to have been feared.
A black ant went in one day and made a tour of exploration up and down,
over chairs and tables, up the ceilings and down again, and, coming out,
wrote an article for the _Crickets’ Gazette_, in which he described the
new abode as a veritable palace. Several butterflies fluttered in and
sailed about and were wonderfully delighted, and then a bumble-bee and
two or three honey-bees, who expressed themselves well pleased with the
house, but more especially enchanted with the garden. In fact, when it
was found that the proprietors were very fond of the rural solitudes of
Nature, and had come out there for the purpose of enjoying them
undisturbed; that they watched and spared the anemones, and the violets,
and bloodroots, and dog’s-tooth violets, and little woolly rolls of fern
that began to grow up under the trees in spring; that they never allowed
a gun to be fired to scare the birds, and watched the building of their
nests with the greatest interest,—then an opinion in favour of human
beings began to gain ground, and every cricket and bird and beast was
loud in their praise.
“Mamma,” said young Tit-bit, a frisky young squirrel, to his mother one
day, “why won’t you let Frisky and me go into that pretty new cottage to
play?”
“My dear,” said his mother, who was a very wary and careful old squirrel,
“how can you think of it? The race of man are full of devices for traps
and pitfalls, and who could say what might happen if you put yourself in
their power? If you had wings like the butterflies and bees, you might
fly in and out again, and so gratify your curiosity; but, as matters
stand, it’s best for you to keep well out of their way.”
“But, mother, there is such a nice, good lady lives there! I believe she
is a good fairy, and she seems to love us all so; she sits in the
bow-window and watches us for hours, and she scatters corn all round at
the roots of the tree for us to eat.”
“She is nice enough,” said the old mother-squirrel, “if you keep far
enough off; but I tell you, you can’t be too careful.”
Now this good fairy that the squirrels discoursed about was a nice little
old lady that the children used to call Aunt Esther, and she was a dear
lover of birds and squirrels, and all sorts of animals, and had studied
their little ways till she knew just what would please them; and so she
would every day throw out crumbs for the sparrows, and little bits of
bread and wool and cotton to help the birds that were building their
nests, and would scatter corn and nuts for the squirrels; and while she
sat at her work in the bow-window she would smile to see the birds flying
away with the wool, and the squirrels nibbling their nuts. After a while
the birds grew so tame that they would hop into the bow-window and eat
their crumbs off the carpet.
“There, mamma,” said Tit-bit and Frisky, “only see Jenny Wren and Cock
Robin have been in at the bow-window, and it didn’t hurt them, and why
can’t we go?”
“Well, my dears,” said old Mother Squirrel, “you must do it very
carefully; never forget that you haven’t wings like Jenny Wren and Cock
Robin.”
So the next day Aunt Esther laid a train of corn from the roots of the
trees to the bow-window, and then from the bow-window to her work-basket,
which stood on the floor beside her; and then she put quite a handful of
corn in the work-basket, and sat down by it, and seemed intent on her
sewing. Very soon, creep, creep, creep, came Tit-bit and Frisky to the
window, and then into the room, just as sly and as still as could be, and
Aunt Esther sat just like a statue for fear of disturbing them. They
looked all around in high glee, and when they came to the basket it
seemed to them a wonderful little summer-house, made on purpose for them
to play in. They nosed about in it, and turned over the scissors and the
needle-book, and took a nibble at her white wax, and jostled the spools,
meanwhile stowing away the corn on each side of their little chops, till
they both of them looked as if they had the mumps.
[Picture: Venturous Squirrels]
At last Aunt Esther put out her hand to touch them, when, whisk-frisk,
out they went, and up the trees, chattering and laughing before she had
time even to wink.
But after this they used to come in every day, and when she put corn in
her hand and held it very still they would eat out of it; and finally
they would get into her hand, until one day she gently closed it over
them, and Frisky and Tit-bit were fairly caught.
Oh, how their hearts beat! but the good fairy only spoke gently to them,
and soon unclosed her hand and let them go again. So day after day they
grew to have more and more faith in her, till they would climb into her
work-basket, sit on her shoulder, or nestle away in her lap as she sat
sewing. They made also long exploring voyages all over the house, up and
through all the chambers, till finally, I grieve to say, poor Frisky came
to an untimely end by being drowned in the water-tank at the top of the
house.
The dear good fairy passed away from the house in time, and went to a
land where the flowers never fade and the birds never die; but the
squirrels still continue to make the place a favourite resort.
“In fact, my dear,” said old Mother Red one winter to her mate, “what is
the use of one’s living in this cold, hollow tree, when these amiable
people have erected this pretty cottage, where there is plenty of room
for us and them too? Now I have examined between the eaves, and there is
a charming place where we can store our nuts, and where we can whip in
and out of the garret, and have the free range of the house; and, say
what you will, these humans have delightful ways of being warm and
comfortable in winter.”
So Mr. and Mrs. Red set up housekeeping in the cottage, and had no end of
nuts and other good things stored up there. The trouble of all this was,
that, as Mrs. Red was a notable body, and got up to begin her
housekeeping operations, and woke up all her children, at four o’clock in
the morning, the good people often were disturbed by a great rattling and
fuss in the walls, while yet it seemed dark night. Then sometimes, too,
I grieve to say, Mrs. Squirrel would give her husband vigorous curtain
lectures in the night, which made him so indignant that he would rattle
off to another quarter of the garret to sleep by himself; and all this
broke the rest of the worthy people who built the house.
What is to be done about this we don’t know. What would you do about it?
Would you let the squirrels live in your house or not? When our good
people come down of a cold winter morning, and see the squirrels dancing
and frisking down the trees, and chasing each other so merrily over the
garden chair between them, or sitting with their tails saucily over their
backs, they look so jolly and jaunty and pretty that they almost forgive
them for disturbing their night’s rest, and think that they will not do
anything to drive them out of the garret to-day. And so it goes on; but
how long the squirrels will rent the cottage in this fashion, I’m sure I
dare not undertake to say.
_HUM_, _THE SON OF BUZ_.
AT Rye Beach, during our summer’s vacation, there came, as there always
will to seaside visitors, two or three cold, chilly, rainy days,—days
when the skies that long had not rained a drop seemed suddenly to bethink
themselves of their remissness, and to pour down water, not by drops, but
by pailfuls. The chilly wind blew and whistled, the water dashed along
the ground and careered in foamy rills along the roadside, and the bushes
bent beneath the constant flood. It was plain that there was to be no
sea-bathing on such a day, no walks, no rides; and so, shivering and
drawing our blanket-shawls close about us, we sat down at the window to
watch the storm outside.
The rose-bushes under the window hung dripping under their load of
moisture, each spray shedding a constant shower on the spray below it.
On one of these lower sprays, under the perpetual drip, what should we
see but a poor little humming-bird, drawn up into the tiniest shivering
ball, and clinging with a desperate grasp to his uncomfortable perch. A
humming-bird we knew him to be at once, though his feathers were so
matted and glued down by the rain that he looked not much bigger than a
honey-bee, and as different as possible from the smart, pert, airy little
character that we had so often seen flirting with the flowers. He was
evidently a humming-bird in adversity, and whether he ever would hum
again looked to us exceedingly doubtful. Immediately, however, we sent
out to have him taken in. When the friendly hand seized him, he gave a
little, faint, watery squeak, evidently thinking that his last hour was
come, and that grim death was about to carry him off to the land of dead
birds. What a time we had reviving him,—holding the little wet thing in
the warm hollow of our hands, and feeling him shiver and palpitate! His
eyes were fast closed; his tiny claws, which looked slender as cobwebs,
were knotted close to his body, and it was long before one could feel the
least motion in them. Finally, to our great joy, we felt a brisk little
kick, and then a flutter of wings, and then a determined peck of the
beak, which showed that there was some bird left in him yet, and that he
meant at any rate to find out where he was.
Unclosing our hands a small space, out popped the little head with a pair
of round brilliant eyes. Then we bethought ourselves of feeding him, and
forthwith prepared him a stiff glass of sugar and water, a drop of which
we held to his bill. After turning his head attentively, like a bird who
knew what he was about and didn’t mean to be chaffed, he briskly put out
a long, flexible tongue, slightly forked at the end, and licked off the
comfortable beverage with great relish. Immediately he was pronounced
out of danger by the small humane society which had undertaken the charge
of his restoration, and we began to cast about for getting him a settled
establishment in our apartment. I gave up my work-box to him for a
sleeping-room, and it was medically ordered that he should take a nap.
So we filled the box with cotton, and he was formally put to bed, with a
folded cambric handkerchief round his neck, to keep him from beating his
wings. Out of his white wrappings he looked forth green and grave as any
judge with his bright round eyes. Like a bird of discretion, he seemed
to understand what was being done to him, and resigned himself sensibly
to go to sleep.
The box was covered with a sheet of paper perforated with holes for
purposes of ventilation; for even humming-birds have a little pair of
lungs, and need their own little portion of air to fill them, so that
they may make bright scarlet little drops of blood to keep life’s fire
burning in their tiny bodies. Our bird’s lungs manufactured brilliant
blood, as we found out by experience; for in his first nap he contrived
to nestle himself into the cotton of which his bed was made, and to get
more of it than he needed into his long bill. We pulled it out as
carefully as we could, but there came out of his bill two round, bright
scarlet, little drops of blood. Our chief medical authority looked
grave, pronounced a probable hemorrhage from the lungs, and gave him over
at once. We, less scientific, declared that we had only cut his little
tongue by drawing out the filaments of cotton, and that he would do well
enough in time,—as it afterwards appeared he did, for from that day there
was no more bleeding. In the course of the second day he began to take
short flights about the room, though he seemed to prefer to return to us;
perching on our fingers or heads or shoulders, and sometimes choosing to
sit in this way for half an hour at a time. “These great giants,” he
seemed to say to himself, “are not bad people after all; they have a
comfortable way with them; how nicely they dried and warmed me! Truly a
bird might do worse than to live with them.”
So he made up his mind to form a fourth in the little company of three
that usually sat and read, worked and sketched, in that apartment, and we
christened him “Hum, the son of Buz.” He became an individuality, a
character, whose little doings formed a part of every letter, and some
extracts from these will show what some of his little ways were:—
“Hum has learned to sit upon my finger, and eat his sugar and water out
of a teaspoon with most Christian-like decorum. He has but one
weakness—he will occasionally jump into the spoon and sit in his sugar
and water, and then appear to wonder where it goes to. His plumage is in
rather a drabbled state, owing to these performances. I have sketched
him as he sat to-day on a bit of Spiræa which I brought in for him. When
absorbed in reflection, he sits with his bill straight up in the air, as
I have drawn him. Mr. A— reads Macaulay to us, and you should see the
wise air with which, perched on Jenny’s thumb, he cocked his head now one
side and then the other, apparently listening with most critical
attention. His confidence in us seems unbounded: he lets us stroke his
head, smooth his feathers, without a flutter; and is never better pleased
than when sitting, as he has been doing all this while, on my hand,
turning up his bill, and watching my face with great edification.
“I have just been having a sort of maternal struggle to make him go to
bed in his box; but he evidently considers himself sufficiently
convalescent to make a stand for his rights as a bird, and so scratched
indignantly out of his wrappings, and set himself up to roost on the edge
of the box, with an air worthy of a turkey, at the very least. Having
brought in a lamp, he has opened his eyes round and wide, and sits
cocking his little head at me reflectively.”
When the weather cleared away, and the sun came out bright, Hum became
entirely well, and seemed resolved to take the measure of his new life
with us. Our windows were closed in the lower part of the sash by frames
with mosquito gauze, so that the sun and air found free admission, and
yet our little rover could not pass out. On the first sunny day he took
an exact survey of our apartment from ceiling to floor, humming about,
examining every point with his bill—all the crevices, mouldings, each
little indentation in the bed-posts, each window-pane, each chair and
stand; and, as it was a very simply furnished seaside apartment, his
scrutiny was soon finished. We wondered at first what this was all
about; but on watching him more closely, we found that he was actively
engaged in getting his living, by darting out his long tongue hither and
thither, and drawing in all the tiny flies and insects which in summer
time are to be found in an apartment. In short, we found that, though
the nectar of flowers was his dessert, yet he had his roast beef and
mutton-chop to look after, and that his bright, brilliant blood was not
made out of a simple vegetarian diet. Very shrewd and keen he was, too,
in measuring the size of insects before he attempted to swallow them.
The smallest class were whisked off with lightning speed; but about
larger ones he would sometimes wheel and hum for some minutes, darting
hither and thither, and surveying them warily, and if satisfied that they
could be carried, he would come down with a quick, central dart which
would finish the unfortunate at a snap. The larger flies seemed to
irritate him, especially when they intimated to him that his plumage was
sugary, by settling on his wings and tail; when he would lay about him
spitefully, wielding his bill like a sword. A grasshopper that strayed
in, and was sunning himself on the window-seat, gave him great
discomposure. Hum evidently considered him an intruder, and seemed to
long to make a dive at him; but, with characteristic prudence, confined
himself to threatening movements, which did not exactly hit. He saw
evidently that he could not swallow him whole, and what might ensue from
trying him piecemeal he wisely forbore to essay.
Hum had his own favourite places and perches. From the first day he
chose for his nightly roost a towel-line which had been drawn across the
corner over the wash-stand, where he every night established himself with
one claw in the edge of the towel and the other clasping the line, and,
ruffling up his feathers till he looked like a little chestnut-burr, he
would resign himself to the soundest sleep. He did not tuck his head
under his wing, but seemed to sink it down between his shoulders, with
his bill almost straight up in the air. One evening one of us, going to
use the towel, jarred the line, and soon after found that Hum had been
thrown from his perch, and was hanging head downward, fast asleep, still
clinging to the line. Another evening, being discomposed by somebody
coming to the towel-line after he had settled himself, he fluttered off;
but so sleepy that he had not discretion to poise himself again, and was
found clinging, like a little bunch of green floss silk, to the mosquito
netting of the window.
A day after this we brought in a large green bough, and put it up over
the looking-glass. Hum noticed it before it had been there five minutes,
flew to it, and began a regular survey, perching now here, now there,
till he seemed to find a twig that exactly suited him; and after that he
roosted there every night. Who does not see in this change all the signs
of reflection and reason that are shown by us in thinking over our
circumstances, and trying to better them? It seemed to say in so many
words: “That towel-line is an unsafe place for a bird; I get frightened,
and wake from bad dreams to find myself head downwards; so I will find a
better roost on this twig.”
When our little Jenny one day put on a clean white muslin gown
embellished with red sprigs, Hum flew towards her, and with his bill made
instant examination of these new appearances; and one day, being very
affectionately disposed, perched himself on her shoulder, and sat some
time. On another occasion, while Mr. A was reading, Hum established
himself on the top of his head just over the middle of his forehead, in
the precise place where our young belles have lately worn stuffed
humming-birds, making him look as if dressed out for a party. Hum’s most
favourite perch was the back of the great rocking-chair, which, being
covered by a tidy, gave some hold into which he could catch his little
claws. There he would sit, balancing himself cleverly if its occupant
chose to swing to and fro, and seeming to be listening to the
conversation or reading.
Hum had his different moods, like human beings. On cold, cloudy, gray
days he appeared to be somewhat depressed in spirits, hummed less about
the room, and sat humped up with his feathers ruffled, looking as much
like a bird in a great-coat as possible. But on hot, sunny days, every
feather sleeked itself down, and his little body looked natty and trim,
his head alert, his eyes bright, and it was impossible to come near him,
for his agility. Then let mosquitoes and little flies look about them!
Hum snapped them up without mercy, and seemed to be all over the ceiling
in a moment, and resisted all our efforts at any personal familiarity
with a saucy alacrity.
Hum had his established institutions in our room, the chief of which was
a tumbler with a little sugar and water mixed in it, and a spoon laid
across, out of which he helped himself whenever he felt in the
mood—sitting on the edge of the tumbler, and dipping his long bill, and
lapping with his little forked tongue like a kitten. When he found his
spoon accidentally dry, he would stoop over and dip his bill in the water
in the tumbler; which caused the prophecy on the part of some of his
guardians that he would fall in some—day and be drowned. For which
reason it was agreed to keep only an inch in depth of the fluid at the
bottom of the tumbler. A wise precaution this proved; for the next
morning I was awaked, not by the usual hum over my head, but by a sharp
little flutter, and found Mr. Hum beating his wings in the tumbler—having
actually tumbled in during his energetic efforts to get his morning
coffee before I was awake.
Hum seemed perfectly happy and satisfied in his quarters; but one day,
when the door was left open, he made a dart out, and so into the open
sunshine. Then, to be sure, we thought we had lost him. We took the
mosquito netting, out of all the windows, and, setting his tumbler of
sugar and water in a conspicuous place, went about our usual occupations.
We saw him joyous and brisk among the honeysuckles outside the window,
and it was gravely predicted that he would return no more. But at
dinner-time in came Hum, familiar as possible, and sat down to his spoon
as if nothing had happened. Instantly we closed our windows and had him
secure once more.
At another time I was going to ride to the Atlantic House, about a mile
from my boarding-place. I left all secure, as I supposed, at home.
While gathering moss on the walls there, I was surprised by a little
green humming-bird flying familiarly right towards my face and humming
above my head. I called out, “Here is Hum’s very brother.” But, on
returning home, I saw that the door of the room was open, and Hum was
gone. Now certainly we gave him up for lost. I sat down to painting,
and in a few minutes in flew Hum, and settled on the edge of my tumbler
in a social, confidential way, which seemed to say, “Oh, you’ve got back
then.” After taking his usual drink of sugar and water, he began to fly
about the ceiling as usual, and we gladly shut him in.