"The bird is deadThat we have made so much on."
"The bird is deadThat we have made so much on."
"The bird is dead
That we have made so much on."
Koma knew what had happened and bewailed his loss in such a shrill, incessant keening that when, a few days later, an east wind gave him a swiftly fatal chill, we could only be glad to have that pitiful piping hushed.
Little aliens! We had never known them.
WARBLER WEATHER
The oak-leaves yet are doubtingBetween the pink and green;Half smiling and half poutingOur shy New England MayTouches each happy spray,And at her call the runawayWarbler tribes convene.The gold-flecked Myrtle flitters,The Redstart dives and spins,The gay Magnolia glitters,The little RubycrownTwinkles up and down;The fairy folk have come to townWith all their violins.Our garden party sparklesWith varied warbler wear,The olive suit that darklesTo umber, russet crest,Blue tippet, crocus vest;New fashions come with every guest,Winged jewels of the air.Their treetop conversationIs sweetest of the sweet,With flashes of flirtationAs gallants bow and dip."Witch-e-wee!" "Cher!" "Chip-chip!"Too elfin fine for human lipTheir dainty: "Tzeet! tzeet! tzeet!"When we shall walk togetherIn Paradise, Most Dear,May it be warbler weather,Divine with flutteringsOf exquisite wee wings,Our own familiar angelingsThat piped God's praises here.
The oak-leaves yet are doubtingBetween the pink and green;Half smiling and half poutingOur shy New England MayTouches each happy spray,And at her call the runawayWarbler tribes convene.
The oak-leaves yet are doubting
Between the pink and green;
Half smiling and half pouting
Our shy New England May
Touches each happy spray,
And at her call the runaway
Warbler tribes convene.
The gold-flecked Myrtle flitters,The Redstart dives and spins,The gay Magnolia glitters,The little RubycrownTwinkles up and down;The fairy folk have come to townWith all their violins.
The gold-flecked Myrtle flitters,
The Redstart dives and spins,
The gay Magnolia glitters,
The little Rubycrown
Twinkles up and down;
The fairy folk have come to town
With all their violins.
Our garden party sparklesWith varied warbler wear,The olive suit that darklesTo umber, russet crest,Blue tippet, crocus vest;New fashions come with every guest,Winged jewels of the air.
Our garden party sparkles
With varied warbler wear,
The olive suit that darkles
To umber, russet crest,
Blue tippet, crocus vest;
New fashions come with every guest,
Winged jewels of the air.
Their treetop conversationIs sweetest of the sweet,With flashes of flirtationAs gallants bow and dip."Witch-e-wee!" "Cher!" "Chip-chip!"Too elfin fine for human lipTheir dainty: "Tzeet! tzeet! tzeet!"
Their treetop conversation
Is sweetest of the sweet,
With flashes of flirtation
As gallants bow and dip.
"Witch-e-wee!" "Cher!" "Chip-chip!"
Too elfin fine for human lip
Their dainty: "Tzeet! tzeet! tzeet!"
When we shall walk togetherIn Paradise, Most Dear,May it be warbler weather,Divine with flutteringsOf exquisite wee wings,Our own familiar angelingsThat piped God's praises here.
When we shall walk together
In Paradise, Most Dear,
May it be warbler weather,
Divine with flutterings
Of exquisite wee wings,
Our own familiar angelings
That piped God's praises here.
SUMMER RESIDENTS AT A WISCONSIN LAKE
By Katharine Coman
"Another beautiful day of sunshine and shimmering leaves and bird-notes and human love."
—Katharine Coman:Letter.
The summer resort in question is only one of the numberless lakelets that dot the hill country of Wisconsin; a mere dimple in the sunny landscape, filled with limpid water. The banks are overhung by beautiful lindens and mammoth oaks and by hoar cedars of a thousand years' growth.
So sloping are the shores that reeds and rushes run far out into the lake, carrying the green life of the earth into the blue heaven of the water. Creeks and bayous stretch in turn far back into the land, and the reeds and rushes follow after. Knee-deep in the swamps stand the tamarack trees. Their cool shades cherish the mystery of the primeval forest that held undisputed sway in this region only fifty years ago. Back on the hills lie rich grain fields and comfortable farmhouses, each defined against the sky by its windmill and cluster of barns and haystacks.
This is an ideal summer residence for birds who have a mind for domestic joys. Nothing, for example, could be better adapted for nesting purposes than these cedar trees; not so much the centuried veterans, as the young things of ten or twenty years' growth. Their dense and prickly foliage promises security from invasion, while the close-set branches offer most attractive building-sites. Here the robins place their substantial structures; a masonry of sticks and mud, hollowed out within into a chamber as round and smooth as if molded on a croquet ball, and lined with fine, soft grasses. The catbirds build more loosely, weaving strips of cedar bark into a rough basket. The interior is softened for the tender bodies of the anticipated nestlings by coils of horse hair. The mourning dove lays her eggs on a frail scaffolding of cedar twigs, with the merest suggestion of padding. How the eggs are kept in place on windy days is a mystery to the uninitiated. As for brooding the young, the mother bird soon gives over the attempt to do more than sit alongside her twin fledglings. The cedar birds, despite their name, are oftenest found in the linden trees. Rowing along the water side one may see the slender bodies tilting on the top-most branches, flitting to and fro among the pendant yellow bracts, peering shyly this way and that, whispering to each other sage words of caution as to the queerness of all the world "save thee and me, Dorothy." Gentle little Quakers they seem in the daintiest of dove-color plumage. They are connoisseurs in the matter of foods, as well as of dress. Nothing pleases their palate so well as the wild cherries that ripen by the roadside. The sweet kernels of the linden fruit are not bad eating, however, if one may judge by the quantities of split shells to be found beneath the trees. The lake is sought out by birds as well as humans for the pleasure of bathing in the cool, fresh water. Sit quietly by some pebbly bank for a half hour or so, and you cannot fail to see robin or bluejay or turtledove come down to take his daily plunge.
The reedy marshes are beloved by the redwings. The thick-set tufts of the cat-o'-nine-tails afford ideal sites for summer cottages, with building material close at hand. Here, too, the marsh wrens weave their oven-shaped nests and hang them among the banners of the iris. The water-lily pools are alive with summer folk. Quaint, unwieldy bitterns flap their slow way to nests well hidden in the reeds. Coots steal in and outen routeto their lake dwellings. The broad green pads offer the Virginia rail a secluded perch, where he may consider which quarter of the shining mud flats will prove the best feeding ground for the day. A trim little figure in gray and tan, he gathers no soil from the black ooze through which he wades. Another dainty person who haunts these same shallows is the spotted sandpiper, the much loved "teeter-tail." He runs tipping along the water's edge, with an occasional short flight, as much at home among these placid ripples as by the booming sea. The kill-deer plover vibrates between the grassy meadow and the beach, but he, as well as the sandpiper, prefers to stake his domestic happiness on dry ground. Among the birds of the shore, the kingfisher is most in evidence. Conspicuous in blue coat, gray waistcoat and broad, white collar, he flies along the beach seeking for the dead branches of oak or cedar that shall serve him as a lookout station from which to spy upon the finny folk swimming in the water beneath. A flash in the air, a splash in the water, and the "expert angler" dashes triumphantly home, his watchman's rattle announcing victory and fresh supplies to the awkward squad of baby kingfishers deep in the clay bank awaiting his arrival.
Back in the meadows where thistles and wild lettuce are going to seed, the hard-bills spend their holidays. Goldfinches cling to the thistle tops, merry little clowns in yellow and black, antic tumblers no less agile and versatile than the chickadee. Dickcissels search the purple ironweeds for provender, and song sparrows flit along the blossoming fence rows. Kingbirds perch at a point of vantage and watch their chance for a dash at a grasshopper. Fine fighters these fellows, fully equal to defending their well-feathered nests against all comers, and therefore disdaining concealment. Bluebirds carol high in the air their song of peace on earth and goodwill to man. Humming birds hover over the milkweeds, bent on extracting not honey only, but toothsome insects from the rosy blooms.
The tall oaks are sought out by the orioles, tanagers and grosbeaks,—a brilliant and tuneful company. Here, too, the vireos, warbling, red-eyed, white-eyed and yellow-throated, spy out invisible insects under the growing leaves. Warblers throng the woods in May and June, reveling in the bursting buds; but most of them have pushed on to Canada for the summer season. Only the black and white creeper remains to nest in Wisconsin. The resounding tattoo of the high-hole rings from the hole of a blasted tree. The wood looks as if riddled with bullets. The red-headed woodpecker follows close on his yellow-winged cousin. Both find an abundant supply of ants in the decaying forest. High in a fork of the branches the red-tailed hawk pitches his tent, a ragged, black wigwam, rivaling that of the crow for size and inaccessibility.
The haunts of men are not wholly eschewed by our little brothers of the air. The peewee loves to place his nest under the eaves of a sheltering porch, and the phœbe is no less sociable. The presence of human beings does not at all disconcert their housekeeping arrangements. I have seen a young brood fed and fondled, and finally piloted forth for their first journey in the world, within ten feet of a hammock full of children.
To see the water birds at home one should take a boat in the early morning or toward nightfall, and float silently on the open bosom of the lake. Then you may watch the black terns wheeling and turning in the blue sky, like beautiful great swallows. They are easily distinguished even at a considerable height by their white wing bars. A loon paddles slowly across the bay with tantalizing unconcern. It is of no use to follow him, however, even with muffled oars. He knows a trick worth any two of yours. Huge fellow as he is, he dives beneath the surface, leaving not a ripple behind him. After five minutes of puzzled waiting you may see him—or is it his double?—pop up from the water many rods away, as serene and still as if he had not just executed a submarine maneuver hardly to be excelled by the latest torpedo boat. Quite as expert a performer is the pied-billed grebe, who swims long distances with body submerged and only the tip of the bill out of the water. Unobserving gunners conclude that he has gone to the bottom of the lake, and call him the hell-diver. The grebe spends half of his life in or on the water. His nest is a raft buoyed upon a clump of decaying vegetation, and looks like a floating island moored to a reed. Birds of the lake, too, seem the swallows—tree swallows, rough-winged and barn swallows. They skim the water hither and yon in mad pursuit of prey. No degree of familiarity with their mud nests avails to deprive these winged atoms of their halo of spring and romance.
Birds of high degree occasionally visit our humble lakelet. A bald eagle has been seen on the lightning-scarred branch of its tallest oak. Blue herons flap their majestic way from shore to shore. If you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth you may even be so lucky as to see a snowy heron passing through to some heronry in the wilds of Canada. The night herons come every spring to their ancient rookery in a swamp hard by. As the shadows fall the birds may be heard calling, "squawk, squawk," while they make their way down the creek to their fishing grounds in the lake.
For the better part of our bird neighbors the summer sojourn is nodolce far niente. They come north that their babies may have wholesome air and suitable food. A gay young husband, like the ruby-throated humming bird, shirks domestic responsibilities, but he expects only two wee nestlings. A brood of five or six requires the assiduous attention of both parents. Baby blue jays, for example, seem to have an unlimited appetite. Their scolding, snarling cries begin with the early dawn and only cease with nightfall. Even after the rascals are flown one may find an anxious mother vainly striving to satisfy her clamoring darlings, as she hurries from one to another with some choice tidbit. A great hulking fellow, as big as his parents and as gayly feathered, will stand crying like an infant, with wings a-tremble and mouth a-gape, waiting for the food to be thrust down his throat. Young robins are hardly less rapacious but far more tractable. I was one day watching the début of a family that lived in a neighboring cedar tree. The mother bird was having an anxious time, for each young one, as he spread his wings, made but a flap or two and fell sprawling into the network of branches beneath the nest. One young hopeful essayed a more ambitious flight and came down to the ground. He had no thought of fear and, being of an inquiring turn of mind, came hopping through the grass to see what I was like. Such a dear little man, in polka dot pinafore and white ruffles! But "chuck, chuck," mother robin called a warning note, and like a flash he turned tail and bolted into the bushes. I found him later perched on a branch within easy grasp of my hand. He gazed at me for some minutes with eyes full of baby wonder; then, remembering the maternal admonitions, he fled to a higher branch. Of all feathered mothers the catbird is the noisiest. She flits restlessly about, eying from every point of vantage the intruder who dares to show an interest in her housekeeping. I determined to sit it out one morning, pitting my patience against her sympathy for the hungry young ones. After two hours of flutter and meow the mother heart could no longer resist the appeal of the gaping yellow mouths. With sudden resolution she dashed straight to Farmer Black's gooseberry patch, seized a berry and returned in a flash. The luscious morsel once divided among the small fry, however, she flew back to her post of observation.
The turtledoves seem a sentimental lot. During the courting season an enamored swain will sit for hours in silent contemplation of his own graceful pose, or chanting softly, "I am alone—alone—alone." The nest once built and the young ones hatched, he hovers about in tender constancy, bringing food to the mother as well as to the babies, and perching alongside of the nest as close as circumstances will allow. The little people are carefully tended until they are well-nigh grown, though they look most uninteresting objects. A young dove will sit silent and motionless for hours at a stretch, the only sign of life the glitter in his bright, bead-like eyes. Decide that he has gone daft, however, and venture a step too near,—presto! With flutter and whirr he takes to wings, and is off as if flying was as simple a feat as the traditional "falling off a log." The jaunty kingfisher, too, makes a devoted parent. One day we saw a fledgling fly straight out over the lake. The mother bird followed close, uttering cries of alarm. But, alas! she could not lend him wings. His young muscles were unequal to his ambition, and the little body dropped into the water. Both parents dashed madly back and forth over the still, shining surface, and then wandered disconsolately from tree to tree along the shore, voicing their grief in wild, rattling cries.
Bird families hold together long after the nest is abandoned. They may be seen toward nightfall making their way by twos and threes to the tamarack swamp across the lake. The close-set, symmetrical branches provide the best of perches for inexperienced feet. "Birds of a feather flock together" when it comes to a question of lodging houses. One evening I counted one hundred and fifteen kingbirds roosting in the tapering spires of the tamarack trees.
September days are heralded by the return of the birds who have summered in Canada. Fox sparrows stop with us a week or so on their southward journey. The evening grosbeaks have come down from far Saskatchewan, and are thinking of spending the winter here. Wild geese wake one o' nights, with their hoarse "honk, honk." They have stopped for a taste of our tender frogs, but will soon re-form their triangular caravans and push on to the South. Ducks, mallards and canvasbacks, feed and fatten in the shallow water among the reeds. The gunners arrive as soon as they, however, and will soon frighten them away. Everybody is getting ready for the great migration. Troops of young birds flutter through the trees, like autumn leaves blown by a gust of wind. They are taking their first lessons in migration and in food supply.
The natives look on at these preparations with cynical unconcern. Blue jays chatter and scream with a daily extension of their marvelous vocabulary. Crows come proudly out from the deep woods, leading black, ungainly broods, and direct their flight to the ripening cornfields. Nuthatches, the white-bellied and the Canadian, bustle about the tree trunks, bent on making the most of their time while Jack Frost spares the insect life. The chickadees, nature's acrobats, turn somersaults among the branches in sheer defiance of the law of gravitation. The cares of summer are over and done with. The woes of winter do not terrify this morsel of india rubber and compressed air. The English sparrow pursues his ubiquitous search for food with insular disdain of everything he does not understand. He has penetrated our sylvan retreats and secured a foothold here by the most impudent of squatter claims. He lives and multiplies by dint of a systematic disregard of everybody's rights. The manners and the morals of the great city cling to him. He will have nothing in common with our country ways. He brings with him the blight of civilization.
THE JESTER
Myths from earth's childhood tellOf Godhood visible,—Indra, the azure-skied,Four-handed, thousand-eyed;Far-wandering Isis, chiefLady of Love and Grief;Zeus, on each rash revoltHurling the thunderbolt;Woden of warrior formGray-mantled with the storm;Lir of the foam-white hair,Mad with the sea's despair.But of those Splendors whoConceived the kangaroo,With gesture humorousShaped hippopotamus,Intoned the donkey's brayAnd, in an hour of play,Taught peacocks how to strut?Holy is Allah, butIs holiness expressedIn hedgehogs? Whence the jest?Even in creation's dawnWas Puck with Oberon?
Myths from earth's childhood tellOf Godhood visible,—Indra, the azure-skied,Four-handed, thousand-eyed;Far-wandering Isis, chiefLady of Love and Grief;Zeus, on each rash revoltHurling the thunderbolt;Woden of warrior formGray-mantled with the storm;Lir of the foam-white hair,Mad with the sea's despair.
Myths from earth's childhood tell
Of Godhood visible,—
Indra, the azure-skied,
Four-handed, thousand-eyed;
Far-wandering Isis, chief
Lady of Love and Grief;
Zeus, on each rash revolt
Hurling the thunderbolt;
Woden of warrior form
Gray-mantled with the storm;
Lir of the foam-white hair,
Mad with the sea's despair.
But of those Splendors whoConceived the kangaroo,With gesture humorousShaped hippopotamus,Intoned the donkey's brayAnd, in an hour of play,Taught peacocks how to strut?Holy is Allah, butIs holiness expressedIn hedgehogs? Whence the jest?Even in creation's dawnWas Puck with Oberon?
But of those Splendors who
Conceived the kangaroo,
With gesture humorous
Shaped hippopotamus,
Intoned the donkey's bray
And, in an hour of play,
Taught peacocks how to strut?
Holy is Allah, but
Is holiness expressed
In hedgehogs? Whence the jest?
Even in creation's dawn
Was Puck with Oberon?
EMILIUS
"O, I could beat my infinite blockhead."
—Jonson'sThe Devil is an Ass.
Professor Emily has the kindest heart in the world and is always doing good. Her charities would make a rosary more fragrant than sandal-buds. And yet, perhaps, one time out of a thousand, her intention and her action trip each other up.
One day in early June she met on our village sidewalk, half a mile from the nearest pond or brook, a snapping turtle of formidable proportions, easily weighing his twenty or twenty-five pounds. In characteristic fashion she stopped to consider what she could do for him. Though he was, for his own part, neither cordial nor communicative, she decided that he must have lost his way, since the water, his natural habitat, lay behind him, and by a dexterous application of boot and stick she turned him about, quite against his will, so that his snout pointed toward home. But the turtle, a surly, obstinate fellow, with no respect whatever for academic authority, refused to progress in the appointed path, and for some five minutes they argued it out together, with no manifest result except a distinct access of temper, rather evenly divided.
Your true philanthropist is not easily balked, and Professor Emily, returning the scrutiny of those small, keen, sinister eyes that watched her every movement, skillfully dodged that dark, vicious head which kept lurching forward from the olive-mottled shell in lightning-swift motions, seeking to strike this determined benefactor whom only muddled wits could mistake for an enemy.
"No, you don't," she answered him sternly, retreating before a sudden forward scramble of the broad webbed feet. Regardless of the terrified protests of a group of freshmen, who had gathered on the outskirts of the fray, she executed a rapid rear movement and seized the reptile firmly toward the end of its long, rough tail. Swinging this furious Caliban clear of the ground and holding it well out from her body, she considered what to do next.
The noon had suddenly turned hot. She found herself panting a little. That turtle was surprisingly heavy. He was awkward to handle, too, twisting his neck back over his shell and darting it out left and right to a disconcerting distance. Soothing tones had no effect whatever and there seemed to be no suitable surface to pat. Even if he could and would have told her the exact location of his native creek, it might prove an irksome task to carry him so far, with those powerful jaws snapping most suggestively, only biding their time to get in an effective argument. Our house was close at hand. Why not accomplish two good deeds in one and give this self-willed waif to us for a pet? He would have a happy home and we another of God's creatures to love.
Dear Emily!
A shriek from Mary brought us to the kitchen. There was our household staff and stay mounted on a chair, clasping her skirts tight about her and apparently addressing the ceiling. There was our generous-hearted friend, flushed and weary, but, by a miracle, unbitten. There was our neighbor, Young Audubon, a budding naturalist, who had come to her aiden routeand shared the honors of the delivery. And there was an indignant snapping turtle, lying on its back in the middle of the kitchen floor. Notwithstanding the pale yellows of its under-side, shell and legs and tail, its expression was profane.
Joy-of-Life told Mary to be quiet. I poured the philanthropist a glass of water. Then, exchanging eloquent glances, we learned of the new pleasure in store for us.
"They make very nice pets," declared the donor, beaming with benevolence. "Large specimens live for hundreds of years. They are not at all exacting about their food and can be trained to eat from the hand."
"Not from mine," screamed Mary, bouncing up and down on her chair.
"Wasn't it Pierre Loti who had a pet tortoise?" continued Emily. "Its name was Suleima and it used to play with his white kitten. You might name the turtle Suleima, after its literary cousin."
"No. We'll name it Emilius, after you, if it must be named at all."
"But we haven't even a black kitten," protested Joy-of-Life, "and so little time for playing ourselves, that I am really afraid——"
"The dear might be dull. Wouldn't you better take him back to where you found him?"
"And leave him on the road? Lost? For motors to run over? How could he get out of their way? What does he know about motors?"
We admitted that he did not look modern.
"Besides, I must run to catch that next train. I've just remembered that I am due at the Melting Pot conference in town."
"Isn't there room for Emilius in the pot?" I called after her, but she was gone without waiting to be thanked.
"If ye'll put the baste in a suitcase," proposed Mary, "it's mesilf will take it over to her rooms an' lave it there."
But Young Audubon, who had been lying on the floor, examining Emilius from the tip of his tail to the snub of his snout, was enraptured,—so enraptured that the chelonian, as he called it, was pressed upon him as a free gift, regretfully declined because of certain prejudices on the part of a devoted but unscientific mother.
"I can study him almost as well over here," cheerily said Young Audubon. "Now the first thing to do is to drill a hole in his carapace."
"Carry what?"
"Upper shell, you know."
The boy, a blond, blushed pink at our ignorance and managed, in an offhand way, to touch the lower shell when he lightly referred to it as the plastron.
"The drilling won't hurt him. He won't even know it's happening."
Whatever the darkened spirit, inaccessible in its armor, thought of the subsequent proceedings, it registered no objection. Defenseless in his undignified position, Emilius suffered our well-meant attentions in bitter silence. The hole was drilled, the turtle tipped over, grasped again by his peculiarly unattractive tail and borne triumphantly to the grassy bank behind the house, where, like any domestic animal, he was tethered to a tree.
"What next?" asked Joy-of-Life, who was already losing her heart to the unresponsive monster.
"Water," pronounced Sir Oracle. "Turtles won't feed except under water. They can't swallow if their heads aren't completely immersed. It will take your largest dishpan——"
"It's mesilf that is going home to-morrow—to stay," announced Mary.
"Wouldn't a washtub do?" compromised Joy-of-Life. "There's that old one, you know, Mary, that you never use."
"First-rate. Show me where to find it, Mary. I'll give you a start to that wild cherry."
With a craft beyond the semblance of his open countenance, Young Audubon raced Mary to the cellar, where she arrived panting too hard for protests. They soon returned in amicable companionship, carrying a battered blue tub between them.
Jerking up Emilius by the cord, we plumped him into the tub, poured in abundant water and left him to be happy. Then our troubles began.
In the first place, Emilius absolutely refused to eat, in water or out. Understanding from our one authority that he needed a carnivorous diet, we tempted him, day after day, with every variety of meat brought to our door in the butcher's white-hooded cart with its retinue of hungry dogs, but nothing whatever would our boarder touch. And in the second place, he was, unlike Diogenes, forever scrambling out of his tub and digging himself in at one point or another on the bank. Several times a day one or the other of us might be seen tugging up Emilius by his cord from the bowels of the earth and solicitously dumping him down again into his tub of water, which a shovelful of mud, shreds of meat and other attractions still failed to render homelike. His one object in life was to get out of it.
"If Emilius would only take a nap!" I sighed one warm afternoon, when I had just rescued him from a deep pit of his frenzied digging for the third time that day.
"Read him poetry," advised Joy-of-Life. Magical snatches of Bliss Carman's deep-sea songs ran through my head:—
"When sheering down to the LineCome polar tides from the North,Thy silver folk of the brineMust glimmer and forth;"* * * * *"The myriad fins are moving,The marvelous flanges play."
"When sheering down to the LineCome polar tides from the North,Thy silver folk of the brineMust glimmer and forth;"
"When sheering down to the Line
Come polar tides from the North,
Thy silver folk of the brine
Must glimmer and forth;"
* * * * *
* * * * *
"The myriad fins are moving,The marvelous flanges play."
"The myriad fins are moving,
The marvelous flanges play."
Chesterton, who chuckled over another grotesque denizen of the deep, would have felt the charm of Emilius:
"Dark the sea was, but I saw him,One great head with goggle eyes,Like a diabolic cherubFlying in those fallen skies.* * * * *"For I saw that finny goblinHidden in the abyss untrod;And I knew there can be laughterOn the secret face of God."
"Dark the sea was, but I saw him,One great head with goggle eyes,Like a diabolic cherubFlying in those fallen skies.
"Dark the sea was, but I saw him,
One great head with goggle eyes,
Like a diabolic cherub
Flying in those fallen skies.
* * * * *
* * * * *
"For I saw that finny goblinHidden in the abyss untrod;And I knew there can be laughterOn the secret face of God."
"For I saw that finny goblin
Hidden in the abyss untrod;
And I knew there can be laughter
On the secret face of God."
But it was almost too early for Chesterton, and quite too early for the fascinating fish poems of Rupert Brooke or for Chauncey Hickox's feeling apostrophe to a tortoise:
"Paludal, glum, with misdirected legs,You hide your history as you do your eggs,And offer us an osseous nut to crackMuch harder than the shell upon your back.No evolutionist has ever guessedWhy your cold shoulder is within your chest—Why you were discontented with a planThe vertebrates accept, from fish to man.For what environment did you provideBy pushing your internal frame outside?How came your ribs in this abnormal place?Inside your rubber neck you hide your faceAnd answer not.
"Paludal, glum, with misdirected legs,You hide your history as you do your eggs,And offer us an osseous nut to crackMuch harder than the shell upon your back.No evolutionist has ever guessedWhy your cold shoulder is within your chest—Why you were discontented with a planThe vertebrates accept, from fish to man.For what environment did you provideBy pushing your internal frame outside?How came your ribs in this abnormal place?Inside your rubber neck you hide your faceAnd answer not.
"Paludal, glum, with misdirected legs,
You hide your history as you do your eggs,
And offer us an osseous nut to crack
Much harder than the shell upon your back.
No evolutionist has ever guessed
Why your cold shoulder is within your chest—
Why you were discontented with a plan
The vertebrates accept, from fish to man.
For what environment did you provide
By pushing your internal frame outside?
How came your ribs in this abnormal place?
Inside your rubber neck you hide your face
And answer not.
Besides, I had no ground for hope that Emilius would be pleased by my reading of poetry or by anything else that I could do for him. He impressed me as intensely preoccupied, a turtle of a fixed idea.
I was standing by the tub at sunset, trying to ingratiate myself with its sulky occupant, whom I had just dragged up from his latest hole in the bank, by tickling his flippers with a playful twig, when Giant Bluff strode over from his adjacent territory and made us a party of three.
"How's your snapper?"
"I don't know. He doesn't tell. But I'm afraid he can't be feeling very fit, for he hasn't eaten anything since he came, a week ago."
"Hasn't, though? Huh! Looked out of my window at three o'clock last night and saw it grazing out there at the length of its rope, munching grass like any old cow."
Previous conversations with Giant Bluff had impaired our faith in his strict veracity.
"I thought turtles ate only animal food."
"If it's fresh and kicking. What you ought to do is to catch it a mess of frogs. 'Twould tear a live frog to pieces fast enough. But you've starved it to grass. That's all right. I raised turtles out on the Mojave desert one spell and fed 'em on nothing but grass. Quite a dainty out there. Sold 'em for five dollars apiece. Turned over a cool thousand——"
"Of turtles?"
"Of dollars. Easy's winking. This snapper of yours wouldn't be bad eating. Might fetch five cents a pound in the market."
I was not exactly fond of Emilius, but I hated to hear him discussed as edible pounds. Moving away a little, I began to stir lightly with my twig the loose earth in his last excavation. Giant Bluff was no favorite in our neighborhood, into which he had intruded, a stranger from the wild west, a year or two before. His little habit of sitting on his back steps, Sunday afternoons, with a rifle across his knees, and shooting with accurate aim every cat and hen that trespassed on his land was in itself enough to account for his unpopularity.
The shooting, however, except when a pet rooster or tabby was the victim, thrilled the children on the hill with a delicious terror. Only that morning I had seen Towhead, crouched behind a clump of syringas, playing sharp-shooter.
"Here!" he was shouting to Rosycheeks, who was approaching very slowly, like a fascinated bird. "Hurry up! You've got to come walking by and be shot."
"I doesn't want to," sobbed poor little Rosycheeks, "but I's tomin',—I's tomin'."
The glory of Giant Bluff, whose boasts were as prodigious as his profession was mysterious, had recently, however, been tarnished by an open discomfiture. One of our oldest and most respected citizens, a Yankee in blood and bone, driver of a depot carriage, had incurred Giant Bluff's deadly displeasure. And this was the way of it. In this beginning of our sleepy summertide, when the campus was as empty of life as a seigniorial park, when the citizens were able to use the sidewalks and the shopkeepers dozed behind their counters, the New York train dropped at our station a sharp-voiced young woman in a flamboyant hat.
Uncle Abram, the only driver to persist in meeting trains through the long vacation, watched from his carriage, with indifferent eyes, her brisk approach.
"Is this a public vehicle?"
"Think likely."
"Do you know where Mr. Benjamin Bluff lives?"
"Maybe."
"Take me there."
On the way the fare, Giant Bluff's daughter by a former marriage, questioned Uncle Abram as to her father's business and position in the town, but she might as well have tried to wring information from Emilius. Arrived at the house, she bade her driver inquire for her if Mr. Bluff was at home, saying that otherwise she would not call.
Mrs. Bluff, whom Uncle Abram had never met before, answered the bell.
"Mr. Bluff in?"
"No. Why?"
"Nothin' partic'lar," and Uncle Abram backed himself away.
"Well?" queried his passenger, as he started up Daniel Webster with a professional crack of the whip.
"Ain't to hum."
"Who came to the door?"
"Lady."
"What lady?"
"Dunno."
"Was it his wife?"
"Dunno as 'twas his wife."
His exasperated fare, afterwards tracking down her parent in Boston, made use of this incident for the slander of her stepmother.
"A nice impression she makes, to be sure! Even that numskull of a driver doubted whether she was your wife or not."
Giant Bluff came back that evening breathing out threats of slaughter. Before midnight it was noised all about our village that he had sworn to shoot Uncle Abram on sight. The old driver was warned by a group of excited boys who found him serenely smoking over a game of checkers and were quite unable to interest him in their tidings. But the next day, when the station platform was well filled with our business men waiting for the eight o'clock into town, Uncle Abram drove up to the depot and reined in Daniel Webster just against the spot where Giant Bluff was standing, a little aloof for the reason that nobody cared to stand with him.
Taken by surprise as Uncle Abram coolly looked him over, Giant Bluff, unexpectedly to himself, said:
"Good morning."
"Ez good a mornin' ez God ever made."
Giant Bluff, who prided himself on his atheism, began to swagger.
"That's stuff and nonsense. Only babies and fools believe such rubbish nowadays."
"Thet so? Ain't no God, eh, and he never made no mornin's? Wal! Maybe ye'll put me in the way of findin' out about quite a few little things like that. I've hearn tell thet ye're goin' to shoot me, an' my rheumatiz is so bad this summer thet I'd be obleeged if ye'd shoot me right now an' hev it over."
"You—you insulted my wife," gasped Giant Bluff.
"Not a nary," protested Uncle Abram, with a touch of indignant color in his weather-beaten cheeks. "I said I didn't know whether the lady thet come to the door was your wife or not, an' no more I didn't. I hedn't never seen her afore. But even s'posin' thet your morals didn't hurt you none, do ye think I'd let it out to a stranger? No, siree; I'd a kep my mouth shet, for the credit o' the town. An' now thet I've had my say on thet little misunderstandin', ye kin shoot me ez soon ez ye like."
The crowded platform roared for joy, the opportune train came in, and Giant Bluff, the first to swing aboard, was not seen in the village again for a fortnight. So it came to pass that he was but newly acquainted with Emilius.
As I was aimlessly poking about with my twig in the last of those mysterious holes which Emilius had been so desperately resolved on digging, a number of small, round, white objects came to view.
"Why, what are those?" was my imbecile exclamation, stooping to see them better in the half light. Forthwith Giant Bluff was stooping at my shoulder.
"Eggs.Didn't you ever see turtles' eggs before? It beats me what you learned ladies don't know."
I went abruptly in to Joy-of-Life, and there we sat in the dusk, overwhelmed with contrition. Poor, dear, misunderstood, ill-treated Emilius! All he wanted was a chance to get away from the water and lay her eggs in some warm, deep chamber, where he could lie hidden for days, and they for weeks, in comfort and security. And how we had worried her with our continual upjerkings and immersions, how we had kept him digging one forbidden nursery after another, how arrogantly we had set ourselves against the unpersuadable urge of instinct!
Before breakfast the next morning we hurried out together to set Emilius free. There was no Emilius. The tub stood empty, from the tree dangled a bit of cut cord, the loose earth that marked the holes had been neatly raked over, there were no small, white, round objects to be found. Had Emilius gone for good and taken his eggs with her?
As we searched the ground in vain, Giant Bluff sauntered out of his back door, smiling an inscrutable smile.
"Saw that snapper of yours walking off an hour since. It went under the back fence out into the woods. Reckon you can't catch it, though it was traveling rather slow; couldn't hurry much, for it had a dozen little turtles trotting along on each side. Quite a handsome family!"
Joy-of-Life and I, turning our backs on that stupendous liar, stared at each other with horror dawning in our eyes.
Had he——? Would he——? Could he——?
Emilius!
HUDSON'S CAT
"This night our cat ranne crying from one side of the ship to the other, looking overboord, which made us to wonder; but we saw nothing."
—Juet's Journal.
What did you see, O pussy-cat-mew,Pet of theHalf-Moon'sturbulent crew?Who taught them mew-tiny? Wasn't it you?Juet kept journal of storm and fogAnd the mermaid that set them all agog,But what has become of the cat-a-log?Henry Hudson, the master sage,Writ large his name on history's page,But you, you too, were a purr-sonage.Shall the tale slight you, whose tail was a-quiverAs you and Hudson sailed up the riverMade only his by Time the giver?Why did you take to adventuring,Puss-illanimous fireside thing?What was the cargo you hoped to bring?Did you dream of multitudinous miceRunning about the Isles of SpiceIn a paradoxical Paradise?Were you not homesick where monsters swam,Dolorous dolphin and clamorous clam,For your sunny stoop in Amsterdam?Months at sea, while the billows roared,And the Milky Way not a cupful poured;No wonder Tabby looked over-bored.You had your feelin's, as felines go,Poor little puss. What scared you so?O stupid sailors that didn't know!Was it a dogfish struck the sparkFrom your sea-green eyes with the quaint remarkThat you were sailing upon a bark?Millions of happy pussies fallInto oblivion; still you callFrom the top of your ancient cater-wall,Call on the centuries to concurIn praise of Tabby the Mariner,Who discovered the Catskills, named for her.
What did you see, O pussy-cat-mew,Pet of theHalf-Moon'sturbulent crew?Who taught them mew-tiny? Wasn't it you?
What did you see, O pussy-cat-mew,
Pet of theHalf-Moon'sturbulent crew?
Who taught them mew-tiny? Wasn't it you?
Juet kept journal of storm and fogAnd the mermaid that set them all agog,But what has become of the cat-a-log?
Juet kept journal of storm and fog
And the mermaid that set them all agog,
But what has become of the cat-a-log?
Henry Hudson, the master sage,Writ large his name on history's page,But you, you too, were a purr-sonage.
Henry Hudson, the master sage,
Writ large his name on history's page,
But you, you too, were a purr-sonage.
Shall the tale slight you, whose tail was a-quiverAs you and Hudson sailed up the riverMade only his by Time the giver?
Shall the tale slight you, whose tail was a-quiver
As you and Hudson sailed up the river
Made only his by Time the giver?
Why did you take to adventuring,Puss-illanimous fireside thing?What was the cargo you hoped to bring?
Why did you take to adventuring,
Puss-illanimous fireside thing?
What was the cargo you hoped to bring?
Did you dream of multitudinous miceRunning about the Isles of SpiceIn a paradoxical Paradise?
Did you dream of multitudinous mice
Running about the Isles of Spice
In a paradoxical Paradise?
Were you not homesick where monsters swam,Dolorous dolphin and clamorous clam,For your sunny stoop in Amsterdam?
Were you not homesick where monsters swam,
Dolorous dolphin and clamorous clam,
For your sunny stoop in Amsterdam?
Months at sea, while the billows roared,And the Milky Way not a cupful poured;No wonder Tabby looked over-bored.
Months at sea, while the billows roared,
And the Milky Way not a cupful poured;
No wonder Tabby looked over-bored.
You had your feelin's, as felines go,Poor little puss. What scared you so?O stupid sailors that didn't know!
You had your feelin's, as felines go,
Poor little puss. What scared you so?
O stupid sailors that didn't know!
Was it a dogfish struck the sparkFrom your sea-green eyes with the quaint remarkThat you were sailing upon a bark?
Was it a dogfish struck the spark
From your sea-green eyes with the quaint remark
That you were sailing upon a bark?
Millions of happy pussies fallInto oblivion; still you callFrom the top of your ancient cater-wall,
Millions of happy pussies fall
Into oblivion; still you call
From the top of your ancient cater-wall,
Call on the centuries to concurIn praise of Tabby the Mariner,Who discovered the Catskills, named for her.
Call on the centuries to concur
In praise of Tabby the Mariner,
Who discovered the Catskills, named for her.
CATASTROPHES
"And when Maeldune and his men went into the best of the houses they saw no one in it but a little cat that was in the middle of the house, and it playing about on the four stone pillars that were there, and leaping from one to another. It looked at the men for a short space, but it did not stop from its play."
—Lady Gregory'sBook of Saints and Wonders.
People are people, and cats are cats. We do not know our pussies. We pet them but we cannot tame them. Landor's Cincirollo,
"wagging his dread jaw at every chirpOf bird above him on the olive branch,"
"wagging his dread jaw at every chirpOf bird above him on the olive branch,"
"wagging his dread jaw at every chirp
Of bird above him on the olive branch,"
is latent in Wordsworth's
"kitten on the wallSporting with the leaves that fall."
"kitten on the wallSporting with the leaves that fall."
"kitten on the wall
Sporting with the leaves that fall."
These charming fireside tenants of ours have their own concerns, which lie aloof from the human. Even nursery-lore bears witness to this:
"'Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat,Where have you been?''I've been to London,To see the Queen.''Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat,What did you there?''I frightened a little mouseUnder her chair.'"
"'Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat,Where have you been?''I've been to London,To see the Queen.''Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat,What did you there?''I frightened a little mouseUnder her chair.'"
"'Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat,
Where have you been?'
'I've been to London,
To see the Queen.'
'Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat,
What did you there?'
'I frightened a little mouse
Under her chair.'"
But if we cannot forego the consciousness of those tiger claws hid in the velvet daintiness of the light feet, neither can tabby put her trust in us. Race memory and, too often, individual experience accuse us. Her reticence with humankind, her stealth, her self-reliance, might well have been stamped deep into cat character by the monstrous cruelties she has suffered at our hands. Her reputed connection with witches, of whom it is estimated that Christendom put to death some nine million, involved the poor animal in their hideous tortures. Indeed, she caught it from all sides. Cats were flung into the bonfires to perish with the helpless old crones who had cared for them. A witch might be exorcised by whipping a cat, like the wretched puss long and solemnly flogged by twelve priests "in a parlor at Denham, til shee vanished out of theyr sight." And it was a cat, so confession on the rack declared, that after an accursed christening was cast into the sea to raise a storm that should drown James of Scotland, "the devil's worst enemy," on his wedding journey home from Denmark. This royal witch-hunter, who came thirteen years later to the throne of England, was not content until thirty human victims had paid by horrible deaths for the black art of that storm.
A few of these maligned cats have left a distinctive record on the blurred page of history. Rutterkin, the familiar of Agnes Flower, whose very name should have attested her innocence, was black as the soot of hell, but Mother Fraunces, who learned the secrets of sorcery from her own grandmother, had "a whyte spotted cat* * *to be her sathan," while the leader of the infernal chorus in the cavern scene ofMacbethwas a tabby:
"Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed."
Into other inoffensive little beasts, "hedgepigs," puppies, owls, bats, crows, rabbits, toads, the evil spirits were believed to enter, though Thomas Heywood notes with satisfaction that no imp was ever so sacrilegious as to masquerade as dove or lamb; but the cat calumny has lasted longest.
"And shall I be afraydOf Cats in mine own Countrey?"
"And shall I be afraydOf Cats in mine own Countrey?"
"And shall I be afrayd
Of Cats in mine own Countrey?"
Some of us are, for a recent criminal trial in one of the Middle States brought out the fact that many an American pocket, even to-day, carries a silver bullet as a talisman against the "black hex," or witch-cat.
Yet from the cruelties of superstition poor puss has suffered less than from the cruelties of sport. Rustic festivals in Merry England were not complete without the archery matches whose target was a terrified, bleeding cat, hung up in a wicker "bottle," while shouts of glee greeted the successful hits in the whizzing storm of arrows. As a special merry-making, a great company of our jovial ancestors would set forth on horseback, with drum-beating and all manner of hullabaloo, attended by half the population of the town, to enjoy themselves at the expense of some ill-fated pussy. A barrel, half full of soot, was swung from a cross-beam firmly fixed on two high poles. Into this barrel she was plunged and under it the valiant horsemen rode as gayly as the English ride to a fox-hunt even yet, striking it tremendous blows with clubs and wooden hammers. If any life was left in the bruised and mangled cat, after the destruction of the barrel, the man who put an end to her by some spectacular novelty of barbarity was the hero of the day.
How can we expect wise old Grimalkin to forgive us our atrocities? She remembers. Accepting or rejecting at her pleasure what courtesies are offered her, she maintains her own reserves. Rare are the recorded instances of her going out of her way to serve mankind, to whom she owes no debt of gratitude. Yet a legend, attested by two portraits of this Good Samaritan, tells that when Sir Henry Wyatt, father of the poet, was imprisoned in the Tower under Richard III and left to perish of starvation, a cat came daily to his window-grating, bringing him a pigeon from a neighboring dove-cot, which doubtless had its own opinion of her charity. No wonder that Sir Henry, in his later, honored years under the Tudors, "would ever make much of cats, as other men will of their spaniels or hounds."
With the best will in the world towardfelis domestica, I have never been able to maintain fortunate relations with the individuals that have come my way. Colleagues of mine have reared kittens that have become the pride and joy of their hearths, as yellow Leo, who passed from the happiest of homes into a lyric shrine; but my own cats make a sorry parade down the avenue of memory. At the far, dim end of the avenue glints out a chubby child in a calico-caped sunbonnet, laboriously trundling in her doll-carriage five blind kittens, with the benevolent intent of giving them a pleasant airing. The little copper-toed shoes bump on the rocks and are caught in the brambles of that rough pasture, while at every jolt that sprawl of kittenhood overflowing the small red chariot miauls so dolorously that their benefactor is sorely tempted to sit down and cry with them. But amazement at their lack of appreciation is less than resentment at the conduct of their grim, gray mother, Old Spotnose, who comes tearing after in fierce pursuit and overtakes the rocking vehicle, whence she snatches one of the wailing passengers by the scruff of its neck and races back with her dangling burden to the woodshed. Determined to make the remaining kittens happy, the child goes tugging and panting on, but still there is heard that dreaded rush in the rear, and another, another, another and yet another of those squallerkins is kidnapped. Nothing is left at last but an empty doll-carriage, overturned among the daisies and, deep within the sunbonnet, a puckered, crimson face flowing with tears.
Throughout my childhood Old Spotnose continued to be an unsocial and ungracious being. Perhaps annoyed by our persistent attentions to her frequent families in the woodshed, she sought out all manner of hiding-places from haymow to cellar. Memorable is the Sunday morning when our mother lifted down the hatbox from her upper closet shelf and looked in, her Sabbath expression completely destroyed, to find a huddle of new kittens reposing in the crown of her best bonnet. The sudden disappearances of these successive kitten groups were to my slowly dawning apprehension first a mystery and then a horror. Old Spotnose finally took to the woods, returning to the kitchen door for food, a gaunt, half-savage creature, only under stress of icebound weather. When we moved away from the village, she could not be found, but one of my brothers, back for a visit the following summer, heard that she had been seen skulking about the house and that kindly neighbors had thrown meat and fish in her way. Carrying a basin of milk, he went to a break in the barn foundations and, lying flat on the ground, called and coaxed. Relenting toward humankind at the last, sick Old Spotnose, hardly more than skin and bone, crawled out to him. She would not taste the milk, but she lay against his knee for a while, accepting his caresses; then dragged herself back under the barn to die alone.
From that time to this, all my personal relations with cats have ended in grief. One engaging kitten after another grew into romantic or adventurous youth only to meet disaster. Perhaps our most heart-rending experience was with Triptolemus, taken from his mother in such tender infancy that we could not teach him to lap milk or even suck it from the finger. Finally he solved the problem himself by tumbling into the saucer and, when he was lifted out, licking his feet with relish. For days he insisted on the saucer promenade, taking nourishment only by applying his wayward little tongue to each foot in turn. From a roly-poly innocent, wondering at the world out of the roundest of blue eyes, he grew, with the astonishing speed of kittenhood, into a profligate young ruffian, limping home from one disreputable fight after another with torn ears and gashed neck and thighs. One wound deepened into a festering, offensive sore, beyond the cure of our domestic surgery, and as veterinaries and animal hospitals were then foreign to our experience, a brother, in my absence, was bidden take the cat down to the river and drown him. Very slowly the executioner, a stout bag in his hand, made his way to the water's edge, Trip careering about his feet and playing with the fatal string. The bag was weighted with stones and the cat was ordered to enter the open mouth. Trip sniffed at it suspiciously, did not like the game, but looked up trustfully into the familiar face and obeyed. The boy who flung that bag out into the current and came running home as if nine reproachful little ghosts were at his heels could never be brought to drown a cat again.
Later on, there was a graceful mite, Argon, whom I can still see jumping after moths in the moonlight; but before the moth-season was over, there came a night whose darkness never rendered him up. Strayed or stolen, killed, chased, enchanted, it was not for us to know.
Years after, our home rejoiced for a few brief weeks in the charms of Frisky Fuzzy, a peculiarly affectionate, confiding kitty, who met a cruel death by the teeth of the rector's terrier. This young priest was a holy man in general, but he had no regard for the sixth commandment as broken by his dog. All the neighborhood was aroused, for one beloved puss after another had been left torn and bleeding by that hypocritical little brute, who always kept an eye out for fresh victims as he trotted sedately at his master's heels, making pastoral calls. When at last vengeance found him out and the dog lay poisoned on the parsonage steps, the rector's grief was so sincere that my anger melted in sympathy. There had been a coolness between us since Frisky Fuzzy's fate, but on the next occasion when we met at a neutral tea-table, I attempted a reconciliation.
"Perhaps your dog and my cat have made up our quarrel in heaven," I began, passing him the sugar.
"I don't believe your cat went to heaven," he retorted, passing me the lemon.
Our last attempt at a home kitten was with a little sprite of so perverse and irreverent a temper that the most liberal theology could hardly hold out to us the hope of finding her again in any Paradise where pious pussies congregate. This impish being was foisted upon us by an old friend whose persuasive powers, as I had long known, were irresistible. In tones that were dulcet even by way of the telephone she invited me to shelter her wild young puss, Polly, during the summer, while she closed her own house and, bearing Billy in a basket, sought the repose of an ocean isle.
"Why don't you carry Polly with you, too?"
"There isn't room in the basket and, besides, I'm sure thattwocats would be against the rules of the railroad."
"But Polly takes to the trees whenever I try to pat her. She would run away."
"Oh, I can arrange that for you very nicely. I'll let you have a kitten of hers and then she'll be perfectly contented."
"A kitten of Polly's! She is only a kitten herself."
"Yes, you are quite right, as usual. One kitten might not be enough to steady her. It would be better for you to have two, and then Polly will be kept busy in teaching them to play together."
"Now how many catkins have you over there? Own up."
"Well! Not counting the pincushion pussy that the mice like to nibble, we have six on hand just now,—Billy and Polly and the four kits. Such darlings! Everybody wants them. The competition is really terrible, but of course I insist that you shall have first choice. Come over this afternoon, please. We are taking the early train to-morrow morning."
Spellbound by the cheerful audacity of these proposals, I went, and when, after much active exertion on our part, Polly had been caught and securely hasped down under a heaving basket-lid, I dubiously selected two of her blind babes to bear her company.
"Who takes the other two?"
"You do," responded my friend more winsomely than ever, "unless you want to be a horrid Herod and go down in history as another slayer of the innocents. Look at those little dears! Listen to them! Have you the heart to ask me to drop them into a pail of cold, cold water? What sort of a physiologist are you to suppose that kittens, born only yesterday, could live without their mother? And Polly would miss them dreadfully. I never saw a more devoted family. As soon as they are old enough to gambol, they will be such a pleasure for you all,—especially your sister. And you can easily find nice homes for them, if you want to give them away later on."
The four members of our summer household each had the privilege of naming one of the kittens. Housewife Honeyvoice called the black one Topsy; the small schoolgirl, Esther, dubbed the prettiest Daisy; I gave to the homeliest the encouraging appellation of Cinderella, and Sister Jane, returning from a visit to find the feline family in possession, promptly branded the fourth as Beelzebub. Out of deference to her outraged feelings, a nursery was prepared down cellar, where Polly, for so inexperienced a parent, took excellent care of her babies except when my officious ignorance interfered.
Still a blunderer, I put the kittens out on the south piazza the second day to treat them to a bracing interlude of air and sunshine. Polly at once went frantic, mewing and scratching for re-admittance. Presently a succession of queer, soft thumps brought me to the scene, and there was Polly, Beelzebub flapping from her mouth, climbing madly up the outside of the screen door. As soon as she saw me, she parted her jaws to emit another of those shrill meows that had been profaning the peace of the house and down fell poor Belze with a piteous whack on the piazza floor.
Close scrutiny of the situation revealed a big, saffron-colored cat, with a dangerous glint in his green eyes, peering from the shrubbery and, self-rebuked, I restored Polly and her jewels to the safe seclusion of the cellar.
But I still held to my faith in the open air and, as soon as the kittens began to blink, Housewife Honeyvoice and I pulled out from the lumber that chokes up cellars under feminine charge the big wire box which had been the Castle Joyous of Robin Hood. Planted firmly on the grassplot outside the cellar door, with a cat-hole just large enough for Polly cut in the wire, it was so secure as to appease even her maternal fears. Every morning she marshaled her little troop out to this new abode, carefully drove them all in and tended them there until sunset, when she led them back to the cellar. All the cats in the vicinity came to call, but Polly was the very spirit of inhospitality. She always maintained an anxious guard against marauders and, at the approach of the most amiable old gossip, would fill up the wire doorway with her own slender body, spitting and bristling in the very face of the disconcerted guest. Cinderella, the most precocious of the kittens, observed with admiration this form of welcome and scandalized all observers by scampering to the door one day, as her mother was returning from a brief constitutional, and with all due ceremonies of defiance refusing her admission. After one astonished instant, Polly recovered her presence of mind, bowled out of the way that comical ball of impudence and made it her first parental duty, after entering, to box Cinder's ears.
As the kittens grew older, they had the run of the house, which they filled with elfin mirth of motion and reels of Puckish revel. Placed in a row on my desk, they would watch the moving pen with fascinated eyes, till one shy paw after another would steal out to investigate and presently there would be a flurry of funny antics all over a blotted page. By autumn they had all gone their ways to different households, except Esther's Daisy, whom we kept, but the joy of kittenhood was the only life they had. Doom, like a black cat hunting mice, speedily caught them all, unless, perchance, dogs and motors were kinder than we fear to Cinder, who, one winter day, after her morning saucer of milk, struck blithely out into the sunshine from the best of homes and never, though search, inquiry and advertisement did their utmost, was heard of again. Little Bub proved so puny that he was left with Polly, reinstated, much to her content, in her own kingdom, but not even her puzzled solicitude, varied by cuffings, could keep him alive. As for Topsy and Daisy, I have not the heart to tell how they perished, but though I say it as should not, Daisy was too bad for this world. An incarnate imp, she mocked all discipline and scorned all affection, capering into new mischief at every rebuke and scratching herself free from caresses. Despising laps and cushions, she took to the air like an aeroplane, forever on the leap from one forbidden shelf, mantel or flower-pot to another. Her agility was supernatural. She would hang from a curtain cord, spring thence to the top of a door, pounce on a bowing caller's back, and, within ten seconds fill the hall with such skurry and commotion that Hecate and all her witches could have done no more. She could not keep quiet, even at night, until Housewife Honeyvoice devised the plan of putting her to bed in a basket, with a cork dangling from the handle for her to play with in her dreams.
Joy-of-Life was ill that winter and, because the kitten's pranks would now and then divert a suffering hour, we bore with Daisy as long as patience could, until, indeed, she forsook the house and set up an independent establishment with a battered ruffian of a cat under our south porch. Before forsaking the house, she had derided everything in it. She had, indeed, an uncanny gift of singling out for her most profane attentions the special objects that humankind holds sacred. On the top of my desk stands a small Florentine bust of Dante, whose austere countenance she loved to slap. Beyond it hangs a cross of inlaid olivewood from Jerusalem, apparently inaccessible, but this infant athlete, precariously balancing with one foot on the curved woodwork of the desk and two feet clawing the wall, would stretch herself out like an elastic until her free foot could give the lower tip of the cross a smart rap and set it swinging. Punished, she would strike back, hitting us in the face with an absurd, soft paw; called, she would run away; caught, she would kick and bite. Our most tactful cajolery she met with suspicion and disdain, if not with open ridicule. Graceful as a whirling leaf, she was untamable as the wind that whirls it,—the wildest wisp of kittenhood that ever left an aching memory.
Since the tragic exit of Daisy, whose confidence I could never win,—and her cynical little ghost bids me admit that her distrust was borne out by the event,—I have counted myself unworthy to take any kitten to hearth and home. I doubt if any would come. My neighbors across the way have a lordly old Thomas, who, smelling dog on my skirts, spits at me as I mount the steps. My neighbors of the cross-cut have a glossy black puss in a resplendent red collar, who politely but unrelentingly evades all my advances. The feline heart has found me out. Yet I still cherish a wistful regard for these delicate-footed, wary creatures, who develop so suddenly from madcap frolic into dignity, discretion and reserve, keeping even in the most domestic surroundings a latent sense of a free life elder than civilization, when, as Swinburne tells his silken crony: