wonderful. Towards evening scattered flocks kept the sky lively as they
circled around on their long wings a hundred feet or more above the
ground, hunting moths and beetles, interrupting their rather slow but
strong, regular wing-beats at short intervals with quick quivering
strokes while uttering keen, squeaky cries something like _pfee_,
_pfee_, and every now and then diving nearly to the ground with a loud
ripping, bellowing sound, like bull-roaring, suggesting its name; then
turning and gliding swiftly up again. These fine wild gray birds, about
the size of a pigeon, lay their two eggs on bare ground without
anything like a nest or even a concealing bush or grass-tuft.
Nevertheless they are not easily seen, for they are colored like the
ground. While sitting on their eggs, they depend so much upon not being
noticed that if you are walking rapidly ahead they allow you to step
within an inch or two of them without flinching. But if they see by
your looks that you have discovered them, they leave their eggs or
young, and, like a good many other birds, pretend that they are sorely
wounded, fluttering and rolling over on the ground and gasping as if
dying, to draw you away. When pursued we were surprised to find that
just when we were on the point of overtaking them they were always able
to flutter a few yards farther, until they had led us about a quarter
of a mile from the nest; then, suddenly getting well, they quietly flew
home by a roundabout way to their precious babies or eggs, o’er a’ the
ills of life victorious, bad boys among the worst. The Yankee took
particular pleasure in encouraging us to pursue them.
Everything about us was so novel and wonderful that we could hardly
believe our senses except when hungry or while father was thrashing us.
When we first saw Fountain Lake Meadow, on a sultry evening, sprinkled
with millions of lightning-bugs throbbing with light, the effect was so
strange and beautiful that it seemed far too marvelous to be real.
Looking from our shanty on the hill, I thought that the whole wonderful
fairy show must be in my eyes; for only in fighting, when my eyes were
struck, had I ever seen anything in the least like it. But when I asked
my brother if he saw anything strange in the meadow he said, “Yes, it’s
all covered with shaky fire-sparks.” Then I guessed that it might be
something outside of us, and applied to our all-knowing Yankee to
explain it. “Oh, it’s nothing but lightnin’-bugs,” he said, and kindly
led us down the hill to the edge of the fiery meadow, caught a few of
the wonderful bugs, dropped them into a cup, and carried them to the
shanty, where we watched them throbbing and flashing out their
mysterious light at regular intervals, as if each little passionate
glow were caused by the beating of a heart. Once I saw a splendid
display of glow-worm light in the foothills of the Himalayas, north of
Calcutta, but glorious as it appeared in pure starry radiance, it was
far less impressive than the extravagant abounding, quivering, dancing
fire on our Wisconsin meadow.
Partridge drumming was another great marvel. When I first heard the
low, soft, solemn sound I thought it must be made by some strange
disturbance in my head or stomach, but as all seemed serene within, I
asked David whether he heard anything queer. “Yes,” he said, “I hear
something saying _boomp_, _boomp_, _boomp_, and I’m wondering at it.”
Then I was half satisfied that the source of the mysterious sound must
be in something outside of us, coming perhaps from the ground or from
some ghost or bogie or woodland fairy. Only after long watching and
listening did we at last discover it in the wings of the plump brown
bird.
The love-song of the common jack snipe seemed not a whit less
mysterious than partridge drumming. It was usually heard on cloudy
evenings, a strange, unearthly, winnowing, spiritlike sound, yet easily
heard at a distance of a third of a mile. Our sharp eyes soon detected
the bird while making it, as it circled high in the air over the meadow
with wonderfully strong and rapid wing-beats, suddenly descending and
rising, again and again, in deep, wide loops; the tones being very low
and smooth at the beginning of the descent, rapidly increasing to a
curious little whirling storm-roar at the bottom, and gradually fading
lower and lower until the top was reached. It was long, however, before
we identified this mysterious wing-singer as the little brown jack
snipe that we knew so well and had so often watched as he silently
probed the mud around the edges of our meadow stream and spring-holes,
and made short zigzag flights over the grass uttering only little
short, crisp quacks and chucks.
The love-songs of the frogs seemed hardly less wonderful than those of
the birds, their musical notes varying from the sweet, tranquil,
soothing peeping and purring of the hylas to the awfully deep low-bass
blunt bellowing of the bullfrogs. Some of the smaller species have
wonderfully clear, sharp voices and told us their good Bible names in
musical tones about as plainly as the whip-poor-will. _Isaac, Isaac;
Yacob, Yacob; Israel, Israel_; shouted in sharp, ringing, far-reaching
tones, as if they had all been to school and severely drilled in
elocution. In the still, warm evenings, big bunchy bullfrogs bellowed,
_Drunk! Drunk! Drunk! Jug o’ rum! Jug o’ rum_! and early in the spring,
countless thousands of the commonest species, up to the throat in cold
water, sang in concert, making a mass of music, such as it was, loud
enough to be heard at a distance of more than half a mile.
Far, far apart from this loud marsh music is that of the many species
of hyla, a sort of soothing immortal melody filling the air like light.
We reveled in the glory of the sky scenery as well as that of the woods
and meadows and rushy, lily-bordered lakes. The great thunderstorms in
particular interested us, so unlike any seen in Scotland, exciting
awful, wondering admiration. Gazing awe-stricken, we watched the
upbuilding of the sublime cloud-mountains,—glowing, sun-beaten pearl
and alabaster cumuli, glorious in beauty and majesty and looking so
firm and lasting that birds, we thought, might build their nests amid
their downy bosses; the black-browed storm-clouds marching in awful
grandeur across the landscape, trailing broad gray sheets of hail and
rain like vast cataracts, and ever and anon flashing down vivid zigzag
lightning followed by terrible crashing thunder. We saw several trees
shattered, and one of them, a punky old oak, was set on fire, while we
wondered why all the trees and everybody and everything did not share
the same fate, for oftentimes the whole sky blazed. After sultry storm
days, many of the nights were darkened by smooth black apparently
structureless cloud-mantles which at short intervals were illumined
with startling suddenness to a fiery glow by quick, quivering
lightning-flashes, revealing the landscape in almost noonday
brightness, to be instantly quenched in solid blackness.
But those first days and weeks of unmixed enjoyment and freedom,
reveling in the wonderful wildness about us, were soon to be mingled
with the hard work of making a farm. I was first put to burning brush
in clearing land for the plough. Those magnificent brush fires with
great white hearts and red flames, the first big, wild outdoor fires I
had ever seen, were wonderful sights for young eyes. Again and again,
when they were burning fiercest so that we could hardly approach near
enough to throw on another branch, father put them to awfully practical
use as warning lessons, comparing their heat with that of hell, and the
branches with bad boys. “Now, John,” he would say,—“now, John, just
think what an awful thing it would be to be thrown into that fire:—and
then think of hellfire, that is so many times hotter. Into that fire
all bad boys, with sinners of every sort who disobey God, will be cast
as we are casting branches into this brush fire, and although suffering
so much, their sufferings will never never end, because neither the
fire nor the sinners can die.” But those terrible fire lessons quickly
faded away in the blithe wilderness air; for no fire can be hotter than
the heavenly fire of faith and hope that burns in every healthy boy’s
heart.
Soon after our arrival in the woods some one added a cat and puppy to
the animals father had bought. The cat soon had kittens, and it was
interesting to watch her feeding, protecting, and training them. After
they were able to leave their nest and play, she went out hunting and
brought in many kinds of birds and squirrels for them, mostly ground
squirrels (spermophiles), called “gophers” in Wisconsin. When she got
within a dozen yards or so of the shanty, she announced her approach by
a peculiar call, and the sleeping kittens immediately bounced up and
ran to meet her, all racing for the first bite of they knew not what,
and we too ran to see what she brought. She then lay down a few minutes
to rest and enjoy the enjoyment of her feasting family, and again
vanished in the grass and flowers, coming and going every half-hour or
so. Sometimes she brought in birds that we had never seen before, and
occasionally a flying squirrel, chipmunk, or big fox squirrel. We were
just old enough, David and I, to regard all these creatures as wonders,
the strange inhabitants of our new world.
The pup was a common cur, though very uncommon to us, a black and white
short-haired mongrel that we named “Watch.” We always gave him a pan of
milk in the evening just before we knelt in family worship, while
daylight still lingered in the shanty. And, instead of attending to the
prayers, I too often studied the small wild creatures playing around
us. Field mice scampered about the cabin as though it had been built
for them alone, and their performances were very amusing. About dusk,
on one of the calm, sultry nights so grateful to moths and beetles,
when the puppy was lapping his milk, and we were on our knees, in
through the door came a heavy broad-shouldered beetle about as big as a
mouse, and after it had droned and boomed round the cabin two or three
times, the pan of milk, showing white in the gloaming, caught its eyes,
and, taking good aim, it alighted with a slanting, glinting plash in
the middle of the pan like a duck alighting in a lake. Baby Watch,
having never before seen anything like that beetle, started back,
gazing in dumb astonishment and fear at the black sprawling monster
trying to swim. Recovering somewhat from his fright, he began to bark
at the creature, and ran round and round his milk-pan, wouf-woufing,
gurring, growling, like an old dog barking at a wild-cat or a bear. The
natural astonishment and curiosity of that boy dog getting his first
entomological lesson in this wonderful world was so immoderately funny
that I had great difficulty in keeping from laughing out loud.
Snapping turtles were common throughout the woods, and we were
delighted to find that they would snap at a stick and hang on like
bull-dogs; and we amused ourselves by introducing Watch to them,
enjoying his curious behavior and theirs in getting acquainted with
each other. One day we assisted one of the smallest of the turtles to
get a good grip of poor Watch’s ear. Then away he rushed, holding his
head sidewise, yelping and terror-stricken, with the strange buglike
reptile biting hard and clinging fast,—a shameful amusement even for
wild boys.
As a playmate Watch was too serious, though he learned more than any
stranger would judge him capable of, was a bold, faithful watch-dog,
and in his prime a grand fighter, able to whip all the other dogs in
the neighborhood. Comparing him with ourselves, we soon learned that
although he could not read books he could read faces, was a good judge
of character, always knew what was going on and what we were about to
do, and liked to help us. We could run nearly as fast as he could, see
about as far, and perhaps hear as well, but in sense of smell his nose
was incomparably better than ours. One sharp winter morning when the
ground was covered with snow, I noticed that when he was yawning and
stretching himself after leaving his bed he suddenly caught the scent
of something that excited him, went round the corner of the house, and
looked intently to the westward across a tongue of land that we called
West Bank, eagerly questioning the air with quivering nostrils, and
bristling up as though he felt sure that there was something dangerous
in that direction and had actually caught sight of it. Then he ran
toward the Bank, and I followed him, curious to see what his nose had
discovered. The top of the Bank commanded a view of the north end of
our lake and meadow, and when we got there we saw an Indian hunter with
a long spear, going from one muskrat cabin to another, approaching
cautiously, careful to make no noise, and then suddenly thrusting his
spear down through the house. If well aimed, the spear went through the
poor beaver rat as it lay cuddled up in the snug nest it had made for
itself in the fall with so much far-seeing care, and when the hunter
felt the spear quivering, he dug down the mossy hut with his tomahawk
and secured his prey,—the flesh for food, and the skin to sell for a
dime or so. This was a clear object lesson on dogs’ keenness of scent.
That Indian was more than half a mile away across a wooded ridge. Had
the hunter been a white man, I suppose Watch would not have noticed
him.
When he was about six or seven years old, he not only became cross, so
that he would do only what he liked, but he fell on evil ways, and was
accused by the neighbors who had settled around us of catching and
devouring whole broods of chickens, some of them only a day or two out
of the shell. We never imagined he would do anything so grossly
undoglike. He never did at home. But several of the neighbors declared
over and over again that they had caught him in the act, and insisted
that he must be shot. At last, in spite of tearful protests, he was
condemned and executed. Father examined the poor fellow’s stomach in
search of sure evidence, and discovered the heads of eight chickens
that he had devoured at his last meal. So poor Watch was killed simply
because his taste for chickens was too much like our own. Think of the
millions of squabs that preaching, praying men and women kill and eat,
with all sorts of other animals great and small, young and old, while
eloquently discoursing on the coming of the blessed peaceful, bloodless
millennium! Think of the passenger pigeons that fifty or sixty years
ago filled the woods and sky over half the continent, now exterminated
by beating down the young from the nests together with the brooding
parents, before they could try their wonderful wings; by trapping them
in nets, feeding them to hogs, etc. None of our fellow mortals is safe
who eats what we eat, who in any way interferes with our pleasures, or
who may be used for work or food, clothing or ornament, or mere cruel,
sportish amusement. Fortunately many are too small to be seen, and
therefore enjoy life beyond our reach. And in looking through God’s
great stone books made up of records reaching back millions and
millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn that vast multitudes
of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a
good time in God’s love before man was created.
The old Scotch fashion of whipping for every act of disobedience or of
simple, playful forgetfulness was still kept up in the wilderness, and
of course many of those whippings fell upon me. Most of them were
outrageously severe, and utterly barren of fun. But here is one that
was nearly all fun.
Father was busy hauling lumber for the frame house that was to be got
ready for the arrival of my mother, sisters, and brother, left behind
in Scotland. One morning, when he was ready to start for another load,
his ox-whip was not to be found. He asked me if I knew anything about
it. I told him I didn’t know where it was, but Scotch conscience
compelled me to confess that when I was playing with it I had tied it
to Watch’s tail, and that he ran away, dragging it through the grass,
and came back without it. “It must have slipped off his tail,” I said,
and so I didn’t know where it was. This honest, straightforward little
story made father so angry that he exclaimed with heavy, foreboding
emphasis: “The very deevil’s in that boy!” David, who had been playing
with me and was perhaps about as responsible for the loss of the whip
as I was, said never a word, for he was always prudent enough to hold
his tongue when the parental weather was stormy, and so escaped nearly
all punishment. And, strange to say, this time I also escaped, all
except a terrible scolding, though the thrashing weather seemed darker
than ever. As if unwilling to let the sun see the shameful job, father
took me into the cabin where the storm was to fall, and sent David to
the woods for a switch. While he was out selecting the switch, father
put in the spare time sketching my play-wickedness in awful colors, and
of course referred again and again to the place prepared for bad boys.
In the midst of this terrible word-storm, dreading most the impending
thrashing, I whimpered that I was only playing because I couldn’t help
it; didn’t know I was doing wrong; wouldn’t do it again, and so forth.
After this miserable dialogue was about exhausted, father became
impatient at my brother for taking so long to find the switch; and so
was I, for I wanted to have the thing over and done with. At last, in
came David, a picture of open-hearted innocence, solemnly dragging a
young bur-oak sapling, and handed the end of it to father, saying it
was the best switch he could find. It was an awfully heavy one, about
two and a half inches thick at the butt and ten feet long, almost big
enough for a fence-pole. There wasn’t room enough in the cabin to swing
it, and the moment I saw it I burst out laughing in the midst of my
fears. But father failed to see the fun and was very angry at David,
heaved the bur-oak outside and passionately demanded his reason for
fetching “sic a muckle rail like that instead o’ a switch? Do ye ca’
that a switch? I have a gude mind to thrash you insteed o’ John.”
David, with demure, downcast eyes, looked preternaturally righteous,
but as usual prudently answered never a word.
It was a hard job in those days to bring up Scotch boys in the way they
should go; and poor overworked father was determined to do it if enough
of the right kind of switches could be found. But this time, as the sun
was getting high, he hitched up old Tom and Jerry and made haste to the
Kingston lumber-yard, leaving me unscathed and as innocently wicked as
ever; for hardly had father got fairly out of sight among the oaks and
hickories, ere all our troubles, hell-threatenings, and exhortations
were forgotten in the fun we had lassoing a stubborn old sow and
laboriously trying to teach her to go reasonably steady in rope
harness. She was the first hog that father bought to stock the farm,
and we boys regarded her as a very wonderful beast. In a few weeks she
had a lot of pigs, and of all the queer, funny, animal children we had
yet seen, none amused us more. They were so comic in size and shape, in
their gait and gestures, their merry sham fights, and the false alarms
they got up for the fun of scampering back to their mother and begging
her in most persuasive little squeals to lie down and give them a
drink.
After her darling short-snouted babies were about a month old, she took
them out to the woods and gradually roamed farther and farther from the
shanty in search of acorns and roots. One afternoon we heard a
rifle-shot, a very noticeable thing, as we had no near neighbors, as
yet. We thought it must have been fired by an Indian on the trail that
followed the right bank of the Fox River between Portage and Packwaukee
Lake and passed our shanty at a distance of about three quarters of a
mile. Just a few minutes after that shot was heard, along came the poor
mother rushing up to the shanty for protection, with her pigs, all out
of breath and terror-stricken. One of them was missing, and we supposed
of course that an Indian had shot it for food. Next day, I discovered a
blood-puddle where the Indian trail crossed the outlet of our lake. One
of father’s hired men told us that the Indians thought nothing of
levying this sort of blackmail whenever they were hungry. The solemn
awe and fear in the eyes of that old mother and those little pigs I
never can forget; it was as unmistakable and deadly a fear as I ever
saw expressed by any human eye, and corroborates in no uncertain way
the oneness of all of us.
IIIToC
LIFE ON A WISCONSIN FARM
Humanity in Oxen—Jack, the Pony—Learning to Ride—Nob and
Nell—Snakes—Mosquitoes and their Kin—Fish and Fishing—Considering the
Lilies—Learning to Swim—A Narrow Escape from Drowning and a
Victory—Accidents to Animals.
Coming direct from school in Scotland while we were still hopefully
ignorant and far from tame,—notwithstanding the unnatural profusion of
teaching and thrashing lavished upon us,—getting acquainted with the
animals about us was a never-failing source of wonder and delight. At
first my father, like nearly all the backwoods settlers, bought a yoke
of oxen to do the farm work, and as field after field was cleared, the
number was gradually increased until we had five yoke. These wise,
patient, plodding animals did all the ploughing, logging, hauling, and
hard work of every sort for the first four or five years, and, never
having seen oxen before, we looked at them with the same eager
freshness of conception as we did at the wild animals. We worked with
them, sympathized with them in their rest and toil and play, and thus
learned to know them far better than we should had we been only trained
scientific naturalists. We soon learned that each ox and cow and calf
had individual character. Old white-faced Buck, one of the second yoke
of oxen we owned, was a notably sagacious fellow. He seemed to reason
sometimes almost like ourselves. In the fall we fed the cattle lots of
pumpkins and had to split them open so that mouthfuls could be readily
broken off. But Buck never waited for us to come to his help. The
others, when they were hungry and impatient, tried to break through the
hard rind with their teeth, but seldom with success if the pumpkin was
full grown. Buck never wasted time in this mumbling, slavering way, but
crushed them with his head. He went to the pile, picked out a good one,
like a boy choosing an orange or apple, rolled it down on to the open
ground, deliberately kneeled in front of it, placed his broad, flat
brow on top of it, brought his weight hard down and crushed it, then
quietly arose and went on with his meal in comfort. Some would call
this “instinct,” as if so-called “blind instinct” must necessarily make
an ox stand on its head to break pumpkins when its teeth got sore, or
when nobody came with an axe to split them. Another fine ox showed his
skill when hungry by opening all the fences that stood in his way to
the corn-fields.
The humanity we found in them came partly through the expression of
their eyes when tired, their tones of voice when hungry and calling for
food, their patient plodding and pulling in hot weather, their
long-drawn-out sighing breath when exhausted and suffering like
ourselves, and their enjoyment of rest with the same grateful looks as
ours. We recognized their kinship also by their yawning like ourselves
when sleepy and evidently enjoying the same peculiar pleasure at the
roots of their jaws; by the way they stretched themselves in the
morning after a good rest; by learning languages,—Scotch, English,
Irish, French, Dutch,—a smattering of each as required in the faithful
service they so willingly, wisely rendered; by their intelligent, alert
curiosity, manifested in listening to strange sounds; their love of
play; the attachments they made; and their mourning, long continued,
when a companion was killed.