woods, but had been waked up by the voices, “let us reconsider our
vote. Long ago, in the days of our fathers, these hills remained the
same from age to age; but now the world has changed, and we must put
up with it. The bells are not so bad as they might be, after all. They
don’t ring all the time, and though they are not as musical as your
songs, or as my hoot, yet they are not altogether without harmony. I
move it be left to each bird to do as he chooses.”
The vote was taken and carried, and the birds flew off merrily; but the
owl went to sleep again.
The next morning, as the pastor and his wife were in their garden
tending their flower-beds, and both longing for the songs of the birds,
suddenly the voice of the oriole was heard in the pear tree. He was
leaping from branch to branch, singing as if to make up for lost time
and as though he could not utter the notes fast enough.
“Here I am!” he said to the pastor. “We have thought the matter over
and concluded to let the bells ring.”
The pastor looked up delighted, and his wife shared his joy.
“Did I not tell you,” she cried, “that it would all come right? For
when no harm is intended and both sides mean to be fair, though they
may sometimes get crooked, they are pretty sure to come straight again.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
JACK AND JENNY.
A SPARROW that lived with many others in a public park offended his
neighbors by getting up too early in the morning and beginning to chirp
before they were willing to be waked. They called a meeting of all the
flock, and after considering the matter told him that he and his mate
must look for another home.
This he refused to do, saying that he had as good a right to stay where
he was as they had.
“These trees do not belong to you,” he said, “and you don’t pay rent
for the bird-boxes we live in. They were put up by the people who own
the park, because they love to see us building our nests and flying
about here.
“Beside this,” he continued, “I have done nothing with which you ought
to find fault, for I never wake till the break of day, and do not begin
to chirp for several minutes after that, when all industrious sparrows
should be ready for breakfast. This very morning I heard a cock crow
before I opened my bill, and what sparrow would not be ashamed to be
lazier than the chickens?”
[Illustration]
When the other birds heard this speech, they did not try to answer
it—for, indeed, it was every word true and they could say nothing
against it—but, having the power on their side, they all at once
fiercely attacked the sparrow with their beaks and claws. Nor did they
attack him alone, but they flew at his innocent mate also, and hurt
her more than they hurt him; for after they were both driven out of the
park and had lodged on a neighboring fence it was found not only that
her feathers were badly tumbled and torn, but, alas! that one of her
eyes was pecked out.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
As winter was just coming on, they knew not where to go or what to do.
For the first few nights they roosted on the roof of a stable; but this
was a forlorn, lonely place, and, as they had no perch to clasp with
their little feet, the wind almost blew them away. Beside this, the
man who kept the stable was so saving of his corn, and swept the yard
so clean, that they could hardly pick up as much as would make a good
meal in a whole day.
[Illustration]
From the roof of the stable they moved under the eaves of a
carpenter-shop, and thought they were nicely fixed, until one dark
night a cat stole softly along the roof to the spot where they were
sleeping, and, suddenly putting out her paw, almost caught them both in
her sharp claws. As it was, she caught poor Jenny’s tail and pulled
out every feather of it, which did the cat no good, but was a great
loss to Jenny, for she could hardly guide herself in flying, and looked
very odd beside.
After this they led a sad wandering life for the rest of the winter,
always sleeping in fear on clothes-lines and fences, and picking up a
poor living—mostly from frozen slop-buckets and around kitchen doors.
But toward spring better fortune came to them, for a little girl,
looking out of the dining-room window one morning, spied them hopping
about the pavement below, and threw them some crumbs. Her joy was great
when she saw them quickly eat what she had thrown and then seem to look
up for more. She ran back to the table, and brought them as much as
they wanted.
[Illustration]
The next day they came again, and after this, every day, almost as soon
as it was light, they might be seen waiting for their breakfast from
the hands of their little friend.
[Illustration]
But think of their surprise one April morning, when the sun was shining
brightly and the buds were just beginning to swell on the rose-bushes,
to see the carpenter come in at the garden-gate carrying a new bird-box
fastened to the top of a high pole, which he at once began to set up in
the middle of the grass-plot, digging a deep hole to set it in, so that
it would stand firm in spite of wind and weather.
[Illustration]
Their kind little friend ran out from the house and almost danced for
joy around the pole while it was being planted. And her father and
mother, and brothers and sisters, sharing in her delight, all left the
breakfast-table to watch the carpenter at his work.
[Illustration]
That very day the happy pair—little Jack and Jenny—went into their new
home, and before night were picking up dried grass and twigs with
which to begin building their nest.
[Illustration]
Now, it happened, not long after this, that a young sparrow who lived
at the park, in taking a longer flight than usual one morning, spied
the pretty bird-box with her old acquaintances perched at its door.
“Oh ho!” said she to herself, “is this where you have come? and to such
a fine house, too!” and in a lower voice, which no one could hear, she
whispered, “I would like to live in it myself.”
[Illustration]
She waited till Jenny had gone off in search of a twig; then she
quickly flew down to Jack, who was singing on the roof.
“Don’t you remember me?” she asked. “My parents lived next door to you
at the park. But I was not one of those who drove you away; indeed, I
never raised my wing against you.”
“I remember you,” replied Jack. “But how in the world did you get
here?”
“I came to admire your beautiful new home,” said Pert, “and to tell you
how glad I am that you have got up in the world.”
[Illustration]
“Thank you for your kindness,” replied Jack.
“There is something else,” said Pert, “that I want to say, but I don’t
like to mention it.”
“Speak out,” said Jack; “I want ever so much to hear it.”
“Well, then,” replied Pert, “to tell you the truth, I am afraid that
all the other birds, when they hear of your good fortune, will laugh at
your wife.”
“What ails her?” asked Jack.
“She is not the one,” replied Pert, “for so handsome a sparrow as you,
and for such a fine house.” Here Miss Pert turned all the way round to
show her fine feathers. “And I have come as a friend,” she continued,
“to ask if I can help you in finding a prettier mate.”
“I don’t want one,” said Jack.
“What?” exclaimed Pert. “And Jenny with only one eye and all her
tail-feathers pulled out?”
“Ah, but,” said Jack, “her other eye is the brightest and softest that
ever was seen. And, as for her tail-feathers, they are all growing
again.”
“Pooh!” said Pert, “she is too old for you, beside being ugly.”
[Illustration]
“Oh no,” said Jack; “she is just the right age. And if she _has_ lost
her good looks, she has lost them for me. When you were against me,
then she was my friend; and now, when you are willing to be my friend
because I have grown rich, I will not turn her off to please you. Go
home again, Miss Pert, for nobody but Jenny shall share my fine house.”
* * * * *
That person seems the prettiest whom we love the best; and the one who
was faithful to us when we were in trouble is the one we should remain
faithful to when our troubles are taken away.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE MEETING OF THE WINDS.
THE north and the south winds met one day in a field beside a river.
The north wind had brought some snow the night before, but the south
wind blew soon after, and melted nearly all of it. Only a few white
patches were left, here and there, along the sunny banks of the stream.
As soon as the winds came near each other the south wind said:
“Good-morning, brother! I am glad to meet you, though your cold breath
quite chills me.”
“But I am not glad to meet you,” answered the north wind. “Why did you
melt my snow so quickly? Could you not let it lie for one day?”
[Illustration]
“The time has come for the grass and flowers, you know, brother, and I
must be at work,” said the gentle south wind.
“There was no need of such haste,” said the burly north wind; “when
friends meet, they should be polite.”
“I have to call up the daisies and to waken the roses,” said the south
wind, “and to make all the fields green by the first of May. I have no
time to lose. Look at yonder meadow how brown it is, and at these trees
how bare! Scarcely a fly is buzzing in the sunshine, and not a tortoise
has yet crept out of his hole in the ground.”
“I do not care for your daisies and your tortoises,” muttered the north
wind; “you want to hurry me off, but I will not go so soon.”
[Illustration]
“Have you not had the whole winter to yourself,” asked the south wind,
“freezing the brooks, driving away all my birds and my butterflies,
and covering the fields and roads and bushes and barns with snow? If
I chanced to come then and pay you a visit some bright morning, how
quickly you drove me away again! Never might I stay till the sun went
down!”
“The winter is my time,” said the north wind; “it belongs to me, and
you had no right to come then.”
“And the spring is my time,” answered the south wind; “you know the law
is that I must have the fields now.”
[Illustration]
“You think a great deal of yourself,” said the north wind, angrily,
“but I am stronger than you. I can fly farther, and I see things that
you never see. Where do you think I came from this morning?”
“Tell me, I cannot guess?” answered the south wind.
“I came all the way from the icy pole, where the sea is frozen over,
and the land is covered with snow that never melts. The white bear
lives there. I saw one but a few hours ago, watching for fish by a hole
that he had broken through the ice.”
[Illustration]
“But you never saw my home, nor the strange sights that are there,”
said the south wind. “I come from the far-off torrid zone, where the
snow never falls, and the frost never kills the buds and the flowers.
There the panther lives. I passed by one last night in the forest lying
out on the branch of a great tree, watching for his prey, that he might
spring down on it as it passed beneath.”
[Illustration]
“But I see the Esquimaux,” answered the north wind, “in their strange
skin dresses, living in houses of snow. They fight the fierce walrus on
the ice, and spear the fur-covered seal from their little boats that
dance on the waves. I watch the Northern Lights, so red and beautiful,
shooting up like bright flames in the sky, and the night is almost
as light as the day. Then the Esquimaux harnesses his dogs, and the
Laplander his reindeer, and they travel swiftly over the frozen plain.”
[Illustration]
“Yesterday I blew with all my might until I loosed a field of ice
and sent it out to sea. A white bear was on it, and he sailed on his
ice-boat across the sea to Iceland. As I passed the steep, high rocks
on the shores of Greenland I saw the eider-ducks brooding there. Each
one had lined her nest with soft down plucked off of her own breast.
Then I frightened them with my hoarse voice, and thousands—yes,
hundreds of thousands—rose up in the air like a cloud.”
[Illustration]
“But let me ask you,” murmured the south wind, “did you ever hear among
your icebergs and your frozen wastes the song of the oriole and the
mocking-bird, that I hear every day in the woods where I live? You look
at your Esquimaux in their snow houses, but I peep in at the hut of the
Indian that stands under the forest shade, or I blow against the sail
of his canoe and waft it up some quiet river where the trees grow thick
on each side and meet overhead. The red flamingo wades out into the
water, and the monkeys and parrots chatter among the branches.
“I see the boa-constrictor coiled among the roots on the shore, or
watch the alligator floating down the stream. My home is among the
orange trees and in the fields where the sugar-cane grows. There I lie
still and sleep, or awake to go forth on my journeys over the earth—not
to freeze up the ground and make it barren and bare, but to cover it
with green and bring out the buds and flowers on every bush and tree.”
[Illustration]
While the winds were talking in this way, the river, that had been
listening to them, said:
“Why do you thus boast and provoke one another? Why not speak gently
and kindly of the wonderful things you have seen? You would not change
homes, would you?”
“No, indeed!” each one replied; “I love my own the best!”
“Then,” said the river, “what good can come of disputing when both are
satisfied? As for me, I love you both. I am glad for the north wind
to blow cold, and cover me with ice in the winter, so that the merry
skaters can come and glide swiftly over my smooth surface.
[Illustration]
“And I love the south wind to breathe softly in the spring, and make my
banks green again, and waken the frogs along my shore, and bring the
fisherman in his boat, and the boys to swim.
“Let us all be friends, then, and love each other, and be satisfied
with what our kind Creator has given us, and happy in doing what will
please Him.”
[Illustration]
Then the north wind said:
“I am willing to be friends again. It is true that the spring is your
time, gentle south wind; I will not stay to nip your opening flowers,
but will fly away to my cold home.”
And the south wind said:
“Forgive me if I was rude, brother. When November shall come once more,
I will leave the fields and woods to you. Take this sprig of evergreen
to remember me by, and may it not fade till we meet again! Farewell!”
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 172, “lookod” changed to “looked” (Peter looked around the)
Page 457, “ou” changed to “on” (but on looking around)
End of Project Gutenberg's New Lights on Old Paths, by Charles Foster