Saint Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order, without
whom there would probably have been no missions in California,
regarded the birds as his “little brothers and sisters.” Just
as I began the actual writing of this book I picked up in the
streets a tiny song sparrow, wounded, unable to fly, and that
undoubtedly had been thrust out of its nest. In a short time we
became close friends and inseparable companions. Hour after
hour she sat on my foot, or, better still, perched, with head
under her wing, on my left hand, while I wrote with the other.
Nothing I did, such as the movement of books, turning of
leaves, etc., made her afraid. When I left the room she hopped
and fluttered along after me. She died just as the book was
receiving its finishing pages. On account of her ragged and
unkempt appearance I called her Scraggles; and to her, a tiny
morsel of animation, but who had a keen appreciation and
reciprocation of a large affection, I dedicate this book.
When I read this to some of my friends they were moved to tears and
wanted to know more about Scraggles. As I told the story, others
desired to hear it. Then in a lecture on “The Radiant Life” I told it
again, and thousands were touched to tears by the simple narrative of
the sweet little bird’s beautiful and trustful life.
Fortunately, my familiarity with the camera had made me desire to make
some photographs of Scraggles some three weeks before her death. My
daughter and I made several, and then a friend came and made two or
three others, so that now we feel really blessed in possessing these
counterfeit presentments of the little creature.
When our friends saw these photographs they desired copies of them;
and when, after the publication of “In and Out of the Old Missions,”
strangers began to write both to my publishers and myself for
“further particulars about Scraggles,” I felt that I ought to give to
others some of the joy and delight and benefit I and mine had in our
intercourse with her.
* * * * *
Dear little Scraggles! I little thought when I first saw you
struggling to get away from me, as if afraid I might devour you, that
we should so soon become such inseparable friends. It was a sudden
impulse that led me to pick you up and take you home, and though the
loving hearts there welcomed you, they realized better than I did the
trouble you would be. But somehow that did not deter us from making
you one of us, and you soon recognized the relationship. Our
association was short, as men reckon time, but time really has very
little to do with life.
“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.”
So in the short three months you were with me we lived your lifetime
together; and though my life is stretching out into further time, and
your body is buried, you, dear little Scraggles, still live on with
me. I don’t know, and I care less, what the psychologists say about
birds having souls, and I am equally indifferent as to what the
theologians say of there being a heaven for birds, or birds entering
the heaven of human beings. This I do know, that in my own soul, far
more real than the demonstrable propositions of life, such as that two
and two make four, is the certain assurance that my soul and
Scraggles’ will meet when my body and soul are severed.
So sleep, content and serene, dear little Scraggles, in your tiny and
flower-embowered resting-place. You know full well in your tiny, but
love-filled heart that just so soon as I have met all the human loved
ones in the soul-life, I shall seek for you, and seek until I find,
for I shall want you even in heaven. My heaven will be incomplete
without you. I believe absolutely with Browning, that
“There shall be no lost good,
What was, shall live as before!”
So in the life of the future, with understanding and love made sweeter
by clearer knowledge, we shall love on; for of all great things that
abide forever “the greatest is love.”
* * * * *
_Books by George Wharton James_