boxes, three or four occupying a long settee, and one, wearing a big
light-colored overcoat, who came every day, sitting like a lord in the
comfortable armchair in front of the cylinder stove. This last man was
not rich; neither was he in any peculiar sense a social favorite; he
said little and bought less; but he always had the chief seat. I used
to wonder what would happen if some day he should come in and find it
occupied. But on that point it was idle to speculate. As well expect
a simple congressman to drop into the Speaker’s chair, leaving that
functionary to dispose of his own corporeal dignity as best he could.
Prescription, provided it be old enough, is the best of titles. What
other has the new king of Great Britain and Ireland?
If it was shortly before schooltime, on one of those mornings when the
weather seemed to be laying itself out to establish a record, the talk
was likely to be of thermometers.
“My glass was down to nineteen below,” one man would say, by way of
starting the ball.
“Mine touched twenty at half-past six,” the next one would remark.
And so the topic would go round, the mercury dropping steadily, notch
by notch. As I said a week ago, winter was winter in those days. It may
have occurred to me, sometimes, that the man who managed to speak last
had a decided moral advantage over his rivals. He could save the honor
of his thermometer at the least possible expense of veracity.
So far things were not very exciting, though on the whole rather more
so, perhaps, than studying a geography lesson (as if it were anything
to me which were the principal towns in Indiana!); but now, not
unlikely, the conversation would shift to hunting exploits. This was
more to the purpose. Wonderful game had been shot, first and last, down
there in the Old Colony; almost everything, it seemed to a listening
boy, except lions and elephants. If Mr. Roosevelt had lived in those
times, he need not have gone to the Rocky Mountains in search of
adventure.
I listened with both ears. There never was a boy who did not like
to hear of doings with a gun. I remember still one of my very early
excitements in that line. I was on my way home at noon when a flock of
geese flew directly over the street, honking loudly. At that moment a
shoemaker ran out of his little shop, gun in hand, and aiming straight
upward, let go a charge. Nothing dropped, to my intense surprise and
no small disappointment; but I had seen the shot fired, and that was
something--as is plain from the fact that I remember it so vividly
these many years afterward. The names of the principal towns of Indiana
long ago folded their tents like the Arabs and silently stole away, but
I can still see that shoemaker running out of his shop.
It was a common practice, I was to learn as I grew older, for
shoemakers to keep a loaded gun standing in a corner, ready for such
contingencies. There was a tradition in the town that a certain man (I
have forgotten his name, or I would bracket it with Mr. Roosevelt’s)
had once brought down a goose in this way. It is by no means
impossible; for flocks of geese were an everyday sight in the season (I
am sure I have seen twenty in an afternoon), and sometimes, in thick
weather, they almost grazed the chimney-tops. Geese (of that kind) have
grown sadly fewer since then, and perhaps have learned to fly higher.
After the hunting reminiscences would likely enough come a discussion
of fast horses, Flora Temple and others--including “Mart” So-and-So’s
of our village; or possibly (and this I liked best of all, I think),
the conversation would flag, and old Jason Andcut would begin whistling
softly to himself. Then I was all ears. Such a tone as he had,
especially in the lower register! And such trills and bewitching turns
of melody! Why, it was almost as good as the Weymouth Band, which in
those days was every whit as famous as the Boston Symphony Orchestra
is now. When it played the “Wood-up Quickstep” or “Departed Days,” the
whole town was moved, and one boy that I knew was almost in heaven.
In fact, ours was a musical community. The very man who now occupied
the armchair in front of the stove (how plainly he comes before me as
I write, taking snuff and reading the shopkeeper’s newspaper of the
evening before) had acquired the competency of which he was supposed
to be possessed by playing the flute (or was it the clarinet?) in a
Boston theatre orchestra; and at this very minute three younger men of
the village were getting rich in the same sure and easy manner. As
for whistling, there was hardly a boy in the street but was studying
that accomplishment, though none of them could yet come within a mile
of Jason Andcut. His was indeed “a soft and solemn-breathing sound,”
as unlike the ear-piercing notes which most pairs of puckered lips
gave forth as the luscious fruit of his own early pear tree (“Andcut’s
pears,” we always called them) was unlike certain harsh and crabbed
things that looked like pears, to be sure, but tied your mouth up in a
hard knot if, in a fit of boyish hunger, you were ever rash enough to
set your teeth in one. The good man! I should love to hear his whistle
now; I believe I should like it almost as well as Mr. Longy’s oboe;
but the last of those magical improvisations was long ago finished. I
have heard good whistling since (not often, but I have heard it, both
professional and amateur), but nothing to match that soliloquistic
pianissimo, which I stole close to the man’s elbow to get my fill of.
Was the prosperity of the music partly in the boyish ear that heard it?
That corner-grocery gathering was one of our institutions; I might
almost say the chief of them--casino and lyceum in one. If somebody
once called the place a “yarn factory,” that was only in the way of a
joke. On a rainy holiday it was a great resource. There were always
talkers and listeners there,--the two essentials,--and the talk was
often racy, though never, so far as I know, unfit for a boy’s hearing.
The town supported no local newspaper, nor did we feel the need of
any. You could get all the news there was, and more too, “down at the
store.” If the regular members of the club failed to bring it in, the
baker or the candy peddler would happen along to supply the lack. And
after all, say what you will, word of mouth is better than printers’
ink.
And while you listened to the talk, you could be eating a stick of
barber’s-pole candy or a cent’s worth of dates, or, if your wealth
happened to admit of such extravagance, you could enjoy, after
the Cranford fashion, quite unembarrassed by Cranford pudicity, a
two-cent orange. Those were the days of small things. Dollars did not
grow on every bush. Seven-year-old boys, at all events, were not
yet accustomed to go about jingling a pocketful of silver. Once, I
remember, I saw a little chap sidle up to the counter and look long at
the jack-knives and other temptations displayed in the showcase. By and
by the shopkeeper espied a possible customer, and came round to see
what was wanted.
“How much are those tops?” asked the boy, pointing with his finger.
“Ten cents,” was the answer.
The boy was silent. He was thinking it over. Then he said: “I’ll take
two cents’ worth of peanuts.”
Poor fellow! I have seen many a grown man since then who was obliged
to content himself with the same kind of philosophy. And who shall say
it is not a good one? If you cannot spend the summer in Europe, take a
day at the seashore. If you miss of an election to Congress, bid for a
place on the school committee. If you cannot write ten-thousand-dollar
novels, write--well, write a weekly column in a newspaper. There is
always something within a capable man’s reach, though it be only “two
cents’ worth of peanuts.”
BIRDS AT THE WINDOW
The winter has continued birdless, not only in eastern Massachusetts,
but, as far as I can learn, throughout New England. Letters from
eastern Maine, the White Mountain region, and western Massachusetts all
bring the same story: no birds except the commonest--chickadees and the
like. Crossbills, redpolls, and pine grosbeaks have left us out in the
cold.
The only break in the season’s monotony with me has been a flock of six
purple finches, seen on the 29th of January. I was nearing home, in
a side street, thinking of nothing in particular, when I heard faint
conversational notes close at hand, and stopping to look, saw first one
and then another of the bright carmine birds; for five of the six were
handsome adult males. All were eating savin berries, and conversing in
their characteristic soft staccato. It was by all odds the brightest
patch of feathers of the new century. The birds must be wintering not
far away, I suppose; but though I have been up and down that road a
dozen times since February came in, I have seen nothing more of them.
Within a month they will be singing, taking the winds of March with
music. No more staccato then, but the smoothest of fluency.
Much the birdiest spot known to me just now is under our own
windows--under them and against them, as shall presently be explained.
Indeed, we may be said to be running a birds’ boarding-house, and we
are certainly doing an excellent business. “Meals at all hours,” our
signboard reads. We “set a good table,” as the trade expression is,
and our guests, who, being experienced travelers, know a good thing
when they see it, have spread the news. There is no advertisement so
effective as a satisfied customer.
The earliest comers are the blue jays. They anticipate the first call
for breakfast, appearing before sunrise. Jays are a shrewd set. They
can put two and two together with the sharpest of us. Man, they have
discovered, is a laggard in the morning. Then is their time. In very
bad weather, indeed, they come at all hours; but they are always wary.
If I raise the window an inch or two and set it down with a slam, away
they go; though, likely as not, I look out again five minutes later
to find them still there. In times of dearth one may reasonably risk
something for a good piece of suet.
The jays take what they can, somewhat against our will. The table
is spread for smaller people: for downy woodpeckers, white-breasted
nuthatches, and chickadees, with whom appears now and then, always
welcome, a brown creeper. The table is set for them, I say; and they
seem to know it. They come not as thieves, but as invited guests, or,
better still, as members of the family. No opening and shutting of
windows puts them to flight. Why should it? There are at least a dozen
baiting-places about the house, and they know every one of them. Though
the fare is everywhere the same, they seem to find a spice of variety
in taking a bite at one table after another.
My own principal enjoyment of the business, at present, is connected
with a new toy, if I may call it so: a small, loosely knit, or
crocheted, bag--made of knitting-cotton, I think I was told--sent to
me by a correspondent in Vermont. Into this, following the donor’s
instructions, I have put nutmeats and hung it out of a window of my
working-room, throwing a cord over the top of the upper sash, and
allowing the bag to dangle against the pane.
At first I broke the nuts into small pieces, but I soon learned better
than that. Now I divide the filbert once, and for the most part the
birds (chickadees only, thus far) have to stay on the bag and eat,
instead of pulling out the pieces whole and making off with them. The
sight is a pretty one--as good as a play. I am careful not to fill
the bag, and the feeder is compelled to hang bottom side up under
it, and strike upward. The position is graceful and not in the least
inconvenient, and possesses, moreover, a great economical advantage:
the crumbs, some of which are of necessity spilled, drop on the eater’s
breast, instead of to the ground. I see him stop continually to pick
them off. “Gather up the fragments,” he says, “that nothing be lost.”
When one of the pieces in the bag is so far nibbled away that a corner
of it can be pulled through one of the interstices, matters become
exciting. Then comes the tug of war. The eater, who knows that his
time is limited, grows almost frantic. He braces himself and pulls,
twitching upward and downward and sidewise (“Come out, there, will
you?”), while the wind blows him to and fro across the pane, and one
or two of his mates sit upon the nearest branch of the elm, eyeing
him reproachfully. “You greedy thing!” they say. “Are you going to
stay there forever?” Often their patience gives out (I do not wonder),
and one after another they swoop down past the window, not to strike
the offender, but to offer him a hint in the way of moral suasion.
Sometimes one alights, with more or less difficulty, on the narrow
middle sash just below, and talks to him; or one hovers near the bag,
or even perches sidewise on the string, just above, as much as to say,
“Look out!” Then I hear a burst of little, hurried, sweet-sounding,
angry notes--always the same, or so nearly the same that my ear is
unable to detect the difference.
Generally these manœuvres are successful; but now and then the feeder
is so persistently greedy that I am tempted to assert a landlord’s
prerogative and tell him to begone. Only once have I ever seen two
birds clinging to the bag together, although so far as I can make out,
there is nothing to hinder their doing so; and even then they were not
eating, but waiting to see which should give place to the other.
All in all, it is a very pleasing show. It is good to see the innocent
creatures so happy. Nobody could look at them, their black eyes
shining, their black bills striking into the meats, all their motions
so expressive of eager enjoyment, without feeling glad on their
account. And with all the rest, it may be said that an ease-loving man,
with a meddlesome New England conscience, is not always sorry to have a
decent, or better than decent, excuse for dropping work once in a while
to look out of the window. Who says we are idle while we are taking a
lesson in natural history? I do not know how many times I have broken
off (seeing a bird’s shadow in the room, or hearing a tap on the pane)
while writing these few paragraphs.
Once, indeed, I saw something like actual belligerency. Two birds
reached the bag at the same instant, and neither was inclined to
withdraw. They came together, bill to bill, each with a volley of those
fine, spitfire notes of which I spoke just now, and in the course of
the set-to, which was over almost before it began, one of them struck
beak-first against the window, as if he were coming through. Then both
flew to the elm branches, fifteen feet away, and in a moment more one
of them came back and took a turn at feeding. I am not going to take
in the bag for fear of the immoral effects of excessive competition.
Competition--among customers--is the life of trade. I am glad to see my
table so popular.
The nuthatches, of which we have at least two, male and female, as I
know by the different color of their crowns, have not yet discovered
the nuts, but come regularly to the suet in the trees, and pretty
often to a piece that is nailed upon one of my window-sills. I hear the
fellow’s pleasant, contented, guttural, grunting notes, and rise to
look at him, liking especially to watch the tidbits as they travel one
after another between his long mandibles. Even if he does not call out,
I know that it is he, and not a chickadee, by the louder noise he makes
in driving his bill into the fat.
I have fancied, all winter, that the birds--these two nuthatches, I
mean--were mated, seeing them so often together; and perhaps they are;
but the other day I witnessed a little performance that seemed to put
another complexion upon the case. I was leaving the yard when I heard
bird notes, repeated again and again, which I did not recognize. To the
best of my recollection they were quite new. I looked up into a tree,
and there were the two nuthatches, one chasing the other from branch
to branch, with that peculiarly dainty, fluttering, mincing action of
the wings, a sort of will-you-be-mine motion, which birds are given to
using in the excitement of courtship. There could be no doubt of it,
though it was only the 10th of February: Corydon was already “paying
attentions” to Phyllis. Success to him! I notice, also, that chickadees
are beginning to whistle a “Phœbe” with considerable frequency, though
there is nothing in the weather to encourage them. Birds have an
almanac of their own. Spring is coming.
A GOOD-BY TO WINTER
Winter is not quite done, but it will be by the time this “Clerk” is
printed. That is to say, _my_ winter will be done. In this respect, as
in many others, I am a conservative. My calendar is of the old school.
“There are four seasons in the year--spring, summer, autumn or fall,
and winter.” So we began our school compositions; and by “spring” we
meant the spring months--March, April, and May. The temperature might
belie the almanac; there might be “six weeks’ sledding in March;” but
when March began, spring began.
And by the way, what a capital subject that was--“The Seasons”! A theme
without beginning and without end; a theme to be taken seriously or
humorously, in prose or verse; a theme of universal interest. Best
of all, there was no difficulty about the first sentence. No need to
sit for half an hour chewing the end of one’s pencil and waiting for
inspiration. Down it went: “There are four seasons in the year--spring,
summer, autumn or fall, and winter.” We never omitted to say “autumn or
fall;” the synonymy helped out the page, and gave us the more time in
which to consider what we should say next. That is the great difficulty
in authorship. On that shoal many a good ship has struck. A man who
always has something to say next is bound to get on--as a “space
writer,” if as nothing else.
Our opening remark was not strictly original, but we did not mind. It
was true, if it wasn’t new; and without being told, I think we had
discovered--by intuition, I suppose--what older heads seem to have
learned by rule, that it is good rhetoric, so to speak, to begin with
a quotation. I was pleased, the other day, to see a brilliant essayist
commending it as an excellent and becoming practice to leapfrog into
one’s subject over the back of some famous predecessor. Such was our
custom, for better or worse, till a certain master (I am tempted to
name him, but forbear) announced just before the fatal day, that
compositions on “The Seasons” would no longer be accepted. That was
cruelty to authors. He spoke with a smile, but it was a smile of
malice. I have never forgiven him. He is living still, a preacher of
the gospel. When Saturday night comes, and he finds himself hard put
to it for the morrow’s sermon (as I have no doubt he often does--I
hope so, at all events), does he never remember the day when with the
word of his mouth he deprived thirty or forty young innocents of their
easiest and best appreciated text? He is righteously punished. Let him
preach to himself, some Sunday, from Numbers xxxii. 23, “Be sure your
sin will find you out.”
Why shouldn’t one write about the seasons, I wonder. There is
scarcely anything more important, or more universally interesting,
than the weather. Ten to one it was the first thing we all thought
of this morning. And the seasons are nothing but weather in large
packages--weather at wholesale. Their changes are our epochs, our
date-points. But for them, all days being alike, there would be no
calendar. It is well known that people who live in the tropics seldom
know their own age. How should they, with nothing to distinguish one
time of year from another? Young or old, they have never learned that
“there are four seasons in the year.”
We are better off. Life with us is not all in the present tense. As
Hamlet said, we look before and after. (Hence it is, I suppose, that
we have “such large discourse,” and continue, some of us, to write
compositions.) We live by expectation. “Behold,” says the weather,
“I make all things new.” Every day is another one, and every season
also. At this very minute a miraculous change is at hand. A great and
effectual door is about to swing on its hinges, and I, for one, wish
to be awake to see it; not to wake up by and by and find the door wide
open.
So far from wearying of the seasons as an old story, I am more
intensely interested in them than ever. If any of my fellow citizens
are not just now thinking daily of the passing of winter and the advent
of spring, I should like to know what they are made of. For myself, I
am like a man in jail. My term is about to expire, and I am notching
off the days one by one on a stick. “Three more,” say I; “two more.”
“Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.” And I am ready to hang
my cap on the horns of the moon.
“You are too much in haste,” some man will say; the same that said,
“How are the dead raised up?” But I know better. It is one happy effect
of ornithological habits that they shorten the winter. There will
be no spring flowers for a good while yet, but there will be spring
birds within a fortnight, perhaps within a week; nay, there may be
some before night. Indeed, I have just come in from a two-hour jaunt,
and at almost every step my ears were open for the first vernal note.
I have seen bluebirds, before now, earlier than this; and what has
happened once may happen again. So, while the wind blew softly from
the southwest, and all the hills were mantled with a dreamy haze, I
chose a course that would take me past one apple orchard after another;
and, as I say, my ears (which I often think are better ornithologists
than their owner,--if he is their owner) kept themselves wide awake.
If that sweet voice, “Purity, purity” (with all bird lovers I thank
Mr. Burroughs for the word)--if that heavenly voice, the gentlest of
prophets, was on the breeze, they meant to hear it.
They heard nothing, but that is not to say that they listened to no
purpose. They heard nothing, and they heard much; for there is an ear
within the ear, and the new year’s voice--which is the bluebird’s--was
in the deepest and truest sense already audible. The ornithologist
failed to catch it; for him _Sialia sialis_ is still to look for; but
the other man was in better luck.
The “new year’s voice,” I say; for the year begins with spring. We had
the seasons in their true order when we were school-children--“spring,
summer, autumn or fall, and winter.” It must have been some very old
and prosy chronologist that arranged their progression as our almanacs
now give it. The young are better instructed. Does not the Scripture
say, “The last shall be first”?
And within three days--I can hardly believe it--the old year will
be done. So let it be. Its passing brings us so much nearer the
grave; worse yet, perhaps, it leaves us with our winter’s work half
accomplished; but our eyes are forward. After all, our work is not
important. We are twice too busy; living as our neighbors do, rather
than according to the law of our own being; playing the fool (there
is no fool like the busy one); selling our birthright for a mess of
pottage. The great thing, especially in springtime, is to lie wide open
to the life that enfolds us, while the “gentle deities” show us, for
our delight,--
“The lore of colors and of sounds,
The innumerable tenements of beauty.”
Yes, that is the wisdom we should pray for. The youngest of us will not
see many springs. Let us see the most that we can of this one. So much
there will be to look at! Now, of all times, we may say with one of
old, “Lord, that I might receive my sight.” What a new world we should
find ourselves living in! I can hardly imagine it.
BIRD SONGS AND BIRD TALK
I mentioned a fortnight ago a flock of half a dozen purple finches
(linnets) seen and heard conversing softly among themselves in some
roadside savin trees on the 29th of January. They must be passing the
winter somewhere not far away, I ventured to guess. “Within a month,” I
added, “they will be singing, taking the winds of March with music.”