"Who hath talked to the shy bird-people,And counseled the feathered breastTo follow the sagging rain-windOver the purple crest?"
"Who hath talked to the shy bird-people,And counseled the feathered breastTo follow the sagging rain-windOver the purple crest?"
"Who hath talked to the shy bird-people,
And counseled the feathered breast
To follow the sagging rain-wind
Over the purple crest?"
But on the sixth day of March Robin Hood came home. There had been a baby blizzard the night before and, as we returned from college in the early afternoon, I noticed birdtracks in the light snow that still mantled the piazza rail.
"See those prints, right where Robin Hood used to sit and watch us take our supper!" I exclaimed, a wild hope knocking at my heart, but Joy-of-Life thought it a case of hungry tree sparrows and, with her especial tenderness for the plucky, one-legged fox sparrow that had consorted with them all winter, went in to find them a choice handful of scraps. But when, a few minutes later, I entered my chamber, there outside his accustomed window, on the feeding-box now drifted over with snow, sat a great, plump, glossy redbreast, staring into the room with Robin's own bright eyes and cocking his head to listen to our welcome. He fluttered back to the nearest tree, when we opened the window, indicating that he had learned a thing or two, in the gossip of the long aerial journeys, about the human race, nor did he ever again enter the house nor let us touch him, but he kept close by, for weeks, perching in his old familiar places on roof and rail and window-ledge, hopping in our walks and gamboling in our eyes. Out in the open, he would come within a few inches of us and there take his stand and chirp the confidences that we would have given all our dictionaries to comprehend. He was such a tall, stately robin, with such an imposing air of travel and experience as he stood erect, swelling his bright breast with the effort to relate his Winter's Tale, that Joy-of-Life rechristened him Lord Bobs.
In course of time our gallant fledgling appeared in company with a mate, most disappointing to our romantic anticipation,—a faded crosspatch old enough to be his grandmother, a very shrew who scolded him outrageously whenever she saw him lingering beside us. She told him we were ogres, alligators, everything that was horrible and dangerous, and threatened to peck out his last pin-feather unless he flew away from us at once. A selfish old body she was, too, monopolizing the rock-bath, as if she were taking a cure for rheumatism, whole hours at a time, while Robin Hood, hot and dusty, waited on her pleasure in the drooping branches above. But despite her shrill remonstrances, he would still visit the window box, perching on Downy Woodpecker's marrow-bone for an opera stage and trilling his matins and vespers to our delighted ears. We were as proud of Robin Hood's singing as if we had taught him ourselves. Between his carols our troubadour would take a little refreshment, trying in turn Nuthatch's lump of suet, Bluejay's rinds of cheese, Junco's crumbs and his own mocking-bird food, or quaffing rain water from Chickadee's nutshell cups. He would sometimes hop to the sill and, close against the glass, watch all the doings in that world which lay about him in his infancy. We looked forward to an hour when he might bring his own little speckles to play, as he had loved to play, with the empty nutshells, but Mrs. Robin hustled him off to the woods for the nesting season and we were never able after that first spring to distinguish him with certainty among our robin callers. None the less he had made the summer and all summers happier for us by his gracious though guarded pardon for our unkindness.
"Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves himWith the day's shame upon him,"
"Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves himWith the day's shame upon him,"
"Truth never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves him
With the day's shame upon him,"
and even over wild-bird tradition and matrimonial tyranny the truth of our love for Robin Hood, its single lapse forgiven, had prevailed.
WHY THE SPIRE FELL
Our Emperor built a marble churchSo holy never a bird might perchOn cross or crocket or gilded crown,A fretted minster of far renown,But still the spire came crashing down.They stoned the swallow and limed the lark;A rosy throat was an easy mark;The tiniest wren that built her nestIn Christ's own halo, on Mary's breast,Was scared away like a demon guest.Once, twice, thrice, the glistening spireThat soared from the central tower, higherThan all its clustered pinnacles, fell,And not one of the carven saints could tellThe cause, though the emperor quizzed them well.Down in the cloister all strewn with chipsOf alabaster and ivory tipsOf pastoral staffs and angel wings,In a rainbow ruin of sacred thingsHe held high court in the way of kings.All the while in a royal rageHe pelted with fragments of foliage,Curly acanthus and vineleaf scroll,Finial, dogtooth and aureole,The linnets and finches who came to condole.Crowned with a cobwebby cardinal's hatThat swooped from the vaulted roof like a bat,On a tilted porphyry plinth for a throne,The emperor summoned in thunder toneThe hallowed folk of metal and stone.Martyrs, apostles, one and all,Tiptoed down from the quaking wall;Crusaders, uncrossing their legs of brass,Sprang from their tombs; over crackle of glassBalaam rode on a headless ass.But not one of the sculptured cavalcadeFlocking from choir and creamy façade,Deep-arched portal and pillared aisleHad a word on his lips, though all the whileGentle St. Francis was seen to smile.Whistles, chuckles, warbles triedTo give the answer the saints denied;Gurgles, tinkles, twitters, trills,Carols wild as wayward rillsTroubadouring daffodils.St. Peter, high in his canopied nicheSet with jewels exceeding rich,Was dancing a hornpipe over the clock,But before the gargoyles had time to mockFrom his shoulder crowed St. Peter's cock."Kirikiree!Creative LoveThat folds the emperor folds the dove.No church is finished, though grand it be,That lacks the beauty of charity.Buttress your spire.Kirikiree!"So our Emperor reared the spire anew,Yon shaft of glory that cleaves the blue,Held in its place by the lightest thingsGod ever fashioned, the wee, soft wingsOf the birds that join in our worshipings.
Our Emperor built a marble churchSo holy never a bird might perchOn cross or crocket or gilded crown,A fretted minster of far renown,But still the spire came crashing down.
Our Emperor built a marble church
So holy never a bird might perch
On cross or crocket or gilded crown,
A fretted minster of far renown,
But still the spire came crashing down.
They stoned the swallow and limed the lark;A rosy throat was an easy mark;The tiniest wren that built her nestIn Christ's own halo, on Mary's breast,Was scared away like a demon guest.
They stoned the swallow and limed the lark;
A rosy throat was an easy mark;
The tiniest wren that built her nest
In Christ's own halo, on Mary's breast,
Was scared away like a demon guest.
Once, twice, thrice, the glistening spireThat soared from the central tower, higherThan all its clustered pinnacles, fell,And not one of the carven saints could tellThe cause, though the emperor quizzed them well.
Once, twice, thrice, the glistening spire
That soared from the central tower, higher
Than all its clustered pinnacles, fell,
And not one of the carven saints could tell
The cause, though the emperor quizzed them well.
Down in the cloister all strewn with chipsOf alabaster and ivory tipsOf pastoral staffs and angel wings,In a rainbow ruin of sacred thingsHe held high court in the way of kings.
Down in the cloister all strewn with chips
Of alabaster and ivory tips
Of pastoral staffs and angel wings,
In a rainbow ruin of sacred things
He held high court in the way of kings.
All the while in a royal rageHe pelted with fragments of foliage,Curly acanthus and vineleaf scroll,Finial, dogtooth and aureole,The linnets and finches who came to condole.
All the while in a royal rage
He pelted with fragments of foliage,
Curly acanthus and vineleaf scroll,
Finial, dogtooth and aureole,
The linnets and finches who came to condole.
Crowned with a cobwebby cardinal's hatThat swooped from the vaulted roof like a bat,On a tilted porphyry plinth for a throne,The emperor summoned in thunder toneThe hallowed folk of metal and stone.
Crowned with a cobwebby cardinal's hat
That swooped from the vaulted roof like a bat,
On a tilted porphyry plinth for a throne,
The emperor summoned in thunder tone
The hallowed folk of metal and stone.
Martyrs, apostles, one and all,Tiptoed down from the quaking wall;Crusaders, uncrossing their legs of brass,Sprang from their tombs; over crackle of glassBalaam rode on a headless ass.
Martyrs, apostles, one and all,
Tiptoed down from the quaking wall;
Crusaders, uncrossing their legs of brass,
Sprang from their tombs; over crackle of glass
Balaam rode on a headless ass.
But not one of the sculptured cavalcadeFlocking from choir and creamy façade,Deep-arched portal and pillared aisleHad a word on his lips, though all the whileGentle St. Francis was seen to smile.
But not one of the sculptured cavalcade
Flocking from choir and creamy façade,
Deep-arched portal and pillared aisle
Had a word on his lips, though all the while
Gentle St. Francis was seen to smile.
Whistles, chuckles, warbles triedTo give the answer the saints denied;Gurgles, tinkles, twitters, trills,Carols wild as wayward rillsTroubadouring daffodils.
Whistles, chuckles, warbles tried
To give the answer the saints denied;
Gurgles, tinkles, twitters, trills,
Carols wild as wayward rills
Troubadouring daffodils.
St. Peter, high in his canopied nicheSet with jewels exceeding rich,Was dancing a hornpipe over the clock,But before the gargoyles had time to mockFrom his shoulder crowed St. Peter's cock.
St. Peter, high in his canopied niche
Set with jewels exceeding rich,
Was dancing a hornpipe over the clock,
But before the gargoyles had time to mock
From his shoulder crowed St. Peter's cock.
"Kirikiree!Creative LoveThat folds the emperor folds the dove.No church is finished, though grand it be,That lacks the beauty of charity.Buttress your spire.Kirikiree!"
"Kirikiree!Creative Love
That folds the emperor folds the dove.
No church is finished, though grand it be,
That lacks the beauty of charity.
Buttress your spire.Kirikiree!"
So our Emperor reared the spire anew,Yon shaft of glory that cleaves the blue,Held in its place by the lightest thingsGod ever fashioned, the wee, soft wingsOf the birds that join in our worshipings.
So our Emperor reared the spire anew,
Yon shaft of glory that cleaves the blue,
Held in its place by the lightest things
God ever fashioned, the wee, soft wings
Of the birds that join in our worshipings.
AN EASTER CHICK
"Only, what I feel is, that no charity at all can get rid of a certain natural unkindness which I find in things themselves."
—Pater'sMarius the Epicurean.
The grippe had held me a prostrate prisoner for weeks. Books, pencils, people were forbidden. It was a strange but not unhappy Lent to lie helpless day after day, gazing through my blessed square of window into a first snowy, then blowy, often rainy and rarely sunshiny patch of woodland, watching the brown oak leaves whirl in hurricane dances above the pine-tops, and the crows wing their strong flight against the gray of the sky. As a cumberer of the earth, I was meekly grateful for the least attention from this active outdoor world, for the cheery pipings of the chickadees, whose wee black bills pounded the marrow-bone on the window-sill, for the guttural greetings of the white-breasted nuthatches who played the acrobat on the swinging, open-work bag of cracked walnuts outside the pane, even for the jeers of the bluejays who swooped to the sash and dashed off like triumphant Dick Turpins with our bounty of bread and cheese.
So Joy-of-Life, hearing of a Boston confectioner's pious offer to bestow an Easter chicken on every customer who should alleviate the fast by the purchase of two pounds of expensive candies at any time during Holy Week, thought she would add to my feathered acquaintance a more intimate companion. Herself an abominator of sweets, she heroically passed a dollar and a half across the counter and received in exchange, beside two boxes of riotous living, a tiny chick, only a day or so out from egg and incubator.
It was pretty, she said, to see the interest with which the tired shop-girls bent over that fluffy morsel of life, petting it with light touches and soothing words, as it was tucked away, with Indian meal for provender and a wad of cotton-wool for bedding, in a gay pasteboard houselet. The color of this miniature mansion was russet flecked with black. The door was a painted sham, but the red-tiled roof swung open. The window boasted four oblong apertures, and the whole establishment was symmetrically set in a half-inch estate of the reddest pasteboard clay. The girl made the roof secure with a few turns of silver cord and the captive was reduced to thrusting an indignant yellow bill through one after another of his window openings, expostulating with all creation in a series of shrill chirps. As the customer stepped out with her premium in hand, the candy-coveting group of ragamuffins outside the window surged forward in rapture at sight and sound of the chicken, and one particularly grimy urchin reached up both arms toward it with such an imploring gesture that the birdling almost changed ownership then and there. But Joy-of-Life bethought herself in time of the conditions of tenement and alley, not favorable to the development of any sort of biped, and said:
"It is for a sick lady. Don't you want her to have it?"
And the tatterdemalion slowly dropped his wistful hands, sighing dutifully, "Yes, m'm."
The chicken-bearer's dignified progress, "cheep, cheep, cheep," across the Common and Public Gardens and through the Back Bay section, afforded her a new gauge for testing human nature. Colonial Dames who looked an aristocratic rebuke she put lower in the scale of sympathy than the Italian organ-grinder whose black eyes laughed frankly into hers, while the maid who opened a door in Newbury street, where Joy-of-Life had a call to make, fell with her shocked, contemptuous stare quite under passing rank.
It was late in the evening before I heard upon the stairs a welcome tread, mounting to that queer accompaniment of cheep, cheep, cheep, now pitched upon a key, had we but ears to hear, of acute distress. My delight in greeting the chicken was not reciprocated, and no wonder. Our unconscious, ignorant crimes against his frail little being had already begun. Joy-of-Life, ever most tender toward the weak, enjoyed, moreover, the advantage of having been reared upon a farm, where she had often watched the life of coop and poultry-yard, but not even she was wise enough to give that chicken comfort.
She had carefully seen to it, all the journey through, that he had oxygen enough. The March wind blew so harshly that she had wanted to shelter the fairy chalet under her cloak, but had feared that the yellow bill, forever thrusting itself through the small casement, would gasp for air. Air! That is the least of a chicken's wants. With all his baby energy, Microbe, as we promptly christened him, had called for heat, heat, heat, and had not been understood. Those thin pasteboard walls and that shred of cotton-wool had left him practically naked to the blast, and he was chilled—poor innocent—to the bone.
And still, in our big, human obtuseness, we did not comprehend. We brought him meal mixed with cold water—an atrocious diet from which he angrily turned away. All at cross purposes, we flattered him foolishly in our alien tongue, while he remonstrated passionately in his. At last the warmth of the room and very weariness quieted that incorrigible cheep a little, and he was put downstairs out of invalid hearing, with a strip of batting cast, like a snowdrift, over his jaunty dwelling.
The family went snugly to bed, while the furnace fire burned lower and lower and the chill of the small hours stole through the house. A less mettlesome chicken, overwhelmed with the loneliness and cruel cold, would have yielded up its accusing little ghost then and there, but this mite had a marvelous spirit of his own and struggled against fate like a De Wet.
In that heavy hour before the dawn, Joy-of-Life was roused from sleep by such desperate chicken shrieks, "Yep, yep, yep! Help, help, help!" that no doors could shut them out. Shivering in her dressing-gown she went down to our unhappy fosterling, who lay stiff and straight, with head thrust forward and legs stretched back, apparentlyin articulo mortis. The rigid bit of body was cold to her touch, and the only hopeful sign was that shrill, protesting chirp, into which all remaining vitality seemed to be forced. Holding the downy ball compassionately between her palms, this ineffectual giantess—from Microbe's point of view—reflected on the possibilities of the situation only to be baffled. The kitchen fire was out, the oven had not a hint of warmth in it, there was no hot water for the rubber bag. Besides, the chicken seemed too far gone for restoration, and she guiltily smothered him away under the fold of cotton batting and retreated to her chamber. But Microbe had by no means surrendered his sacred little claims to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The persistent prick of his muffled, frantic cries drove sleep from her pillow. She rose once more and, by inspiration, carried the diminutive mansion down cellar, where she placed it on top of the furnace! Instantly the genial heat reached that exhausted chick, who had battled for it so valiantly and long. The white-barred lids slipped up over the round black eyes—for chickens literally "shut their peepers up"—and he was asleep before his rescuer had turned away.
Joy-of-Life did not believe such a day-old atom of mortality could survive this woeful night. She came to my bedside at the breakfast hour and prepared me solemnly for word of Microbe's premature decease. But little did we know as yet the meaning of that maligned phrase "chicken-hearted." She descended at a funereal pace to the cellar, but with the sound of her swift returning feet I laughed to hear, clearer from stair to stair, an eager, spirited little pipe, "Chip, chip, chip! What's up now? Where are we going on this trip, trip?"
Such a wide-awake, enterprising speck of poultry it was that Joy-of-Life proudly set upon the counterpane! He gave prompt proof of his activity by scrambling madly for my plate, and fluttered down, with yellow winglets spread, exactly in the center of my slice of toast.
"It's spring chicken on toast he's giving yez," cried our delighted Mary, and in honor of that ready display of Irish humor, his name was forthwith abbreviated to Mike.
Then he hopped up into my neck, cuddled down, sang a little, contented song and went off to sleep again, waking to find himself the ruler of the roost.
Word of our mutual devotion went abroad and forthwith the critics began. A high-minded friend sent word that if she heard of my lavishing any more affection on that ridiculous little rooster, she would come and wring his yellow neck, and even the Madre herself, she who had borne with my foibles longest and most indulgently, wrote in a flash of scandalous uncharity that she wished I would rest content with the wild birds that God had made, and not waste attention on an illegitimate, incubator chicken.
But "God be with trewthe qwer he be!" The foolish fact is that, in the restlessness of convalescence, when work and worry, thought and humanity must still be shooed from the threshold, I found hourly mirth and comfort in that dot of sunshine. The phenomenal mists and rains of this first April of the new century caused such a dearth of golden lights in the world that a yellow chicken acquired peculiar values. The furnace-man said he was a Wyandotte and, as a feminine household, we invariably put absolute faith in the word of our furnace-man. I do not know how Wyandottes ought to look, but I know that this was a daffodil-colored mite, with legs and feet more slender than chicken wont, and with a hundred diverting, confiding, tyrannical little ways.
I never ceased marveling at the pluck with which this Lilliputian tackled life in the midst of such Brobdingnagian surroundings. The only time I ever saw him scared was when a guest, so well acquainted with chickens as to venture on personal liberties, flourished her glove over the graveled box that served poor little Mike for his Earthly Paradise.
"Squawk! squawk!" he cried in an agitated pipe I had not heard before, and scrabbled wildly to the shelter of my hand, nestling out of sight under the palm in his favorite fashion.
"Did you hear him call hawk, hawk?" asked my erudite visitor. "We have an old biddy at home who nurses a grudge against me this week because I will not let her set, and the last time I went out into the henyard, if she didn't scream hawk, hawk, just like that, and send the chickens scuttling to cover under the barn! The hateful thing! She knew how insulted I would feel to be taken for a hawk!"
But apart from that trying occasion, Mike was a scrap of valor. No member of the family was tall enough to disconcert him. He pecked whatever he saw, from his own feet to the register, and would pounce like a baby pirate upon objects many times larger than himself, cheeping to the world his tidings of magnificent discovery. I am no pastoral linguist, but I learned the rudiments of chicken language from Mike, who was such a chatterbox that he twittered in his sleep.
Meal-times, which he liked to have occur every hour from dawn to dark, brought out his conversational fluency at its best. We tried many experiments with his diet, in obedience to many counselors. We were told that his Indian meal should be mixed with scalding water, that he was too young for this hearty dish and should be fed with dry oatmeal, that minute crumbs of bread would comfort his crop, that larger bits of bread, kindly masticated in advance, were better, that sour milk was essential, mashed potato indispensable, string beans a plausible substitute for angle-worms, that he must be given a chance to swallow gravel to assist the grinding in his wee gizzard mill, and that his cereals should be discreetly spiced with grubs and lettuce leaves and such spring dainties. Whatever we were told to do, we did. Mike's repasts were thus seasons to him of delicious excitement, and he would tear deliriously from one end of his box to the other, pecking to right and left, exclaiming in high glee, "Tweet, tweet! Something to eat! Bless my pin-feathers! Here's a treat!"
This up-to-date son of an incubator had an obstinate instinct in him which made the tap of my finger on the floor of his box equivalent to the tattoo of a hen's bill beside some scratched-up delicacy, and it was funny to see him rush to the sound, his black eyes shining with joyous expectancy. So queerly did instinct serve him that he would grab the goody as if a brood of famished brothers were on his heels and, spreading his bits of wings, race off with his prize, most indiscreetly shrilling as he went, "Twit, twit, twit! You shan't have a bit," and gobbling it down in a corner with choking precipitation.
One of the "Arrows of the Wise" carries the point, "Be not idle and you shall not be longing," and I had no chance to miss my customary vocations with this importunate cockerel demanding constant society and care.
Hatched to the vain anticipation of brooding wings and crooning cluck and the restless pressure of other downy little bodies all about him, Mike was a lonesome chick and could not bear to have his sorry substitute for a mother-hen out of sight and sound a minute. His box must be within reach of my hand, whither every few minutes he would run for a snuggle and a snooze, turning a disdainful back on the elaborate hot-water-bottle and cotton-batting shelters I had been at such pains to erect. The life in him craved contact with life. If I withdrew my hand, having occasionally other uses for it, or neglected to respond to his casual remarks, my ears would suddenly be assailed by a storm of piteous chirps, the neck would stretch until two round eyes peered anxiously above his castle wall, and then, with clamber and scramble, that indomitable little spirit would achieve the impossible and land a fluttering fluff-ball against my face. When I was well enough to move from room to room Mike would dare the most terrific rumbles from his box to come chasing after, though every threshold was a towering obstacle over which a Labor Union of wings and legs could barely carry him.
After he had eaten his supper, with undiminished enthusiasm, and had drunk his fill from a butter-plate, lifting his yellow bill to heaven with every drink, and giving thanks, as all good chickens do, we used to tuck him away in a basket. At first we buried him deep under a light mass of cotton-wool, from the precise center of whose surface his head would shine out in the morning like a star set in fleecy clouds; but the chief of our advisory council warned us that the films might get into his eyes and down his gullet with disastrous results, and suggested instead the use of a retired table-scarf. Chicken in the cloth, cloth in the basket, basket on the register, the family would compose itself to listen to the "Life of Huxley," while the softest, drowsiest nest song, "Tweety-tweet! Tweety-tweet!" from the depths of the table-scarf accompanied the voice of the reader. The elfin music-box would fall silent presently, but when bedtime came, and Joy-of-Life, before taking the basket down cellar to hang it near the furnace for the night, brought it to me that I might ask, no matter how quietly, "All well, Mike?" a dreamy little note would instantly float back, "Tweety-tweet! Sleeping sweet!"
We grew so fond of our pet as to dislike to see him deprived of the natural companionship of chickenhood, and two other downy midgets—a Penciled Brahmapootra, the gift of the market-man, and a Plymouth Rock, from the Lady of Cedar Hill—were procured to bear him company. The first we dubbed Patience, as the proper associate of a Microbe, but this beautiful little fowl, whose golden face and delicately striped body gave it a wild-bird look, developed such shillalah characteristics, especially when Mike made off with the choice morsels, that his name was speedily curtailed to Pat. The Plymouth Rock was called Cluxley, in memory of our evening readings; but a meek, illogical, not to say unscientific henny-penny she proved, who would stand gazing on a dainty until one of her foster-brothers had snatched it up and then industriously go and scratch for it in all the places where it never could have been. Pat was a self-reliant, material-minded younker, and we let him go his own lively way, with the minimum of handling, but our brown Cluxley was of a clinging disposition and had an embarrassing habit of imperiling her life by stealthy excursions up loose sleeves. Mike did not welcome these birds of his own feather any too cordially and held somewhat aloof from them to the end. One of my students sent in a pair of dainty blue slippers, fortunately too small, as thus my conscience was clear in devoting them to the welfare of my immediate brood; but I always had to see to it that Mike and Pat took their siestas in separate slippers, where they would drowsily flute away in musical rivalry. Cluxley, with her customary indiscretion, bestowed herself one day in a damp rubber for her nap and caught a bad cold, which we successfully doctored with hempseed.
Mike had begun to show signs of feathers and once he tried to crow. He had become less dependent on me for intimate society, his attention being much taken up with thwarting Pat's designs on the tidbits, but he could by no means dispense with me as general protector. If I were in the room, or close beside them in a steamer chair out of doors, he was willing to ramble a bit with Pat and Cluxley, always taking the lead, but I could not slip away and leave them, even in Mary's charge, without immediate consternation, protest and pursuit on Microbe's part. He was such a humanized chicken, coming at the call of his name, loving to eat from the finger, cocking his little head so sagely when he was addressed and politely cheeping a response, that he became perilously attractive to the children of the neighborhood. Sturdy schoolboys would kiss his yellow softness on the sly and we often had to rescue him from the unskillful clutch of loving childish hands.
When a luncheon was brought to me out of doors, all three chickens would come winging and scrabbling up the rug that wrapped the sorceress of the steamer-chair and dispose themselves about the edge of the tray, chirping continuous amens to the grace steeped in ancient witchcraft:
"Spread, table, spread.Meat, drink and bread.Ever may I haveWhat I ever crave,When I am spread.Meat for my black cock,And meat for my red."
"Spread, table, spread.Meat, drink and bread.Ever may I haveWhat I ever crave,When I am spread.Meat for my black cock,And meat for my red."
"Spread, table, spread.
Meat, drink and bread.
Ever may I have
What I ever crave,
When I am spread.
Meat for my black cock,
And meat for my red."
Now that I was to be seen outside the house with my little brood, kindly neighbors came from all sides with offers of more chickens, but my family cares were already heavy for a convalescent, and experience had taught me that
"true happinessConsists not in the multitude of friends,But in the worth and choice."
"true happinessConsists not in the multitude of friends,But in the worth and choice."
"true happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice."
Occasional misgivings as to the future crossed my mind. I had often seen reposing sheep blocking up the doorways of Andalusian homes,—Easter lambs given, all gay with ribbons, to the children the year before and still withheld by family affection from their natural destiny of mutton. The Dryad looked forward with glee to my appearance on the academic platform with three full-grown fowls roosting on the back of my chair or stalking up and down the desk, picking up bits of chalk and pencil whittlings, but such embarrassments were not to be.
Mike was the first to sicken. His name may have been against him or the long confinement in the basket may have injured him. The table-scarf may have been too heavy to admit of his standing and moving during the night as a chicken should. He suddenly became crippled, as with paralysis. One morning, although he breakfasted with abundant relish, he insisted on hiding in my hand immediately after. I wanted him to run about for exercise, and twenty times put him back into his box, but he returned to me twenty-one and had his own way for a while, until Mary played the kidnapper. Coming down stairs half an hour later I heard her remonstrating with Mike, who was cheeping wildly.
"Faith, Mike, ye're that onraysonable I can't plaze yez any how. There's Pat and Cluxley as good as clover in the kitchen, but I let yez into the dining-room, and still ye're discontinted, and now I've let yez into the parlor, Mike, and not the parlor is good enough. Whativer is it that ye can be wanting?"
Poor Chicken Little! He heard my voice and started to meet me, but with such hobbling, staggering, bewildered steps that, at last, the threshold overthrew him. We did for him what we knew—and we knew nothing—that day and the next, and he sang his tuneful tweety-tweet on Monday night; but on Tuesday morning, a fortnight from his coming, when I asked for my chicken, they brought me a ghastly little form lying among primroses.
I might say that I met the loss of my tiny comrade with adult dignity and composure, but
"Syr, for lying, though I can do it,Yet am I loth for to goo to it."
"Syr, for lying, though I can do it,Yet am I loth for to goo to it."
"Syr, for lying, though I can do it,
Yet am I loth for to goo to it."
The core of my grief is the sense that my blundering devotion cut short, on the very edge of spring, that gallant little life which brought help to me in my heavy hour, and which had in it all the promise of a Chaucer chanticleer.
In deep humiliation, we forthwith gave Pat and Cluxley over to higher intelligence than ours, to a neighbor's hen who had no narrow parental prejudices, but amply gathered them in with her own brood. Pat was the beauty of the coop, but in a day or so his legs began to waver and sink under him, and he, too, never knew a Maytime. Cluxley was always the belated one and outlived him some three days, but on the fourth morning she went staggering into the undiscovered realm.
People say, "But you did well to keep your Easter chicken alive fourteen days. If the truth were known, you would find that very few of those candy-sale chickens hold out so long as that. We bought one for the children, but it was dead before Sunday. It is next to impossible to raise chickens by hand, even with experience. As to the ducklings that are coming into fashion for Easter gifts, they die sooner than chickens."
Then to our moral, for Mike's small story surely has a moral, though it does not matter in the least to Mike. I have no delusions there.
"All men arePhilosophers to their inches,"
"All men arePhilosophers to their inches,"
"All men are
Philosophers to their inches,"
but chickens' inches are so very few that there is no room for altruism in their philosophy. Yet the thought of how much these wee innocents may suffer from the incompetence of those who so lightly assume their fostering urges a protest against keeping Easter, the Festival of Life, by such wanton sacrifice of life. How can we reproach the Spaniards, who celebrate their Easter by the merciless bullfight, while we permit this cruelty to tender chickenhood?
A chicken's death is not more trivial than a sparrow's fall. St. Francis of Assisi would have cared.
But beneath it all lies the old, dark problem of creature existence. They are so ready to trust and love us, these feathered and furred companions of ours on the strange, bright star that whirls us all through the vast of ether to an unknown rhythm, and we, with a lordly selfishness that scoffs at question, slaughter them for our food and clothing, hunt them for our sport, make them our drudges in peace and our victims in war. I can never forget the eyes of a calf that ran to me from his butcher in Norway,—of a kid that I saw struggling away from the knife on Passover eve in Palestine. Yet such is the order of the earth. All carnivorous creatures prey upon the weaker. Water and wood and field and air are but varying scenes of the unpausing tragedy. Why, if it must be so, were these doomed animals endowed with the awful gift of suffering? And what recompense, even in the far reaches of eternity, can their Creator make to these myriad martyrs for their griefs and tortures? Is He the God of Hardy'sThe Dynasts, careless of mortal agonies? There dwelt a truer God in Shelley's heart, thecor cordiumof him who wrote:
"I wish no living thing to suffer pain."
HOW BIRDS WERE MADE
Above his forests bowed the Spirit, dreamingOf maize and wigwams and a tawny folkWho should rejoice with him when autumn brokeUpon the woods in many-colored flame.Pale birches, maples gleamingIn splendor of all gold and crimson tints,And dark-green balsams with their purple hintsOf cones erect upon the stem, awokeIn his deep heart,Though thought had yet no words,Beauty no name,Creative longing for a voice, a songBlither than winds or brooklet's tinkling flow,His own joy's counterpart.He breathed upon the throngOf wondering trees, and lo!Their leaves were birds.The birds do not forget, but love to fellowThe trees whose shining colonies they were;Else wherefore should the scarlet tanagerFling from the oak his proud, exultant flushOf music? Why mid yellowSprays of the willow by her empty nestLingers the golden warbler? Softly drestIn autumn buffs and russets, choristerSweetest of all,Angel of lonely eves,The hermit thrushHaunts the November woodland. In them bidesMemory of that far time, ere eyes of menHad seen the tender fallOf shadow or the tidesOf silver sunrise, whenThe birds were leaves.
Above his forests bowed the Spirit, dreamingOf maize and wigwams and a tawny folkWho should rejoice with him when autumn brokeUpon the woods in many-colored flame.Pale birches, maples gleamingIn splendor of all gold and crimson tints,And dark-green balsams with their purple hintsOf cones erect upon the stem, awokeIn his deep heart,Though thought had yet no words,Beauty no name,Creative longing for a voice, a songBlither than winds or brooklet's tinkling flow,His own joy's counterpart.He breathed upon the throngOf wondering trees, and lo!Their leaves were birds.
Above his forests bowed the Spirit, dreaming
Of maize and wigwams and a tawny folk
Who should rejoice with him when autumn broke
Upon the woods in many-colored flame.
Pale birches, maples gleaming
In splendor of all gold and crimson tints,
And dark-green balsams with their purple hints
Of cones erect upon the stem, awoke
In his deep heart,
Though thought had yet no words,
Beauty no name,
Creative longing for a voice, a song
Blither than winds or brooklet's tinkling flow,
His own joy's counterpart.
He breathed upon the throng
Of wondering trees, and lo!
Their leaves were birds.
The birds do not forget, but love to fellowThe trees whose shining colonies they were;Else wherefore should the scarlet tanagerFling from the oak his proud, exultant flushOf music? Why mid yellowSprays of the willow by her empty nestLingers the golden warbler? Softly drestIn autumn buffs and russets, choristerSweetest of all,Angel of lonely eves,The hermit thrushHaunts the November woodland. In them bidesMemory of that far time, ere eyes of menHad seen the tender fallOf shadow or the tidesOf silver sunrise, whenThe birds were leaves.
The birds do not forget, but love to fellow
The trees whose shining colonies they were;
Else wherefore should the scarlet tanager
Fling from the oak his proud, exultant flush
Of music? Why mid yellow
Sprays of the willow by her empty nest
Lingers the golden warbler? Softly drest
In autumn buffs and russets, chorister
Sweetest of all,
Angel of lonely eves,
The hermit thrush
Haunts the November woodland. In them bides
Memory of that far time, ere eyes of men
Had seen the tender fall
Of shadow or the tides
Of silver sunrise, when
The birds were leaves.
TAKA AND KOMA
"What madness is it to take upon us to know a thing by that it is not? Shall we perswade our selves that wee know what thing a Camell is, because wee know it is not a Frogge?"
—Barckley'sFelicitie of Man. 1603.
To console me for the loss of the chicks, Joy-of-Life went into a Boston bird-store one day and, in defiance of all her principles and mine, bought me a Japanese robin. When she presented him, the daintiest little fellow, mouse-color, with touches of red and gold on wings and throat and the prettiest pink bill, I met her guilty look with one of sheer astonishment.
"A Robin Redbreast in a cagePuts all Heaven in a rage,"
"A Robin Redbreast in a cagePuts all Heaven in a rage,"
"A Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage,"
I quoted.
"But he was in a cage already," she weakly apologized, "and we'll be very good to him."
"Good jailers!"
"But liberty here would be his undoing, and I can't take him over to Japan. Come! It's time that you said thank-you."
But Taka, named after a Japanese boy of Joy-of-Life's earlier acquaintance, proved a dubious blessing. He was in angry temper from the first, and a brilliant new cage, fitted up with all the modern conveniences and latest luxuries, failed to appease him in the least. He would thrust his head between the gilded bars so violently that he could not draw it back, and while we were doing our clumsy best to extricate him he would peck our fingers with furious ingratitude. He upset his porcelain dishes, declined to use his swing and, as a rule, rejected all the attractions of his criss-cross perches, fluttering back and forth and madly beating against the bars or huddling in an unhappy little bundle on the floor. It was a matter of weeks before we could coax him into conversation, and then his abrupt, metallic chirps were so sharp that Mary, who scorned and disliked him as a foreigner, was scandalized.
"Don't ye talk with him. It's all sauce that Jap is giving yez."
Even Robin Hood, social little fellow that he was, tried in vain, later on, to make friends with this ungracious stranger. The East and the West could not meet. In response to Robin's cheery chatter, Taka would bristle, turn away and maintain a stubborn silence.
I used to carry his cage out of doors with me and set it up on the bank, where crocuses followed snowdrops, and tulips followed crocuses, beside the steamer-chair, hoping that he would feel more at home amid the blossoms and bird music of the spring. But there little Lord Sulks would sit, bunched into a corner of his palace, deigning no response whatever to the soft greetings of the bluebirds, those "violets of song," nor to the ecstatic trills of the fox sparrows, nor even to the ringing challenge of Lieutenant Redwing, as he flashed by overhead on his way to Tupelo swamp.
A calling ornithologist examined Taka carefully and concluded that he was an old bird, although the dealer had glibly represented him as being in the very pink of youth. So our poor prisoner was perhaps not born in captivity and may have had more than ancestral memories of spreading rice fields, tea plantations and holy bamboo groves. Our brave blue squills, our sunny forsythias, our coral-tinted laurels could not break his dream of flushing lotus and flaming azalea. What was our far-off glimpse of silvery Wachusett to the radiant glories of sea-girt Fujiyama? I hinted that a pet monkey might solace his nostalgia, but to such suggestion Joy-of-Life remained persistently deaf.
The children of the neighborhood found him, sullen though he was, a center of fascination, and would crowd about his cage, pointing out to one another the jewel tints in his plumage.
"Cutest bird I ever seed 'cept the flicker," pronounced Snippet, whose straw-colored hair stood out like a halo.
"Chickadees are nicer'n flickers," protested wise little Goody Four-Eyes. "A chickadee eats three hundred cankerworms in a day and over five thousand eggs—when he can get 'em."
The boys gave a choral snort.
"Who does the countin'?" demanded Punch.
"WishI'dbeen born with all the learnin' in me," scoffed Snippet.
But Goody, who had gathered many a pinecone for our feeding-boxes and, her snub nose pressed snubbier yet against the window pane, had watched the black-capped rolypolies twitch out the winged seeds, stood her ground.
"Does, too," she averred stoutly. "Boys don't know about birds. They stone 'em."
"And girls wear feathers in their hats."
"I don't, but Snippet's mamma does."
"Doesn't neither. She jes' wears regrets on Sunday."
"You don't say it right, but you're nothin' but a small boy."
"I'm seven," blustered Snippet, "and I think I'd be eight by now, if I hadn't had the measles."
"Where's Taka?" I exclaimed.
In the jostling of the children about the cage, the door, accidentally or not, had been slipped ajar, and Taka, taking advantage of the heat of the discussion, had escaped.
The youngsters raised a whoop that might well have scared him to the Pacific, but not the stir of a bird-wing could be perceived anywhere about.
Cats!
"Run to the house, Punch, please, and call out everybody to help us find Taka."
I had selected Punch as the boy of longest legs, forgetting his partiality for Mary's doughnut jar. He chose the route through the pantry with the result that when, after a suspiciously long interval, the rescue party arrived, Mary was dancing with wrath.
"Shure," she panted, "that gossoon would be a good missenger to sind for Death, for he wouldn't be after gitting him here in a hurry at all at all."
We hunted and we hunted and we hunted. We hunted high in the trees, which the boys and Goody, too, climbed with an activity that surprised the woodpeckers; we hunted low in the grass, interrupting a circle of squirrels gathered around a toadstool, as around a birthday cake; but no sign of Taka. We searched hedges and shrubbery, but no Taka. We chirped and we whistled, though well aware that even if Taka heard us he would not answer.
The western sky was a brighter red than Goody's hair-ribbon before we sat ourselves down, discouraged, on the piazza steps to wait for Joy-of-Life.
One by one the children had been summoned home, all but Wallace. He had by telephone directed his parents, who used to be older than he but whom he now watched over with solicitude, to eat their supper without him and go to bed as usual in case he should be detained.
"I don't like to think of that little goldy head out in the big dark all night," I said.
"Maybe a star will suppose it's another star and come down and stay with it," suggested Wallace, trying to buttress my sagging courage.
"His winglets are so wild and so weak."
"I believe the other birds know where he is. Please tell us," entreated Wallace, addressing a solemn crow that had just flapped over from the wood to a neighboring fence-post.
"Now it's no use to be asking of His Riverence," put in Mary. "All the crows were prastes once and they talk only the Latin."
It was one of Joy-of-Life's miracles. It was almost dark when, tired and hungry, she came home from Boston,—from a committee meeting of philanthropists who had been quarreling as only philanthropists can. She looked into Taka's empty cage, stayed but for a glass of milk and a few inquiries as to our field of search, and then, taking an electric torch, slipped softly into Giant Bluff's cherished tangle of luxuriant rosebushes, where the rest of us had not dared to venture. In a few minutes she emerged, scores of irate briars catching at her clothes and hair. She was crooning as she came out and in her safe clasp nestled a sleepy little bird.
Soon after this episode, Joy-of-Life went west for her summer sojourn among the birds at a Wisconsin lake, leaving to Mary, Robin Hood and myself the guardianship of that forlorn mite. He was as obstinate as ever in his lonesomeness, always pettishly rebuffing the friendly advances of Robin and, though I would take his cage to the vicinity of bird after bird, hoping that in some one of these he might recognize a kindred spirit, he found nothing of his feather. The white-breasted nuthatch, after nearly two months of absence, presumably for the rearing of a brood in leafy seclusion, returned for a call at the feeding-box, looking as genteel as ever in his tailor-made gray suit, but so preoccupied with domestic memories that at first he would say nothing but "Spank! spank! spank!" I brought Taka to the window and he looked on disdainfully while I tried to win Nuthatch back to his winter phrase of "Thank! thank! thank!" Only once did he revert to bachelor freedom of expression. That was when he fluttered up to the nutmeat bag and found it dangling empty:
"What a prank, prank, prank, to rob my bank, bank, bank! oh, the offense is rank, rank, rank!"
At this explosion of resentment Taka gave an involuntary chirp, and Nuthatch, the most inquisitive and alert of all our bird visitors, looked the stranger over keenly before he retorted with shocking rudeness, "You're a crank, crank, crank," and flew off to see what the brown creeper, zigzagging wrong side up about the rough-barked trunk of an old oak, was finding good to eat.
Once I carried Taka well out into the wildwood, but he was not interested in any of its busy tenants,—not in little Chippy, who all but pushed his russet crown between the bars of the cage, nor in Yellow-Hammer, stabbing the ground for ants, nor in
"yonder thrush,Schooling its half-fledged little ones to brushAbout the dewy forest."
"yonder thrush,Schooling its half-fledged little ones to brushAbout the dewy forest."
"yonder thrush,
Schooling its half-fledged little ones to brush
About the dewy forest."
At last, one afternoon, after Taka had been moping for hours in deeper gloom than usual, I impulsively held up a hand-glass before him. As soon as the solitary caught sight of that other Japanese robin he broke out into excited chirps and twitters, and suddenly, to my astonishment, caroled forth a ravishing song. I hastily put the glass away, but he began calling, calling, calling with a wistful eagerness that could not be endured. He kept it up till dark and began it again at dawn, so hopefully, so yearningly, that, principles or no principles, there was only one thing to do.
I went into Boston that morning and, stopping at a Japanese store, asked their word for robin.
"Kóma-dóri, or Little Bird, usually called Koma, the Little One."
So on I fared to the bird-dealer's and bought Koma for Joy-of-Life. He was the only Japanese robin they had left, and the dealer swore that he was Taka's brother, but I suspected that the relationship was nearer that of great-great-grandson, for Koma, smaller than Taka, of brighter gold and more vivid ruby, was the quintessence of vital energy, a very spark of fire. He fought like a mimic Hector while the dealer was catching and boxing him, and all the gay-hued parrots jumped up and down on their perches and screamed with the fun of having something going on.
The dealer declared that the two birds would thrive best in the same cage; so I introduced Koma into Taka's commodious abode that afternoon and listened in high content to their jubilant bursts of song. They went to sleep on the highest perch with their tiny bodies cuddled close together, but during the following week their love lyric was punctuated by several fights. Taka, hitherto so contemptuous of the comforts of his cage, now wanted to swing whenever he saw Koma swinging and insisted on shoving his guest away and eating from the very seed-cup that Koma had selected, whereupon Koma, a glistening ruffle of wrath, would fling himself in furious attack upon his honorable ancestor.
Mary, whose partiality for Koma, little beauty that he was, attempted no disguise, maintained that Taka always began the combats and was always worsted; but I was not so sure. Koma, a restless gleam of chirp and song, was such a violent character that twice he rammed his head between the upper wires of his cage and nearly hanged himself. Some heathen deity had given him, for his protection, a tremendous voice, and his shrieks soon brought me running to his rescue. Both times, as soon as I had parted the wire and released the lustrous little head, Taka, wildly agitated through the minutes of Koma's peril, turned fiercely upon me and accused me of the trap.
"Youdid it! Ugly thing!Youdid it! You nearly killed my Koma."
And poor little Koma, gasping in the gravel, would chime in faintly but with no less resentment, "Shedid it."
Yet within an hour they might be fighting again, and I would find them spent and panting, glaring at one another from opposite sides of their limited arena, with deep cuts about the little warrior faces.
"Taka," I would remonstrate, "aren't you ashamed to treat your own clansman like this, when you wanted him so much?"
But Taka and penitence were far asunder. "It's my last tail-feather—chir-r-r! Koma, he hasn't any tail at all—chir-r-r! No more have I now. Don't care a grub. I pulledhisout. Catch me that fly, can't you? Who-oo-oo-oop!"
Koma, whose song had an entrancing gypsy note, was so much the wilder of the two that Taka seemed comparatively tame. Koma's terror of human monsters was unconquerable, and his panics, whenever one of us neared the cage, soon destroyed the frail confidence that our long patience had been building up in Taka. Presently we had two out-and-out rebels on our hands, and even Dame Gentle, who "had a way" with birds, could not cajole them into a League of Lovers.
When the cage door was opened for putting in or taking out the small glass bathtub, it was a ticklish matter to prevent their escape, for they could dart like mice through the least crack and, sly atoms of conspiracy, were always on the lookout for a chance. Warned by bitter experience, we saw to it that the windows were closed before that perilous task was undertaken, but too often a victorious squeal from Koma would announce his exit, and Taka, hopping in sympathetic exultation from perch to perch, would urge him on with ancient Japanese war-cries while he soared from mantel to chandelier, vanished in the folds of a portiere or flashed from fern to rubber-plant. If he succeeded in reaching the entry, he would prolong the game by hiding in overshoes and umbrellas, while Taka, now that Koma was away, would at once set up his pleading, poignant call and never cease until the truant, snapping his pink bill and kicking fiercely with scratchy little claws, was thrust back into the cage. Much as Taka might play the tyrant, he could not bear having Koma out of his sight and reach. Once, after an especially savage duel in which Koma had been badly trampled and pecked, we put the wounded hero into a cage of his own and hung it in the adjoining room. Forthwith both those scamplings raised such a prodigious outcry and lament, taking on as if their naughty specks of hearts were broken, that we brought back Koma's cage and hung it in the window beside Taka's. But even so they scolded and protested and, as the shadows fell, established themselves each on the extreme end of a perch, as near one another as they could get, but with the cruel wires and a few inches of space between them. Still they fumed and fretted until we returned Koma, mauled as he was, to Taka's cage, when instantly they nestled their plumy sides close together and blissfully went to sleep.
Yet we kept both cages in use, separating our tiny incorrigibles when their battles waxed dangerous. They loved to talk them all over afterwards, gabbling like schoolboys, but if one of us chanced to approach the window—"Sshh! Don't tell the ogre," and in an instant they were dumb as toy idols. When we had time, we would occasionally, after taking all due precautions, throw wide their cage doors and invite them to enjoy the freedom of the room; but liberty so given they despised. Only stolen fruit is sweet. After much deliberation and consultation, they would stealthily steal out and skurry about the floor like rats for a while, hunting for bugs and worms. When it became evident that our rugs did not furnish such refreshment, they would cuddle up together in Taka's cage and spoon. Koma would tuck his shining wee head down on Taka's shoulder, and Taka would gently peck him all over from the tip of his bill to his claws. Then, more often than not, they would bristle and square for the fun of a fight. At this point we would try to catch Koma and put him back into his own safe cage, but even when his little coxcomb was so bloody that I had to wash it off under the faucet, he was the top of ingratitude, gasping and clattering with fury. All the while Taka, who had cut that poor pate open, would be trilling abuse. A pugnacious pair of fairy Japanese pirates they were!
We kept those midgets, a daily trouble and amusement, through the winter. They sang like angels when it pleased them and in the intervals conversed exclusively with each other in a harsh, metallic chatter that filled the house. But one sad June morning we found Taka in the bottom of the cage, on his back, the uplifted claws pathetically curled, the wee body stiff and cold.