Your letter was here Monday morning. I am sorry you did not send some
message to your mother in it. You know how quick she is to take offence.
Why not hereafter address your letters to us both--thus "Dear Father
and Mother." But write to her alone next time. How about that course in
Geology given by Shaler? I thought you were going to take that? I
had rather you take that than any course in English Composition.
Read Ruskin's "Modern Painters" when you get a chance. Read Emerson's
"English Traits" and his "Representative Men."
Send me some of the pictures you took at Slabsides of the Suter girls
and any others that would interest me.
I go to-day to the Harrimans at Arden for two or three days. On Saturday
last I had 25 Vassar girls at SS and expect more this Saturday. Lown
said Black Creek was full of ducks on Sunday--I see but few on the
river. Give my love to the Suter girls.... Much fog here lately.
Your affectionate father, J. B.
Ducks in Black Creek--it was tantalizing to read that! It brought back
the memories of the days Father and I hunted them there--I shall never
forget how impressed he was by one duck, so impressed that he spoke
of it at length in an article he wrote--"The Wit of a Duck." He was
paddling me up the sun-lit reaches of the Shataca on Black Creek when
suddenly two dusky mallards or black ducks tore out of the willow
herb and dodder and came like the wind over our heads. I was using a
high-powered duck gun, and brought down both ducks, one, however, with
a broken wing. The duck came tumbling down and with a fine splash struck
the water, where for a moment it shone and glistened in the sun. And
that was all, the duck was gone instantly, we never saw it again. What
happened of course was that the duck dived, using its other wing and
feet, and came up in the brush, where it hid, no doubt with only half an
inch of its bill out of water. Its presence of mind, working instantly
and without hesitation, caused Father to exclaim in wonder.
Father was never a sportsman in the strict sense--he never had a shotgun
that was really good for anything, or any hunting dogs or hunting
clothes--a pair of rubber boots used for trout fishing was as far as he
got in that direction--unless the soft felt hat, gray, torn, with some
flies or hooks stuck in the band, could be counted. He was an expert
trout fisherman, but was not averse to using grasshoppers, worms, live
bait, or caddis fly larvae. I know we stood one day in the Shataca
and Father shot and shot at the black ducks that flew overhead, and he
bemoaned his lack of skill in not being able to bring them down. "Dick
Martin would bring those fellows down every time," he would say. As I
look back on it with the light of later experience I am sure the ducks
were out of range, and the borrowed gun was a weak poor thing, not a
duck gun. We built ourselves a bough house out on a little island in the
swamp and got in it, crouched down, and soon some ducks came down, down,
lowering their feet to drop in the water. "Don't shoot, Poppie, don't
shoot!" I exclaimed, and he did not shoot, and to this day he never knew
why I gave such bad advice--I was afraid of the noise of the gun! Father
thought I wanted him to wait until they were nearer. But the chance
never came again and we went home duckless.
In one of his essays Father spoke of a large family as being like a big
tree with many branches which, though it was exposed to the perils of
the storms and all enemies of trees, had as compensation more of the
sun, more places for birds and their nests, more beauty, and so on. I
told him that Balzac expressed the same idea in fewer words, and for a
moment he looked worried. Balzac said, "Our children are our hostages to
Fate." And each way of expressing the similar idea is characteristic of
the man. In many ways Father was like a wide-spreading tree--his intense
nature was one that caught all the sun and beauty of life, enough
and more to compensate for the sorrow and pain he knew. To adventures
out-of-doors, the rise of a big trout to his fly, the sudden appearance
of some large wild animal, how his whole nature would react! He was well
aware of this trait and often spoke of it--in fact, he had no desire
to be cold and calculating before either the unusual or beautiful in
nature. Something as illustrating this trait of his comes vividly to
mind: one early March day I was out duck hunting here on the Hudson and
Father was watching me from shore with field glasses. He was sitting
in a sunny nook beside the high rocks below the hill. I was out in the
drifting ice with my duck boat, which I had painted to resemble a cake
of ice, and was very carefully paddling up on a flock of about a hundred
Canada geese. When I got almost within range I found my lead in the ice
closed and could not get nearer, but that near by there was another lead
in the ice that would take me within easy range. To get to this lead I
had to back out of the one I was in, rather a ticklish performance when
so near the watchful geese. I did it, however, and as I remember I got
some geese. But Father on shore could not see the narrow leads in the
great fields of ice; he saw only that when near the geese I suddenly
began to drift backward, and judging me by himself he said afterward: "I
thought when you saw all those geese so near you got so excited you were
overcome or something--and were lying there in the bottom of that boat,
helpless in the ice!"
The following three letters show how he watched the river for the
migrating wild fowl:
Saturday,