Ah, Blanco, did I worship GodAs truly as you worship me,Or follow where my Master trodWith your humility,Did I sit fondly at his feetAs you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,And watch him with a love as sweet,My life would grow divine!
Ah, Blanco, did I worship GodAs truly as you worship me,Or follow where my Master trodWith your humility,
Ah, Blanco, did I worship God
As truly as you worship me,
Or follow where my Master trod
With your humility,
Did I sit fondly at his feetAs you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,And watch him with a love as sweet,My life would grow divine!
Did I sit fondly at his feet
As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,
And watch him with a love as sweet,
My life would grow divine!
Almost all our great men have more than one dog in their homes. When I spent a day with the Quaker poet at Danvers, I found he had three dogs. Roger Williams, a fine Newfoundland, stood on the piazza with the questioning, patronizing air of a dignified host; a bright-faced Scotch terrier, Charles Dickens, peered at us from the window, as if glad of a little excitement; while Carl, the graceful greyhound, was indolently coiled up on a shawl and took little notice of us.
Whittier has also a pet cow, favorite and favored, which puts up her handsome head for an expected caress. The kindly hearted old poet, so full of tenderness for all created things, told me that years when nuts were scarce he would put beech nuts and acorns here and there as he walked over his farm, to cheer the squirrels by an unexpected find.
Miss Mitford’s tribute to her defunct doggie shows to what a degree of imbecility an old maid may carry fondness for her pets, but it is pathetically amusing.
“My own darling Mossy’s hair, cut off after he was dead by dear Drum, August 22, 1819. He was the greatest darling that ever lived (son of Maria and Mr. Webb’s ‘Ruler,’ a famous dog given him by Lord Rivers), and was, when he died, about seven or eight years old. He was a large black dog, of the largest and strongest kind of greyhounds; very fast and honest, and resolute past example; an excellent killer of hares, and a most magnificent and noble-looking creature. His coat was of the finest and most glossy black, with no white, except a very little under his feet (pretty white shoe linings I used to call them)—a little beautiful white spot, quite small, in the very middle of his neck, between his chin and his breast—and a white mark on his bosom. His face was singularly beautiful; the finest black eyes, very bright, and yet sweet, and fond, and tender—eyes that seemed to speak; a beautiful, complacent mouth, which used sometimes to show one of the long white teeth at the side; a jet black nose; a brow which was bent and flexible, like Mr. Fox’s, and gave great sweetness and expression, and a look of thought to his dear face. There never was such a dog! His temper was, beyond comparison, the sweetest ever known. Nobody ever saw him out of humor. And his sagacity was equal to his temper. Thank God, he went off without suffering. He must have died in a moment. I thought I should have broken my heart when I came home and found what had happened. I shall miss him every moment of my life; I have missed him every instant to-day—so have Drum and Granny. He was laid out last night in the stable, and this morning we buried him in the middle plantation on the house side of the fence, in the flowery corner, between the fence and Lord Shrewsbury’s fields. We covered his dear body with flowers; every flower in the garden.Everybody loved him; ‘dear saint,’ as I used to call him, and asI do not doubt he now is!!No human being was ever so faithful, so gentle, so generous, and so fond! I shall never love anything half so well.
“It will always be pleasant to me to remember that I never teased him by petting other things, and that everything I had he shared. He always ate half my breakfast, and the very day before he died I fed himall the morningwith filberts.” (There may have been a connection between the filberts and the funeral.)
“While I had him, I was always sure of having one who would love me alike in riches or poverty, who always looked at me with looks of the fondest love, always faithful and always kind. To think of him was a talisman against vexing thoughts. A thousand times I have said, ‘I want my Mossy,’ when that dear Mossy was close by and would put his dear black nose under my hand on hearing his name. God bless you, my Mossy! I cried when you died, and I can hardly help crying whenever I think of you. All who loved me loved Mossy. He had the most perfect confidence in me—always came to me for protection against any one who threatened him, and, thank God, always found it. I value all things he had lately or ever touched; even the old quilt that used to be spread on my bed for him to lie on, and which we called Mossy’s quilt; and the pan that he used to drink out of in the parlor, and which was always called Mossy’s pan, dear darling!
“I forgot to say that his breath was always sweet and balmy; his coat always glossy like satin; and he never had any disease or anything to make him disagreeable in his life. Many other things I have omitted; and so I should if I were to write a whole volume of his praise; for he was above all praise, sweet angel! I have inclosed some of his hair, cut off by papa after his death, and some of the hay on which he was laid out. He died Saturday, the 21st of August, 1819, at Bertram House. Heaven bless him, beloved angel!”
It is as sad as true that great natures are solitary, and therefore doubly value the affections of their pets.
Southey wrote a most interesting biography of the cats of Greta Hall, and on the demise of one wrote to an old friend: “Alas! Grosvenor, this day poor old Rumpel was found dead, after as long and as happy a life as cat could wish for—if cats form wishes on that subject. There should be a court mourning in Cat-land, and if the Dragon wear a black ribbon round his neck, or a band of crape,à la militaire, round one of the fore paws, it will be but a becoming mark of respect. As we have not catacombs here, he is to be decently interred in the orchard and catnip planted on his grave.”
And so closes this catalogue of Southey’s “Cattery.”
But, hark! my cats are mewing, dogs all calling for me—no—for dinner! After all, what is the highest civilization but a thin veneer over natural appetites? What would a club be without itschefs, a social affair without refreshment, a man without his dinner, a woman without her tea? Come to think of it, I’m hungry myself!
If every hen should only raise five broods yearly of ten each, and there were ten hens to start with, at the end of two years they would number 344,760, after the superfluous roosters were sold; and then, supposing the extra eggs to have paid for their keeping and the produce to be worth only a dollar and a half a pair, there would be a clear profit of $258,520. Allowing for occasional deaths, this sum might be stated in round numbers at a quarter of a million, which would be a liberal increase from ten hens. Of course I did not expect to do as well as this, but merely mention what might be done with good luck and forcing.ROBERT ROOSEVELT.
If every hen should only raise five broods yearly of ten each, and there were ten hens to start with, at the end of two years they would number 344,760, after the superfluous roosters were sold; and then, supposing the extra eggs to have paid for their keeping and the produce to be worth only a dollar and a half a pair, there would be a clear profit of $258,520. Allowing for occasional deaths, this sum might be stated in round numbers at a quarter of a million, which would be a liberal increase from ten hens. Of course I did not expect to do as well as this, but merely mention what might be done with good luck and forcing.
ROBERT ROOSEVELT.
Having always heard, on the best authority, that there was “money in hens,” I invested largely in prize fowls secured at State fairs and large poultry shows, buying as many kinds as possible to make an effective and brilliant display in their “runs.”
Thereisa good deal of money in my hens—how to get it back is the present problem. These hens were all heralded as famous layers; several did lay in the traveling coops on the journey, great pinky-brown beauties, just to show what they could do if they chose, then stopped suddenly. I wrote anxiously to former owners of this vaunted stock to explain such disappointing behavior. Some guessed the hens were just moulting, others thought “may be they were broody”; a few had the frankness to agree with me that it was mighty curious, but hens always were “sorter contrary critters.”
Their appetites remained normal, but, as the little girl said of her pet bantam, they only lay about doing nothing. And when guests desired some of my fine fresh eggs boiled for breakfast, I used to go secretly to a neighbor and buy a dozen, but never gave away the mortifying situation.
Seeing piles of ducks’ eggs in a farmer’s barn, all packed for market, and picturing the producers, thirty white Pekins, a snowy, self-supporting fleet on my reformed lakelet, I bought the whole lot, and for long weary months they were fed and pampered and coaxed and reasoned with, shut up, let out, kept on the water, forbidden to go to it, but not one egg to be seen!
It was considered a rich joke in that locality that a city woman who was trying to farm, had applied for these ducks just as they had completed their labors for the season of 1888-’90; they were also extremely venerable, and the reticent owner rejoiced to be relieved of an expensive burden at good rates. Knowing nothing of these facts in natural history, I pondered deeply over the double phenomenon. I said the hens seemed normal only as to appetite; the ducks proved abnormal in this respect. They were always coming up to the back door, clamoring for food—always unappeased. They preferred cake, fresh bread, hot boiled potatoes, doted on tender bits of meat, but would gobble up anything and everything, more voracious and less fastidious than the ordinary hog of commerce. Bags of corn were consumed in a flash, “shorts” were never long before their eager gaze, they went for every kind of nourishment provided for the rest of the menagerie. A goat is supposed to have a champion appetite and digestion, but a duck—at least one of my ducks—leaves a goat so far behind that he never could regain his reputation for omniverosity. They were too antique to be eaten themselves—their longevity entitled them to respect; they could not be disposed of by the shrewdest market man to the least particular of boarding-house providers; I could only regard them with amazement and horror and let them go on eating me out of house and home and purse-strings.
But at last I knew. I asked an honest man from afar, who called to sell something, why those ducks would not lay a single egg. He looked at them critically and wrote to me the next day:
“DEAR MADAM: The reason your ducks won’t lay is because they’re too old to live and the bigest part of ’em is drakes.Respectfully,JONAS HURLBERT.”
“DEAR MADAM: The reason your ducks won’t lay is because they’re too old to live and the bigest part of ’em is drakes.
Respectfully,
JONAS HURLBERT.”
I hear that there are more ducks in the Chinese Empire than in all the world outside of it. They are kept by the Celestials on every farm, on the private and public roads, on streets of cities, and on all the lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, and brooks in the country. That is the secret of their lack of progress. What time have they to advance after the ducks are fed and cared for? No male inhabitant could ever squeeze out a leisure half-hour to visit a barber, hence their long queues.
About this time the statement of Mr. Crankin, of North Yeaston, Rhode Island, that he makes a clear and easy profit of five dollars and twenty cents per hen each year, and nearly forty-four dollars to every duck, and might have increased said profit if he had hatched, rather than sold, seventy-two dozen eggs, struck me as wildly apocryphal. Also that caring for said hens and ducks was merely an incident of his day’s work on the large farm, he working with his laborers. Heart-sick and indignant, contrasting his rosy success with my leaden-hued failure, I decided to give all my ducks away, as they wouldn’t, couldn’t drown, and there would be no use in killing them. But no one wanted them! And everybody smiled quizzically when I proposed the gift.
Just then, as if in direct sarcasm, a friend sent me a paper with an item marked to the effect that a poor young girl had three ducks’ eggs given her as the basis of a solid fortune, and actually cleared one hundred and eighteen dollars from those three eggs the first year.
Another woman solemnly asserts in print a profit of $448.69 from one hundred hens each year.
The census man told me of a woman who had only eighteen hens. They gave her sixteen hundred and ninety eggs, of which she sold eighteen dollars’ worth, leaving plenty for household use.
And my hens and my ducks! In my despair I drove a long way to consult a “duck man.” He looked like the typical Brother Jonathan, only with a longer beard, and his face was haggard, unkempt, anxious. He could scarcely stop to converse, evidently grudged the time, devotes his entire energies from dawn to twilight to slaving for his eight hundred ducklings. He also kept an incubator going all the time.
“Do ducks pay you?” I asked.
“Wall, I’m gettin’ to be somewhat of a bigotist,” he said; “I barely git a livin’.”
“Why Mr. Crankin—” I began.
The name roused his jealous ire, and his voice, a low mumble before, now burst into a loud roar. “Yes, Crankin makes money, has a sight o’ incubators, makes ’em himself, sells a lot, but some say they don’t act like his do when they git off his place; most on ’em seem possessed, but Crankin,hecan manage ’em and makes money too.”
“Do your ducks lay much?”
“Lay! I don’t want ’em to lay! Sell ’em all out at nine weeks, ’fore the pin feathers come; then they’re good eatin’—for them as likes ’em. I’ve heard of yure old lot. Kill ’em, I say, and start new!”
“Crankin says—”
“I don’t care nothing what Crankin says” (here the voice would have filled a cathedral), “I tell ye; me and Crankin’s two different critters!”
So I felt; but it would not do to give up. I purchased an expensive incubator and brooder—needn’t have bought a brooder. I put into the incubator at a time when eggs were scarce and high priced, two hundred eggs—hens’ eggs, ducks’ eggs, goose eggs. The temperature must be kept from 102° to 104°. The lamps blazed up a little on the first day, but after that we kept the heat exactly right by daily watching and night vigils. It engrossed most of the time of four able-bodied victims.
Nothing ever was developed. The eggs were probably cooked that first day!
Now I’m vainly seeking for a purchaser for my I. and B. Terms of sale very reasonable. Great reduction from original price; shall no doubt be forced to give them away to banish painful recollections.
I also invested in turkeys, geese, and peacocks, and a pair of guinea hens to keep hawks away.
For long weary months the geese seemed the only fowls truly at home on my farm. They did their level best. Satisfied that my hens would neither lay nor set, I sent to noted poultry fanciers for “settings” of eggs at three dollars per thirteen, then paid a friendly “hen woman” for assisting in the mysterious evolution of said eggs into various interesting little families old enough to be brought to me.
Many and curious were the casualties befalling these young broods. Chickens are subject to all the infantile diseases of children and many more of their own, and mine were truly afflicted.Imprimis, most would not hatch; the finest Brahma eggs contained the commonest barn-yard fowls. Some stuck to the shell, some were drowned in a saucer of milk, some perished because no lard had been rubbed on their heads, others passed away discouraged by too much lard. Several ate rose bugs with fatal results; others were greedy as to gravel and agonized with distended crops till released by death. They had more “sand” than was good for them. They were raised on “Cat Hill,” and five were captured by felines, and when the remnant was brought to me they disappeared day by day in the most puzzling manner until we caught our mischievous pug, “Tiny Tim,” holding down a beautiful young Leghorn with his cruel paw and biting a piece out of her neck.
So they left me, one by one, like the illusions of youth, until there was no “survival of the fittest.”
In a ragged old barn opposite, a hen had stolen her nest and brought out seventeen vigorous chicks. I paid a large bill for the care of what might have been a splendid collection, and meekly bought that faithful old hen with her large family. It is now a wonder to me that any chickens arrive at maturity. Fowls are afflicted with parasitic wrigglers in their poor little throats. The disease is called “gapes,” because they try to open their bills for more air until a red worm in the trachea causes suffocation. This horrid red worm, called scientificallyScelorostoma syngamus, destroys annuallyhalf a millionof chickens.
Dr. Crisp, of England, says it would be of truly national importance to find the means of preventing its invasion.
The unpleasant results of hens and garden contiguous, Warner has described. They are incompatible if not antagonistic. One man wisely advises: “Fence the garden in and let the chickens run, as the man divided the house with his quarrelsome wife, by taking the inside himself and giving her the outside, that she might have room according to her strength.”
Looking over the long list of diseases to which fowls are subject is dispiriting. I am glad they can’t read them, or they would have all at once, as J.K. Jerome, the witty playwright, decided he had every disease found in a medical dictionary, except housemaid’s knee. Look at this condensed list:
DISEASES OF NERVOUS SYSTEM.—1. Apoplexy. 2. Paralysis. 3. Vertigo. 4. Neuralgia. 5. Debility.DISEASES OF DIGESTIVE ORGANS.—99.DISEASES OF LOCOMOTIVE ORGANS.—1. Rheumatism. 2. Cramp. 3. Gout. 4. Leg weakness. 5. Paralysis of legs. 6. Elephantiasis.Next, diseases caused by parasites.Then, injuries.Lastly, miscellaneous.
DISEASES OF NERVOUS SYSTEM.—1. Apoplexy. 2. Paralysis. 3. Vertigo. 4. Neuralgia. 5. Debility.
DISEASES OF DIGESTIVE ORGANS.—99.
DISEASES OF LOCOMOTIVE ORGANS.—1. Rheumatism. 2. Cramp. 3. Gout. 4. Leg weakness. 5. Paralysis of legs. 6. Elephantiasis.
Next, diseases caused by parasites.
Then, injuries.
Lastly, miscellaneous.
I could add a still longer list of unclassified ills: Homesickness, fits, melancholia, corns, blindness from fighting too much, etc.
Now that I have learned to raise chickens, it is a hard and slow struggle to get any killed. I say in an off-hand manner, with assumed nonchalance: “Ellen, I want Tom to kill a rooster at once for tomorrow’s dinner, and I have an order from a friend for four more, so he must select five to-night.” Then begins the trouble. “Oh,” pleads Ellen, “don’t kill dear Dick! poor, dear Dick! That is Tom’s pet of all; so big and handsome and knows so much! He will jump up on Tom’s shoulder and eat out of his hand and come when he calls—and those big Brahmas—don’t you know how they were brought up by hand, as you might say, and they know me and hang around the door for crumbs, and that beauty of a Wyandock, youcouldn’teathim!” When the matter is decided, as the guillotining is going on, Ellen and I sit listening to the axe thuds and the death squaks, while she wrings her hands, saying: “O dearie me! What a world—the dear Lord ha’ mercy on us poor creatures! What a thing to look into, that we must kill the poor innocents to eat them. And they were so tame and cunning, and would follow me all around!” Then I tell her of the horrors of the French Revolution to distract her attention from the present crisis, and alluded to the horrors of cannibalism recently disclosed in Africa. Then I fall into a queer reverie and imagine how awful it would be if we should ever be called to submit to a race of beings as much larger than we are as we are above the fowls. I almost hear such a monster of a house-wife, fully ninety feet high, say to a servant, looking sternly and critically at me:
“That fat, white creature must be killed; just eats her old head off—will soon be too tough”—Ugh! Here Tom comes with five headless fowls. Wasn’t that a weird fancy of mine?
Truly “Me and Crankin’s two different critters.”
From the following verse, quoted from a recent poultry magazine, I conclude that I must be classed as a “chump.” As it contains the secret of success in every undertaking, it should be committed to memory by all my readers.
“Grit makes the man,The want of it the chump.The men who win,Lay hold, hang on, and hump.”
“Grit makes the man,The want of it the chump.The men who win,Lay hold, hang on, and hump.”
“Grit makes the man,
The want of it the chump.
The men who win,
Lay hold, hang on, and hump.”
“But stop,” says the courteous and prudent reader, “are there any such things as ghosts?”“Any ghostesses!” cries Superstition, who settled long since in the country, near a church yard on a “rising ground,” “any ghostesses! Ay, man, lots on ’em! Bushels on ’em! Sights on ’em! Why, there’s one as walks in our parish, reglar as the clock strikes twelve—and always the same round, over church-stile, round the corner, through the gap, into Shorts Spinney, and so along into our close, where he takes a drink at the pump—for ye see he died in liquor, and then arter he squenched hisself, wanishes into waper.“Then there’s the ghost of old Beales, as goes o’ nights and sows tares in his neighbor’s wheat—I’ve often seed ’em in seed time. They do say that Black Ben, the poacher, have riz, and what’s more, walked slap through all the squire’s steel traps, without springing on ’em. And then there’s Bet Hawkey as murdered her own infant—only the poor little babby hadn’t learned to walk, and so can’t appear ag’in her.”THOMAS HOOD,The Grimsby Ghost.
“But stop,” says the courteous and prudent reader, “are there any such things as ghosts?”
“Any ghostesses!” cries Superstition, who settled long since in the country, near a church yard on a “rising ground,” “any ghostesses! Ay, man, lots on ’em! Bushels on ’em! Sights on ’em! Why, there’s one as walks in our parish, reglar as the clock strikes twelve—and always the same round, over church-stile, round the corner, through the gap, into Shorts Spinney, and so along into our close, where he takes a drink at the pump—for ye see he died in liquor, and then arter he squenched hisself, wanishes into waper.
“Then there’s the ghost of old Beales, as goes o’ nights and sows tares in his neighbor’s wheat—I’ve often seed ’em in seed time. They do say that Black Ben, the poacher, have riz, and what’s more, walked slap through all the squire’s steel traps, without springing on ’em. And then there’s Bet Hawkey as murdered her own infant—only the poor little babby hadn’t learned to walk, and so can’t appear ag’in her.”
THOMAS HOOD,The Grimsby Ghost.
That dark little room I described as so convenient during a terrific thunderstorm or the prowling investigations of a burglar, began after a while to get mysterious and uncanny, and I disliked, nay, dreaded to enter it after dark. It was so still, so black, so empty, so chilly with a sort of supernatural chill, so silent, that imagination conjured up sounds such as I had never heard before. I had been told of an extremely old woman, a great-great-grandmother, bed-ridden, peevish, and weak-minded, who had occupied that room for nearly a score of years, apparently forgotten by fate, and left to drag out a monotonous, weary existence on not her “mattress grave” (like the poet Heine), but on an immensely thick feather bed; only a care, a burden, to her relations.
As twilight came on, I always carefully closed that door and shut the old lady in to sleep by herself. For it seemed that she was still there, still propped up in an imaginary bed, mumbling incoherently of the past, or moaning out some want, or calling for some one to bring a light, as she used to.
Once in a while, they told me, she would regain her strength suddenly and astonish the family by appearing at the door. When the grand-daughter was enjoying a Sunday night call from her “intended” it was rather embarrassing.
I said nothing to my friends about this unpleasant room. But several were susceptible to the strange influence. One thought she should not mind so much if the door swung open, and aportièreconcealed the gloom. So a cheerful cretonne soon was hung. Then the fancy came that the curtain stirred and swayed as if some one or something was groping feebly with ghostly or ghastly fingers behind it. And one night, when sitting late and alone over the embers of my open fire, feeling a little forlorn, I certainly heard moans coming from that direction.
It was not the wind, for, although it was late October and the breezes were sighing over summer’s departure, this sound was entirely different and distinct. Then (and what a shiver ran down my back!) I remembered hearing that a woman had been killed by falling down the steep cellar stairs, and the spot on the left side where she was found unconscious and bleeding had been pointed out to me. There, I heard it again! Was it the wraith of the aged dame or the cries of that unfortunate creature? Hush! Ellen can’t have fallen down!
I am really scared; the lamp seems to be burning dim and the last coal has gone out. Is it some restless spirit, so unhappy that it must moan out its weary plaint? I ought to be brave and go at once and look boldly down the cellar stairs and draw aside that wavingportière. Oh, dear! If I only had some one to go with me and hold a light and—there it is—the third time. Courage vanished. It might be some dreadful tramp hiding and trying to drive me up-stairs, so he could get the silver, and he would gladly murder me for ten cents—
“Tom,” I cried. “Tom, come here.” But Tom, my six-footer factotum, made no response.
I could stand it no longer—theportièreseemed fairly alive, and I rushed out to the kitchen where Ellen sat reading theLedger, deep in the horrors of The Forsaken Inn. “Ellen, I’m ashamed, but I’m really frightened. I do believe somebody is in that horrid dark room, or in the cellar, and whereisTom?
“Bedad, Miss, and you’ve frightened the heart right out o’ me. It might be a ghost, for there are such things (Heaven help us!), and I’ve seen ’em in this country and in dear old Ireland, and so has Tom.”
“You’ve seen ghosts?”
“Yes, indeed, Miss, but I’ve never spoke to any, for you’ve no right to speak to a ghost, and if you do you will surely die.” Tom now came in and soon satisfied me that there was no living thing in the darkness, so I sat down and listened to Ellen’s experiences with ghosts.
THE FORMER MRS. WILKES.—“Now this happened in New York city, Miss, in West 28th Street, and is every word true, for, my dear, I saw it with my own eyes. I went to bed, about half-past nine it was this night, and I was lying quietly in bed, looking up to the ceiling; no light on account of the mosquitoes, and Maud, the little girl I was caring for, a romping dear of seven or eight, a motherless child, had been tossing about restless like, and her arm was flung over me. All at once I saw a lady standing by the side of the bed in her night dress and looking earnestly at the child beyond me. She then came nearer, took Maud’s arm off me, and gently straightened her in bed, then stroked her face, both cheeks—fondly, you know—and then stood and looked at the child. I said not a word, but I wasn’t one bit afraid for I thought it was a living lady. I could tell the color of her eyes and hair and just how she looked every way. In the morning I described her to Mrs. Wilkes, and asked, ‘Is there any strange lady in the house?’ ‘No, Ellen. Why?’ she said. Then I said: ‘Why, there certainly was a pleasant-looking lady in my room last night, in her night dress, and she patted Maud as if she thought a sight of her.’
“‘Why,’ said my mistress, ‘that is surely the former Mrs. Wilkes!’
“She said that the older daughter had seen her several times standing before her glass, fixing her hair and looking at herself, but if she spoke to her or tried to speak, her mother would take up something and shake it at her. And once when we were going up-stairs together Alice screamed, and said that her mother was at the top of the stairs and blew her cold breath right down on her. The stepmother started to give her her slipper, but the father pitied her and would not allow her to be whipped, and said ‘I’ll go up to bed with you, Alice.’”
“Did you ever see the lady in white again, Ellen?”
“Never, Ma’am, nor did I ever see any other ghost in this country that I was sure was a ghost, but—Ireland, dear old Ireland, oh, that’s an ancient land, and they have both ghosts and fairies and banshees too, and many’s the story I’ve heard over there, and from my own dear mother’s lips, and she would not tell a lie (Heaven rest her soul!), and I’ve seen them myself over there, and so has Tom and his brother too, Miss. Oh, many’s the story I could tell!”
“Well, Ellen, let me have one of your own—your very best.” And I went for pencil and pad.
“And are ye going to pin down my story. Well, Miss, if ye take it just as I say, and then fix it proper to be read, they’ll like it, for people are crazy now to get the true ghost stories of dear old Ireland. O Miss, when you go over, don’t forget my native place. It has a real castle and a part of it is haunted, and the master doesn’t like to live there—only comes once a year or so, for hunting—and the rabbits there are as thick as they can be and the river chuck full of fish, but no one can touch any game, or even take out one fish, or they would be punished.”
“Yes, Ellen it’s hard, and all wrong, but we are wandering away from your ghosts, and you know I am going to take notes. So begin.”
“Well, Miss, I was a sort of companion or maid to a blind lady in my own town. I slept in a little room just across the landing from hers, so as to always be within reach of her. I was just going to bed, when she called for me to come in and see if there was something in the room—something alive, she thought, that had been hopping, hopping all around her bed, and frightened her dreadfully, poor thing, for, you remember, she was stone blind, Miss, which made it worse. So I hurried in and I shook the curtains, looked behind the bureau and under the bed, and tried everywhere for whatever might be hopping around, but could find nothing and heard not a sound. While I was there all was still. Then I went into my room again, and left the door open, as I thought Miss Lacy would feel more comfortable about it, and I was hardly in my bed when she called again and screamed out with fear, for It was hopping round the bed. She said I must go down-stairs and bring a candle. So I had to go down-stairs to the pantry all alone and get the candle. Then I searched as before, but found nothing—not a thing. Well, my dear, I went into my room and kept my candle lighted this time. The third time she called me she was standing on her pillow, shivering with fright, and begged me to bring the light. It was sad, because she was stone blind. She told me how It went hopping around the room, with its legs tied like. And after looking once more and finding nothing, she said I’d have to sleep in the bed with her and bring a chair near the bed and put the lighted candle on it. For a long time we kept awake, and watched and listened, but nothing happened, nothing appeared. We kept awake as long as we could, but at last our eyes grew very heavy, and the lady seemed to feel more easy. So I snuffed out the candle. Out It hopped and kept a jumping on one leg like from one side to the other. We were so much afraid we covered our faces; we dreaded to see It, so we hid our eyes under the sheet, and she clung on to me all shaking; she felt worse because she was blind.
“We fell asleep at daylight, and when I told Monk, the butler, he said it was a corpse, sure—a corpse whose legs had been tied to keep them straight and the cords had not been taken off, the feet not being loosened. Why my own dear mother, that’s dead many a year (Heaven bless her departed spirit!)—she would never tell a word that was not true—she saw a ghost hopping in that way, tied-like, jumping around a bed—blue as a blue bag; just after the third day she was buried, and my mother (the Lord bless her soul!) told me the sons went to her grave and loosened the cords and she never came back any more. Isn’t it awful? And, bedad, Miss, it’s every word true. I can tell you of a young man I knew who looked into a window at midnight (after he had been playing cards, Miss, gambling with the other boys) and saw something awful strange, and was turned by ghosts into ashadow.”
This seemed to be a thrilling theme, such as Hawthorne would have been able to weave into the weirdest of weird tales, and I said, “Go on.”
“Well, he used to go playing cards about three miles from his home with a lot of young men, for his mother wouldn’t have cards played in her house, and she thought it was wicked, and begged him not to play. It’s a habit with the young men of Ireland—don’t know as it’s the same in other countries—and they play for a goose or a chicken. They go to some vacant house to get away from their fathers, they’re so against it at home. Why, my brother-in-law used to go often to such a house on the side of a country road. Each man would in turn provide the candles to play by, and as this house was said to be haunted, bedad they had it all to themselves. Well, this last night that ever they played there—it was Tom’s own brother that told me this—just as they were going to deal the cards, a tall gentleman came out from a room that had been the kitchen. He walked right up to them—he was dressed in black cloth clothes, and wore a high black hat—and came right between two of the men and told them to deal out the cards. They were too frightened even to speak, so the stranger took the cards himself and dealt around to each man. And afterward he played with them; then he looked at every man in turn and walked out of the room. As soon as he cleared out of the place, the men all went away as quick as ever they could, and didn’t stop to put out the lights. Each man cleared with himself and never stopped to look behind. And no one cared to play cards in that house afterward any more. That was Tom’s own brother; and now the poor young man who was going home at midnight saw a light in one of the houses by the road, so he turned toward it, thinking to light his pipe. Just before knocking, he looked in at the window. As soon as he peeped in the light went out on him, and still he could see crowds of people, as thick as grass, just as you see ’em at a fair—so thick they hadn’t room to stand—and they kept swaying back and forth, courtesying like. The kitchen was full, and looking through a door he saw a lot more of fine ladies and gentlemen; they were laughing and having great fun, running round the table setting out cups and saucers, just as if they were having a ball. Just then a big side-board fell over with a great crash, and all the fine people scampered away, and all was dark. So he turned away on his heel and was so frightened, his mother said, he could hardly get home from fear, and he had three whole miles to go. Next day he was thrashing corn in the barn and something upset him and pitched him head foremost across the flail. He rose, and three times he was pitched like that across the flail, so he gave up and went home. His mother asked him: ‘Johnny, what is the matter with you? You do look very bad!’ So he up and told her what had happened to him in the barn, and what he saw the night before. And he took suddenly sick and had to keep his bed for nine weeks, and when he got up and was walking around, he wasn’t himself any more, and the sister says to the mother: ‘Mother, I’m sure that it isn’t Johnny that’s there. It’s only his shadow, for when I look at him, it isn’t his features or face, but the face of another thing. He used to be so pleasant and cheerful, but now he looks like quite another man. Mother,’ said she, ‘we haven’t Johnny at all.’ Soon he got a little stronger and went to the capital town with corn. Several other men went also to get their corn ground. They were all coming home together a very cold night, and the men got up and sat on their sacks of corn. The other horses walked on all right with them, but Johnny’s horses wouldn’t move, not one step while he was on top of the load. Well, my dear, he called for the rest to come and help him—to see if the horses would go for them. But they would not move one step, though they whipped them and shouted at them to start on, for Johnny he was as heavy as lead. And he had to get down. Soon as he got down, the horses seemed glad and went off on a gallop after the rest of the train. So they all went off together, and Johnny wandered away into the bogs. His friends supposed, of course, he was coming on, thought he was walking beside his load; the snow was falling down, and perhaps they were a little afraid. He was left behind. They scoured the country for him next day, and, bedad, they found him, stiff dead, sitting against a fence. There’s where they found him. They brought him on a door to his mother. Oh, it was a sad thing to see—to see her cry and hear her mourn!”
“And what more?” I asked.
“That’s all. He was waked and buried, and that’s what he got for playing cards! And that’s all as true as ever could be true, for it’s myself knew the old mother, and she told me it her very self, and she cried many tears for her son.”
But the sheep shearing came, and the hay season next, and then the harvest of small corn ... then the sweating of the apples, and the turning of the cider mill and the stacking of the firewood, and netting of the wood-cocks, and the springes to be mended in the garden and by the hedgerows, where the blackbirds hop to the molehills in the white October mornings and gray birds come to look for snails at the time when the sun is rising. It is wonderful how Time runs away when all these things, and a great many others, come in to load him down the hill, and prevent him from stopping to look about. And I, for my part, can never conceive how people who live in towns and cities, where neither lambs nor birds are (except in some shop windows), nor growing corn, nor meadow grass, nor even so much as a stick to cut, or a stile to climb and sit down upon—how these poor folk get through their lives without being utterly weary of them, and dying from pure indolence, is a thing God only knows, if his mercy allows him to think of it.LORNA DOONE.
But the sheep shearing came, and the hay season next, and then the harvest of small corn ... then the sweating of the apples, and the turning of the cider mill and the stacking of the firewood, and netting of the wood-cocks, and the springes to be mended in the garden and by the hedgerows, where the blackbirds hop to the molehills in the white October mornings and gray birds come to look for snails at the time when the sun is rising. It is wonderful how Time runs away when all these things, and a great many others, come in to load him down the hill, and prevent him from stopping to look about. And I, for my part, can never conceive how people who live in towns and cities, where neither lambs nor birds are (except in some shop windows), nor growing corn, nor meadow grass, nor even so much as a stick to cut, or a stile to climb and sit down upon—how these poor folk get through their lives without being utterly weary of them, and dying from pure indolence, is a thing God only knows, if his mercy allows him to think of it.
LORNA DOONE.
A farm-house looks on the outside like a quiet place. No men are seen about, front windows are closely shaded, front door locked. Go round to the back door; nobody seems to be at home. If by chance you do find, after long bruising of knuckles, that you have roused an inmate, it is some withered, sad-faced old dame, who is indifferent and hopelessly deaf, or a bare-footed, stupid urchin, who stares as if you had dropped from another planet, and a cool “Dunno” is the sole response to all inquiries.
All seems at a dead standstill. In reality everything and everybody is going at full speed, transpiring and perspiring to such a degree that, like a swiftly whirling top, it does not appear to move.
Friends think of me as not living, but simply existing, and marvel that I can endure such monotony. On the contrary, I live in a constant state of excitement, hurry, and necessity for immediate action.
The cows were continually getting out of pasture and into the corn; the pigs, like the chickens, evinced decided preference for the garden. The horse would break his halter and dart down the street, or, if in pasture, would leap the barbed-wire fence, at the risk of laming his legs for life, and dash into a neighbor’s yard where children and babies were sunning on the grass.
Rival butchers and bakers would drive up simultaneously from different directions and plead for patronage and instant attention.
The vegetables must be gathered and carried to market; every animal was ravenously hungry at all hours, and didn’t hesitate to speak of it. The magnificent peacock would wander off two miles, choosing the railroad track for his rambles, and loved to light on Si Evans’s barn; then a boy must be detailed to recover the prize bird, said boy depending on a reward. His modest-hued consort would seek the deep hedges back of a distant swamp.
Friends would come from a distance to surprise and cheer me in my lonely retreat just at the time that the butter must positively be made, while the flowers were choking for water, smothered with weeds, “pus’ley,” of course, pre-eminent. Then a book agent would appear, blind, but doubly persistent, with a five-dollar illustrated volume recounting minutely the Johnstown horror. And one of my dogs would be apt at this crisis to pursue and slay a chicken or poison himself with fly-paper. Every laboring man for miles around would come with an air of great importance to confidentially warn me against every other man that could be employed, with the stereotyped phrase in closing: “Well, whatever you do” (as if I might be left to do anything) “don’t hire John Smallpate or Bill Storer. I’ve known him, man and boy, for thirty years; you’ll do well not to trusthim!”
Yet these same men who had so villified each other could be seen nightly lounging in front of the grocery, discussing politics and spitting in sweet unison.
The general animosity of my entire family to each other caused constant interruptions.
“Sandy,” the handsome setter, loathed the pug, and tried to bite his neck in a fatal way. He also chased the rabbits, trod on young turkeys so that they were no more, drove the cat out of the barn and up a tree, barked madly at the cows, enraging those placid animals, and doted on frightening the horse.
The cat allowed mice to roam merrily through the grain bins, preferring robins and sparrows, especially young and happy mothers, to a proper diet; was fond of watching the chickens with wicked, malicious, greedy, dangerous eyes, and was always ready to make a sly spring for my canaries.
The rabbits (pretty innocent little creatures I had thought them, as I gazed at their representatives of white canton flannel, solidly stuffed, with such charming eyes of pink beads) girded all my young trees and killed them before I dreamed of such mischief, nibbled at every tender sprout, every swelling bud, were so agile that they could not be captured, and became such a maddening nuisance that I hired a boy to take them away. I fully understand the recent excitement of the Australians over the rabbit scourge which threatened to devastate their land.
The relations were strained between my cows; mother and daughter of a noble line; they always fed at opposite corners of the field, indulging in serious fights when they met.
My doves! I am almost ready to say that they were more annoying than all the rest of my motley collection, picked all seeds out of the ground faster than they could be put in, so large spaces sowed with rye lay bare all summer, and ate most of the corn and grain that was intended to fatten and stimulate my fowls.
Doves are poetical and pleasing, pigeons ditto—in literature, and at a safe distance from one’s own barn. It’s a pretty sight at sunset on a summer’s eve to see them poising, wheeling, swirling, round a neighbor’s barn. Their rainbow hues gleam brightly in the sun as they preen their feathers or gently “coo-oo, I love oo,” on the ridge pole. I always longed to own some, but now the illusion is past. They have been admired and petted for ages, consecrated as emblems of innocence and peace and sanctity, regarded as almost sacred from the earliest antiquity. They have been idealized and praised from Noah to Anacreon, both inclined to inebriety! But in reality they are a dirty, destructive, greedy lot, and though fanciers sell them at high prices, they only command twenty-five cents per pair when sold for the market!
The hens lost half their feathers, often an eye, occasionally a life, in deadly feuds. My spunky little bantam game cock was always challenging one of my monster roosters and laying him low, so he had to be sent away.
John, my eccentric assistant, could abide no possible rival, insulted every man engaged to help him, occasionally indulging in a free fight after too frequent visits to the cider barrels of my next neighbor, so he had to follow the bantam.
Another distress was the constant calls of natives with the most undesirable things for me to buy; two or three calls daily for a long time. Boys with eager, ingenuous faces bringing carrier pigeons—pretty creatures—and I had been told there was money in pigeons. I paid them extortionate prices on account of extreme ignorance; and the birds, of course, flew home as soon as released, to be bought again by some gullible amateur. I had omitted to secure the names and addresses of these guileless lads.
A sandy-haired, lisping child with chronic catarrh offered me a lot of petrats!
“I hear you like pets,” she said, “Well, I’ve got some tame rats, a father and mother and thirteen little ones, and a mother with four. They’re orful cunning. Hope you’ll take ’em.”
A big, red-faced, black-bearded, and determined man drove one day into the yard with an immense wagon, in which was standing a stupid, vicious old goat, and almost insisted on leaving it at a most ridiculously high price.
“Heard that the woman that had come to live here wanted most every animal that Noah got into the ark; was sure she’d like a goat.” It was with considerable difficulty that he could be induced to take it away.
Dogs, dogs, dogs—from mastiff to mongrel, from St. Bernard to toy poodle—the yard really swarmed with them just before the first of May, when dog taxes must be paid!
A crow that could talk, but rather objectionably, was offered me.
A pert little boy, surrounded by his equally pert mates, said, after coming uninvited to look over my assortment: “Got most everything, hain’t ye? Got a monkey?”
Then his satellites all giggled.
“No, not yet. Will notyoucome in?”
Second giggle, less hearty.
A superannuated clergyman walked three miles and a quarter in a heavy rain, minus umbrella, to bring me a large and common pitcher, badly cracked and of no original value; heard I was collecting old china. Then, after making a long call, drew out a tiny package from his vest pocket and offered for sale two time-worn cheap rings taken from his mother’s dead hand. They were mere ghosts of rings that had once meant so much of joy or sorrow, pathetic souvenirs, one would think, to a loving son. He would also sell me his late father’s old sermons for a good sum!
This reminded me of Sydney Smith’s remark to an old lady who was sorely afflicted with insomnia: “Have you ever tried one of my sermons?”
Perhaps I have said enough to prove that life in a bucolic solitude may be something more varied than is generally—don’t let that old peddler come into the house, say we want nothing, and then tell the ladies I’ll be down directly—and, OEllen, call Tom! Those ducks are devouring his new cabbage-plants and one of the calves has got over the stone wall and—what?
“He’s gone to Dog Corner for the cow-doctor.”
—Yes, more varied than is generally supposed!