of mind expressing itself in exultant strains from his organ. He read
meanings into the music that the composer, in his wildest moments, could
never have hoped to convey. It is a peculiarity of travelling musical
geniuses, like my Uncle, that they always begin a journey at sunset,
when the day goes.
Growing ever fainter, the compelling strains of triumph broke upon my
listening ears, fortunately without doing any damage. Fortissimo, forte,
decrescendo, piano, diminuendo, pianissimo, peace—thus the clear
commanding notes died into silence, winding in a thread of silver melody
around the base of the distant hill.
Night fell, but I dodged and it did not hit me. The quiet sweetness of
the woods was like a plaster on a sore place, and I enjoyed it to the
full. My conscience reproached me somewhat for betraying the trust the
tawny mother had reposed in me, and I felt, intuitively, that I should
never see her again.
I never did, though I am always expecting to meet her in the woods, and
I never hear a _faux pas_ without thinking it maybe Hoop-La or one of
her children.
JENNY RAGTAIL
After my Uncle went away, the silence began to rasp on my nerves; it was
so different from what I had been accustomed to. I had that curious,
attenuated nervousness which is always expecting something unpleasant to
happen. This was especially acute along about seven in the evening, at
which time my talented relative was wont to begin his regular recital
upon the instrument he so thoroughly understood.
From seven to eleven, the air would be full of faint, mysterious echoes
which had no discernible source. Fragmentary, disorganised phrases from
_Bedelia_, _Could Ye Come Back to Me, Douglas_, and the beautiful,
though familiar melodies from _Il Trovatore_, came in from the woods
around me and beat against the walls of my cabin. It seemed as though
some of Uncle’s music had been canned and the cans were exploding. The
effect was uncanny, to say the least.
As time went on, it became evident that I must do something desperate,
or else become the star inmate of a padded cell. Those who do not
believe in personal influence should remain alone for a time in a place
which an uninvited relation has regretfully left. With nerves and senses
sharpened by the ordeal through which they have recently passed, they
will hear and feel some queer things, or I miss my guess.
At the crisis of my unhappy condition, I remembered the old saying,
“Like cures like,” and I clutched at it as a drowning man grabs the
proverbial straw. “The hair of a dog will cure the bite,” continued my
inner consciousness.
But what could I do that would even remotely approach the things that
Uncle did? I had no musical gifts, and an organ like his was out of the
question for about eleven hundred and eighty-nine different reasons. I
must have something, however; something distinctively Italian. Like
lightning the solution of my problem burst upon me. A concertina!
Within a week I had procured a fine one, also an instruction book. The
new study became so absorbing that I forgot all about Unnatural History,
for the time being. It was not long before I could play _Down on the
Suwanee River_, _The Last Rose of Summer_, and _Home, Sweet Home_. The
instrument had a wonderfully fine tone, and, for the first time, I began
to understand the wild, universal passion to learn music.
I discovered that the pleasure is mainly selfish, the joy being
principally that of the performer. The one who plays, or rather works,
an instrument of any sort, can never give others as much pleasure as he
gives himself. With the voice, the principle is the same, though greatly
intensified. Conversation exemplifies it in lesser degree, though not
much less. I remembered that when I was very young, a number of other
rising citizens used to battle with me for the control of the harmonica
which I found in my infantile sock one radiant Christmas morning. “The
child is father of the man,” said Wordsworth, though how much his word’s
worth it is not for me to say.
As I played, one day, I felt bright eyes upon me. I was taking deep
accordion plaits in the silence, but I was not wholly oblivious to my
surroundings. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”—how
wonderfully true that is! Already I looked forward to the time when all
the wood-folk should come and stand around me, open-mouthed and rapt,
while I worked my concertina.
Every day, when I began to practise my technical exercises, I felt the
bright eyes. When an eye is laid on a Little Brother of the Woods, he
can feel it all through his system. I was not sufficiently interested,
however, to investigate.
One bright morning, when I was practising that beautiful song beginning:
“Knock, and the world knocks with you; boost, and you boost alone,” I
heard a corroborative thump from the woods.
It was really a tremendous noise and seemed as though it must have been
made by a Moose, an Elephant, or some animal equally large. At brief
intervals the sound was repeated and at last I concluded that someone in
my immediate neighbourhood was giving a pound party.
The next day, according to the entries in my observation ledger, I had
filled the concertina with cooky crumbs and had begun to play a
cake-walk, adding a little milk to the interior occasionally to
produce a more liquid tone. From the distant shrubbery, from the same
quarter where I had repeatedly felt the bright eyes, I heard a
thump-thump-thump, perfectly metrical, and in time with my merry tune.
It was accompanied by a soft patter, seemingly from very small hands.
With a sudden reversion to my former interests I threw the concertina
aside, and dashed into the forest.
There, beneath a bush, were Jenny Ragtail and her son, Chee-Wee, still
patting and thumping in the metre of the cake-walk and not knowing that
the music had stopped. It takes sound some time to travel and I have
always been very quick on my feet.
As soon as they saw me, they vanished.
When I returned to my instrument, it refused to work, and upon taking it
apart, I discovered that the milk had been churned to butter. I was
obliged to scrape the entire mechanism before I could play any more, but
there was a smile of satisfaction upon my face as I did so. I had always
known that the long ears of Rabbits served some good purpose in the wise
economy of creation, and now I perceived that they were ears for music.
A Donkey’s telephonic apparatus is constructed upon much the same plan,
and everyone knows how he can sing.
I have not space to describe the gradual manner in which my acquaintance
with Jenny Ragtail progressed, nor how I learned all that I know about
Rabbits and their language. Suffice it to say that before many weeks had
passed by, she and Chee-Wee would scamper into my presence as soon as I
began the first notes of the cake-walk, and would sit very close to me
as I extracted the melody from the instrument, patting and thumping at
the accented notes.
I remembered reading in my well-thumbed copy of _Uncle Remus_ that
“Bre’r Rabbit was always a master hand to pat a tune,” but I never
wholly believed it until I saw it done. Little Brothers of the Woods are
sometimes very incredulous of the observations of others, as my readers
have doubtless noted.
In the remainder of this scientific treatise, though I may translate
freely and frequently from Rabbit into English, I shall say nothing that
the Rabbits did not say. Accuracy has always been a strong point with
me—in fact, I am rabid upon it.
Jenny Ragtail was a large, well-shaped brown Rabbit. Her body tapered
slightly in at the waist line, and this led me to surmise that in the
privacy of her chamber she wore some sort of a corset. Her finale was a
gloriously beautiful tuft of white Rabbit fur, which led Chee-Wee in and
out of the mazes of the forest trails like a friendly beacon. Her eyes
were large and brown and motherly, and projected so far from her kind,
matronly countenance, that she could see behind her, in the same manner
that the ever-feminine of our own species can see around a corner or
through a stone wall. Jenny’s intuition was marvellous.
Chee-Wee was almost infinitesimal in size. He looked like a baby Rat and
was once taken for one by a lady book agent, with a very dignified
carriage, who penetrated the wilderness as far as my hermitage. I never
knew whose Nature Library she was canvassing for, because, at the first
glimpse of Chee-Wee, she took the brakes off her carriage and fled into
the next county. Those who think that women cannot run should have seen
this book agent.
Chee-Wee was not many weeks old, but already he was beginning to study
in the school his mother taught. There are schools of Rabbits, just as
there are schools of Fish, though it is not so generally known. They
learn by whisker touching, the sense of smell, telegraphy with the hind
feet, and by another method which I shall explain later.
The first thing Jenny taught Chee-Wee was to play dead. One thump means
“freeze.” Two thumps mean “follow me.” Three thumps mean “danger—run for
dear life,” and four thumps mean “come.” The politicians who have their
ears to the ground are many times only Unnaturalists in disguise,
listening for Rabbit thumps. Then, when a valuable franchise comes
along, they are in a position to grab it.
One day Chee-Wee had a dreadful adventure. He was in the woods near my
cabin and Jenny was out foraging. She had put him in a _crèche_ under
the roots of a pine and told him not to move a muscle until she came. A
terrible serpent, with a very bright head, was close to Chee-Wee; a
peculiar, striped serpent that made him stiff with fright. He had read
in his little primer about garter snakes, and in his childish ignorance
supposed this was one. He was scared almost to death, but he had enough
presence of mind to thump for his mother, who instantly left her
shopping tour and hastened to his side.
He was partially right, though it was not a Snake at all and had been
dropped by the lady book agent in her mad flight through the forest,
but, none the less, Chee-Wee was soundly spanked for turning in a 4:11
alarm for nothing more than a smoking chimney, while his mother was
engaged in chasing up a bargain sale.
Those who have not lived near enough to the animals to know what they
are talking about will think I have made Chee-Wee and his mother too
human, but that little band of choice spirits who study the
encyclopedias all Winter and get out a Nature Book apiece every Spring,
will know that I have not so abased my high calling as to be inaccurate
in even the smallest detail.
A Rabbits best friend is his brier patch and he is seldom more than
eight and one half hops away from it. Jenny Ragtail used to carry a copy
of that beautiful poem, _Brier Rose_, in her reticule, so that she would
always have a place of refuge in time of trouble. I know this, because I
wrote the piece out for her myself from my book of _Parlour Elocution_.
Jenny was devoted to Chee-Wee. She loved him nineteen times as hard as
she could have done if his eighteen little brothers and sisters, who
were published simultaneously, had not died of a fever before they were
a week old. This was an epidemic which raged fiercely among the
Squirrels and nearly spoiled all the Rabbit stew. He got nineteen times
as much schooling and learned nineteen times as much as he could
otherwise have done. This accounts for anything that may seem unusually
intelligent in the future conduct of Chee-Wee.
First, she taught him geography. With a toothpick I gave her, she drew
out a singularly accurate relief map of the surrounding country in the
sand at my door. I still have the toothpick and a small bottle of the
sand, which I kept to convince the doubting ones. She was a week or more
in making it, and I fear that Chee-Wee would have been very restless,
had it not been for the little silvery minnow in a glass of water at
Jenny’s elbow, which interested him greatly. She kept it there in order
that her map might be drawn to scale.
When the map was finished, I was allowed to inspect it, and it was
really wonderful, though it was not at all the kind of a map that I
should have drawn. She had marked the brier patches, the dens of
Woodchucks and Weasels, the kennel of a distant farmer’s Hound, and a
log in the middle of a pond. This latter place was marked by a small
piece of flag-root which bore the picture of a Rabbit’s hind foot, and
meant “Last Stand.” It was well named, for no animal but a loan shark
could have found them there.
She taught him to comb his hair, brush his teeth, wash his face, paying
special attention to his ears, and to curl his tail up over his back,
like a Squirrel. It was the merest stub of a tail and Chee-Wee got
vertigo once from chasing it round and round trying to get a good view
of it. Their comb was an ordinary curry comb, which presumably had
dropped from the vest pocket of some canine pursuer.
Jenny saved her own combings, putting them carefully away in a box made
of Squirrel bark. I noted afterward that she had stuck little bits of
fur on some of the thorns in the brier patch where she and Chee-Wee
lived, after the manner of Hop o’ My Thumb, who dropped pebbles in the
wood that he might find his way home again. This was to guide Chee-Wee
to the family residence in time of need.
It is not generally known that Rabbits make a blanket to cover their
babies out of tufts of fur which they pick from themselves. Jenny’s
blanket was a beauty and exemplified the arts and crafts movement among
the Rabbits in a particularly striking way.
The background was white, and on it, in bold relief, was a large brown
Rabbit, just vanishing around the corner of the blanket. Below was the
motto, “Always Keep Your Front Feet off the Landscape.”
When this blanket was soiled, she washed it in the brook, using a bit of
soap bark on the more soiled places, and hanging it out to dry on a line
from home. Thinking that Chee-Wee might possibly take cold, I offered
her a small square of brussels carpet for them to sleep under. It was
the best I had, but she disdained the offering, and upon examining it
closely, I saw why. Neither of them could have slept under it, because
the nap was all worn off.
Rabbits love rose bushes and even that fine, new, man-made rose bush
which climbs all over the country—the barbed wire fence. Jenny taught
Chee-Wee how to lead his enemies into the fence and how to take the
flying leap through the wires, leaving not so much as a tuft of fur
behind to tell the tale. That summer Chee-Wee killed two Dogs, a Weasel,
a Skunk, and three Bull Frogs, who were chasing him across the country,
at different times, of course, by leading them full blast into this
dangerous fence. Here they always hung until some of their mourning
friends or relatives would come and cut down the body.
A Rabbit’s nose is exactly like the paper pin-wheels the children make
and pin to the end of a stick. When the children run, with the stick
held straight out in front of them, the pin-wheel whirls merrily, as
everyone knows. A Rabbit’s nose has an interior formation of precisely
the same size and shape, which revolves on an axis of cartilage at the
slightest movement of the wearer. Thus does Nature care for her
children.
Chee-Wee would never eat anything until his mother had certified to the
quality of it. She always had to taste of it first, to be sure that it
was all right, and frequently he took the food out of her mouth, in this
way becoming very fond of hash. I have often seen them nibbling the ends
of a long blade of grass, coming closer and closer together as the grass
got shorter, and finally ending in a very loving kiss. It was both
pretty and touching.
One cold day, I prepared some spaghetti according to Uncle Antonio’s
method, though the pipes that I bought in the village were not at all
like those that he took out of the interior recesses of his organ. We
had it for lunch, Jenny Ragtail, Chee-Wee, and I, and we all ate
heartily.
I was never more forcibly convinced of the truth of the saying that
“What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” than I was that
afternoon. Personally, I never felt better in my life. A warm glow of
brotherly love pervaded my entire system, and there was enough spaghetti
left for my luncheon the following day, if I could summon up sufficient
self-denial to keep it that long.
But in less than an hour, Jenny and Chee-Wee were both very sick.
Chee-Wee lay on the ground at the foot of a pine tree, and his mother,
pitiable though her condition was, hobbled off to the marsh for some
medicine.
When she returned, weak and exhausted, she had a large quantity of
teaberries. She brewed these into a strong, bitter liquid over my fire,
with boiling water from my tea-kettle. She dosed Chee-Wee with it
liberally, then drank some of it herself. In half an hour, they were
capering around as usual, and I was much pleased with Jenny’s
cleverness.
Seeing that the mixture was a good Hare tonic, I rubbed some on my dome
of thought where the thatching was thin, but it did not work in the same
way.
The next day, when I brought out the plate of spaghetti for my luncheon,
intending to divide, as usual, with my guests, they both scampered off
at such a mad pace that I could see nothing but a cloud of dust and the
gleam of light from their white tails. I did not know that anything on
earth could go at such a pace as that, though my mother used to tell me,
when she was making my gingham shirts, that brown and white were always
fast colours. I believe it now, but I did not then, for those shirts
never used to get me to school on time during the swimming season, and,
indeed, often delayed me, with unaccountable knots in the sleeves.
Chee-Wee soon grew into a good-sized Rabbit. He used to stand up on his
hind legs and bite the trees as high as he could reach. One tree, a few
feet from my cabin door, is scarred with these tiny teeth marks from the
height of one inch above the ground, where he could just reach when he
was a little baby Rabbit, up to three feet and eighteen inches from the
ground, which measured his height in his prime.
Any Rabbit, passing through the woods, would know that he was on
Chee-Wee’s reservation, and would stop to measure his height on the
tree. If he was taller than Chee-Wee, he would go on, and when they met,
they would fight it out with claw and tooth and fang and the wild rush
through the long-burrows that honeycombed the earth beneath my cabin. If
the trespasser was not as tall as Chee-Wee, he would go away, taking
long jumps that he might not leave any tracks.
This custom is also followed out by Bears, as any writer on the subject
will tell you. I am always willing to give my fellow Unnaturalists
credit for what they see. Goodness knows it is little enough, compared
with what I have done.
Jenny’s school was near the lake, beyond a hill, and securely sheltered
from observation except from the water. When a canoe approached, they
all had plenty of time to hide before it came near enough to be
dangerous. These brown, fuzzy things are so much like the landscape that
they are fully protected.
Usually, a Rabbit does not travel much in the daytime. They are
nocturnal animals and by day they sit in forms, or cases, that they have
made of grass and leaves and their combings and stationed in secluded
spots. When they get tired of living in one place, they change their
spots, but it always means the building of a new form.
The Rabbits were not afraid of me, however, and I shall never forget the
day that I rowed up silently along the shore and came upon Mistress
Jenny’s school. The baby Rabbits were all sitting on toadstools, with
their spelling-books held up close to their faces. One little Rabbit
missed a word while I was looking on, and was promptly put to bed on
account of his sick spell, as was quite right and proper.
There was a large map made on the hill just back of the teacher’s desk,
and a tin pail, freshly filled with water, stood in one corner. They
drank out of a nutshell, cunningly chiselled by sharp little teeth into
the shape of a cup, and many were the trips to the corner. How it
reminded me of my own schooldays!
Another little brown Rabbit, who seemed to be a very naughty bunny,
brought a Spider to school and put it in Jenny’s desk while she was
teaching the youngest class to count. Jenny learned what she knew of
arithmetic from an old Adder that lived under a log in the woods. When
she saw the Spider, she instantly called the culprit to her, and in
plain sight of the whole school punished him severely with a lady’s
slipper that I had unaccountably missed from my flower bed.
[Illustration:
“In plain sight of the whole school, punished him severely with a
lady’s slipper.”]
Under Jenny’s careful tuition, all these little Rabbits learned things
that their own parents would never have had time to teach them. Children
are born so fast in Rabbit families that there is never an opportunity
for any one set of children to learn more than the merest rudiments of
education, and this school of Jenny’s was like a University Extension
Centre in an Esquimaux village. My cabin became a general meeting place
for the Rabbits of the neighbourhood, and at length they got to be
rather of a nuisance. Uncle Antonio had taken my only pillow with him
for Jocko to sleep on—dear Uncle was always so considerate of
animals!—and I was forced to make a pair of overalls do duty instead. I
used to roll these up at night, with a stray feather or two in the
pockets, and put my weary head down over all. Usually, I knew nothing
more until morning, when Jenny and Chee-Wee would come and pat my face
with their soft, velvety paws, and tell me it was time to get breakfast,
and, please, could we have breakfast food this morning?
I used to explain to them that anything that was eaten in the morning
was breakfast food, but they were as keen for good cereals as the editor
of a popular magazine.
One night my overalls were stolen, so gently that I did not know it. I
looked all over the premises for them and could not find them. Jenny
seemed troubled also, and after breakfast she and Chee-Wee went out to
look for them.
In about an hour, they returned, Jenny with the trouser legs in her
mouth and Chee-Wee bringing up the rear. I should never have known them
for mine, had not the autograph of the laundry marker been travelling
with the band. They were torn, and had as many small holes in them as a
fly screen. I was angry and was about to wage a war of extermination on
the entire Rabbit tribe, but Jenny pleaded with me so effectively that I
refrained. A Rabbit is very cunning when he sits up on his hind legs,
with his paws folded, and looks at you eagerly with his bright eyes.
These are all minor details, however, and have been commonly observed by
others. The only discovery of real importance which I made that Summer
was in relation to the Rabbit method of communicating with each other.
Fellow-Unnaturalists have written of the thumping, the whisker touching,
and so-on. Some have even attempted to tabulate the thump code, but with
only partial success.
My discovery is entirely new and has never appeared in any book before.
Briefly it is this. Rabbits converse with each other by means of a
deaf-and-dumb alphabet, very similar to that made by mutes of our own
species, using their ears entirely.
I have not space here to elaborate upon it, nor to explain how I
happened to discover it, but the entire subject will be found in a
monograph which will be published in pamphlet form as soon as my paper
on _The Rabbit Grammar_ has been read before the International Society
of Registered Unnaturalists.
Jenny was very clever at making me understand her, even without
resorting to her own language. For instance, one day I had given her a
handful of salt, in response to unmistakable signs and gestures on her
part. She tasted of it, sniffed, then sat down upon it and began to sway
from side to side. I understood then that she preferred rock salt and
immediately gave it to her, but was it not clever? Could a human being,
without the power of speech, have done more?
Among themselves, the talk of the Rabbits was astonishingly easy and
informal. After I learned their language, by watching Jenny, Chee-Wee,
and the friends who used to call upon them, I heard, or rather saw, many
amusing things. All unconscious of my familiarity with their speech,
they used to discuss me in my own presence.
Once, after a long and prolonged wig-wagging on the part of an old,
grey-whiskered Rabbit, I made out this: “Say, Jenny, what earthly good
is that blamed hermit to you? Haven’t you influence enough to get us
some corn?”