"Yes, but in the silence and the darkness there doesn't seem any answer to
him."
"Madame," I said, "if you will look up at the stars you will find a very
complete answer."
I confess that I find the owl not only tolerable but stimulating. I like to
hear the pessimist really let himself go. It is the nameless and unformed
fears of the mind that paralyse, but when my owl comes along and states the
position at its blackest I begin to cheer up and feel defiant and
combative. Is this the worst that can be said? Then let us see what the
best is, and set about accomplishing it. "The thing is impossible," said
the pessimist to Cobden. "Indeed," said that great man. "Then the sooner we
set about doing it the better." Oh, oh, say I to my owl, all is lost, is
it? You wait till the dawn comes, and hear what that little chap in the red
waistcoat has to say about it. He's got quite another tale to tell, and
it's a much more likely tale than yours. I shall go to bed and leave you to
Gummidge in the trees until the sun comes up and tells you what a dismal
fraud you are.
"Tu-whit, tu-whoo," hoots the owl back at me.
Yes, my dear sir, but you said that last night, and you have been saying it
every night I have known you, and always the sun comes up and the spring
comes round again and the flowers bloom, and the fields are golden with
harvest.
"Tu-whit, tu-whoo."
Oh, bother you. You ought to be a _Daily Mail_ placard.
No doubt the owl is quite happy in his way. Louis XV. expressed the owlish
philosophy when he said, "Let us amuse ourselves by making ourselves
miserable." I have no doubt the wretched creature did amuse himself after
his fashion. I have always thought that, secretly, Mrs. Gummidge had a
roaring time. She really enjoyed being miserable and making everybody about
her miserable. I have known such people, and I daresay you have known them,
too--people who nurse unhappiness with the passion of a miser. They are
having the time of their lives now. They go about saying, "Tu-whit,
tu-whoo! The Russians are beaten again, or if they are not beaten they will
be. Tu-whit, tu-whoo! We're slackers and slouchers and the Germans are too
many for us. Tu-whit, tu-whoo. They're on the way to India and Egypt, and
nothing will stop them. All, all is lost." But I notice that they enjoy a
beef-steak as much as anybody, and do not refuse their soup though they
salt it with their tears.
I like that story of Stonewall Jackson and the owl. The owl was a general,
and he rushed up to Jackson in the crisis of the first battle of Bull's
Run, crying "All is lost! We're beaten!" "Oh," said Jackson, "if that's so
I'd advise you to keep it to yourself." Half-an-hour later the charge of
Jackson's brigade had won the battle. I do not know what happened to the
owl, but I daresay he went on "Tu-whit-ing" and "Tu-whoo-ing" to the end.
The owl can't help being an owl.
Ah, there is little red waistcoat singing on the fence. Let us find a worm
for the philosopher....