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RNTKHED according 10 Act of the Parliament of Canada, in tl.o year 1897. by .loUN
.1 AMEB Pkoctkr, at tlie Department of Agriculture.

THE.

Philosopher

In The Clearing.

A.DTHOR OF "THE RAGGED PHILOSOPHER," "THE STANDARD BEARER
AND OTHER POEMS," " VOICES OF THE NIGHT," ETC.

QUEBEC :
Daily Telegraph Print.

1897

131860

PS 84-8/

flt tl)e '" xtz of tl)c Clcapincf.

O OME 3'ears ago, when I was asked by the editor of the St.
_]^ Johns News — who must be forgiven in that he did it in
ignorance, and never dreamed of the amount of boredom he was
preparing to inflict on himself and his readers — to contribute to his
paper regularly, I was for a moment inclined to refuse, being
appalled at the prospect of having something to write about every
week. I had not learned at the time that it is the easiest thing m
the world to say it when you have nothing to say, and, very
frequently, the hardest thing when you have. That is the reason
why the fair sex are so eminently gifted in the oratorical line, and
why men are either silent altogether, or make an awful mess of it
when they do speak. However, I concluded, as too many
unfortunate readers are aware, to try the experiment, and then
came the question what line I should take, and in what guise I
should present myself. As I pondered over these things my eyes
lit upon an old stump by the roadside, and suddenly there came
before me a vision of the half-forgotten past when I first came into
this country, and when all was an unknown land to me, even as
the literary journey on which I was preparing to embark was.

It was late in the fall of one of the fifties when, after a stay
of some four weeks in Montreal, I set out to make my abode in a
certain village of the Eastern Townships, which was better known
to its neighbors at that time by the name of Slab City, than by the
one it insisted on being called, though it eventually succeeded
in carrying its point. How well do I remember the long day's
ride in the stage under a hot sun from St. Johns to Stanbridge
East, at which point 1 rested from my joltings for the night ! How
exciting was the constantly recurring speculatioi. as to which
wheel was coming off first as we rumbled into and out of holes in
which a calf might have been buried, and in which occasional cats,
young puppies, and other agricultural products were ! What an

AT THK GATE OF THE CLEARING.

inventive, and at the same time thrifty genius of the inhabitants it
showed when attempts at mending the worst parts of the road
by filling them up with old boots, and worn-out stovepipes were
observable ' And, in the parishes nearest St. Johns, what a lot of
children there were ! All young ; they never seemed to get beyond
a certain age ; but they made up in numbers what they lacked
in maturity. Sturdy little urchins looking cherubic enough to have
just come out of the garden of Eden, and about as scantily clad as
if they had ; some of them, indeed, being, like Horace, clothed
in their own virtue — and nothing else. These, and the dogs, which
formed almost as large a portion of the population as the children,
and the bright-eyed smiling women that came to the doors as the
stage rolled by, were the salient points of my reminiscences of that
.)ld-time ride. But the most salient points were the cahots —
" cow holes " as I then understood them to be called, and I thought
that perhaps they were the " buffalo wallows " of which I had
read in England, and kept a bright look out for the buffaloes.
But I never saw any.

" The shades of night were falling fast " long before we drew
up for a few minutes at the post-office in Bedford, and the scenery
between that village and Stanbridge was as indefinite as a Liberal's
conceptions of a commercial policy, so that when I rose up in the
morning, and looked out of the bed-room window, my eyes fell for
the first time on a genuine Canadian clearing ; a vast field that
stretched from the very yard of the little inn to the bush in the
distance, and full of stumps. Stumps of all shapes and sizes ;
smooth ones, splintered ones, stumps blackened with fire, stumps
whitened with sun and rain. I think there was some grass, but
I am not sure ; I know there were lots of little pools of water, and
a great many stones ; and there were some ten or a dozen
melancholy sheep scattered about, looking very like what the
hundredth ovine must have done when it had strayed off from the
ninety and nine. But the one predominant idea was stumps.
Involuntarily I looked about for the wolves. I had read a great
deal about the Canadian wolves, and this seemed just the place

AT THE GATE OF THE CLEARING.

where one might expect to see them, but I didn't, any more than I
saw the buffaloes. Yet thi.s expectation was not so very absurd
after all, for I did hear once or twice after of a wolf being seen in
the vicinity ; but he was an untruthful and delusive animal,
partaking of the opposite characters of angels' visits, in that he was
" few and far between," and of a politicia\''s aiite-election promises,
in that he failed to materialize, or, if he di^l, turned out to be .some
stray dog out on a sheep-stealing expeditioi : just like a politician.

However, the scene, which is connnoii enough, impressed me
very strangely at the time with a simse of weird loneliness which
I had never experienced before. And yet, when a school-boy,
I had spent hours, and sometimes whole days, in roaming over the
great furze and heath-covered wastes of the Westmoreland und
Yorkshire mountains along which a nuui might travel from Kendal
to the Scottish border without seeing a human habitation, or the
trace of human civilization beyond the difterent flocks of sheep
that dotted every steep hill side. But there the conflict between
man and nature was ended, and peace hud been signed. The time
when that vast upheaval had been covered by the stately trees
of the forest had long passed away, and left no trace behind it ;
here, the struggle was just begun, and I was looking down on one
of the battle-fields still cumbered with the evidences of the strife*
and the slowly decaying bodies of the fallen. There I was face to
face with nature quietly contemplative in a settled order of things ;
here was a state of transition ; man breaking in on the old peace.
I carried that picture away with me then, and shall still carry
it till all earthly pictures are effaced. It rose up before me as
I was pondering over the request of the editor of the News, and I
said to myself, " There you have it. J\ist fancy yourself back on
one of those old stumps, and philosophize on things in general and
nothing in particular."

I was, in a measure, adapted for philosophizing, too, so far as
externals went. My wife complained, (as she complains with
tears in her eyes to this day), that she never could get me to look
decent. I hate " fixing up "; and I have a pecuUar affection for

- I . H»B»?Wf5IWBn™

6 AT THK GATK OF THE CLKAKING.

old clutho.H, partly because they are more comfortable, and partly
because one is never distressed with fears of spoiling them. It
was iu vain that she represented to me that I owed something
to society, and tliat 1 ought to at least appear res])ectable. T
replied that when society footed my tailor's bills, it might dictate
wiiat 1 siioiild wear, but that so long as I had to perform that
unpleasant operation myself, I should consult my own convenience,
and society, if it did not like it, might go to Bath, and further, if it
chose. It was just at the end of one of the daily discussions
on the subject that I confided to her my intention of writing
philosophical articles i'rom the stump by the roadside, on which
she exclaimed, " You a Vhiloso]>her 1 a pretty ragged IMiilosopher
you'd make." And this is how I came to be a Magged Philosopher,
and v/rite nonsense. I may have sinned deeply : I am only too
conscious that I have ; but I trust it will be taken into merciful
consideration that I was brouglit into literary existence by the
coml)ined forces of an editor and a woman ; and what goodness
can yon expect from the influence of the one, or sense fiom the
influence of the other ?

pausincf crt the (gate. The Ppefaee.

" There are more things in heiiven iind enrth, Huratio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy ";

Jam not quite certain whether that is the cuiijct (juotivtiou, but
it does not matter if it isn't ; it will serve my purpose just as
well, and that is all that I care about. The reader will be kind
enough to bear it in mind before he starts any objection to finding
the preface to a book come in a diiferent order to that which is
generally assigned to it. There are reasons : and reasons probably
that would never have occurred to him had this book not been
written. In the first place, I am desirous of having something
original ; not very much ; I am quite content with a limited pos-
session in that line, being satisfied, in the main, with common-
places dressed up and served in a iiiud of literary boarding-house
hash for present use ; but still I should like, for my own sake, a
little bit of originality, and since Solomon assures us that there is
nothing new in the way of human thought under the sun, I see no
other means of attaining the fulfilment of my modest aspirations
save by putting the preface where it "didn't ought to was."
Secondly, authors may not be aware of the fact, but readers are,
that a preface is never read. " Surely in vain is the net spread in
the sight of any bird," and the general reader is a great deal too
wary to bother himself with a preface, a thing which is usually as
dry and uninteresting to anybody but the writer, as the old
Sunday school books which contained biographies of " Little Mary
Jane," and happy death beds of infantile saints ; or if it was at all
witty and interesting was simply an exasperating button-holing of
the reader anxious to plunge at once in mediaa res. Any
way, interesting or not, prefaces are never read, as I intend,
this to be, and therefore I am going to get it in surreptitiously,
and as a sort of surprise party, for it would be manifestly

PAUSING AT THE GATE. THE PREFACE.

i!:

dorogatory to ray wisdom as a philosopher to write something that
I knew beforehand would not be looked at. There are other
reasons also ; but " enough is as go(jd as a feast," though that is a
proverb that will not stand close examination.

Having thus estublished, I hope satisfactorily, that the placing
of a preface in the contents of a book, instead of before them, is
not a totally indefensible proceeding, however startling it may
appear at first sight, I am conscious that I shall meet with the
objection that if I wished this of mine to be read I should not have
announced it with a flourish of trumpets, and proclaimed it from
the house tops. Here again, I must refer to the statement of Mr,
Shakespeare with which I commenced. The fact is that. I don't
intend to take any chances, as I informed my publisher when
he suggested that it would be a great deal more gi'and and heroic
for me to risk my capital than to risk his, I did not dispute the
assertion, but I put it to him that, as a jihilosopher, I could not
be expected to set any value on glory and fame, which are perish-
able articles at bust ; that, indeed, it was perfectly impossible for
me to consent to acquire them, and that since they doubtless >. uld
be gained by the publication of my book, he was the only one
to whom they could fall. He looked dubious, but " the woman
that hesitates is lost," and so is the publisher. Now either a
preface is, by artful contrivance, read, or it is not read. That
seems to be incontrovertible. If this of mine falls under the
former category, 1 shall have gained a point ; if under the latter, 1
shall have gained a point still. Not the same, I grant, but another.
Did it ever strike you, (but of course it never did) what unlimited
possibilities for the author there are in an ordinary preface. Secure
in the knowledge that it will be passt'd over unheeded, he can say
what he likes. He can preface a treatise in favor of Free Trade
with an elaborate disquisition on the advantages of Protection ; a
geography, with the statement that the world is flat, and that if
you only go far enough, you will tumble oif ; a treatise on medi-
cine, with a defence of the principles of christian science ; a volume
of orthodox sermons, with the theories of the Theosophists ; and

PAUSING AT THE fiATK. THK PREFACE.

nobody will \h} any thi) wisiT. By the aid of u preface he can
even go so far as to construct, unuidcd, a full party pngraninic,
a thing which inasmuch as it enilmici\s every theory known to the
p(jlitical world, hiis iiitherto hiid to be got up in sections in this
country ; a little bit in each I'rovince ; and which, desjiite the
numerous talented minds that have been working at it, has never
yet been blended into one harmonious whole. But tiie author can
do it — with a j)reface — and can answer any objections made to liis
book by the entjuiry " Have you read what 1 advanced in my
preface/" (>r course the answer is "no," with probably the mut-
tered addition, "and don't intend to.' Then the objector stands
convicted before the world of not having fully mastered his sub-
ject, and is silenced acct)rdin"ly. This is how I stand to win on
either event. Read this, and yuu will probably be too wearied
and listless to be capable of making any comi)laint afterwards ;
don't read it, and then i^ ou sliould .uy the book is dull and
stupid the answer is that you Ir. vi- not perused it with suthcient
care, and it i^ your fault, not rnme.

I have chosen as a rrontisi>ioce an owl sitting on a stump.
The stump is obvious enough ; j)erhai)3 a little too obvious ; Init
the owl is more debatable. I never could satisfactorily make
out whv that bird should be assigned to the Goddess of Wisdom :
he's not particularly wise that I know uf ; in fact, if you catch him
out by daylight, which is not a very .isual tlung to do, he looks
particularly foolish. He bolts his food whole ; and that any child
studying hygiene under the auspices of the committee of Public
Instruction can tell you is very injurious to the digestion. It is
also a further proof of iiis deplorable lack of education that he
does not seem to sutler from dyspejjsia by the j)ractice. He is a
dissipated bird, too, and keeps late hours ; doesn't do any work in
the day time, and comes down to breakfast when the shades of
night are gathering fast, a lamentable ])roof of his utter di.sregard
for the feelings and convenience of Mrs. Owl. What he does
when he condescends to leave his bed at a time when respectable
birds are either in theirs or preparing to go to them, is accurately

BBBH

PAUSING AT THE GATE. THE PREFACE.

known to few, except the tield-mice ; and they have nothing good
to report about liim ; but I have a suspicion that he drinks ; and
something stronger than water too ; for' if you happen to be awake
in the wee sma' hours, you will hear him attempting to say " Truly
rural" to Mts. Owl when he goes home, or practising what he
calls singing on some old dead branch. A little later on you will
hear him snoring ; and if you pass his house in the morning he
will be hiccuping in his sleep. Now you can't call such a bird as
that a fitting companion for a prim old school marm like Miss
Minerva, and I don't believe she had anything to do with him.
It's all a vile slander, and was probably started by some disgruntled
ratepayer when Minerva commenced her educational life as
teacher of an elementary country school. Not that I consider the
owl an ass (intellectually asinine, of course) ; far from it. He
knows enough to enjoy life according to iiis lights, or rather, in
his case, twilights, which, I take it, is more than a great many of
us, male and female, old and young, wise and foolish, know how
to do. We are all of us fed with a species of providential bacon,
in which the fat of prosperity is intermingled witli the lean of
adversity, and sorrow, and disappointment ; and we cannot take
our lean uncomplaingly : it spoils our enjoyment of the fat. We
are like the old lady whose rheumatism more than counter-
balanced a comfortable home, assured means of living, and good
friends; we think more of the crumpled rose leaves than the
smooth ones in our beds. You never find an owl doing that. If
he misses his swoop at a too nimble mouse, he merely remarks
" Hoot, mon ! but ye're gey and lucky," and goes off in search of
another without troubling himself further about the absconder.
I don't know whether he ever goes home without his supper, or
whatever he calls his meal, but he always goes home jolly, and
saying Tooral-looral. Bright moonlight, or murky dark, wet or
dry, it is all the same to him, at any rate so far as he can be heard
from, and there is no question about his enjoyment of life. Even
when he gets belated in the daytime, and is surrounded by a host
of little birds reviling him, and pretending to peck at him, he sits

PAUSING AT THE GATE. THE PREFACE.

blinking in a humorous manner as if the whole show was ^ot up
for his entertainment, and does not appear the least troubled with
his novel position. He's a wise bird in his way, thougli decidedly
not intellectual, and has a solemn and pretentious air which is
very imposing. I think lie and I have some points of resemblance.
And now that I liave made these things clear we will come down
to the business of this chapter. Let me see ! what was it ? oh !
the preface — Yes ! the preface !

Well, now ! You must be aware that I have already reached
tiie limits of an ordinary well behaved chapter in getting ready to
say what I was going to say ; and 1 shouldn't wonder if you were
tired. What is of a great deal more importance, (to me), is that
I can tired whether you are or not, and so I am going to put the
shutters up and close the wisdom store till next morning. What
is that you're saying? "You haven't come to the preface yet."
Now I think of it, you are right ; you haven't; and what is more,
I don't believe there is any prospect of your doing so. What does
it matter ? You would not liave read it if you liad ; and now you
are in the proud, and I Hatter myself, original position, of having
perused a preface that never was written, and never will be. That
alone is more than worth the price of the whole b^ok.

M '
m

.r^C'-r^" ■ ■ ■ ^'^ ■ ^*''= g'* '"**>" ' w *«*MWM*>i**w

•i

In tlie Cleapins- On Pi^eeonecivcd Ideos.

!;'

1 1

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'I,

©PEN confession, they say, is -ood for the soul, and what
"they say," must be true, the gh I have always been a
little suspicious of the maxim, having observed that those who are
most active in preaching it, are also, generally, those who are most
backward in coming forward to the practice of it, and I am not
sensible of any particular moral benefit that has accrued to me for
confiding my preconceived notions of Canadian zoology to a heart-
less public that will probably laugh at me instead of sympathizing
with me. And yet if I looked upon Canada in my earlier days as
a paradise for young women, where any amount of bears was
ready to hug them to their heart's content, and a terrible place for
innocent masculine lambs like myself, whom wolves were always
ready to devour, yet I was not so very far astray after all, for
there are bears in the province of Quebec, because I've seen them ;
and I know there used to be wolves, but they have since evolved
into contractors, and politicians, and wander over the country
amid metaphorical instead of literal stumps. In those days,
however, I kept my ideas to myself as much as I could, and so
avoided having them enlarged and improved, as happened to a
young Englishman who had come into the country about a year
before I did, and had grf)wn confidential with the genial Collector
of Customs who dwelt in Slab City and kept one eye on one side of the
line, and the other on the other side This young man had precon-
ceived an idea, that the boundary separated two races of men as
distinct in thought, 3peech,and appearance as the heathen Chinee.and
the new woman, and he was encouraged in the belief by his
confidant. " Yes ! " said the Collector, " the difference is very
perceptible, and strikes the thoughtful observer immediately he
crosses the line. Of course, I don't say that there is any change in
the scenery close by the border, but in everything else there is a
marked alteration, even in the atmosphere. However, there is

t:li '

IN THE CLEARING. ON PRECONCEIVED IDEAS.

nothing like seeing for yourself, and as I am going to drive over
to West Berkshire on the other side, I shall be happy to have your
company." The offer was accepted, and the two jogged along merrily
for a mile and a half, when the Collector pointed out the boundary
stone. Now, as luck would have it, just at this precise moment
one of those pretty little bushy-tailed animals, which are as
renowned for their jicrfume as any city girl, had run across the
road, and the air was blue with the remarks he made, en passant.
The Collector rose to the occasion. " Here we are just crossing
the line," said he, " and I told you there was a difference in the
atmosphere. Perha})s you are able to distinguish it ? " By this
time they were in the full enjoyment of the odours of Araby the
Blest, and the Englishman was looking pale, and holding on to his
nose with both hands. " Yes " he gasped, " there is a decided
difference. Unpleasant, too, I should say, but I suppose the
natives are accustomed to it. I think, if you'll excuse me, I'll get out
and walk back." And he did. What is more, during his brief
stay there, nothing would induce him to go in that direction again.
His preconceived notions had l)eeu more than corroborated by
experience. It was useless to argue with him ; he pinned his faith on
the Collector and the — Sk — k.

Mutato nomine de tefabida. In these days of Vassar and
Girton there is no need of apology to the fair reader, if I have
any, for quoting Latin, but for the benefit of the weaker masculine
intellect I may translate it briefly into the vernacular, " You're
another." We all of us have our preconceived notions, and they
are all more or less erroneous and absurd. When Mr. Pecksniff'
expressed an overwhelming desire to be favoured with his land-
lady's ideas of a wooden leg, I rather fancy he would have been
considerably astonished if his wish had been gratified. We cannot,
unfortunately, get at her ideas now, but I should not be at all
surprised to learn that the worthy lady's ideal of a wooden le<y
took the form of a highly polished mahogany one, such as used to
SU3 uiu thj old fashioned four-poster bedsteads ; or take the case of
our Mjiit Gracious Sovereign Lady, *^'ie Queen. Don't you, when-

IN THE CLEARING. ON PRECONCEIVED IDEAS.

i|f

ever you think about her at all, picture her to yourself as a stately
woman wearing a gorgeous crown, with long trailing robes to
match, instead of a stout old lady in widow's weeds, specimens of
which one meets everywhere ? I know I do. When we who are
outside of the pale of the noble four hundred, let our imaginations
conjure up visions of the aristocracy, are they not pictured to us
as bo-starro(l, and he-gartered, clad in ermine and fine linen,
instead of the common place ladies and gentlemen whom we may
jostle in the streets without knowing what we have done ? Does
" Maud in the light of her youth and her grace, singing of Death,
and of Honour that cannot die " have any picture before her of
the real smoke-grimed hero, with patched up uniform, that lies
on the battle field, breathing out his life in sobbing gasps ?

As a general rule, I fancy, the notions we form of things
with which we have not had a previous acquaintance magnify the
reality, thither in importance and desirability, or theii' contraries,
just as the liaze distorts the outlines of the objects that loom
through it. We seldom undervalue a thing in prospectu, unless it
be some obstacle to the accomplishment of our own wills. I
know of but one instance lo the contrary, and that was the case of
the Irishman who had heard dreadful tales of the mosquitoes in
foreign parts, and of their long trunks which they plunged into the
bodies of their victims and through which they drained the blood.
He was bound for India, and on arriving at Calcutta, the first
thing he saw on the wharf was an elephant. " Howly Mother av
Moses ! " he exclaimed in horror, " Is that baste a muskeeter ? "
What's that you're saying ? That the elephant was not a mosquito,
and therefore Paddy's preconceived notions might have been right
after all ? Now, that brings up a very intricate question, namely,
whether things have any actual existence outside of ourselves, and
independent of the attributes which we assign to them. Take a
dream, for instance. Its incideTits are very real to the dreamer,
though when he awakes he will be ready to acknowledge that
they did not, and could not exist. And yet is he so certain of
that ? I remember once reading of a man who used frequently to

m \

!il(|l

IN THE CLEARING. ON PRECONCEIVED IDEAS.

stately
bes to
lens of
'ho are
aations
I to us
linen,
ve may
? Does
Death,
her of
hat lies

wake out of his sleep, crying out that some enemy liad him by
the throat, and was trying to choke him. One morning he was
found dead in bed, with blackened face, eyes and tongue protrud-
ing, and every symptom of death by strangulation. What do you
make out of that ? Well, now ! if the actuality of a thing depends
on our own perceptions of it, then, since the elephant was, accord-
ing to Paddy's inner consciousness, a mosqiiito, an actual mosquito
he was, pro tern, and not an elephant. — Q. E. D.

f things
;nify the
ntraries,
lat loom
unless it
,vills. I
e case of
iiitoes in
into the
he blood,
the first
[other av
keeter ? "
nosquito,
een right
namely,
slves, and
Take a
dreamer,
edge that
jertain of
uently to

01) tYit Stuinp. polities.

Mil

l-r

^ HK word 'politics' surprises by himself" wrote Count
Smorltork, and, whether he meant it «r not, the remark was
a most valuable and true one, for politics are nothing less than a
constant series of surprise parties. The derivation of the word is
popularly supposed to be polis, a state, and politics to mean
nuitters pertaining to the state, but this is an entire error :
the real derivation is "polloi" "many," and "ticks," a parasite
which affects sheep and other animals, many ticks, and the idea
was suggested by the way in which those devoted to politics as a
pursuit get into the wool of the taxpayer, and fleece him. Politics
is the one blessed thing on this changing scene in which there is
always money : it has various aspeci.5, and appears under various
forms ; patriotism, public spirit, enterprise, etc., etc., but you can
always tell it by that characteristic. If there is no money in it,
it's not politics. As a late lamented friend of mine, who was first
a Conservative, then a Liberal, then premier of the province and a
Nationalist, and finally became a patriot once remarked, je n'aime
que la poUtiqae qui paie. That is the only kind of politics
which is real ; any other is hollow sham. If you don't believe
me, ask the first contractor you come across.

It is necessary that this great principle should be first laid
down in order to understand why opposing parties call each other
such uncomplimentary names as rogue, thief, liar, etc., while
insisting at the same time on their own purity and honesty, without
eliciting the faintest sign of feeling from the persons so attacked.
When once you admit that true and good politics consists in the
extraction of money for your own, and, incidentally, your friends'
benefit from the pul)lic purse, it is easy to perceive how nothing
will make those in power believe that they are doing anything but
what is right, and that their opponents are false to the very nature

'■■';•*

UN' THE STIMl'. rOLlTlCS.

Count
irk was

than a
Bvord is
mean
error :
parasite
:he idea
ics as a

Politics
. there is

various
,you can
ey in it,

was first

ce and a

e n'aime
politics
believe

Ifirst laid
ich other
while
[, without
I attacked.
ts in the
friends'
nothing
[thing but
Iry nature

til

of the thing they profess to be ; and how those opponents feeling
themselves as capable of the employing of the public purse for
their own benefit, should conceive that they are deterred from
doing so by illegal means. But they are " all honourable men ;"
and to bribe, or get fat contracts, or any other corrupt mode of
proceeding does not detract from their honour, for the more money
a man makes out of politics the more thoroughly is he doing his
duty to himself: that is, to his country, or that section of it which
is represented by him.

There are two classes of politicians : those who sit still, and
make all the mon'v; anl those who go about the country, and
make all the speeches. The former are called the supporters, and
the latter are termed the learlors of the party. The supporters are
so named because they maintain the other fellows, pay for the
bouquets that are presented them, and the dinners thrt are ten-
dered them ; also for election expenses, such as surreptitious
whiskey, valuable old horses, and rubber rings for interesting
babies, etc., etc. The leaders get their name from heading the
pack, and running the game, i. e., the public purse, down, when
the rest of tlie. hounds, (1 don't mean anything personal), come up,
and devour it. There is also a small subsection of the supporters,
called the organizers. These act as the huntsmen : they mark out
the country over which the run is to be made, whip the pack into
line, and keep the leaders from devouring the quarry when it is
run down. They get the antlers and haunches ; the pack gets the
body, and the leaders the leavings. " Only poor pickings," you
will say. Perfectly correct ; and that is why a cabinet minister,
generally speaking, has very little to leave behind him when he
dies. There remains one more element in " the party " ; the little
terriers and mongrels that run about fussily, and do all the yelp-
ing. These are called "the rank and file." They are not much
good, except for show, and get mighty few crumbs ; a couple of
dollars for a vote, when it is doubtful, is a fair market price.

All these together constitute " the party " ; but it is only the
men that make the money, the contractors, the promoters of rail-
2

ON THK STl'Ml". POLITICS.

ill

roads and canals and ahippiug lines, tlie combinog, that are really
the politicians. It is true that tiie others get a little ; a very
little ; but that dot's not entitle them to be clus.-<ed as politicians,
any nujre than the employes can be looked upon as the members
uf a firm because they get p.iLl Lheir wages out of the profits.
Now, it is from want of a jiroper appreciation of this fact that the
outside public falls into a grievous error, and when it finds its
pockets rapidly being depleted, or stumbles suddenly on some
good fat job, blames the unfortunate government for it. It is not
the fault of the government at all, but of the men who cry.
"Simon says, ' NVigglc-Waggle ' " to it, and who proceed to turn it
out, oT attempt to do so, if it does not Wiggle-Waggle as per order.
Ezekicl Snooks votes for the ministerial oundidate ; he is su])port-
ing the government only incidentally ; in reality lie is voting for
ii railway company, a graving-ilock contractor, a cotton or sugar
eoiabine ; and when he casts iiis ballot for an opposition candidate,
he is supporting men who either belong to one of these classes, or
want to l);dong to tliem. It all cnnes to the same thing in the
end, my sou. " liere " said the shownuui describing his panorama
of tlu! Battle of Waterloo ; " here you s;',es Bonyparty on his white
horse cheering on the last charge ; and there you sees the Dook of
Vellintou, on his whit" liors", a shouting " Vp, Guards, and at ' em'."
" Vich is Bonyparty, nud \'ieh is the Dook of Vellintou"?
s(^ueaked a sm:ill \nm.) in the aufliiuiee. " Vicliever you likes,
my little dear; you pays your mijney, and you takes your choice."
That's what the ch'ctor does. The one nuiterial thing is the paying
of the nuniey ; the clioii^e is quite iuimaterial. It do.'S not much
mxtter, so far as the expen litun; of tlu' public money is concerned,
whether the Governiuent is Conservative or Liberal ; the same
class of men is behiml it, and manipulates the purse strings. Does
that seem a sweeping assertion { \ recollect, and I dare say others
are yet alive to recollect also, how a great railway car])oration
turned round on a govei'nment and ej(!cted it from power,
because it was on the point of establishing another great railroad
company, whose rivalry was feared. There, was a gnnit deal of
fuss about the " scaiidal," as it was then called, at the time, and it

UN TiiK sTr.Nir. I'uLrnc.s,

WU3 lUiiJe U) do duly fur yuuvd ufLor ; Iml tliu simple matter was
that oue set of " suppdrtLTs " ulferod more pucuuiary support to
have u charter grauteil, than the other set either woiihi, or could
give tu have it refusj<l, aud the latter turned over its support
to the eiieiuy. Tiic public iuloiest had nothing to ilo with the
affair : in fact the public got the svcjrst of it, as it geuerally does
in these disputes, for it wasted live precious years in the contemp-
lation of a lini.' CO consist of alternate stretches of land and water-
ways ; as if anybody in his senses could expect a line to pay that
involved half-a-dozen trans-shipments, more or less ; and a lot of
steel rails dumped down to rust by the honest and capable
Government that succeeded the corrupt one which was turned out.
If you look up(Mi thos.i wasted years as you would a sum of
money, according to the old adage " Time is money," aud calculate
the interest on them up to the present date, how much do you
think the advanceiuent of the country was dehiyed ? Aud whose
fault was it ?

flt the Foot of the Stuinp. Dcfneins-

lilli"

.l«li

'II

HHEKE is not inucli to say about a ,stuiui» from a social point of
view ; it is esseiitially a solitary tiiiug, although surrounded
by scores of its fellows, all as unsociable as itsell, and has an air,
half uiorose, half melancholy. It may be patronized occasionally
by a predatory old crow, or a. marauding hawk, but that gorgeous
thief of the world, the l)lue jay, won't come near it, and the rollick-
ing bob-o-link holds it in high disilain. It is only when a stump
is regarded philosophically that it becomes a matter of interest,
and then its uses are apparent ; for observation, if you sit on the
top of it ; for meditation, if you recline at the foot of it. The
person M'ho uses it for a seat must have all his senses on the qui
vive : he is obliged to sit u]) like a little man. because there is
no back to it ; and he is forced to keep his eyes from shutting, and
his wits from wool-gathering, because if he does not, he runs the
risk of tumbling off, and hurting himself. There is nothing that
comes up to a seat on a stumj) for the purpose of exercising the
powers of intelligent observation, that I am aware of, unless it be
a high step-ladder. But you can't very well carry a high step-
ladder under your arm to sit down on when you are tired, every
time you go out for a stroll ; whereas you van find a stump most
any where in Canada outside of the cities. On the other hand,
the foot of the stumj) is admirably adapted for meditation, and the
closing of the dreamy eyes. The ground is generally covered with
a soft mattress of moss and wild flowers ; there is a nice support
for your back ; and the roots stretch out on both sides of you like
the arms of an easy chair. The only j)recaution to be taken is to
make sure that the spot has not been preempted by a bumble
bee, or a black wasp ; in which ease it is as unfavourable for
philosophy and meditation as can well be imagined. When I wish
to pursue political researches, T sit on the top of a stump ; when

AT THE FOOT OF THE STUMP. DANUINa.

^«

it is my do.siro to in(iiil;,'i> in j)hilo3ophicul disquisitions, I lit' at
the font of it. I urn doinf,' ,so now.

It is drawing' to the cloan of a hot suninitir'.s day, and tho air
is dancing up and down in ^dassy undulations. Thore are other
dancers besides the air, in ihf sli!i]»(' nf myriads of small flies, that
seem to me never to deviate from tli>'ii' iv-ijici'tivc tracks to ri;^ht
or to left, but to keep a [)erpetual alternation of ascent and
descent. T call them flies; some peo|)k' (.ill ilicm ^Miats ; and
others aj,Min, mid<fets : the naturalists ^ive the merry little beggars
a long Latin name, Kitheincrides, and ])retend that their term of
life extends throughout the space of twenty-four hours. It may
!•;> so ; I shouKln't 1),' suri)risod if it were. I know that I should
b.i dead myself long before the twenty-four hours had expired, if
I attem])t(!d to take the violent exercise they do, and I wonder if
they have any idea that there is such a thing as perspiration.

They arc not social economists ; that's evident. I should
like to catoh one of them, if I crjuld, and explain to them of what
enormous waste of motive power they are guilty, and of how
much more use it would be to the world if they were to form a
combine, and run a cotton mill, for instance. They could do it if
they chose. Of course some one would have to build the mill for
them, but they could run it afterwards and pay him off out of the
profits. "Just consider, my little friend," I woidd say to one;
" here you are raising your body two or three feet into the air
about twenty times every second. It's not ranch of a body, it is
true ; but then there are thousands of you ; millions ; myriads I
should say, if there are corresponding swarms of you round every
stump in the field. And you are at this work from the minute
you are born to the minute you die — twenty-four hours ; that is,
86,400 seconds ; and twenty times a second makes 1,728,000
times; and 3 feet at a time makes 5,184,000 feet. Now, suppo-
sing it takes ten million of you to weigh a poimd, (and you really
look a great deal stouter than that), and supposing also that there
is at the least calculation a pound of you jigging up and down by
this stump, you have exerted a force equal to raising over five
million pounds a foot high during your lifetime. What's that you

■ I

AT TnF FOCiT OF TITF f^TtTMr. DAXf'INV;.

say ? That yoii nrn dancing for your own uniusomcnt, and not for
men's profit > Tlmt Im u very wron^j view to tnki-. It is not moral,
and you wmuot ,st*rii)u.sly entertain it, It would griovc mo dooply
to think then; was such a thinf( as an immoral F,|>ht'morid. No I
my littlo friend ! Wo are ull pln^'Ml in this world to assist and

support one another, and ." May do<^s defile the yrave of

that mos piito's ifrandmoth'r ! The r.iscil has hittcMi me on the
nose.

I wonder which of us was right; T in lookiuf^ on daiuiu^' in
a practical liuht as a species of labour, or the Kphcinerid in regard-
incr it as an amusement. Sav;ifj;t' and heathen nations hav<^ asso-
(jiated it with religious ceremonies, and thus, combining,' tiie idea
of service performeil with an ex[)rcssion of icjoicinj; and thanks-
j^iving, have invested th<.' act with the characteristics of both work
and play. There is no doubt that as a religious cerciuouy dancing
played an important i)art iti the .Fewish rilual, but Christianity
refuses lo recognize it as a part of religion, and indeed sonn* creeds
profess to look \x\nm it as immoral, or, at the very least, unbe-
coming. And, no doubt, it would be a considerable shock to see
the Archbishops of Canterbury an 1 Vijrk, and the bishops of the
F^nglish church, dancing a schottische in St. Paul's Cathedral in
lawn sleeves and knee breeches; or the Pope and his Cardinals
going throiigh the mazes of a country dance in St. I'eter's. We
have operatic singers to sing solos in our churches, and the musical
talent of our choirs is a great factor in gathering a good congrega-
tion ; but dancing is " a horse of another colour." We draw thf
line at the music.

In proportion as the re!igi(jus phase of dancing was discarded,
the heathen nations of (rrcece and Rome, and the scmi-civilized
peoples that succeeded them, camt; to look upt)ii dancing as a
labour, and one, moreovijr, that was beneath tlieir dignity. It is
related of a Turkish ambassador to a Eurojiean court, that when
he first witnessed a ball, he expressed his astonishment that people
should take so much trouble. " In my country " said he, " we
have girls to do the dancing, and look on oui'selves."" Them's my
sentiments, exactly." I can admire the grace and elegance of girls

AT THK I'OnT nV THK i^Tl'Ml'. KANi'IMl.

id not for
lot nionil,
rif ilooply
rid. No :
Assist and
\ },'rave of
p on thn

lanciii}^' in
if\ regiird-

llllV(^ 11930-

2, the idwi
lid tlianka-
b(jth work
ly dancing
Jhristiiiuity
Dini' ci'tieds
!iist, unbe-
:i()ck to vS«e
lops of the
ithodral in
Cardinals
tor's. We
,lii', musical
I cougrcga-
ii draw til''

trainiHi to drincn, but sui-iciy dances have always seuincil to in«
absurd and ridioulons, niort! csprcially in the niaie sux, thii ^^tater
portion tu whom invariably look as it' they wmdd put their hands
in tln'ir pui!k»*ts, wt-n; they not fiidiarrasst'd by an insane desire to
put their feet ...re too. Which i,'ivfi them an a>pi'ct ot'iniK'cisiou.
I (jdii't mind confessing' that I half d iii iic iiivsell; my lirat
.ievious trouble came friim it, when, as a litih' li\eyear-uKI, 1 was
setit to a dancing school tn K-arn tlir ait. Th iv 1 met with my
fate; a wickeil little llirt of sweet six, with \>\\\r . y( s, h.ng lUirLs,
and short potficoals. 1 fell madly, distractedly, in love with her,
and, oh Idiss! my passion was retiirncil. We h.id got so tar as to
fliscuss an clopcmriit. whrn thi' usual \illaiii inltiAciied, in the
sluijte of a b(jy a year iiM<r ihun myself, who had steel buckles on
his shoes, and silk stockings, whereas I had oidy cotton ones, anil
no buckles at all. Then she cut me dead. It was an awful blow,
anil 1 have never com}ilcteiy recovcrrd jt. i ixfcollect l»ursting
into tears and exprrssing a wish to go h<>nie. ."Strange how the
events of our youth repeat themselves in d'ler hfe! The dew is
falling, and 1 am getting dam[), and once mure I want tu go home.
I'm going.

s discarded,
111 -civilized
nciiiij as a
nity. It is
that when
that people
d he, " we
Th;jui's my
nee of girls

rr."

iinl

In cr Tctngic.

*'\

/jT is a mark of the philosopher that his trained and well regu-
^ lated mind is able to perceive clearly things which are
either imperceptible, or but dimly seen by other people ; and it is a
further mark that he can receive calmly and without surprise these
quasi-discoveries which would be startling to common minds, if
they came without any previous preparation for them. One of
these discoveries which the true philosopher makes is that he is an
ass. He is continually making it, and — forgetting it ; so that when
he comes upon it for, say, the hundred and tirst time, it has all the
merit of a novel sensation. This is my hundred and second, and
still it is as astonishing as when it tirst dav,'ned uj)on me. But I
don't congratulate myself; far from it. Evil was the day when 1
persuaded myself that a man ought to keep up with the spirit of
the times ; that be should leave the beaten jiaths of Conservatism,
and wander down the sinuous byways traced out by youthful
Liberalism. Still mori^ evil was the day when, forgetting the
example of my great ancestor Adam, I listened to the words of
feminine lips, and hastened to guide Jiiy steps by the light of
feminine wisdom. I'tterly crushed and broken down for the
moment, I am repenting of my folly, when too late, in n;eta])hori-
cil dust and ashes, and in literal Ijrown ))a]ier, vinegar, and court-
plaster. "Oh, my !" as Mr. Fledgeby remarked when he, too, had
come to grief through a woman's instrumentality, "Oh, my !"

"The King's daughter is all glorious within," wrote the psalm-
ist. She might be in those days, and she may be now, for anything
I know to the contrary. I cannot contradict the assertion from
actual experience, for I never dissected om; ; though just at present
I'd dissect half a hundred of them with the greatest pleasure in life
if I could get hold of them. But this T can safely say : they are
anything but glorious without. Apples of Sodom are they ; fair

IX A TANGLE.

•^'O

^ell regu-
•hich arc
:iud it ia a
irise these
minds, if
One of
It he ia an
that when
has all the
econd, and
le. Bnt I
ly when I
le spirit of
iservatism,
youthful
retting the
words of
le light of
for the
n;eta])hori-
and court -
too, had
ny .

the psalni-

H' anything

rtion from

at present

sure in life

: they are

thev ; fair

to view, but bitter to the taste ; shifting sands, that under the
appearance of solid ground engulf the unwary wayfarer ; mossy
quagmires, with nothing green about them except the fellow that
trusts himself to them. Xever, never, never will 1 listen to a
King's daughter again. If I lived to be a thousand years old, and
had to be married a hundred times in that period, I would keep a
safe distance from courts, and the princesses that dwell in them,
and choose my wives from Republican heiresses.

It cami' al)nut iu this way. On a never-sufliciently-to-be
anathematized day I was reading the Xew \ovV Tribune, and I
came on the following paragraph :

"At a gathering of King's daughters at London, Ont., the other day,
Mrs. (irahatn, of Toronto, on being asked if dancing should be tolerated,
replied : 'Yl'h ! but only in the incoming, an hour before breakfast, and then
the wot;ian should dance with her liusbnnd nr brtither.'

I pondered deeply on this saying, and became convinced that
[ had been sinfully nt^lectfui of n.v duties us a husband and
master. You will observe that Mrs. (rraham did not say the
woman, (that is every woman in the household) '*may" dance, but
"should" dance, clearly meaning that it u the duty of every woman
to dance, and that she should lie assisted by her husband, or
brother, as tlie case might be, in doing so. My liousehold is
singularly wtdl arranged for sucli a ])ursuit, and we can always
}iair otf like members of the Legislature when they don't want to
have their names ajipearing in tlu; division lists. There was my
wife and myself; the cat, Naomi, and the dog, dim ; the hired man,
N"athan, and the hired girl, Bloomah ; husband and wife, as required
by ]\Irs. Graham : the cat and dog were not exactly married, but
they (juarrel so continuously that they have every clnim to be
considered in the light of a loving couple ; and as for Nathan and
Bloomah, I knew that he had proposed to her a few days before,
and she had told him that she loved another, but she would always
be a sister to him ; so there again the conditions under which
dancing became a moral duty were fuHilled. You see, the house-
hold was already splendidly mated for saltatory exercise ; husband

i\ A 'rAN'OT-i';.

and wife ; cat and dog; hrotljer and sister. It really seemed to
me, as a sense of neglected duty dawned on me from a perusal ot
Mrs. Graham's words, tlint the tingor of Providence had hccu
pointing that way fi;ir a long tiint' anil that I'verything was pre-
pared to facilitate the ])erforman('e of duty. "Tln' \\oman should
dance." (Jf course, ilow was it that this had never occurred to
me before, th(Aigh I had noticed that Bloonuih was develo]iing a
tendency to fatten up like my prize pig, and was just about as
much disinclined Id bestir herself about her ordinary avoratious '(

The liour lixed iiikui was alsfp singularly convenient. We
ke'ep uji the good nid fasliion of i'auiily jirayds Ijeforc breakfast,
and all the household is then assembled i.: the diuiiig-roiuii. The
eat and tlie ting ilun'l joiti in, of e.iur; ■, but tliey listen very
attentively, or else imitate the example oi' a fashidiiable congre-
gation during the sermon, and go in slt-ej), which is as much as
can be expected from animals that are iim -dited with possessing
souls, (I am referring to the cat and. dn^, ;i(,i the congregation;,
so, as I said, we arc all assembled just at the proper tinu^ ; and
that, again, was a manifest sign in wdiat direction my duty lay
80 I concluded to iK.'gin the very next nuirniug, and have a good
ilance before breakfast, instead ol jirayers, three times a week.
Mrs. (Iraham did not say tliat a wdiiian should dance every day,
and 1 thought every other one, lea\ing Sunday as an olf day,
would be siiilicient for a beginning. I did not take my wife into
jny confidence, thinking I would surprise her. So ] did; and
afterwards she surjirised me — she and lllcomah combined. 1
detest combines now as much as any Liberal does. 1 went to bed
full of virtuous inteiuiims, and as Southey says of Bislio]) llatto,
who was eaten up by rats, 1 '-shipt that night lik(; an innocent
man." He adds, 'dUit Ijishoji llatto never sle])t again," and upon
my Word I feel as if 1 were going to l)e in the same predicament
''Oh, uiy ! I tlo ache so."

The fateful morning came ; but I thought it advisable pre-
viously to give Nathan instructions to ensure everything going ol!'
smoothly. "Nat," I said, '• We are going to vary the religious
exercises a little this morning, so keej) your eye on me, and you

■'I

IX A TANdLK.

em sal ot
liad h'''i"i^
\va^ I'l'i'-
iii sliotili-l
jcurred to
oloyiin;j a ;

, about as {

ocations (

iont. NVc

})rriikfast, ;■

Kllll. 'Hio

listen very

l,le ciingTe- '^A

ri TIlUCll as

|)()ssessin;„'
igregatidn;,

time ; ami
.y duty lay
lavc a gofid
es a week.

every day,
|;in oil' day,

V ^vit'e iutn

1 ditl; and

nliined. 1
kveut to bed
ho]. Hatto,

|m iimoceut.

," and upon

[iredicaiuenl

Ivisablc pre-

In.^ j^oing oir

he religious

iie, and you

and P.lo'iinah inii.^t Just follow me and my wife." He looked a

little astonished, l>ut said it was all ri^ht, and he would. So when

wo stood lip to sinrj the openiu},' hymn, I just elippcd my wife

round the waist and heyan to waltz round the room, singing

lustily,

"Up find down tlie cihbler's bench

'I'he monkey chased the weasel ;
The [)!iison kissed tiio cobbler's wife,
And Pop ! goes the weasel."

N'atlinn followed suit, luigging Bloomali lik(^ a hear, and dancing
like one, too. He trod on the cat's tail at the first start, and she
tlew at the dog; and tlie two adjourned under the table, which was
the only safe plaee for them, for a free figlit. They had to keep it
up, too, for neither of them dared run from under the table while
we' were whirling round in the giddy maze, and when the waltz
came to an end there was as much hair and fur on the ground as
would have stuffed a decent sizi^d mattress.

Feeling a little tire 1 at the end of live minutes, Idrojij.ed my
wife on the sofa, and Xatluiu dumped lUoomah into tlu^ roeking-
chair fnv a brief intermission. l^>efore they could either of them
get enough breath to sjjeak, we, had them oil' again ; this tiuu' to
the strains of '''I'a-ra-ra J>oomdeav,"' which we afterward toned

wn to

,\'o

atlle ( iiri

lUue," f(U' the pace was kill

iul:.

"W'liat was left of the r.it liad taken advantage of tht; jiause to seek
refuge on the toji of the liigh cupboard in which we kiiep the
crockery; at least, I >aw a tail as thick as a stovejtipe waving up
th'^re; T don't know if there was any l)ody to it. As for the dog,
he couldn't Ite seen anvwliiu'e ; and I afterwards heard that when
he was found
ness of

kcdi

, he was under the sofa trying to cover the unwonted
his hinder parts in one of my big falling boots, and
the corresponding baldness of his jiate in the other. He has com-
phitely lost one eye, and, to iuak(> things cvou at the other end, has
(Uily two inehes of his tail left.

We had another iut 'rmissiini, but I delayed ton long, hum-
ming over "After the lUU," whi(di I thought would boa fitting
tune for the conclusion of the cereTnony. This gave time to my

IN A TAXGl.E,

wife and Bloomah to recover from their surprise ; they did not
recover breath for two or three minutes more ; and the first intim-
ation I got of it was a whack on the back of the head from the
Hying coSee pot, the spout of which got jammed between my collar
and my neck, and poured the whole of the boiling liquid down the
small of my back. Xathan basely turned tail, and bolted, but, I
am hap})y to say, the women finished him otf in the kitchen after
they had done with me. What they did. I cannot precisely say.
I have a confused idea of a storm of flying cups, saucers, plates,
knives and forks, spoons, toast, eggs, and other articles too numer-
ous to mention; and wlieu these were exhausted, of being assailed
with all the opprobrious terms that were ever known to man, and
a whole dictionary fall of more that were specially invented for the
occasion. Let me draw a veil over the scene. A woman when
she gets mad is the very — hem I and there were two of them. You
mav imagine the rest. King's daughters, indeed ! Bother the
King's daughters, and very ])articularly bother Mrs. Grah'am, if
they can't do better than lay down rules that a fellow cannot follow
without making a martyr and an ass of himself; and getting
anathematized into the bargain.

y did not
irst intim-

from the
liny collar
1 down the
ted, but, 1
tcheu after
eiselv sav.
ers, plates,
too numer-
Qcr assailed
man, and
ited for the
)raan when
beni. You

Bother the
Grah'ani, if
mnot follow
,nd getting

Heeovcpincf' Aid to Publie Sehools.

'•ON FIN, me voild ! On my end, here I am!" I am not
;_,_ quite certain which end it is, but I think it must be the
latter one, having been brought so near it in consequence of my
imprudence in listcninjj; to a King's daughter, anil not having had
much time to make progress on my recovery. And I am the
more supported in this conclusion because, if 1 may trust to
appearunccs, I am sitting on my old favorite stump, the companion
of my meditations, and my tried friend when the conjugal sky is
overcast. I say, " if I may trust to appearances," because I am
not much disposed to put my trust in anything, and I think
David might liave spoken out like a man instead of half way
when he said, " Put not your trust in princes " — he ouglit to have
added, " or in princes' daughters either " : then, I should have been
all right. However, I am the gainer after all by my late experience,
for I have deduced from it a very important rule of life, and that
is, don't regulate vour conduct to a woman by the advice given
by other womeu, especially if she happens to be your wife or your
hired girl. I don't mean to say that the feminine mind is not
profound — it is too profound for ordinary intellects — or that it is
lacking in common sense. It is certain, however, that its precepts
are not intended for the guidance of the sex. As the poet very
correctly remarks, "The proper study of womankind is man," and
woman recognizes the justice of the sentiment. The sole object
of her thoughts is man : how he should behave, how he should
dress, what he should say, and what he should and should not do.
She studies man in all liis pursuits and vocations, from the
minister in the pulpit to the politician in the caucus; she sizes
him up, and tones him down ; she contemplates him as a possible
husband, and a certain lover ; she torments his life out by day,

:io

UECOVEIiINC;. AID TO IMULIC .Sc;ilOOLS.

,\ '

iiud droaius about liiiu by night ; ;uid all her ochcmes are devoLoii
t(» the iuoimI. iiitullecLual and aojul rjijeuoralu n ul' man. She
ULVjr c()!nlesc'L;uds to bother herself abuuL her airfters, or, when she
dojs, she i)i(;k.s theui to pieces, and disiuisSviS them with contempt.
If I had seen this clearly before I altem[jted to start a family
dancing school, I shoidd not have needed the chasteninj,' of
i!Xpjrieuce ; an 1, after all. I am not so much di.;[)osed to blame
the King's daughters. It was not their fault if I did not understand
that in any sahome they may have fjr masculine regeneration, the
way in which other wtjiuen will view it when put into practical
operation never enters their heads. Their view of creation com-
pri-ses but two things, man and his legeuerator.

At any r,ii(^ I tini in a fair way for recovery ; and I have been
greatly helped t(j this by reading the rejiorts of the })roceedings at
the recent (quarterly meeting of ihe Protestant committee of the
(Council of Public Instruction. I am delighted to lind that that
body has at length awoke to the perception of what I long ago
pointed out, namely, that it is absurd and unjust to devote so great
a part of the public aid to education lo the support of schools in
large and nourishing centres, which are fully able to support
themselves, both in scholars and in money, while poi:)r and struggling
communities are left to tlic of iii.iuitioii, and are put off with aids
which are useless, except for the purjiose of mockery ; one school,
which I instanceii, actuaUy re(;eiving twenty-five cents as the
Government grant ; a sum which barely covered the postage on
the correspondcjice with the department. It is true that this tardy
recognition of what 1 pointed out some years ago is only as yet
})artial and half hearted ; th;^, committee still clings to the leaven
of the Pharisees, and still adheres in a modified form to the
principle of apportioning grants by the results of examinations. It
apparently contemplates the withdrawal, or, at any rate, tht;
reduction of the grants made to schools which are, or ought to be
be, self-supporting ; but it still professes to be convinced of the
propriety of being guided in its distribution of the public moneys
bv the results of the public exainiuati m, and the reports of th(»
inspectors combined.

ILS.

lilies are devoted
•I ui' man. She
tors, or, when she
lu with cuntempl.
to start a family
he ehasleiiin,!,' of
li.;po.sed to blame
I lid not uuier.staud
c regeneration, the
put into practical
of creation com-

v ; and 1 have been
the proceedings at
it committee of the
I to liui that that
of what 1 long ago
,t to devote so great
pport of schools in
ly able to support
poor and struggling
put off with aids
ockery ; one school,
-five cents as the
red the postage on
true that this tardy
igo is only as yet
dings to the leaven
lified form to the
:«f examinations. It
, at any rate, the
are, or ought to be
)e convinced of the
f the public moneys
the reports of th(>

i;i:r(ivi:HiN(;. aid to vvm.ic schoot.s.

T.et mc iry and flear the situation once more in as few words
as possible, and explain thi3 i)rinciples which are at issue. The
system of )»avnient liy resulis i^; a system of prizes ; and jirizes are
awcirdt'il, no! fui i\v aid, but for ilu- rncmiragemenl of education.
Ii \< important t(j note and insist on this distinction, because it may
li.' urgi'd. iuid with justice, li^it whatt'Vi'.r encourages education
, li'>l])< it. Tlii-; i< tru(! enough, sn far ,is it goes, but tlio help
, c.KLen li-d i> iiiMdcntal only. 'I'iie prizes given to the classes in a
s.'li.jol ai'e no do'iiit of juatorial assistanc(! in stirring u]) emulation
:' and tMU'ouraginu' study in the sidiolars, anil, in so far, they
ai'.; of ii'l vaul lu't' bji h to the-;", and to the s:'hool itself; but they
.ii'.' ?i I iiioi'.' aid, piojji'vly >o callrd, to cducalion, than are the
desks of thi' lai'si luolern tashinu, the system of ventilation, the
blacklj i.nds, and u'hiT scliool appliances, in fact, without an
etlicient staff of teachers, all thi'.sf things art; worse than useless.
Now what the hooks, aui] medals, and dijdomas are to the scholars,
, that, and no moi'i", are the g..)ve!'nmt;nt grants on the results system
;■' to the schools. 'rii''y ar- jiri/cs for the encouragement of elUcieut
% education in a community : th- (udy ditference is that instead of
■\ li'ing given to the scholars, ihey are given to the ratepayers, as
■'^ representeil l.iy the S.diool Commissioners, or the l->o.ard of Trustees.
:| I ilunk th It iliis position is so plain and obvious that no one will
• attempt to rontrovurt it ; at any rate I ht\e not yet met with anv
::v one who has done so.

X iw 1 admit, at on 3e, thai this princii»le is a good one, and
alt'jn le 1 witli satisfactory results under certain well detined condi-
tions; my objei'tion to it is thai these conditions do not exist in
tliis province. They exist only in old, and well settled countries,
wh're ever\- eo;inuunity, however small, is able at least to pav for
a s luuil (dem Mitary rdu 'ation, by whi''li I nv)A\\ "the three K's,
Heading, Kiting, and Hithmetic," without extraneous assistance.
Then, the prize system of goveiiiirii-nt gr.mts works satisfactorily
# and withuut doing any injuslice, because it has a good basis to
: v.dik on. It encourages competition, because, however small may-
be the grant received by a school, the sum can be ap])lied to the
.' iniprovem.nu of its education, and is not needed for its maintenance.

RECOVEKINO. All) TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

In this country, and more especially in this province, the case is
different. It is sparsely populated, and all over it arc littlt;
struggling communities that have al)out as much as they can
manag(! to provide for their own maintenance, and to whom the
scanty pittance which they pay to the raw young girls whom alone
they can get as school teachers is a heavy Inirden. No prize
system can awaken any spirit of competition in them, from the
simple fact that any advance is just as much beyond their reach
as the sun is, and from the other simple fact that when a man is
struggling for a bare crust of bread, visions (jf glory and of fame
are not wont to Hit before liis eyes. What such schools need is
lielp, not encouragement. There are communities again in which
the Protestant element is so small that they are either obliged now
to send their children and pay their tuxes to the l*oman Catholic
schools, or soon will be. 1 know of one, and in a t(d(jrably large
(lity too, wliere the only thing that keeps it from being struck off
entirely from the list of Protestant schools is the presence of
French Roman Catholic children who make up half its number.
An exceptional ease ? Well, so far as its being in a tolerably
populous centre goes, yes ; in other details, no. I have been a
teacher, amongst other things, in my day, and I have taught in
elemiuitary schools as well as academies, and I call to mind two
of the former where the government aid was 812 a year, and
where the grant received from the Society fi>r the Propagation of
the Gospel in England was mucli more. I don't know whether
they have it now ; I rather think they haven't, but I do know
that one of them afterwards received that mimificent aid of twenty-
live cents to which I have referred, and by this time, at the same
rate, it is probably paying the government five cents a year instead
of receiving anything.

There is no need to go any further. Now, perhaps you will
understand why I say that the system of apportioning the public
money "by results," is a fiilse and pernicious one in this province,
and that the true principle in t^e present condition of Protestant
education here is to apply that portion of the money which is
devoted to common and elementary education according to the

RECOVERING. AID TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

! case IS
irc little,
fcliey can
'hom the
om alone
No prize
t'rorn the
eir reach
a man is
I of fame
s need is
in which
iliged now
I Catholic
ibly larijre
struck ol^'
lesence of
s number.
L tolerably
A'e been a
I taiight in
mind two
year, and
lagation of
vv whether
'. do know
of twenty-
. the same
ar instead

needs of the smaller and poorer communities. To many of these
latter it is a matter of life or deatii, to all it is one of simple
efficient instruction. It is all very well to exclaim against the
incompetency of the teachers, and to endeavor to educate them
thoroughly, as is still done. In the name of common sense, if such
a thing is known in educational circles, what well educated and
accomplished young man or young woman will bury himself or
herself in a little obscure rural hamlet, with all its discomforts of
living, for a salary not greater than most servant girls get, and
infinitely less than that of a good cook, housemaid, ot- waiter ?
Educate I Yes! and the educated will go off as clerks in stores and
mercantile firms, as type-writers, as book-keepers ; some few may
be trapped into a so-called model school, or even an elementary
school in a big village. But into an out-of-the-way rustic hamlet,
— " not if I know it, Sammy : no ! you don't."

s you will
the public-

IS province,
Protestant
which is

ding to the

ill

fl Winter^ Fantasy.

MlOEEMOST amonu, the pioiiceis uf civilization, and the beue-
factors of niaiikiiid are tlie North American Indians. It is
true that they were uncultured, and their attentions to strangers
were more energetic than conventional, .and more warm tiiau
agreeable, but tluui every nation has its customs, and there art-
fly-specks on the best of us. If they made their c.iptives run the
gauntlet, out of that they evolved lacrosse, and would have
evolved football too, if rubber had not been scarce ; if they made
incursions in the winter, and burned down villages without any
regard to the feelings of the innuxtes, or the fact that the thermo-
meter was 20 Ijelow zero, they invented snow shoes for the purpose ;
if they organized summer surprise parties which ended by their
sticking the surprised with lighted pine splinters as full as a
hedge hog is of quills, and linally dismi :;ing them in a grand
pyrotechnic display, they called into existence the toboggan in
their more sedate moments. Lacrosse, snowshoe clubs, toboggan
slides, these grand things civilization owes to the Indians. Eh '.
"Rather different now to what they were in the time of tln'
aborigines ? " Of course. If a man cannot improve on what his
ancestors did he had Ijetter have been born before them, and
besides, it's a great deal easier to improve on a thing after it is
invented, !han to invent it oneself. The criticism is irrational.
How is a man going to perfect any idea before it has occurred to
any one, I should like to know. Therefore the Indians were tlif
pioneers of civilization, and the benefactors of mankind, Q.E.D.

Look at snow-shoeing; only look at suow-slioeing. Could
there be anything more invigorating, more exhilarating, more
delightful ? That is when you get accustomed to it, and don't trip
yourself up at the first deep snow drift, and make a frantic attempt
to stand on your head on the ground five feet below, while your
heels wave wildly in the air, a human semaphore. But when

A WINTER FANTASY.

, the beue-
aiis. It irt
() strangers
warm than
1 there art-
res run thu
vould havr
thi',v made
,vithout any
the thermo-
the luirpose ;
led l)y theiv
as full as a
in a grand
toboggan in
bs, toboggan
dians. Eh '.
time of till'
on what his
them, anil
g after it i>
is irrational,
occurred U>
ns were thr
1, Q.E.D.
fciug. Could
•ating, more
id don't trip
antic attempt
, while your
But when

these pri'liniinaries are over, uh the glory ol' that steady swinging
tramp over the crisp snow that sparkles in a million diamond facets
under your feet, while the pure bracing air rushes to mtiet you
laden with the breath of spruce and pine, and lills your lungs with
the elixir of life. It also converts your beard and moustucln! into
a fairy grotto of icicles, so that you couUl not get within two inches
of the lips of the pretty girl at your side, however much you niighl
feel temiited to do so, and a convenituit turn in the line of march
might atford an opportunity. Xever mind ; "there is a tide in the
utfairs of men," and besides your nose is looking a little too blue
for sentiment. Hark ! How the mounting spirits break out into
song; no birds ever sang more heartily. "Ho! Hoi Ho! over
the snow, with the blue above and the white below ! Hearts stout
and light of the blue and white, over the s])iirkling crust to-night !"
What's that break in the song and a roar of laughter instead ?
Tompkins gone to grass ? There's no grass now. Pull him out and
set him on his legs again. Nose frozen ? liub it with snow, ov
stop ! Ask Miss Maude there to " kiss the spot and make it well."
All right, old man ! off we go again. Tlie glory ? Ay ! and the
liealth and the pleasure and the good fellowsliip of it. Tlu; air is full
of laughter and joke and song, and the snow under the feet aings like
an accompaniment of fairy bells. Talk about summer birds I Why
here is the very essence of music and poetry. Who is that
swearing up in the l)ig old pine there ? A squirrel, and he's not
swearing either, he is laughing till he can scarcely hold on to the
branch. See how his head bobs down and his tail jerks up in
a very ecstasy of fun. " Bright eyes," Miss Helen ? It's your own
you see reflected in them.

Diamonds glance from tho branching [)ine.s,

Diiiinondfl cover the uleeping vines,

Diamonds star tlio skies above

But brighter thy clear pure eyes, my love.

Sweet eyes I sparkle when bine skies darkle
When night comes down with her starry crovrii
Ere the bridegroom sun hath his race begun
And sleep still fosters country and town.

ifll! 'H

A. WINTKU KANTA8V.

1 ,i

!' I

..!;!

What's that :* " Cluso up in the, real thuro ami don't tall
beliind." Clom; up, it is ; only .stoppinj^ to udniiru ihu .-iiiuiirul.
Take my arm, Mi.s« Ilclon, we'll get aiunif Taster to catcii them up.

Yes ' .snow-shoeing is a grand inveniiim, better than ti»boggan-

ing. I don't care much for tobogganing ; one has no time to

admire H([uirrel.s. You can't talk soft nonsense when your whoK'
attention is devoted to holding on to your toboggan and youi'
breath, and your whole soul is wrapt in an earnest prayer that
when you reach tiie bottom it may be only your leg that is broken,
and not your neck, it is very nice just as you are getting ready
to start, but when that toboggan Ixigin-^ to make play you get u
vivid idea of a sudden lea|t into eternity. Karth vanishes, and
becomes a chaos of whirling i)hantasms ; the heavens — there is n^
such thing as the Heavens ; nothing but a swirlitig blue mist amid
which all the stars, fused into one single comet with a tail live
million of billions of miles long, dart like the arrow of doom. What
was that? An eartiiquake or a volcanic eruption ? )r did that fiend
of a toboggan slide out from unilerneath and hit me on tlir
back? Only a jump ? Ne.Kt time 1 want to jump I'll go up five
miles in a balloon. It would be more comfortable. Where's my
breath ? I shall have to advertise for it when I get to the bottom,
if I ever do get tiiere, which is doubtful. I don't believe there is
a bottom. Somebody has stolen the other end. We have been
travelling at the rate of a hundred thousand miles a second through
countless years, and we ought to have been there, wherever there
is, or if there is a there at all, long before this. I wish I had made
my will before I started ; I wish I could remember a prayer ; 1
wish I had been a l)etter man wlien I was alive ; I wish I was otl

this tob')g'.>,m now tliat [ am dead. 1 wish Hah ! It's stopping.

and I've not been dead at all. Thank Heaven ! If ever again 1
go 1- — -raok ! Lend a hand to pull the toboggan up, and let us try it

■i-i:

■3?

agani.

Man ! it was grand.

I don't lull
u; n*iuiirel.
h iheiu up.
u tobuggaii-

ime to

your whoU'

II iiud your
prayer that
at i.s broken,
3ttin<^ ready
! you get :i
mishes, and
-there is nn
10 mist ami' 1
I a tail tivr
doom. What
lid that fienil
t, me on tlu'
L go up five
Where's my
> the bottom,
ieve there i»
e have been
tiond througli
erever thero

I had made

• a prayer ; I

ish T was oH

It's stoppin,u.

ever again 1

let us try ii

lYIusinffs ctt NiaW Fall.

\1 j\| IdllT seems to me to ccjiiiu lo a clearing with a more gentle
"^ ' tread, ami tit hush it to sleep with a mort! tender whisper
than she does elsewjiere. The honuistead is lull of lil'e, and eager
aiUicipiitions of the morrow ; the graveyard has nothing but the
dust of the dead and llie menu)ries of their yestenlay ; the clearing
coml)ines them both; tells of the waving forest of the past, and
foreshadows the golden gr.iin lields of the future. Whilst the farm
house, the handet, and the town represent life in its vigorous

. activity, and the cenu^tery represents a vanished life, the clearing
is at once the close of one (^\istence and the bi'giniung of another.
What does the night-breeze whisjjer among the stum[)S i A regret

|,for the forest glories, and a sigh for the present desolation ; or a

-vision of the beauty to come ( Who knows i Does the man, or
woman, far advanced in years, kiujw whether in the de[)ths of the
heart, the regret for past joys, the consciousness of failing powers,
or the prospect of the newer anil better life is really the most
predominant ^ Does he cling to the memories of youth and
maturity, or does he say with the poet,

" Tlie siiints arn dead, the martyrs dead,
And Mary, imd Our Lord ; and T
Would follow with humility i"

••| I wonder whether I could put his thoughts into verse, and
jwhether they would run much in this way.

Is there a sigh for the days of yore

When the soul looks back on the beaten track ?

Is it " ah, for the days that shall be no more,"

And alau I for the present, all gloomy and black ?"
God kuows — not I ;

MUSINGS AT NIGHT FALL.

For the soul of man is strange in its ways,

An unsolved riddle, a tangled maze.

It mingles it-i gladness with sorrow,

tts present and past with to morrow ;

Dashes its trium|)hs with whispered fears,

Mixes its laughter with hidden tears ;

It chants in a psalm of thanksgiving

The beauty and glory of living.

Whilst all tlirough the notes of its poeau fly

The undertones of its agony.

As the ways of a nesting plover,

As the heart of a maid to her lover,

As A dream that we lose in awaking,

As a flower that is crushod in the taking.

As the joy that has fled in the grasping,

As the love that has died in the clasping.

As the vapour-born lights of the fen

Are the souls of men unto men.

Have we a yearning sigh for the past.

Or a smile that the end is coming at last ?
I know not — I.

i < •'

:i SHl

Smooth is the pathway that children tread.

Traced out by love, and all hedged in by laughter,
With never a care, and never a dread.

And never a thought of the coming hereafter ;
With the soft liiand stroking the golden head,

And the dear voice cooing its dove to rest,
And the sweet face bending above the bed.

And watching the birdling in its nest !

Ripple of laughter all day long.

Patter of little feet, trilling of song I
Oh I the sweetness, the sweetness, the sweetness

Of the innocent days that Have long gone by I
And ah I the fleetness, the fleetness, the fleetness

Of Time that has left but their memory !

Fair was the road when youth was strong,

When the pulse beat high, and the heart was gay ;

When the breezes whispered naught but a song,
And flowers studded the pleasant way ;

MUSINGS AT NIGHT FALL.

89.

When the vines were laden with purple and gold,

And the apples of Eden hung from each tree ;
When the cup of pleasure was easy to hold,

And the beauty of woman fair to see.
Oh ! the gladness, the gladness, the gladness.

The rapture of yoiitii in the days of yore !
But ah ! the sadness, tiiu sadness, the sadness

Of elusive joys that return no uiore I
For the apples were apples of ISndoni, dust ;

And the poison of asps was the juice of the grape
And the heart's desire but an empty lust ;

And the beauty of woman a soul-less shape.

Hard and rougli was the road for the man ;

Rugged and hard, to be trod alone,
With toil and trouble, and plan upon plan,

And frei|uent stumbles o'er rock and stone ;
When tlie heart was dead to all joys savj one.

The making, and keeping, and n)assing of pelf ;
And if aver there entered a ray of life's sun,

'T was lost in the growing gloom of self.
Children and wife, he toiled for them,

lie said to himself in a dreamy way.
He laboured that they might take their ease,

And who was tliere that could say him, nay ?
Oh ! the gladness, the gladness, the gladness

Of seeing the toil-won wealth increase I
But ah ! the madness, the madness, the madness

Of ever dreaming that gold brings peace.

For if the apples of Sodom are dust.

The sold ,1," Ophir is iron rust.

It might \ eU. be in the tirst beginning

Tl at wealth for loved ones was worth the winning,

•"'Ut habit grows, and hardens, a-id grows

Till it kills ';he stem u))on which it rose,

Ai d the heart lies torpid, unable to ble 'd.

Sucked dry in the grasp of the devi' i ■ greed.

And is it " oh I for the days of yore,"

As the soul looks bac'ic ag.iin o'er the past ?

Or is it "Thark God that they oome no more.

And the l.)ng sought vey*- approaches at last "?
God knows, not 1,

1 11

'■•H

■ ,1 •!

40 MUSINGS AT NIGHT FALL.

Which it shall be in the Holemn day

When the visions of earth are passing away,

A smile, or a cry.
We are mocked through our years by shadows that flee

Still as we strive to i;rasp them,
And our joys are dreams of t e memory,

E'en as we clasp them.

Oh Thou, who seest not as we see,
Look on us when we come to Thee:

Miserere, Domine I

And lo I when at last he h»8 run his race,

There rests a, smile on the dead m m's face.

By Tlic Wcrfccp Courses.

MHERE is a little stream runs through the clearing, and down
into the cultivated lauds below. Up above, in the bush, it is
quite a respectable brook, with miniature water falls, and small
rapids, and chatters along from stone to mossy stone in a sociable
manner that is very charming. It is not what you might call
sparkling, for the great trees crowd its banks, and shut out the sun
light, but it is very merry for all that. The wild birds use it for a
bathing place, and after having carefully selected a spot where it is
about a quarter of an inch deep, and there is no fear of being
drowned, proceed to read the Riot Act over it, as over a tumultuous
assemblage of water drops, and disperse it with much fluttering of
wing, and jerking of tail ; while the squirrel running over a fallen
trunk at some deeper spot, suddenly catches the semblance of
another squirrel running along another trunk down below, and
halts to give his opinion of such conduct, with bushy tail quivering
with indignation, an:l a porfect storm of bad language which
culminates in a shriek, and a flash of red lightning. Down below,
in the cultivated lands, it holds a direct and even course, and, if it
looks more like a drain than anything else, is yet undoubtedly a
stream. But in tha clearing it is simply an ooze, where it is not a
puddle. It has b^en so blocked up in one ])lace by decaying
trunks, and in another by tangled brush that it has lost all Iwart,
and dribbles off here and there in devious ways and unexpecteil
directions. There are trout up above in it, T know, for I have
seen them, and trout below in the drain winch it becomes, not very
big ones of course, but still undeniable brook trout, but I won't
believe that there are any in the clearing. There is not water
enough in any one spot to cover Mk^, knee joints of a middle aged
grass-hopper ; and yet Nathan brought me a lish weighing about
five ounces which he vowed he had caught not far from my stump.

BY THE WATEH COUESES.

He wouldn't say how far ; only winked, and said he wasn't going
to tell me of the hole, and I believe he had the best of reasons for
declining

The demoralizing influence which a fish has on the average

hunifin conscience is as strange as it is notorious. I am not

referring merely to " fish stories," or to all tlie petty deceptions to

which an angler resorts to magnify himself and his catch in the

eyes of the world, but to other things besides. Above all other

pursuits, angling promotes selfishness ; there is the disposition to

give misleading advice to a brother angler as to the best fishing

resorts, and the best places in them ; and the innocent air with

which one fisherman will recommend another to use flies which he

knows oo be altogether unsuitable, is only e([ualled by that with

., uii:h a girl lures a young fellow into proposing and being rejected.

Anil ' fish puts to rout all previously acquired religious habits.

r have known grave and reverend church wardens, and elders, men

who raise their hands with holy horror at flowers on the Communion

table, and emulate the example of the deaf adder when they hear

of choral services, who would nevertheless start off on a Saturday

afternoon after a hard week's work, and go to some distant lake or

river to enjoy a Sunday's fishing ; and they would come back on

the Monday, too, with a goodly string of trout, or ouananiche, or

pickerel, and never think of trying to make amends for their evil

doings by sending me any. It's very curious, by the way, how

fish seem to encourage Sabbath breaking. You may flog a stream,

or a pond, from ^londay morning to dewy Saturday eve, withc^t

getting as much as a rise, and lo ! on the Sunday there is a

perpetual hail storm of leaping fish all through the day. I know

the same sort of thing has been observed about a crow ; gun or no

gun, you've got to keep out of range of him on week days, but on

Sundays you can get almost near enough to put salt on his tail ;

and it has been urged from the consideration of the behaviour of

birds and fish in this respect, that long experience has taught the

lower animals that on one day out of seven they have nothing to

fear from the average civilized man. I doubt the soundness of

this conclusion. You will observe that there is nothing tempting

BY THE WATER COIIRSES.

about the crow. He is not j^ood to eat, and he is not used as an
ornament for a lady's hat. I have no doubt that he wonders why
people shoot at him, and when the day of rest comes, he accepts
the fact like the philosopher that lie is, and makes no more ado
about it. He doesn't stroll in your barn yard, or crow on your
roof, and say " Here I am ; get your gun, Johnnie, if you dare."
But a fish knows th it ho is good to cat, and a thing to bo desired,
because he himself has eaten lots of other little fish in his day, and
enjoyed thein amazingly. When he leaps up on Sunday, he is
tempting man and boy, and he knows it, the wicked beggar. I am
not sure that I grieve deeply wlien he meets witli retribution, even
if it be unrighteous ; though, of course, T wouldn't do it myself on
any account ; that is, if I thought the village was likely to know
it ; and I know plenty of other men who hold tlie same views on
the subject.

Besides being the tempter to Sabbath-breaking, the fish is an
inspirer of wliat I nia> delicately term deceptive imaginations.
VVlien he is brought to the scales he is invariably found wanting,
but it is when he takes his own scales away with him that he is
prodigious, and only inferior in size to the lies that are told about
him. Yet sometimes a fish appears to be possessed of a conscience
of its own, and a sense of what is due to veracity. I recollect a
case in ])oint when a friend of mine got a well merited rebuke for
trying to palm off a " fish story " on me. We had been out on a
sporting expedition together to Lake Kiskising, andone day he took
the canoe ami went out on the pond, while I, having found a nice
little spot where I could fish from the bank, ami smoke comfortably,
remained liehin^l. A couple of hours elapsed, during which 1
won't say how many I caught, for fear you would think I was
lying, which I never do, but it was a good many, when my friend
made his appearance round the jioint and hailed mc. To his
enquiries as to the luck I had had, I answered by pointing to the
string at my feet, and then asked after his welfare. " Only a
couple of dozen," said he ; " they were taking the fly sphmdidly,
but just as I was getting warmed to the work I hooked a splendid
fellow. By Jove sir, I never saw such a fish in my life before, or

villi

BY THE WATER COURSES.

you either. I don't wonder now at the tales of sea serpents. I
played him for an hour and a half, nip and tuck ; up the lake ;
down the lake ; across the lake." "How on earth did you manage
that? " I interrupted ; " You couldn't play such a fish as the one
you're talking about and row at the same time." " Eight you are
Philosopher," he said " but, you see, when my line was all run
out, I just held on to the butt of the rod, braced my feet against
the sides of the boat, and let him tow me. And he did it, sir 1
For an hour and a half did that fish pull the heavy boat at an
express rate, till, about five minutes ago, he found he was getting
into shoal water, (a little over fivo. feet, for I sounded it afterwards),
and then a sudden idea seemed to strike him. Instead of making
out for the deep again he stopped, stood straight up on his tail with
his head and shoulders out of the water, gave a sort of a twirl
lound that broke my line, and then swore at me like a trooper for
having what he called ' such a confounded heavy old tub.' ' It's
luck^' for you,' said he ' that I've been gaining flesh, for last time
I was scaled I only weighed 149 lbs, 5 ounces ; but I've toned up
since, or you wouldn't have had such a fine run.' What do you
think of that ? " I was going to tell him, when a little trout
about six inches long leaped out of the water, with a yard of line
hanging from his mouth. " I don't know what he thinks," it
squeaked, " but I think you're a confounded liar." And he splashed
into the water again. You never saw a man so taken aback.

I was very glad of it, myself, for I detest anything like
exaggeration, or the slightest deviation from truth, and I knew, by
sad experience, tliat my own actual catch that day would have
been dwarfed into insignificance besides the relation of what he
might have cauglit, and ought to have caught, but did not, so that
when we got home I should have been obliged to sit on the empty
cracker box in the back corner of the post office and general store,
while he sat on the counter, and held forth to the . admiring
assemblage. That's the sort of way he always used to serve me
when we went out in those days. But this time I had him ; and
when I got back and said I had caught a land-locked salmon that
gave us three square meals a day for four days, and then we had

BY THE WATER COURSES.

to throw the greater part of it away, because it would not keep any
longer, he could only groan and turn up his eyes. He did open
his mouth at the conclusion of my story, but I went on to add :
"You may think, boys, I'm romancing, but, after all that's only a
small fish for that Lake. Here's Bob will tell you he has known
fish there that were six feet long, and weighed over 149 lbs.
Haven't you, Bob ?" And Bob jumped up and said, "Come along,
boys, it's my treat."

Ppoduets of ths Cleaning. Weeds.

•6|

('^^ clearing in its infancy is a very unpromitsinji; thing to look
,.^J\^ at. At the first glance you would say that to call it a
wilderness would be to pay it a wliolly undeserved compliment. It
is not even a waste, though it looks desolate and wretched enough
for one. It is an extent of unsightly stumps and decaying logs,
with stones and rock interspersed, puddles of water here and there
in the wet season, and small basins of dead vegetation in the dry,
and with a few scanty IjLules of coarse grass, which barely suffice
to whet the appetites of the two or three cows, or sheep, that are
turned in to get their living as best they mav, and that generallv
do so by breaking down the fences, and wandering off into the l)ush
beyond. The berrying season is the only time at which the clear-
ing appears to any advantage, for there tlie wild strawberry
blushes furiously over the mounds and hillocks, and the raspberry
clings to the outskirts of the bush, or, later on, mounts over the
heaps of piled stones. How they got there is a mystery. You
don't iind them in the middle of the bush, but directly the over-
shadowing roof of the forest foliage is taken away, up they pop,
like as many vegetable Jack-in-the-boxes. And with them, the
little violets, purple and white and yellow, and the great dog
violet, the wild oats, the wood anemone and the Mayflower. If
you are very lucky, you may come across a trillium ; the purple
one, be it well understood, not the white ; but this is of very rare
occurrence. These are the spring treasures of the clearing, as the
berries are its summer ones, and it hides them very carefully from
view ; so carefully, indeed, that to a casual observer it presents
much the same aspect in the first half of the year that it does in
the fall, only it looks a little less dusty and brown. But it has
not the slightest hesitation in obtruding its weeds on notice.
Thistles and burdock and mullein tlu'ive on its bosom, as if they

PRODUCTS OF THE CLEARING. WEEDS.

^ould say "Yes ! here we are, and here we mean to stay. You
(ion't like us ? That is a matter of taste. We are the natural pro-
ducts of neglect, and this is our rightful place. By and by, we will
overrun those beautiful fields of yours, and give you a deal of
trouble, but in the meantime as wc stand here we have a beauty
of our own, and possibilities that only lie latent because you do
not think us worth your attention." I am not so sure tliat they
are not right. I know that the wheat and grains that feed millions
to-day have been developed by care and cultivation from coarse
and worthless grasses ; that when left alone they degenerate into
the condition from wliich they were raised. I know that some of
our choicest flowers were originally weeds; that the crab tree is the
distant ancestor of the Fameuse, and tlie sloe of the plum. There
is a great deal to be got out of weeds if you only go the right way
to work about it, and have the necessary j)atienee. I think,
amongst other things, there is a lesson of charity.

Just a few moments ago a tramp passed down the lane, and
looked into the clearing. He was unsavory enough in appearance,
and I doubt not would have been equally unsatisfactory to the
olfactory nerves if I had been near enough, which I fortunately
wasn't. There is no need to describe him in detail : tramps are
not black swans, and a rarity on this continent ; or indeed any
other ; and as they are, with rare exceptions, very much alike in
their salient points, you may imagine what my tramp was like
from those you liave seen for yourselves. He did not see me, and
after leaning on the fence and spitting meditatively over it for a
minute or two, passed wearily on. What was it I was talking
about just now ? Weeds ? well ! here was a two-logged one. I
wonder whether, if he had seen me, he would have said to me as
that burdock was saying when ho came up, " we are the natural
products of neglect, but we have possibilities that are only latent
because you despise us, and do not think us w^orth your attention."
And, again, if he were to say so, I am not quite sure that he would
not be right.

The tramp family is a large one, and embraces widely differing
varieties. It is also an ancient and aristocratic one. The wise

ill'

\W.f

.48

PRODUCTS OP THE CLEARINO. WKEDS.

.#t

kin{^ of Itliaoiv, Ulysses " who saw uiaiiy niiiniiers of men and their
cities " was one of its nieuibers. When the (irecian army was
disbantletl after the capture of Troy, he did just what a lot of
soldiers do in similar circumstances at the present day, and want
on the tramp. He was just the fellow for it too ; unscrupulous and
truculent at heart, and plausible in speech. I have no doubt he was
au adept at wiling the pie of indigestion from the housekeepers of
those days, as well as at e.vtracting a meal of cold meat and
potatoes by menaces whenever he thought he could do it safely.
And he never did a stroke of work, that I can find out. Coming
further down the roll of time, we hud musical tramps, yclept
Troubadours, and wandering minstrels ; religious tramps, such as
the mendicant friars ; literary tramps, such as the poor scholars of
the universities in the middle ages. Guttenberg was a fine example
of the printing tramp ; Columbus of the nautical tramp ; and
political tramps abound now. King and soldier, priest and
scholar, musician and politician, discoverer and explorer, they have
one and all had the same characteristics ; they have religiously
abstained from doing any hard work themselves that they could
possibly avoid, and they have got their living out of the fears or
the foibles of the rest of the world ; and yet they have been held
in honour. They have never been called bad names, or had
the dog set at them. It is only the tramp par excellence, the
avowed and unmitigated tramp, as represented by my friend of a
few minutes ago, for whom such treatment is reserved.

Well ! I suppose he merits it. He is dirty, lazy, (in the sense
of having no settled occupation), brutal ; and it requires a great
deal of Christianity, of which we have none of us any too much,
to tolerate hira ; loving him as a man and a brother is far beyond
our reach. But have you ever considered through what a sad and
terrible experience he must have passed to become the wretch and
outcast that he is ? There are tramps that have been such from
the time almost that they were able t6 walk ; whose babyhood
never knew a mother's love ; whose childhood was passed amidst
blows and curses, picking its scanty sustenance out of the garbage
of the gutter ; taught, and forced, to lie and to steal ; forced not

I'KOUUCTS OF THE CLEARING. WEEDS.

4ft

sense
great
much,
eyoiid
ad and
ch and
from
byhood
amidst
arbage
;ed not

merely by those to whom they belonged, but by the gi'«;at well-to-
do world that would alioul thuia the means of uxistence on tio
other conditions ; knowing nothing of Cfod and the Saviour except
as couvenient names to round olf an oath ; nothing of virtue, and
everything of vice — starved, cold, naked, without sympathy, with-
out love, without means of enjoyment save in the gratilication uf
the coar-sest sensual appetites. What else can they grow up to
\mt what I have just seen i "Do men gather grapes otf thorns or
tigs off thistles ?" And if some kind hand is stretched out to help
tlieni ; to feed and educate them, and send them to some other
country where there is more work for them to gain their living,
what is the cry that is raised ^ You know it yourselves. "Keep
your scum at home ; we want men, it is true, but they must be
men with money." You needn't look indignant. That is what
you say, only I have put the thing in plainer words than you care
Id do. I have spoken of the born tramp: there are others that are
not born, but forced into the ranks. Tramps that have been honest,
hard-working men, and have lost their work through sickness,
accident, or the competition of others, and, having lost it, have not
lj(!en able to recover it again. Others, again, have wandered from
their homes in the hopes of "bettering themselves," and have not
done it. Some of these men give up the struggle at once, and
commit suicide, as the man who falls overboard on a dark stormy
night in mid-ocean will, after the lirst few instinctive struggles,
perceive their futility, and cease from them. But the moat of
tliem join the great army of tramps, from which, having once
enlisted, there is no possibility of desertion. Perha])s you think
that these cannot fall so far as the others. T am not sure that they
don't fall further, with the memories of the past honest life gnawing
at their hearts, and the prospects of the future that lies before them.
Like Sir Bedivere in King Arthur, they "Hear the deep before them,
and a cry behind." How, do. you suppose Tncifer felt, when he
was driven out of heaven ? Suffering muv ranoble a man, but
sutt'ering without prospect or hope of release makes him a devil.
I am not pleading the cause of the tramp as he is : but such
as he is, such has he been made by the world. Is there nothing

In
ill

PHOUIJCTK i)V I'HK CLEAIUNfi. WEEDH.

:::!'

significant in tlui fiirt, lliat as the army of tramps incroast's so do
the numbers and tliu wraith of nulUonaiivs i Thi;ro never was a
more infernal doctrine than tiie Vivv, Trach; maxim, sonnd economy
though it may be " Buy in the cheapest mark(!t, and sell in the
dearest," for it has led to the grinding down of the labourer, and
the reduction of his wages to the lowest living point ; to shoddy
and skimped work, and to the introduction of machinery by which
one man can do the work of fifty men befor Oh, yes! wo are
living fast; and we are dying fa^t too. T ouble is that we

don't die sulUcientiy fast, and there is a superabundance of the
human materials. We make astonishing progress in the arts and
sciences, in civilization and luxury anil wealth, but we are sadly
backward in the art of dying, and the most unreasonable people in
this respect are the poor and the tramps who have been thought-
fully provided with every inducement to shutUo oil this mortal coil,
and persist in refusing to do it. It is jtlainly, their duty to do it.
Somebody has got to die, and it is preposterous to suppose that
we who are ctunfortaidy off, who can throw away a few thousands
on a sup[)er or ball, and a few huudri'ds on a bouquet or a i)air of
garters, who dress in broadcloth and fine lin '». and fare, some of
us, sumptu(jusly, the rest of us comfortabl ry day, should be
called upon to (piit, what, after all, is u j\y ])leasant life.
Certainly we are our brother's keepers. We don't nudvC the mistake
that Cain did, when he knocked Abel on the head. We keep our
brother in a different way now : insist on his mortifying the flesh by
abstinence ; remembering that it is hard for the rich to enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven, take the hardshi[) all on ourselves, and make
the entrance easy for him ; and if he still needs further affectionate
keeping, tax ourselves for gaols and reformatories, and penitentiaiios
wherein to keep him more carefully. It is quite astonishing after all
this, thath(! should be so ungrateful as torol), and steal, and commit
an occasional murder, is not it ? WJiat was it the Inirdock said '{
'• We are the natural products of neglect, but we have possibilities
that only lie latent because you do not think ns worth your atten-
tion." It may bo so ; but it is a great deal easier to swear at the burdock
as a useless and mischievous encumbrance, and to cut him down.

•%

IVly Cousins, the flnts.

^\ lIKlil!^ },'t)es an ant. lie has <^ot a dead tly about four tiines us
bi^ as hiinsL'lf in his mouth, and ia projj;rL'3siu;,' backwards.
pulUuj;, not pushiiii,'. I sujti)ose Sir John Lulibock would consider
that a proof of iulijlli^'unco, a knowhnli^'u that stronj^th is butti'r
iixpundod in [luUiiiii, a thini,' toward you than in ])Ushin«,' it from
vou. "That ant," or pisiniro, as our ^reat grandmothers used to
call him, Sir .T;»hii would say, "has evidently been indoctrinated in
the rudimentary principles of statics and dynamics." And this
would be a strong' aruument in the favor of the evolution of tin*
monkey through a long series of stages from ])roto])lasm, and A'
Ml lU from the immkey. But just wait a bit. I'resently you'll
SCO that accomplished insect climb i)ainfully up a blade of grass,
and, when ho has reached the top, stand on his hind legs and
endeavor to thrust that dead tly into the jaws of space. I thought
sol There he is poking tlie c-i'pus delicti, (for I am convinced that
he assassinated that lly) to all quarters of the compass, as if expect-
ing some heavenly visitant to relieve him of his burden. He'll be
uncommonly lucky if the said heavenly visitant does not come
down on him in the shape of a l»ird. And I am willing to make a
small l);3t that this is not the tirsL time he has played this trick,
and, if he gets home safely, it won't be the last. Now will any-
body tell me that my little frien 1 is possessed of the reasoning
faculty ? He knows as w dl as you or I do what a blade of grass
is ; and he is perfectly aware that there is an end to it ; and yet,
-iiiiiply because it happens to stand in what he fancies his way
home, he must needs run up it, and stand waving himst'slf about likc!
a lunatic on its summit until liis jaws achj with his burden, and
lie descends a sadder, but not a wiser ant, for he will do the very
same thing when the next occasion presents itself. "Go to the ant,
tliou sluggard," says Solomon, as if one could learn anything from
such an insensate proceeding as that I have just witnessed. Well!
1 don't know after all but what ho may have had some reasou for

1,1

MY COUSINS, THE ANTS.

ii[;^ i

his advice. I rather faucy that most of us who are in a hurty to
attain some wished for end, are apt, to take the first way to it that
presents itself, without much consideration as to where it may lead
us. Perhaps we mayn't regard it as a way ; perhaps it may be an
obstacle instead ; the result is much the same in either case ; we go
at it without reflection, and we find ourselves "up a tree." There's
a great deal of human nature in the brute creation, or of brute
nature in the human creation ; which is it ?

Now, when that ant came down to solid earth again, you will
notice that he had lost his way. I never knew an ant yet that got
out of sii^lit of his home, and the highways that lead to it that
didn't lose his way. He finds it again, of course, by some
mysterious process or other, or else by making successive casts in
every direction till he comes across some landmark he knows, or
meets with some other ant who is able to tell him ; but he loses it
all the same for the time being, though he takes very good care not
to lose the fiy. He is like an Englishman in that respect. It is
very hard to make John Bull let go of any property that he has
once managed to get hold of; as witness Egypt. Our cousins, the
Yankees, arc the only people that I know of that have ever in-
duced him to ))art with any of his worldly goods ; and they
generally do it by what is vulgarly called "bamboozling," combined
with a judiciously safe amount of bluster. They got a big slice of
Maine in that way ; and another uf Oregon ; and I shouldn't be at
all surprised if they get another of Alaska. But John Bull never
loses his way ; the ant does. I have noticed the same peculiarity
about many insects — humble-bees especially. Even when they
are quite close to the entrance to tb«ir home they seem puzzled,
and unable to find it for a few minutes. The carpenter-wasp is
another instance. He wmII poke his head into half-a-dozen holes
and crannies before he finds the right one, and this nearly every
time he returns to his residence. It is a very curious peculiarity,
and has often puzzled me. You may take a cat away in a bag,
and get rid of it twenty, fifty, or a hundred miles from its
accustomed domicile, and it will return. Or a dog. The homing
pigeon flies back to its nest with marvelous accuracy and celerity.

MY COUSINS, THE ANTS.

But these little creatures seem liable to a sudden loss of memory,
or whatever is equivalent to it. Once get them out of their
ordinary routine, and they are hopelessly at sea ; for a time at least.
The meanest thing that has life evinces the possession of
reasoning faculties which are totally distinct from what we call
instinct. It is instinct which tcaclies the duckling to swim, and
the chicken to peck directly it comas out of the shell; which leads
the young of mammals, (including bibies) to suckle ; instinct
probably, though not certainly, which dictates the form and fashion
of their nests to the birds ; but besides and beyond this there are
evidences. of the power of thought and reasoning in the lowest
living thing which seems inseparable from the principle of life.
I make no exceptions. The lower we go in the scale of animated
creation, the fewer and fainter are the traces of this, till, when we
come to the realm of botany, they almost entirely disappear. Yet
even in plants they are not altogether wanting. It is something
more than mere accident that leads a vine to send out rootlets in
search of the nutriment to be derived from bones buried some
distance from it, as it has been known to do ; that induced a tree,
annoyed by the fretting against its trunk of a branch of another
tree, to throw out an excrescence that grasped the offender tight,
and strangled it. It seems hard to attribute such thingc as these,
and others that I could name, to thought ; the thought of a tree !
But what then was it ? Certainly not accident, but purpose ;
means adapted to a dehnite end ; and what is that but thought, or,
if you take refuge in instinct, what is that again but unconscious
thought '?.

I take it, then, that the confusion of my little friend when he
came down from his perilous elevation on the top of a blade of
grass, was a suspension of the reasoning faculty, and hence an
evidence that it previously existed. Instinct would have taken
him straight home ; even though, by so taking him, it had for a
time got him "up a tree." When he got down again he would
have trudged off with his burden in the most unhesitating manner.
But he didn't. First he ran a little bit one way ; then he ran a
little bit another ; then he came back and went up the blade of

'■ ■',-■<'

1 !'

■«r

I g,1f\lw^

MY COUSINS, THE ANTS.

■ ' '

grass again, as if lie wanted to get a good look at tlie country.
Plainly, he was vexed, and nervous, and would not reason out
matters coolly. I have seen my hired girl, Blooniah, do much the
same sort of thing when a bad-tempered cow originated an
impromptu chaos of milk, milk-pail, milking maid, and barn-yard
manure, with a single elevation of one of its hind legs. Bloomali
was dazed : she did not know which to pick up first ; the milk, or
the pail, or the manure, or herself ; and she tried to do all four
things at once ; just like my little friend the ant thrusting his fly
into the faces of the foar winds of heaven from the top of the blade
of grass. When she finally got up, she did not know where to
look, or where to gO; or even wh, j say. It's not often that you
find a woman totally incapable Oi an energetic expression of her
sentiments, but she was. She couldn't even say "gosh !" Now a
man would not have hesitated for a moment, either in action or
word. He would have seized a stick, or in default of that, the
milk stool, and have left that cow under no mistaken imju'essiou
as to his sentiments in the matter. And he would have been at
no loss for a proper, or rather improper vocabidary either. Now
this similarity of conduct of Bloomah and the ant under totally
unexpected and annoying circumstances, shows a similarity in the
reasoning powers of the two, contrasted as it is with the dissimi-
larity of conduct of the higher masculine intelligence. Nobody
would deny Bloomah the possession of reason because she looked
and acted like a fool when she was swimming in milk, and when
she recovered her erect position ; and nobody should deny the
same faculty to the ant, because he looked also like a very foolish
ant on the blade of gra.ss, and wIkmi he came down again.
Bloomah recovered sooner than the ant did, and while the latter
"returned to his muttons" and (dimbed up the grass again, she took
very good care not to come near the cow that night, Init, seeing me
laughing at her, hupressed me into the service, and made a fool of
me. Now this was evidently a grade of intelligence much higher
than that of the ant, to whom it never occurred to make me carry
the fly home for him, and is a further ])roof of thought pervading
the whole of the inferior living creation from woman down to

MY COUSINS, THE ANTS.

again.

, fool of
liigher

a cabbage-head, and in a gvadiuilly diminishing ratio. In unforeseen
crises man alone has the perfect intelligence ; man alone is lord of
himself; man alone knows what to do, and what to say.

I wonder where the ant — he's gone now, and I can't ask him.

I wonder where he got tliat Hy, I' eo'ildn't have died of its own
accord, for it is the middle of siimmL'r, and no tly would think
of shuttling off this mortal coil till tliu lir.'sL chills of autumn came,
unless he was forced to do so. Just at this season the fly is
particularly lively and wide awake. When lie was young, and
not well acquainted with this wicked world, you could occasionally
take advantage of his infantile artlessness and want of caution,
and hit him a whack. If you attempt to do it at tliis period of his
life, you only hit yourself. Now how did that ant get that fly ?
It looks very much as if I had been the witness of an insect
crime ; of an assassination, or rather the results of one ; an accessory
to a foul murder It does not much matter now, for the ant is
off, and I couldn't find him again if I were to try, but I should
very much like to learn how he did it. It would be something
useful to know next time musca domestica uses my nose as a
parade ground when 1 want to go to sleep. It takes a great deal
of serious thought and planning to circumvent a lively fly, and
I'm beginning to think that perhaps I was wrong in assigning but

II limited reasoning power to the pismire. 1 hope he will get
home safe with his booty, and that he, and Mrs. ant, and the little
cousins will all have a good supper to-night. I know it is wishing
well to a man, I mean a pismire, whom I believe in my heart to
have been a murderer, but then, remember, his victim was a fly.
There are cases in which murder is only righteous retribution. I
know some among my friends and ac{iuaintance whose taking off
I should feel tempted to consider in that light, and I dare say you
have the same experience. Very likely, this class will be enlarged,
when this book comes to be criticized, if I hear my critics.
Moreover I have no doubt that tliere are some who regard you
aTid me in the same way ; to wit, that they would not be very
indignant if we were assassinated. And that class also will be
increased when this book comes to be read.

Ji'

),«

i 'H\

"Dulee et Deeopuin <i3t."

I ■ /III 'f

\ y /hen contemplating the pismire the other day, my sense of
justice, combined with the love of truth, compelled me to
finish by claiming for him a limited possession of the faculty of
thought, or reason, which I hold to be the distinctive characteristic
of all created life, and the line that divides it from matter. If I
had been left to my own predilections I should not have done so ;
t would much rather have shown him up as a perfect idiot, for
though an ant may be, and doubtless is, an object for the imitation
of the rising generation, yet viewing him with a philosophical eye
he is a nuisance; an abstract nuisance, I mean; that he is a
concrete one anybody can easily prove to himself by sitting down
for a quarter of an hour or so in some place where the little nation
most doth congregate. But taken abstractedly, and considered
totally apart from his vicious little nippers, and his small body
and legs, he is to me, at any rate, a nuisance, for he is a perpetual
reproach. He is the personification of energy and directness ; the
incarnation of the "You mind your business, and I'll mind mine"
principle, the solution of tlie problem of perpetual motion. 1
don't believe he ever sleeps ; 1 am certain he never philosophizes.
Now I don't mean to say that energy and indomitable perseverance
are not great virtues ; in fact, a man in this nineteenth century
cannot get on without them ; but then even these may be carried
too far, and when they are, they become vices. The ant is a great
deal too restless to be really good.

You want to know what all this has to do with patriotism ?
Who said anything about patriotism '. I didn't. It is true that
the chapter is headed dulce et decorum est, but I didn't finish the
quotation witli pro patria mori ; and there are a great many things
that are sweet and fair-seeming besides dying for one's country.
Nobody does that now-a-days; there is nobody now that will

" DTJLCE ET DECORUM EST."

deliberately leap into a gulf purely for his country's sake, as the
old Roman did in ages long since past. Men risk their lives for
titles, or fame, or money. Tommy Atkins will stand up to be
shot at for tenpence or a shilling a week, and very well he stands
up too, when he is called on to do it. But the absolute certainty
of losing one's life never appears to be so dulce et decorum when
it is i)resented to a man. A whole congregation will stand up and

smg

" Ah me ! nh me ! that I
In KeJar's tents here stay I "

Or,-

" () F»radi>e ( O Paradise 1

The world is growing old ;

Who would not be at rest, and free,

Where love is never cold,"

but if the cliauGo of getting out of Kedar's tents right straight otV,
and of being "at rest and free wliere love is never cold" were
otfered at the conclusion of the hymn, there is not a man, woman,
or child in the whole congregation that would jump at it. They
would all say " Oh ! this is so sudilen, " like a young girl to a
))i'(.)posal of marriage, and want a little time to reply to the olfer.
And the longer the time, the better they would l)e pleased. No !
we are none of us enamored witli the i»ro8i)cct of death, either for
our country or any other ol)jcct, that is to say, of our own death.
Anybody else's is a different matter. Man is a great liumljug. I
don't say he is a hypocrite, because he really believes in himself;
l)ut he is a humbug, and humbugs. There is nothing that catches
him so soon as a high-sounding phrase ; what politicians call " a
good cry. " He never stops to consider whether he believes in it,
or not. And that, I take it, is the reason why there are so numy
scoffers at the Christianity of the j^resent age, because its beliefs
are only half, or sentimental beliefs, and the practical half is so
often absent. The popular religion is an emotional one of noble
thoughts, fine aspirations, eloquent discourses, rapturous hymns
and music, pomp and flowers ; and because it is an emotional one

fi.

" DULOE ET DP:(J0UUM EST.

and cannot be ke])t up unintevmittingly, it is reserved tor Sundays,
and laid aside on week days. It is not hypocrisy, heaven forbid!
It is real enough so tar as it goes, but it does not go lar enough ;
and in that it is unreal. The man who i'eels his bosom tilled with
love and charity to his neighbor on the Sunday, will pay his
workwomen starvation wages on the Saturday following, and will
spend the intervening period in trying to get out of his fellow-men
the very utmost he can without infringing on the strict letter of the
law. "1 see the better things and a])prove of them," said the old
Roman poet, "1 follow the worse." The approval of the. better
is as sincere and real as tin })ractice of the worse. Why ?
Because, unconsciously, we have oidy a half belief at the bottom
of our hearts in what we say.

No ! I am not going to sing the praises of ]»atriotism, or any
other of the virtues that are more on our lips than in our heart, and
in our professions more than in our practice. Stretched at my ease
on a nice little rug of moss, and having before my eyes the irritating
example of the busy ant, I am meditating' a laudation of laziness,
about which there can be no humbug, as it is not generally con-
ceded to be an estimable ([uality. But before I begin to do so, let
me remind you of what I saiil about energy and indomitable per-
severance, viz : that when carried to e.x^cess they become vices.
Simihirly, (ami don't you forget it) laziness, which is a very good
and estimable thing in itself, becomes totally reprehensible if you
indulge in it too much. In that, it is like everything else in the
world, wickedness excepted, concerning which the same law holds
good for all, that it is the excess which constitutes the sin and not
the u ;e. I don't claim any originality for the remark. Solomon
said the same long ago, when he observed "Ther(^, is a time for all
things," and St. Paul reiterated it afterwards in the declaration "All
things are lawful ; but all things are not convenient." Now if
these authorities are to bo relied on, it is manifest that there is a
time when laziness is lawful, and also a time when it is not con-
venient ; and that is tantamount to saying that it is good when not
pushed to excess.

Some people don't think so. The ant does not believe in it ;

'" DULCE ET DECORUM EST."

neither doos my wife ; noithei- do women generally us a rule.
They are always in motion themselves ; (I really don't see how the
world would get along it' they weren't), and th3y want everyboily
and everything else to be in motion too. In their eyes, idleness of
any kind is the eighth, and worst, of the seven tleadly sins, and an
unfortunate male that comes within the swooj) of a feminine whirl-
)H)ol has just simply got to do something, lie must not take an
after dinner nap ; he must not sit and smokn ; he must not sit and
read ; sitting is an abomination, and lying down is worse than
heresy, lie must stir about and do something, no matter what ;
and if he do, isn't kiKjw what to do, lie must still stir about till he
does. If Pi'ovidence had not (Uidowed man with a blessed mulish
and (jbstinite disposition, woman woidd have worn out creation
long before the appointed time. Bhjoniah is just as bad as my
wife. If sho. sees me unoecui)ied, she always finds out something
to be done. Slie wants a pail of water, anl the hired mm is out
in the garden ; or else s!ie wants woo.l, and there is nobody about
to saw it; or the pig has got in the potato patch ; or, if she can't
invent anything else, "The Missus is a looking for you. Sir."
Anyhow, I've got to stir ; anl stirring on a hoi day is provocative
of perspiration and profanity.

Xow that is all wrong ; it is uncomfortal)lL' ; it is unnatural,
and it is unseientihc; uncomfcn'table, as everybjdy knows that has
ever had a woman in th.', house wli.m In wiuN to be (j^uiet ;
lumatural as the action of our own he.irts may teach us. We have
a fancy that our very lives depen 1 on tint sanguineous little organ
keeping up its work without intermission ; that, in fact, if the heart
stop3 beating we die. II' we consider that that is tantamount to
ex])3cting it to kee[) on working wiLh')ut intermission for perhajis
seventy or eighty years at a stretch, it will be readily seen what an
extravagant demand we mak.; on it. \\\[ the truth is thai our
hearts do no such thiu'^- ; they hivii lirs of li/imss — j)hysiologists
mil it "relaxation of th >. muscles," — ibout seventy tiiuis a minute
in a healthy adult, and the consei|uenc;! is that they get a rest of
eight hours in the twenty-four. "N't* mirried mm ever gets thai.
Moreover, to object to laziness is uuscieatilic. A high authority

I ''J

'■'4

"DULCK ET DECORUM EST."

if.

has recently discovered that the longer a man sleeps in the twenty-
four hours, the longer he will live ; so that if ho were to sleep the
whole time he wouldn't die at all. Herein lies the secret of
immortality, and in order to prevent man from making use of it
when discovered, animals like my wife Polly, and my servant girl
Bloomah, were created. If there were no women, we should all
go peacefully to sleep ; there would b3 no wars, no strikes, no
famines, no doctors, lawyers or politicians ; no programmes of
committees of public instruction ; no schools, no prisons, no taverns,
no nothing. A blessed and paaceful repose would reign in the
world, and a quiet, only broken by snoring. Just think what a
Utopia would exist under the reign of pure and perfect laziness !

Wouldn't that be "dulce" ? Wouldn't it be "decorum" ? A
whole world reposing under its blankets and counterpanes, snugly
tucked in and snoring the snore of the just ? What is that you
object ? That there would be no civilization, no progress, no
heroic deeds, no noble aspirations ? and pray who would want them ?
It is your unquiet body, who is always poking up himself and other
people, that makes progress and all the rest of it necessary ; creates
competition, and in so doing, is the originator of combines, mono-
polies, and election campaigns. Alan was born to be lazy ; it was
only when he was turned out of Elen that he had to begin to work ;
and if Eve had been asleep, as she ought to have been, instead of
rambling about, falling in with ser])ents, he would never have had
to leave it. The most famous (and the most sensible) beauty in
history, is The Sleeping Beauty, who was all right, and everybody
and thing about her was all right too, till the "fairy-footed Prince"
came along and woke her with a kiss. Misguided young man !
I fancy that in after years there were times when he bitterly
repented of that kias.

"And o'er the hills and far away

Beyond their utmost purple rim.
Beyond the night, across the day,

Through all the world she followed him ;"

Th ere was no getting away from her after she had once woke up.

flftcT> Sunset.

^ HERE is one great drawback to a clearing, so far as I am cou-
earned, in the absence of shade ; for I don't call that shade
which is atlbrded by a four foot stump, to avail yourself of which
you have to sit on the ground and submit to be walked over by
ants and spiders, and other creeping things. At the same time it
must be remembered that I am but a unit of the unnumbered
habitues of the place, and that the birds and chipmunks, the mice,
centipedes and other insect populations, lind shade enough and to
spare. Since then the ideal of government is the greatest good for
the greatest number, it cannot properly be said that the fact of my
being obliged to sit and brown in the sun whenever I want to muse
in the clearing is a drawback to it. There is a great deal of
philosophy in this retlectiou, and, viewed in a right light, it is one
that is eminently conducive to contentment under adverse circum-
stances. You recollect the fable of the Boys and the Frogs : how
the latter, on being pelted with stones every time they popped
their noses above the surface of the pond, appealed to the sense of
justice in their persecutors, and adjured them to rellect that what
was fun to the terrestrials was death to the amphibious partners in
the joke. The statement was not strictly true, or, indeed, true at
all, for that matter. I have thrown lots of stones at fross m the
water ilf my time, and have known plenty of other people that
have done so too, but I never hit one myself, and I never knew
anybody that did. Do you ? Now, it is an impossibility to kill
a frog by missing him with a stone, so that the croaking orator
misrepresented matters as thoroughly as any party newspaper, or
stump politician, ever does, and his appeal might very properly
have been ruled out as not founded in fact ; but I want you to
observe that, supposing for the moment it had been, the true
question at issue was not whether it was a matter of life or death

'It:'.

*v1

I '

.^*

AFTF.R SUNSET.

for the frogs, but wluitliL-r Uiuy wiim in th(! inajurity or not. If
they were, then they were jiistiliiid iu prote.sting ; but if they were
not, then the i)rincii)le of the greatest good for the greatest number
.should have been heUl to i»revail, and the deaths of the frog
minority more than counterlxdanced by the fun aeeruing Irom
them to the [)uerile maj(jrily. Obviously, therehjre, the frogs
should have been conlenti'd witli their situation, and if they
de])lored anything, should have felt bad about it every time one of
their number eseajtod having his brains knocked out ; ol»viously,
also, I have no right to call the absence of shade in the clearing a
drawback, and t!ie proper antl philosophical course is to accept the
situation as it is, and make myself as comfortal)le as I can under
the circumstances, I geiier.illy do ; with the aid of an umbrella.
It looks undignilii'd and uupliih)-iO))hical, 1 admit, to sit on a stump
for an hour logeth-r holding a big cotton uinl)r(,'lla over onci's head,
and it's just a little trying on the arms, nvui^, que, voidez-vons !
As the Ivukuana chief said to JNIacumazahn, no man can put out
the sun. "The sun is sivouger than man who looks at him."
Xow, that you can't ])Ut out the sun is no reason for being put out
yourself. That is a very good thing to remember when yon are
arguing with your wife.

Hut the day comes to an end sometime, as everything else,
you and [ included, will do, and then the little breezes that have
been aslee[) in tlie nursery on the top of the trees wake up, and
their sisters that have \m\\\\ dozing in the soft mosses and the arms
of the violets and si)eedwells d(j the same, and there are gentle
whisp(!rs calling to each other far overhead in the forest, and a
rippling murmur breathing responsive in the grasses i)eneath.
The robin at the edge of the clearing is singing his mate and little
ones to sleep, prejiaratory to going to bed himself on a near branch
of the elm or maple, and the frogs begin their love songs in a not
altogether unpleasant whistling trel)le, with the bull frog playing
the bass accompaniment. Did you ever catch froggie when he
goes a,-wooing, and whistles as he goes ? I have ; but only very
rarely ; directly h(! becomes conscious of an illegitimate audience,
he pockets his instrument in an mstant, and looks as innocent of

AFTER SUNSET.

music as if he belonged to a Ladies' Matinee Musicale." What ia
his instrument i" Well I You would never guess it, but when
liana is in love, he becomes a bagj)ii)er. Where he gets it from,
or how he does it, 1 d(jn't i)rofess to know, but he has a thin semi-
translucent membrane which he ])ulf,s out in the form of u bag
under his chin, and from the air contained in it he draws out the
lung whistling trill that you Ih-ar in the spring evenings and
summer nights. It was a long time belbre I found this out ; 1
thought till then that frogs eou Id do nothing but croak, and that the
whistling sound proceeded from li/<irds, (though a college student
once assured me that it was from wild (]u(;ks, and started oil' to get
his gun to shoot them). Fancy the astonishment of a serenading
froggie at getting a charge (jf duckshot about his ears ; it would be
worse than the stones with which the boys pelted his ancestors.
However, 1 om.'e caught a diinii) troubadour in llagrante delicto.
He must have been head over ears in love to let me get near him,
hut I did ; and I watched him swell out his little Img and trill till
all the air in it was exhiusted, ami he hid to pause for a fresh
supply of breath. Then he saw me ; and, presto ! the bag disa})peared ;
he put on an air of "Please, Sir ! it wasn't me," and tried to make
me believe he was out after mos(iuitoes. 1 pretended T was con-
vinced and walkiid gently away, but the moment my back was
turned he was at it as loud and as shrill as ever ; rather more so
indeed, as if he wanted to make up for lost time. Ah ! it's a
wicked and deceitful world, and there is no trust to be placed in
any creature when it is courting.

In middle air the evening becomes vocal with the hum of
mosquitoes ; not that that is anything new, for he has "been making
things hum" all day ; but as night draws on he seems louder and
more hummy than before. It is the contrast, I sujipose. Xight
always seems to me to have a still silence peculiarly her own, and
so subtle that it is felt rather than perceived. I have read that in
the tropical forests night is the noisiest portion of the twenty-four
hours, for then the birds and the beasts, and the insects that
have been, so to speak, lying flattened out under the oppressive
heat of the day, spring up into vigorously resonant life, but for all

ir!i

. \

\FTKU SUNSET.

that, I cannot believe thiil tlit; [)U('uliui' aileuue uf the ni^^ht U
uttectod by it. I know tbut I myself am conscious of it, oveu in
the lecture, or the concert room, or at home conversing with my
friends ; and those who will watch for it cirefuliy, may, if I may
use the bull, hear it themselves amidst all the sounds that surround
them. Night is like a mother walching the gambols and hearing
the laughter of iier children, herself grave and silent, with the
teniler light of love in her eyes. "Verily, the darkness is no dark-
ness with Thee."

"Fanciful." Well perhaps 1 am. Strange fancies crowd into
a man's lieiul, as lie sits alone with the Creator in the gathering
shadows of tlie twilight, an 1 I cannot think that they are altogether
wild and unprotitable, even if they should be wholly destitute of
reality. Call them but w iking dreams, as visionary and eccentric
as those which visit us in our sleep ; they, at any rate, Jire under
the control of the will and the intellect, and it dejiends on the will
of the dreamer himself whether tiiey shall bring a blessing, or leave
a curse ; whether they .shall make the life purer, noljler, more ten-
der, or haunt it with a liitleous nightmare. This fancy of mine
respecting the indestructible stillness of night came to me originally
when I was lying on a sick bed, given up by my medii'.al attendant,
and all urouml me, and all but given up by myself. The same
thing may come to all who I'ead this book ; must come to most of
them ; and I tell this fancy of mine for their benefit. It is no light
thing to lie alone save for the half hidden watcher by the bedside,
weak and in pain, listening to the loud ticking of the clock telling
out the sands of time as they drop into eternity. Have you ever
noticed the ticking of a clock, wliun that was thu only sound audible ?
How ostentatiously loud it is for a space, and how it gradually sitd<s
into a whisper, and then dies away altogether, till, just as you are
bei'innini' to think that the clock has run down, it bursts out ajiain
as uproarious as at the first? That clock used '' irass me more
than I care to say ; I suppose I wa> nr ous ; bui at any rate 1
used to lie awake listening to it, .imost friglr aed at it, till

one night the fancy came, and I c, it the outside .stillness of the
night pervading and embracing the sound ; ud making it part and

AFTEK SL'NSKT.

iKircol of itself. It was the rtfulization of perfect rest and peace to
.viiicli the activity of the clock was necessary, and yet wholly sub-
ordinate ; not the rest of that "land svhore all things are fcjrgotten,"
Init the rest so grossly niisinttupreted of the Epicurean deities who
sit on the heights of Olympus, inlolligently viewing the storms of
the world ; not indued uusyuipathizing or scornful, as the poet
represents them, hut untouched in their conscious security by
them. •*"

"Thou art almiit my lied and al)out my path, anil s[)iest out all
my ways." it may be that others cannot grasp this fancy of mine
us I have gras[)cd it ; "Non cuivis homini contingit adire Curin-
tlium ;" but it is widl worth making the attempt to do so. There
is a wonderful sense of watchful [)rotection and care in this feeling
of the predominant sileiici' of iiiglit that amalgamates all sound with
itself.

The sun has gone down and overhead the clouds that gathered
lound his parting rays, and the clouds that did not venture to show
iliemselves befc»re, are a billowy mass of colour ; smitten into flame,
bathed in blood, till they tone down into golden and rosy lights,
and so, through tender shades of green and gray, into the sombre
hues of the dark. The day is dead, but how lovely in dying ; how
lovely in its death after the glare and heat and turmoil that pre-
ceded it. And now there is a fresh and totally ditferent world, yet
still the same. Xew voices break upon the air, which is cleft by
new wings ; new footsteps steal across the lands ; new lights break
out in the skies. Consider well the meaning of the story thus
written on the daily page of the book of the world. Is death then
such a terrible ami abhorrent thing as we represent it to ourselves
10 be ? Is it a suspension of life, even for a second ? Ask the
day when it dies ; ask the night when she covers life with her
veil, if that life has been arrested, or — changed.

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JF my eye3 dou't deceive me, that is :ay pig that has just made
his \vay under the bars iuto the clearing. I had fondly
thought that liis education was progress' -Tg satisfactorily, and that
he had got too much of a corporation on him now to be able to
squeeze under the "oars. It seems that I was mistaken, and that
so far from attaining to the dignity of l.)eing erected into a muni-
cipality, he is notlung UKjre than a struggling little hamlet ; two
hamlets rather, with the as yet unfultiUcd possibilities of hams.
Perhaps this seems rather confused, and uiiintelligil)le, but ihat i^.
accounted for by a slight feeling of disappointment which his
sudden api)earauce has evoked, and may be set right in a few
words. You see, I do not reg.ird a pig scientifically, as an animal
of the genus sns ; or vulgarly, as a j)ig in the concrete ; but philb-
sophically, poUticilly, and theologically, as a very estimable food-
product. I'iiilosophically the pig may be regarded as concentrated
intelligence : pott^.'d head ; politically, he may be looked on as a
growing corpoiM.tit)n : Hitches of bacon ; and theologically, he may
b3 considered wilh reference to liis latter end : !iams. When you
come to analyze him carefully in this way you will perceive that
he is a very comple.K arrangement, and a very nice one, too; and
that anything that tends to disturl) this arrangement, must
necessarily produce confusion, not only in the pig himself, but in
the philosopher who is contemplating him. Xow when a moderate-
ly stout gentleman pig undertakes to S(|ueeze himself underneath
the lowest rail of a clearing fence, and gets scored along the back
by a projecting knot, the probabilities are that he will be very
much disturbed for the time being. Mine was, I know, because I
heard him si[ueak. You will rtjadily perceive that when the
subject of meditation becomes "kind o' mixed-up," the ideas
suggested by it must in consequence be themselves mixed up also.
After all, the confusion in my case of hamlets and hams, corpora-
tions and pigs, was not altogether an unnatural one. There is not

THE LEARNED Pit).

"inuch diiference between some corporations and hogs : ask the
ratepayers if there is.

Now that I have cleared up matters satisfactorily, as I hope,
(and if 1 haven't, the fault must lie with the reader, and not with
me ; which, of course it doesn't), I will proceed to reiterate the
statement with which I started, namely, that I was disappointed at
seeing my pig enter the clearing, because it showed that he had
not advanced as far in his })]iilo3ophical education toward becoming
perfect food-product as I had fondly hoped. I am not proud, i
don't object to having a pig as a companion, provided he keeps his
proper distance. Neitlier am 1 jealous. '. readily admit his
superior advantages in the matter of legs ; and I don't envy or
covet his possession of a snout to dig up potatoes with when he
makes surreptitious visits to the potato-patcli ; or his icsthetic curly
tail, with a lovely little kink in it, which was evidently given him
as an adornment, for he does not use it to steer by, and it is of no
manner of good in brushing off flies. Noll am neither disdainful
nor envious. My distress at his sudden appearance arose from the
obvious fact that he was not yet too fat to squeeze under the bars,
and had therefore manifestly not made the most of his opportunities.
And these were many and regular every night and every morning.
Had they not been so, I should have still felt as disappcnnted as
the parent who sends his boy on odd days when lie can be spared
to the district school, and tinds after a couple of years of the course
that he has not got out of the Second Reader. As it was, I felt as
if I had triven him all the advantages of the latest educational
discoveries as set forth in the nearest academy, and he had failed
to pass his examination. That made matters worse. I myself stood
towards him in the relatit)n of Princijial, with Nathan A. i\I. (able
inau-of-idl-work) as assistant ; and I could not very well lay the
blame on the edu;ational staif,which is generally the parental resource.

I have reared and educated a great many little hogs in my
time, and though they were the objects of my greatest solicitude
and fondest care, they all died at a comparatively early age. Yet
there was a great sweetness in their thus passing away. "Whom
the gods love die young," is applicable to the ati'tction which,

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THE LEAKNED HG.

whether we confess it or not, the human race generally bears to the
pig. Moreover, whenever a vacancy in the porcine population was
created, there was always the consoling thought, amounting to a
moral certainty, that I should meet him again, or part of him at
any rate, under happier circumstances, and at the festal board. 1
always had the prospect of an experience similar in kind to that
which fell to the lot of the author of tlrat tou(jhing ballad, " Old
Dog Tray. " You remember how he speaks of the love, amounting
to that of a brother, with which he regarded his canine friend : how
that love was rudely broken in upon by the heartless government
myrmidons who insisted on the payment of a two-dollar dog tax
annually ; how this brutal contluct on tlioir part necessitated the
administration of a dose of prussic acid, hidden, as a last tribute of
heart-broken alfection, in a savoy dish of bones and potatoes : and
how the bereaved survivor grew thin and wasted from sorrow, and
found no pleasure in life, even going to the length of leaving his
beer at dinner untouched. Yet in an unexpected moment the two
friends were reunited, and the heart of the mourner was comforted.
Let me tell it in his own affecting words :

"Old Dog Tray I met again, thuiigh.

To eat tliey persuaded lae one day,
With some tempting mutton pies,

In the which I recognize
The rta/our of my Old Dog Tray."

In my boarding school days we were served at dinner on
Saturday with a pie, popularly believed to be composed of all the
scraps that hail been left (jn the dinner plates during the week,
which we christened "resurrection pie." It must have been a kind
of resurrection pie that once more restored dog Tray to his master.
Ham sandwiches have just the samcji'ffect when a pig is in the case.

Education is a very dilUcult matter, and the education of a pig
is no excejjtion to the general rule. An uncle of mine adopted the
theological, or sectarian school priuci[)le, and brought up his pigs
in what he denominated pews, namely pens in which they had no
room to turn, and when thev had eaten their breakfast had to

THE LEARNED PIC.

walk backwards into their sty to digest it. By thus securing their
continuance in a straight Avay, he maintained that all independent
exercise was prevented, and thar an ini))roved tendency to
corpulence was effected. .Moreover, he fed them on a fixed and
unvaried diet; of oatmeal and potatoes as far as 1 can recollect ;
and encouraged them in the praclii-c of fiMiiperance by giving them
only water to drink. I forgot how tlu' experiment turned out: I
think the pigs all died of fatty degeneration of the brain, or some
such thing. For mv ijart, [ tried the national school svstem. I
fed them with anytliiug and everything; I crammed them till they
could not even grunt. Th(^ plan worked well up to a certain
point : that is with those who lived through it ; for some died of
brain fever, and others got weakt-ned lungs, and had consumption ;
and some went idiotic, and were unfit for food; but the others grew
and thrived up to a certain point, and then instead of increasing in
fatness they began to grow lean again. 1 could not understand it,
till I consulted the princij)al of our academy. A ])rincipal of an
academy nowadays knows everything that can be known, and a
great deal more besides, sn he was able to give me the key to the
enigma. Taking me to wliere the pump stood in the yard he filled
the bucket up to the brim. ''Now," said he, "watch." Then he
pumped again for five minutes before he stopped, and when he had
finished there was absolutely less water in the bucket than when
he began. " There ! " ho went on, " the receptivity of anything is
only limited. If you try to put in more than it can hold, you
drive out that M'hich was already in. If you din a heterogeneous
mass of lessons into a chUd's brain before it has had time to stow
away what "^ had previously learned, it will forget them in a short
time ; and nowever long you may keep pumping in, the new
knowledge displaces a part at least of the old. If you keep a pi-fs
stomach continually filled without giving it time to digest, it woa't
digest, and it won't fatten. It will eventually die, either of
dyspepsia or inanition. You can starve a pig by giving him too
much, just as you can stupify a child by giving him too many
subjects to learn. You can't more than fill a full bucket." Since
that time T have given up cramming.

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"Stcrplight.

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F you listen to astronomers, and other scientific people, they
ill tell you that tlie stars are in the skies during the
daytime, and that the reason why they are not seen is that their
light is over])OVvered by the superior briyhtness of the sun's rays.
It may be so : in fact, I have no doubt that it is so ; the stars must
be somewhere during the day, and if they are not in the sky,
where are they ? It was rather a pretty fancy that accounted for
their invisibility during the day by regarding them as so many
myriad electric lights, lit up by the angels every evening, but even
then, they must be in the lieavens all the time, lit or unlit, and
we can rest assured of tliat without going into any abstruse
astronomical calculations. The reason assigned for our not seeing
them is however less indisputable, (I am speaking unscientifically)
and it does not seem reasonable tliat the liglit of worlds, some of
which are as much bigger than tlie sun as that luminary is than
the earth, should be swallowed up by him, although he does happen
to be a great deal nearer. Still, we have got to believe what we
are told at school, and I su])pose it is of no use to advance any
other theory ; I may be allowed, hijwevur, to point out that there
is a reason for all things, and that tiiere must be a reason why the
sun should be allowed to temporardy e.xtinguish the stars. I
believe it to bo because the latter are not wanted in the day time.

Now don't juni]) at hasty conclusions. I am not retailing the
old joke about the moon's not giving her light during the day
because she wasn't needed : my remark lies deeper tlian that, and
is based on a philosophical consideration of the uses of starlight.
For the pur])ose of illuminating objects and rendering them visible
this light is almost worthless ; you can neither read nor write by
it ; you cannot sew by it ; you can [)ur,sue none of the ordinary
avocations of life by it, as you can manage to do by moonlight; but

"STARLIGHT."

you can meditate by it. Of course you can do that in the day
time, or when the moon is up, or in the dark hours of the night if
you can keep awake ; but starliglit meditations have a vastness and
solemnity peculiarly their uwn, which the busy turmoil of life
during the day is unfitted for, and which the darkness of the night
is not qualified to give. "The ILjavciH declare the glory of God,
and the firmament showeth His handiwork." It is when the
overpowering light of the sun, and the shadowing light of the moon
are taken away ; when the veil of the cloud-burdened atmosphere
is rent; that then system after system of created worlds come into
view, and man stands in the presence, and gazes into the eyes of
infinity without being overwhelmed by it.

Look up, and you see spread out before you creation in all its
stages, from tlie dead world of the moon, to the masses of
incandescent vapour condensing into nt;l)ula', and from nebulae
into suns with their attendant planets, if we may believe the now
generally accepted nebular hypothesis. The field of view is seen
with them in every stage, of every size, and far as the eye or the
telescope can reach, and even further, as the sensitive plate records
for us. The light from these numberless incandescent bodies fills
the interstitial spaces, and coming to our atmosphere blends them
into a whole which we call the firmament, and the vastness of its
extent may well ])aralyze the imagination. But there is something
behind vaster still, and which is given only to those who visit the
underworld to see. Probably you never thought on the subject at
all ; probably also, if you ever did, you came to the conclusion that
what was presented before your eyes, and you could see, or acquire
the knowledge of by the sensitive plate was continued beyond your
powers of ascertaining, indefinitely : in point of fact, that the
succession of worlds is endless, and the presence of matter every-
where. Hard as it may be to conceive an infinite series of solar
systems throughout space, it is harder still to conceive of any.
portion of infinite space where such systems do not exist ; that is
to say, an absolute void, as far as matter is concerned. I do not
say a perfectly absolute void, for that is as inconceivable as a
termination of space ; but absolute as regards matter. Yet if we

I V.

"STARLIGHT."

can find grounds for such a supposition we are driven to the
conclusion that matter is finite in regard to one thing, space, and
to the presumption that it is equally finite in regard to the other
thing, time. In other words that it is neither infinite nor eternal,
and as such is not self-existent, and has been created.

I am not advancing here any theological theory based on
Holy Writ, which, for my present purpose, may be put out of the
question. It is perfectly impossible for the human mind '.o
conceive of any beginning of time, or any ending of space : ■we
assent to the propositions of Eternity and Infinity, not because we
can understand them, but because they commend themselves to our
reason. It is also possible for us to conceive of Eternal and
Infinite matter, knowing that its destruction is a mere matter of
appearance, and is really a change of form. Even then, we should
be driven to a(hnit of the existence of an eternal, intiin'te and
intelligent personality, for the essential characteristic of matter
is inertia, that is, it is unable to set itself in motion and needs an
extraneous imi)ulse wjiicli must be given to it by some thing
immaterial in the first place. Now we know of no force in nature,
even the most subtle, that is not operated by matter in molion, and
there must evidently be something to produce that motion. 80
that even granting the properties of eternity and infinity to the
material atoms, we have still to supply something else before wc
can get at what we call, and truly, the visible creation, and the
argument (wholly rational) for the existence of a Supreme Being is
not affected by what T have further to say.

There is a very curious plienomenon noticeable in the sidereal
map of the Southern Hemisphere which is, 1 hidieve, popularly
known as the "Coal •■Sacks." Tliese are two vast gaps in the
firmament, of the most intense blacku'-s^^i, in tiie which, so far as I
know, the most powerful telescope that could l)e brought on them
has failed to discover star, or m-liula, or luminous vapor. They are
absolutely destitute of light. Recalling this to my mind as I look
up to the brilliant display overhead, and reeidlecting that in no
other part of the heavens does this phenomenon occur, I am
inclined to believe that in gazing at the Coal-Sacks a man is looking

" STARLIGHT.

beyond the vast poncoiirso of worlds into that realm where no
matter exists or ever has existed. Of course we cannot say
]io.sitively that the space has nev(;r \k-vu filled up, but if it has
been it has ))cen swept clean. Elsewhere, the vye is arrested by
worlds upon worlds, and worlds beyond these au'ain ; here there is
absolutely nothini^ so far as we can conceive ; ni.ithinff but the
deepest and most intense darkness. Do y(ju riMiietuber that
sitrnilicant expression of the Saviour s])eakin,<f of the ultimate doom
of the wicked where He says that they shall be cast into the
" Outer darkness "; the darkness of that space which is outside the
realm of created matter ! It almost seems to me that in the Coal-
Sacks we have an evidence of the existence of that region.

In fact, where ever there is matter, liowever attenuated its
liartieles may be, there must be light of some sort, not necessarily
visible to our eyes, as is evidenced by the X rays, but potentially
visible to senses differently constituted to our own, for light is a
vibration of molecular particles whit.-h may or may not be perceptible
according as it is obstructed or arrested by other molecules. At
least, that is my theory (jf it, how far correct I am not able just
now to say without looking it up inas(.'ientifie treatise. Not being
scientific, but only philosophical, it does not much matter to me
whether it is correct or not. I am satistied with it. After all, tlu;
agnostics have some show of reason in asserting that we know
nothing. We don't even know, T mean that we cannot i*;^
certain, that Ave don't know. Looking \ip into the starry space
above my head, I am confounded with the unsolved questions
that it presents, and the inscrutable enigma that lies behind it, and
yet pervades it. " Tlie heavens declare the glory of God," and
" what man by searching hath found out Ood ?"

Instead of puzzling myself with vague speculations, let me
turn my meditations to a more practical use, and enjoy the calm
loveliness of the scene spread out before me. How many eyes
since the foundation of the world have looked, as I am looking,
and guessed as I have been guessing ? And where are the gazers
now ? Their material part has restored to earth what it took from
earth, to the air what it took from air, to the water what it took

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" STARLIGHT.

from water ; but was there nothing in the individuals besides all
this ; were they nothing but automatons set in motion by a spring
wliiuh wo call Life, and ceasing to move when that Sjiring grew
worn out ? In that case, but in that case only, Death is the end
of the man. There may be a reincarmition ; the materials may in
the lapse of countless years come together again fortuitously, a
fresh spring be su])i)lied, and the mechanism work again for some
brief time ; but is man a mechanism merely ? If wA, where has
the other part of him gone. What he drew from earth he returned
to earth at death: to what did he return the remainder? Matter
to matter ; but the will, the int elligenee, where is that to go to ?
Here is the (question which materialists cannot answer. There is
the immaterial part of man which has to be disposetl of, and to
wliich they can assign no ])lace.

DctybiicaK.

/jT is a very ditUcult thing to lake a philosophical virw of day-
break ; extviMiiely (lilliciilt. Vou may take a ^loclic or a
]ir()saic, a sentimental or a practical one, but a i)hilosophical oni' is
more ditliculL to attain to. Von must sec this yoiir.sclf. Yon muslin;
conscious that it is hard to keep your temper with daybreak ; that
lie is an impertinent intruder; a fellow that thrusts his nose in just
where he isn't wanted. If he would come a little later on in the
day it would be all ri^dit enough ; but to come before you have
scarcely settled down into a sound sleep, and Itefore the sun has
warmed the atmosphere suiUciently to make it healthy out of doors,
is very annoying. What renders it still more exasperating is that
the jieriod immediately preceding the dawn is the darkest of the
whole twenty-four hours ; and, being so, is the most conducive to
sound slumber. I don't mean that a man is only just getting to
sleep at daybreak ; if ho is, he doesn't deserve to have any sleep at
;iU. The odds are about a hundred to one, that he has been into
some mischief, hurtful to himself, or other jjcojde, or both. No
thoroughly honest and respectable man, or woman, will stay up till
daybreak, unless under very exceptional circumstances, such as a
club meeting, or a ball ; and every wise man or woman will have
gone to bed and to sleep long before that period ; but it is only
then that he or she begins t(j enter with enthusiasm into the
business, and carry it on with promptitude and despatch ; only then
that the snore of the sleeper attains its full volume and mellowness
of sound. Before, the slumber is light, easily broken ; and the
snore is irregular, faint at first, and oidy heard in melodious iiasal
ejaculations. Abrupt and brief at first, sleep is like a sjdrited horse
u-hen you first take him oi of the stable after a long rest, skittish,
and given to shying, and to breaking oil' from his pace, whatever
that may happen to be ; later on it is like the same horse after

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lUYbREAK.

a breatliinr,' strotdi of four or five milos, wanned up to his work,
and layiiij,' himself down to u steady trot along the level road.
Now, just fancy yo'ivself iu such a position, with a good horse
under y(ju, a well-kej)! road before you, and a briglit breezy day,
not too hot, and not too cold. Vou have got over all tlie little
differences of opinion that showed llieniselves at the starting, and
have estal)lishe(l that cssenlial to the perfect enjoyment of a ride, a
thorough sym])alhy bi'twcen yourself nnd your hors', when just as
you iiavc cut ('led (»ii what you intend to be a louu sharp trot, a
turnpike gate rises before you, and you have to pull u]). The case
is analogous to thai of the sleeper when the day begins to break,
unless he has taken the prc^eaution to let the blinds down before
he went to bid, or long continued lazy lialats have rendered him
impervious to tlie stealthy approaclies of light. II' he has not been
forlilied with one of these two things he has to wake up when day
comes, especially in tiie country, lie may go to sleej) again, and
probably will ; Init be is idinost suni to wake u]» then, even if it
be but for a mi.'iui'ut, and it is t(jo bad; it is really too bad, after
all the tvoubh' and lianl wiuk one has had to attain sound slumber,
io have to do it all ovei' again. It is a waste of energy.

Ami besides this, 'lie luiur of the dawn is the coldest in the
twenty-four. 1 ha\e always understood that to be the case from
others, and liave found it ,-^o myself on the few occasions that
I have not lu'cn mid;ing a tour in Dream-Ian I at that time. That
does not matter so much in summer time, I allow; nay ! it is then
rather an indu.cement, though a deceptive one, to early rising;
but in the winter it is a very dilferent thing and renders the
turning out of a warm bed doubly dillicult, as any married man
will testify. In the summer time there is no difliculty about
getting the lire started in the morning : the women folk, always
an unquiet and restless \\\va\ are alarmingly ready to take that
duty on themselves, and then, Macbeth-like, murder sleep with
clash of ]ians, and clatter of dishes, until the male folk get up in
despair. You don't catch them doing any sm^-h foolish thing in
winter, wdren the snow is on the ground, and the mercury has
gone into retirement, and when if you put out a foot from under the

UAY BREAK.

blankets, you j^ot your toes half frozen oft" before you can slip them
into a stocking. " Oh dear, no 1 Not for Ju.-jeph if he knows it."
'I'he female population of ilie place is then hybernaling like so
many dormice, and has no intention of stirring until " the house
gets warm." It has come to that wise decision by instinct, I
suppose ; but any way that is the princijile for which 1 am con-
tending, namely, that no one should get up before the house, (or
the air, which amounts to the same thing), gets warm : only I am
consistent, and uphold the principle in summer as widlas in winter.
My wife, who W(juld have me start u}) likt' a duck-in-tlie-box,
directly the sun shows the top of his head on the eastern sky,
argues that in summer tiiiuj the only enj'oyabltj hours, and the
hours in wliich work can best be done, are those in the early
inurning. I suppose a man is entitled to choose how ho will have
liis enjoyment, and if 1 prefer to take luiiic out in sleep, having
been too hot ami uncomfortable to do so until it nniUy does get
cool, I hope sucli a choice will commend itself as emiiiciuly
reasonable; and as to doing work ' Well ! I «i!ii not an enthusiastic
admirer of work in my own person, and siuix' 1 can perform nil
that 1 have to do in the hours that I am up and stirring, 1 ri'ally
don't see why I should be expected to undertake any nuire. If 1
arose as suggested, I should only bo engnged in pulling up dewy
weeds, and dirtying my lingers, or disturbing poor little cati-rpillars
and potato-bugs at their breakfast. Besides, il' the later hours of
the summer day are hot and uncomfortable, as there is very little
doubt that they really are to every thing l)ut the li/ards, grass-
hoppers, crickets and such small deer, is th;it any reason for getting
up early, and, so to speak, jiartially acclimating yourself '{ U vuu
were going to be baked alive, would you prefer to be put in a cold
oven, and have tiie tire started under you, or to bu {)ut in a red hot
one at once ?

No doubt " the early bird catches tlie worm." What of that i
The early bird is a murderer. Would you have me imitate him ?
Would you have me resort to cowardly assassination to procure
mv living ? I know it is said, " The more fool the worm for
getting up ^a'st," but this defence of late rising can not be maintained

' I J !

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DAYBKliAK.

for an inrttunl, on eiuiuiry. Tlie fact is tliat the worm had not got
up first; he was just going to bed. Xiglit is the worm's day : he
is not made for the heat which would dry up the laoistiive of hi.s
body, or the light whieh is of no use to him. lie had been enjoying
the eool dews, and piobably expanding his mind by foreign travel,
or cultivating social virtues by a visit ti. his cousin in the next
worm-holt', and was returning home full of news and gossip for
Airs. Worm when the early bird .-<aw him. The early bird had no
busini'ss with hiui at all ; he was a citizen of the ujjper, as the
worm was ol tin.' under world. If liu must needs have fleshy food,
there were, the caterpillars, the flics, llui most|uitoes, the slugs, and
a host of other diurnal pests ready for him, and mankind would
have applauded his (fating them. Instead of that, he falls foul of
an unoffending worm that never diil liim, or anything else, harm,
and that acts as a sort of subsoil plough for the farmer, bringing
ii|) to the surface in a proj)erly digested state, and lit for the farmer's
purposes, the cold and sour underlying earth whi(;h the agricultural
implements do not go *leep enough to reach , and not content with
assaulting this benefactor of the human race, the early bird murder.s
him ; and not satislied with murdering him, he eats him, the
blood-thirsty cannibal I Eats him law, too ! F>ehold the disastrous
effects (»u the nior.ds and conscience of li:)o early rising! Is that
an example Morthy of imitation ? luither than exj>ose my.self to
the risk of hecoming such an infamous scoundrel as the much-
lauded earlv bird, I would even consent to take mv brea'kfast in
bed, if anybody would l)riug it to me. And rsliould look on this
as self-denying virtue, not laziness.

Let me be just, however. The intelligent reader will perceive
that all that I have just said refers to the practice of getting up at
daybreak, either to admire it, or for more practical purposes. 1
have nothing to object to the dawn itself; in fact, I have no doubt
I should be considerably disturbed if it did not come up to time,
even for one day. 1 am perfectly willing to concede to others, if
they wish it the privilege of watching the sun rise, and I must
confess that we have been favored with many beautiful descriptions
of what takes place then by those who liave either seen it or

tiAYBREAK,

imagined it. It is conceivable by those who have not viewed it,
for it is the very reverse process to sunset : the voices of the night
I lie away, and those of the day swell the nujrnini,' hymn of praise
and thanksgiving in their stead ; the s()nil)re clouds swoon into
the gray and green shades, that in their turn blush rose pink, and
then flame out in orange and burnished gold ; and the life of
joyous and buslling activity, of light and sound, takes the place
of the noiseless things that moved invisible umler the sheltering
veil of night. To each his appointed time ; to youth the dawn
with its cool caress, and its promise of future glories and joys ; to
man, the bustle and the fervor of the full day ; to old age, the
calm and repose of sunset; and to nil, night. Who .xjiall exalt
the one at the expense of the others; wiio shall extol the beauty
and desirableness of one to the depreciation of the others ? As the
wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, so is the burden of the day
to the strength of the shoulders that bear it ; so is the beauty of
the day to the eye that gazes on it ; so is the happiness of the day
lo the soul that receives it. To the strong, the greater burden ;
to the clear eye, the greater beauty; to the pure soul, the greater
tiappiness. lie who despises and wastes the hours of dawn is less
litted to endure the heat of the mid-day ; he who lias not toiled
in the mid-day cannot appreciate the rest of the sunset ; and for
liim for whom the sunset of life has no rc.ii repose, night, the long
uight that comes to all, has no sheltering veil ; is nothing but
blackness and a void.

4 r

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^ I

gl J-

irif:''^

Un<icii tl^c lYlaple.

*>- HE maple dues not properly beloug to the clearing. Those who
•^ attacked the vir^nn forest did their woiic well, and were no
respecters of trees in a vertical position. I'runt- on the ground,
they represented dollars and cents, lumber or cordwood, but staud-
inij upright they wen; mere cumberers of the earth, defi'auding
man of his natural and iiialitMial)le heritage. So one after anothei'
they came down to the music of the ringing axe, the largest and
stattdiest tirsl, ami the others in succession, till finally even the
under brush was cut down aui] burned, and the clearing stood out
in its unadorned beauty, wliieh the poet informs us is "adorned
the most." He may be right: 1 won't venture to contradict him :
all that I care to remark on this subject is that tlie utmost adorn-
ment of a ideariug is nothing to i'rag about. I doubt whether
there is anything ugliei' to be found on the face of the earth. It
lacks the beauty of the cultured land, tlie solemnity of the waste,
and till' nuijesty of ) (leak sterility : it is "neither lish, llesh, nor
fowl, nor good red herring"; yet I love it; for it is to nie an
" U'dy l)uekling" that will, in the lapse of years, nuiteriali/e into
a beautiful wliite swan. In its ja'cseiit state, liowever, it is bereft
of all trees, and their [ilaces are taken b\- wild iasj)l)erry tangles,
or elumps of alder at the best. Tlius the maple does not projierly
come under the scope of my oliservation ; but that does n(jt
nuitter, as I dare say the readers of these rundding discourses have
Ion" ago discovered. "Homo sum, et nihil humanum a me alie-
num puto " ; whieh means in my individual case that all is lish
that comes to my net, and 1 put it down just as it conies. Being
a married man, I am denied the jjrivilege of lengthy conversation,
and so have to talk in writing. Also, and for the same reason, 1
have got into the habit ol' being discursive, and talking nonsense.
"Evil communicatious corrupt good manners."

■ i'Vr 11

UNDER THE MAPLE.

The aiiiple does not belong to the dealing, but it does the
next best thing, it looks in over the fence, u vegetable Peeping
Tom of Coventry, and is quite big enough to be seen. Moreover,
it is one of the national emblems, and as such deserves notice.
Why it should be loolvcd on as emblematic of Canadians it is hard
to discover. It makes the very best of firewood, but I should be
sorry to say, (at any rate till I got out of tlie country), that
Canadians were preeminently litted for the burning ; when it is
green, it is very green ; but I never met a Canadian yet who was
especially distinguished by greenness. It is sa],)py in the spring
timi', and the sap can ba .xj.'leil down into sugar: you might boil
a Canadian down till he evaporated into thin air, but you would
get no sugar out of him ; ywi might get "sand," and jilenty of it.
but no sugar ; or, if }du caught him tlown in the lower parishes
on the 8t. Lawrence, you might di.stil him ; but in that case yon
Would only get contraband whiskey. The majde turns red when
il is nipped by tlic frost ; the Canadian turns blue. Tiie more 1
think of it the less able am I to discover any points of resemblance
between acer .saccharinum and houio Canadensis, and I will give up
trying. Stop a bit! The maple is a very pretty thing to look at,
Mvl so, — no! Well, yes ! So are the Cana'Uan girls.

I fancy that different birds have preferences for different trees,
but, not being a very close obscsrver, cannot speak with certainty
on the subject. Of course there are cases in which the preference
is easily accounted for ; as for instance those birds which build
their nests with moss select trees whose trunk and branches are
more or less moss-stained ; but I imagin(^ I have noticed a bird
liistinction of the maple which cannot be explained in this way. 1
Hican the different manner in which the tree is treated by the robin
and the oriole. The robin will sit in the nuiple and sing there all
the day long, but he will not build in it if there is a convenient
elm anywhere near ; the oriole does just the reverse ; when you
want to find that clear voiced songster, look for him in the elm ;
if you have occasion to call on Mrs. Oriole, the chances are ten to
one that you ^vill find her comfortably seated in the maple. I
6

I •«

fP!^

i:nder the maple.

don't say that this is the uuivcrsiil rulf, or that the exceptions to it
are few, but from what little 1 liave noted of the habits of the two
birds I have got the impression that th^ robin prefers the maple
for a concert room, and the elm lor ;i family man.si(jn ; while the
tastes of the (jriole lie in Just the uppositi; direction. 1 should be
glad to learn if anybody else has entertained the sauKi tancy.

The lly-eatchers, too, are great fri(Mld^' ui' the maple, and if
there are any about you are pretty eertaiu t(t liiul them in its
branches. They are (jiuiint merry little things, but dreadfully
vulgar. T'l.'V hii.vc not the slightest rc-i.ect for position. They
will catch and ea.t a fly U])side down, just as unconcernedly as if
they wen' right side uj) : they will do it witli their tails pointing
to the giT'und ; or their beaks ; or their backs ; it makes no diflerence
to them, and it makes no diift!rence to the lly eillu'r, which is
satisfactory to think oi". Anotlier great frequenter of the maple s
the tree grass-hojiper, the cicada, who whistles tlu'ough tlie hot
summer day like froggy when he goes a wooing, but not so melo-
diously, and witli a siu't of chirr that makes you think ; Is; got
a spring running down inside him somewhere. Jle i- ather
hard to iind, bat not so hard as the little tree frogs, wlio may also
be come across sometimes on the niaide, and whom 1 ludf suspect
of the whistling, ordy th.;y don't seem big eiiuunli.

The maple — my ])articular maple 1 am talking of now —
bears numerous scars on his trunk for from Inur 1o live feet from
the ground, as il' lie had been in tlu' wai's. I rather fanc}' that
others of his tribe present the same jx'culiarity if they grow any-
where in tli(' reach of man or boy. He lias undergone several
surgical opt'.rations, and has been tapped ; not for the dropsy, but
for sugar. There have b(;en vari(nis attempls at odd times to
secure an accurate detinitiou (jf that .animal, man. One eminent
scientist of ancient days thought that he had sohcd the riddle, and
defined him as a " featherless biped," but was [lUt to shame and
confusion by an irreverent scallawag, who caught a rooster, strip])cd
him ol his feathers, and invited the jihilosopher to recognize him
as "a man and a brother." He has also !)een called a reasoning
animal, but apart from its being generally conceded that there are

UNDER THE MAPLE.

other creatures tliat can reason quite as well according to their
lights iM a man, ev.'vybody knows some men who are altogether
unreasonal)le, (they are married men, generally) and to be un-
reasonable presupposes an inability to reason. Another definition
of him is that he is a cooking animal ; but that again will not
hold universally good, if we include woman, as I suppose we must,
under tlio general ti-^ru. man. There are plenty of women, (worse
luck !) that are by no means cooking aniuuils : they can concoct
messes productive of dyspepsia and indigestion, and er[uivalent to
slow poisons, but they can't cook. Looking at the maple and his
scars, tile thought suu'u'ests itself to me that man is an animal that
gets something or other fur Ids own beiieJit out of everything he
comes across. If he doesn't, it is not for the want of trying, but
because the idea has not, for the lime being, occurred to him.
What other animal would ever have dreamed of ''ettiii'^ su^ar out
of a tree ? or would have taken so much jjains to do it, when, as
we all know, sugar can l)e obtained by merely going to the nearest
grocer's for live cents a pound ^ You don't find any other animal
tapping trees, or even going to the grocer's for sugar ; and yet
they are all fond of it, I had a little smoo'h-haired English terrier
once, whose character was utteily demoralized by her attachment
to sugar. tShe would watch her o})portunity, a.nd if the breakfast
or supper table was left unguarded a moment, would jump upon
it, and making for the sugar bowl, monopolize its contents if she
liad time ; converted herself in fa(;t into a canine sugar "ombine.
liemonstrance and threats were useless ; whippings were absolutely
thrown away upon her ; till one winter (ivening it occurred to me
In burn a jiiece of sugar in the candle, (we had candles in those
I lays), and present it to her. The conse(iueuce was that her nose
was burned as well as the sugar, and over after that, if the plea-
sure of her absence at talile was earnestly desired, it was only
necessary to show her a lum)) of the once-coveted sweet. She
would walk out of tiie room if the door was open, or under the
table if it wasn't, with her caudal appendage between her legs,
and a growl that sounded marvellously like a siipjiressed anathema.
She was possessed of a highly developed reasoning faculty ; but

•I ., '■- '■ I

•"I

," I

J- '■ * I
^ ■■'

mm'mwr

tNDKR THE MAPLK.

■11'

man, if lie wants sugar, will burn iiia linmjrs, and suffocate himself
with smoke, and make himself di'eadfidly sick with latire, rather
than not have it. Lt is not because lie cannot ilo without it, but
because his natural instinct impels liim to make the most he can
out of everything he comes across. Hence he will fight for ter-
ritory, and steal, and cheat, an! run away with his neighbor's
wife, and driidv all the lii^uor \iv ciin ^et hold of, though it's a
great deal too much for him, iind do many other reprehensible
things. It is his nature. He conceives tliat everything he sees
was made for his own especial benelit, and is subordinate to his
own especial interests. Even the whole of creation. There are
some men wlio will maintain that no world but our own can be
inhabited. Que is too hot ; another too cold ; one too far from
the sun, another too near ; one is too solid, a.nd another not solid
enough. And he treats the unfortunate brutes, birds and beasts,
that he controls, as if they had no rights or feelings; Xoah's ark
animals, to be maimed, and bruised, and cast aside just as it suits
him. He was placed ui)on (?arth, he thinks, to get all he can for
himself out of everything and everybody, and if ho makes any
return, it is with an eye to future profits.

Th(i Choip of the G] casing.

^^1|f|B|

'^lii

^ HERE is music in the cleuriiiy, and (|iiitu a large and accom-
plished l)and of songsters, but they are not feathered ones, as
might perhaps be imagined ; at least, it' some of them are, it requires
a microsco{)e to ascertain the fact. We are not rich in birds in
the clearing, the regular h(xbitu.^s being confined to the little
ground sparrows, whose song, such as it is, does not amount to
much. Tlie birds that move in the upper musical circles do not
shun us absolutely, it is true, but their recognition of us extends
only so far as what among human beings is termed a bowing
acquaintance, a passing notice in the street, and never gets to
familiar intercourse. Tiie robin and oriole overlook the clearing
from the elms or maples at its edge, and sing at it, not for it ; the
l)ob-o-link does the same thing from tJie fences at tlie sides. The
tirst named bird, indeed, will not nnfre([uently drop in to breakfast,
or dinner, for there is a good square meal to be had here when it
is not so easy to find it elsewliere, but the bob-o-link, seldom, and
the oriole never, visits us. The wood-pecker is a more frequent
guest with his tap, tap, tap, on some decaying stump, but who ever
heard of a drum-major in a choir ? and the crows come along
])retty frequently, after they have dug uj) all thi^ seed corn, and,
faiite de mieux, the seed potatoes that come handy ; but the crow
is not musical. He may not be of tliis opinion himself; in fact we
i<now from La Fontaine's fable of the crow and the fox, that he is
not; but there is no going against nature, and nature has endowed
him with a chronic bronchitis. (Jf tlic two, I should say that
riiere is more melody in a bull frog. The blue jay makes his
ap])earance here, too, in the fall, especially if there should be a ripe
corn field close by, but he is chiefly intent on plundering purposes,
and not on practising songs or ])salms, and when he does open his
mouth — Well ! all I can say is that I have heard better singing at

mm 1

THE CHOIR OF TEE CLEARING.

a village concert got up iu aid of the church. Our only other bird
visitants are a very e::ceptional owl who has got drunk overnight,
and lost his latch key and his way at the same time, and the hawks,
sparrow and hen, who are by no niean.^ exceptional, and of whose
approach you become aware before they are seen, feathery twinkling
stars high up in the heavens, by the sudden hush of whatever bird
conversation may happen to be going on at the time. To expect
a bird choir in the clearing is to expect a vain thing, and to Ik;
disappointed.

Nevertheless, we have a nunicrourf and well appointed choir
of our own, the female members of which are recruited from the
insect population, and very obligingly helped by the frogs, who
represent the gentlemen, and sing bass to their treble. Tlie ants,
who are very numerous, don't count, for an ant is always too
intent on business to sing, and 1 don't believe she could if she
tried ; and it is liopeless to try and make anything of the bees.
They have a musical turn if they would only cultivate it, but they
have no application ; they will do notliing but hum their tunes.
However, the mosquitoes and gnnts make up for all other insect
deficiencies, and they chant fr(jm morn to dewy eve without inter-
mission. Of course they have tlieir drawbacks jiist the same as in
human choirs, though I must do them the justice to say that they
don't seem to quarrel among themselves, and they keep thna with
each other, whilst the members of a huuiiin choir generally do the
first thing, and don't do the other. But in the matter of causing
the superintendent or director t(.) wish that he liad never been born
they are very much alike ; whatever .occasional (|uarrels they may
have among themselves, they hav(3 always an outstanding one with
him. "'Tis true 'tis pity; pity 'tis 'tis true." 1 wish I could say
otherwise, but wlierever there is a. man ready like a lamb for the
slaughter, there the lady choristers, insect or human, are gathered
together to immolate him by slow torture. I don't so much mind
in the case of the clergyman, for clergymen were created especially
for women to caress and Hatter and — sting, and serves them right,
too, for if tliere were no clergymen there would be no marriages,
and no endless enquiries as to whether marriage is a failure or not,

THE CHOIR OF THE CLEARIITG.

and no thinly-veiled laudations uf iiduliery by gentlemen and lady
novelists; but -svlien the matter aftects me jiersonally, and as
.superintendent of the elearin,<( and all that goes on in it, I have to
sit on a stump and listen to tlie practising of the lady mosf[uitoe3,
I protest against their copying tln'if human sisters. I say "lady
mosquitoes," because I am iutDi'UhMl du liigh seitmtilic authority
that it is only they who bile ; thi; g( ntlrinan is, liki;all other males,
ii [loor harndess nonentity. If this lie true, as reason and analogy
alike forbid me to doubt, the feminini' mosquito ])0})idation is
greatly in excess of the masculine ; as is the ease with other races
besides the mosquito, and would be still more markedly so with
the human one, if that wise and ancient nation, the t'hinese, did
not drown a great proportion of their female babies as soon as they
are born. I leave for the consideration of jiolitical theorists
whether this practice may not account for the prolonged existence
of the Flowery T'^mpire, and have obtained for it its distinguishing
epithet of Celestial.

The gnats are not so pertinacious, nor so vicious as the
mosijuitoes, and hence, I believe, though I have never been rude
enough to attempt to conlirni my belief by emiuiry, that they are
the married members of the choir. For I have observed that
marriage is a great soother, or chastener, which ever you like to
call it, of the animal spirit-;, and tones down the natural disposition
of the individual in a tndy astonishing manner. 1 have observed,
too, and I am sure every choir-master will corroborate me, that the
spinster members are always the most unruly and dangerous. It
stands to reason that it should be so, because the married ladies
have always a husband ready and convenient, whom they can "take
it out of" at home in curtain lecituriis. Tlie unmarried ones have
no such- resource : they may have, and indeed tliey are certain to
have, one or more young fellows dangling at thtnr heels ; but these
are uncertain, and if the worst comes to the worst, they can always
get away. Th;' husbaml can't. Hence the. spinster variety is the
most wicked, and to be carefully avoided ; that is, when she is
•lisengaged. "When she ha-; hi^r hands full, or in other words is
I'ngaged, then she may be approached in comparative security, for

■■■'^■*'f

iFT

THE CHOIR OF THE CLEARING.

she is all sweetness and light. Generally, but not always ; it is
not safe to be too confident. As Henry the Fourth of France
remarked,

" Souvent foiiiHie varie,
Bion fou qui s'y tie."

Or as Verdi subsequently put it ino.st melodiously,

" La donnii e mobile,
E senipre V!ii'ial)ile. "

both which sayings are endorsed by Sir Walter Scott,

«i;

" Oh I woman, in uur Imurs of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please."

The gnats also have anotlun' disthiguishing characteristic :
they join dancing to their singing, and very pretty and graceful
are the movements of the tiny creatures. Tliey never tire. They
seem carried away and t)ut of themselves by the ex(|uisite joy of
their simple existence of a day. Their span of life may, for auglii
I know to the contrary, seem quite as long to them as our allotted
space of seventy years does to us ; longer ])(>rhaps, for, for them,
death has no terrors, and is not a thing t(j be shrunk from. They
have no skeleton at their feast. And this peculiarity in tht^
Ephemeritles, is also a peculiarity more or less marked of all the
lower classes in the scale of creation; a thorough and ]Mire enjoy-
ment of the ftict of living. [ think that traces of this inay !)!>
found in early childhood, shown iiii)s( ])lairily in the Ij.iby thai
laughs and crows in its sleejt in ilic cradle, from which the pretty
fancy has arisen that its angel is talking to it in its dreams. So
he is ; the angel of Life. Pain and sickness may obscure for a
time this exquisite pleasure of living, but it cannot efface it utter-
ly ; not in the lower animals at any rate. It may be destroyed
in man, but it is his own doing, or the doings of others like him-
self; and it is destroyed by sin— sin. in ourselves,, and sin in
others. With the lower animals it is not so : they, like ourselves,
are subject to pain and disease, hunger, thirst, weariness, slavery;

' !

■m;

TFFE riHOIR or TITK CLKARINT,.

but when these iirc romfjvcid ihf happiness of living reasserts
itself, and shows itself plainly in tlu-ir actions. Hence there is a
very real and absolute moaning in tlie words oi' the Psalmist when
he says " All thy works praise Thee, Lonl I " and in the opening
verse of the Song of the Three Cliildrc.n, " idl ye works of the
I.nrd, bless ye the Lord, praiso Him, and magnify Him for ev^er."
Is there not here one answer at least to the qutistioii " what
were we sent into the world for ' " Were we not placed hiu-e for
our own ha))pin(;ss, and that wo might prize and cnj(jy the gift of
life which is bestowed on us ? Xot to pass it in morose discontent,
affecting to despise it and the things of earth, and the means of
enjoyment which the ]\Lister has givcm us ; nor in unnecessary
mortification of the body and spiiit; unnecessary, mind; for sub-
ject as we are to ]iassions and evil dtvsires, discipline of the flesh
and mind are necessary, but only so lav as they effect the end
aimed at, and do not destroy the otlu.'r aim of our innocent hap-
piness. 1 takt' it tliat we v/cre originally placed on this earth
tliat we might make it an at)od(,' of imiocent pleasure, and thus
praise Him who loves all His i;reation, and would fain see il<
ha]ipy. H' we have fallen I'rom this statt!, and the service of God
now consists mainly in obi'dienci; to the laws which Ho has
revealed to us for our guidance, let us remember that these laws an;
intended to restore us to the estate from which we have fallen,
and that in the kec])ing of them we may obtain that ha})piness of
simple existence which we have lost. There is a lesson to be
learned from these little choristers praising God for the life he has
given ; and yet another. If this life lie so sweet .to even these
tiny mites, how do we sin against their Master, when by cruelty,
greed, thoughtlessness, or sellishin'ss, we unnecessarily inflict pain
on them !

f%\

''■"•»

■.- i ' 1

fl Suinincp Day-Dpccrm.

Here, wlioro I lit! in rest oiitHpread,
With mossy ciirpet yirt !\i'<)un(l,

The threat trees ;,'reeii aliove my lieiid.

And lh)wei's bespan^^le all the ground.

Low drowsy miiniuirs i,'o find conio
Amont; tho apikelots of I lie pines ;

Close by, 1 hear the wild beis hum

'Mid strawberry and arbutus vines.

Above my head the wood-peeUer

Drives cofliii nails in '^dant boles ;

And all the maples ai'o astir

With elear-pilclied notes of orioles.

And somewhere near, (1 know not where),
Like to the voices of a dream,

Far off, yet near, the h.i/.y air

Shakes with the laujfliter of a stream ;

A little noisy rill that brawls

In minuc cataracts through the woods,
And whiils its pebbles over falls
• Of inches into inch-deep floods.

1 cannot see it, but the ear.

Can track its thousand fantasies.
Now rippling on distinct and clear.

Now loud with little angry cries.

1 know that, as it Hows along

With dancing sand-specks in its train,
Some stone has jarred upon its song.

And turned its gold- motes back again.

A SUMMER D\Y-DREAM.

And there it patits, and foams, and raves,
(As wo, ton, r.'ivo o'er little \voe«)

Till myriad bul)l)U'H lli-ck its wuvfis

And gather, whirlinj,', round its throos :

And then a rush, a fiiiry cry,

A crash along its water ways,
And all its raj^c and agony

Are drowned in songs of peace and praise.

.There comes a huttertly, and tiits

To yonder fern-top's dizzy height ;
Folds for a while his wings, and sits ;

Then o[)es them, ((uivoring, in the light,

^■n

And dallies with the sunbeam's kiss,

And shuts his wings, and opes again

In sneh great ecstasy oi bliss

It almost seems a tlirob of pain.

So fair, so frail I So weak, so strong
For happiness in little things I

So mute I yet e'en the voice of song,

Sounds poor by those wing-quiverings.

, Hither and thither, in and out.
Amid the wilderness of grass

The ants, a busy motley rout,

Prospect and scout, pass and repass.

:^'

And as I watch them running by
With eager footsteps to and fro

I fall to wonder, la::ily.

What mighty passion moves them so.

[>. ^

Not love, nor anger. Each alone
Pursues his independent way.

None gather by some way-side stone
To waste in gossip half the day.

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i. SUMMER DAY-DREAM,

Nor see I in the varying throng
That passes and repasses by,

Some portly insect wend along,

Slow-paced, in wealth's own dignity.

\] ilifl

»■,..*

Some aim directs the varied ways
Of all the pigmy multitude ;
Some business that hUows no stays,
Some pleasure eagerly pursued.

And yet, methinks, tlioir rush of feet
Is with a stronger passion rife,

And through their slender pulses beat
The dancings of the joy of life ;

In secret haunts of sweet perfume
To work and play the hours away,

Companions of a world of bloom,

And flower-shaded from the day ;

To feel the tangled grasses stirred

With the cuol breeze'.s soft caress,

And iiear, high up, the brooding bird
Croon little notes of tenderness :

11 ,'

V' ,

And midst such scenes as these, to take
And do their work, however small.

For Him who made ant, flower, and brake,
And I0VS8 the service of them all.

So, as in dreaming sympathy

With all this little world I lie.

Its happy spell comes over me,
And pierces me with ecstasy

!«■•

So great that when I fain would seek

For words, they loom up faint and dim

And well I ween them all too weak

For simplest noted of Life's glad hymn.

A SUMMEn DAY-DREAM.

Oh Lord Omnipotent, how just,

How strong iu love are all Thy ways.

V»'ho peoplest grass-blade.s, and the dust.
And from such worlds pcifectest praiao

Who deckest out with Icvelinesjs

The meanest creatures of Thy hand.

And watchest to protect, and bless

Lives, smaller than a grain of sand.

5i:

Above me, the breath of the pines
And the songs of the birds in the maple trees ;
Around me the scent of the flowers
That blossom among the woodland vines

To greet the summer hours.
And the drowsy hum of the bees,

And the busy unrest of the ants.

And the varying voice of the rill
That sings, and sobs, and rages, and panta

In its course from the hill.

What heart can paint the perfect bli.ss
Of Heaven in nature's second birth.

When Love reigns in such scenes as this.
And such strong joy in things of earth.

w\-

1,' ' !

Tl^s Qpouncl-bipci.

|*i '

Ihi

^\ HE principal of the feathered residents in the clearing is the
^ ground-bird ; indeed, I might say that he is the only one who
may fairly lay claim to the title of resident, for he builds here,
sleeps here, works here, and does what he calls singing here, which
no other bird does. He is a quiet, unassuming little fellow, not
particularly handsome unless you look at hiui closely ; just a mite
incredulous as to the possibility of good intentions on my part at
first, but after he has convinced hiuiself on that point, supremely
indifferent to my presence ; dismisses me from his mind as some-
thing not worth notice, at any rate so long as there is anything to
be found that is lit to eat. When the supplies begin to gr, w scarce
he turns up his little round head, and throws a reproachful glance
at me from his little black eye, as if he more than suspected that I
was to blame, but was too polite to say so, and flies off a few yards
to look for happier hunting grounds. He generally makes his first
appearance alone, and pretends to be a bachelor, free and inde-
pendent, but it is not very long before I hear Mrs. Ground-bird
calling to knn from some little distance away, and wanting to know
where he is, and what he has been doing all this time. Of course,
he is obliged to tell her, and I must do him the justice to say that
he generally does this at once, without any attempt at evasion oi'
concealment, which shows that he has been well brought up, and
not only knows that part of the cat6chism which enjoins respeci
and obedienci.^ to the powers that be, but puts it in practice also,
and then she makes haste to join hiui, and the two continue thi.'ir
search after small game in a cosy and comfortable manner, keepiuu'
up a desultory conversation all the time. And that bird-talk is
the only ground of complaint that I have against him. It may
have subtle inliections and delicate shades of meaning which escajic
my grosser and untutored ear, but to me it sounds terribly mono-

THE GROUND BIRD.

tonous. Cheep ! cheep ! cheep ! Directly he comes into view, he
introduces hiinseli' with " cheep ; " when he Hies away, his parting
remark is " cheep ; " when ho discovers anything to eat, he says
" cheep " before meals, and " cheep " afterwards ; when he thinks he
is going to find it and doesn't, lie siill says "cheep." I don't
remember ever coming on a word before in any language that 1
am acquainted wiili that was i)Ut to such a variety of uses ; it even
beats the Chinese words that have an indehuite number of
significations according to the accent laid on them, and the tone of
voice used, for it has no accentuation, and only one tor It is no
use asking him what lie means by it, for he app urs to mean
anything and everything, and Airs. Ground-bird understands him
thoroughly ; but my failure to compvciicnd him annoys me perhaps
more than it ought to do ; and I feel uncouifortable in my mind
when lie looks at m" l)ef(ive flying away, and says "cheep." I
wonder if he spells that word as I have done, or with an a ; and if
the latter, whether his remark is not personal and derogatory, and
expressive of a very ]io(ir opinion of me on his part. If I could
only be sure that I was right in this misgiving, I declare I wouhl
pick up the first stone or stick that came to hand, and throw it
after him to teach him better manners.

Yet he is a well-meaning little fellow, and a harmless one,
which cannot be said of all well-meaning persons. There are
people in this world whu are constantly going about picking up
their means of living, and crying cheap, cheap, cheap. Cheap
uoods, cheap houses, cheap money, cheap everything. Ay ! and
cheap lives and cheap souls too. I recollect when Cobden began
the anti-corn law agitation in England which grew till it finally
resulted in her present Free Trade policy. It was in Huddersfield,
I think ; at any rate in one of the great nuuvufacturing centres of
the day that he was inveighing against the corn-laws, and appeal-
ing to his hearers to assist him in securing their abolition on the
ground that it would bring cheap food to the working men. Of
course the argument told with his audienci}, but there was one old
weaver there that pressed the argument closer, and saw the results
a little more clearly than he was intended to do. " Cheap food,"

V 'I

'jljjtl

' < t"1j

,l. ,.

I'"

THE GROUND BIRD.

he growled, " hang Lhee, 'L is cheap wages thou meanest." He
never spoke a truer word in his lil'e.

The gi'eat progress made by science in all its branches within
the last halt' century, the improvements in machinery, the natural
increase of population, and the (iccupancy of hitherto uncultivated
lands, and the discovery and development of now and rich beds of
mineral ores of dillerent kinds have tended legitimately to cheap-
ness in all the articles in common use, by the increased production
of the raw material on the one hand, and the increased facilities
for manufacturing them at a less cost on the other. In so far as
lowness of prices, (which is what is generally meant by cheapness)
is etfected by this, the result is natural an<l innoceuL. It is only
a truism to say that the more abundant, and the more easily
obtained anything is, the lower is its value in public estimation,
and also its value as an article of trade and barter. Increased
production, from whatever source it originates, brings with it de-
creased prices, until it reaches a certain limit, and then there
comes " a glut in the market," and there is virtually no sale al all.
The opening up and settlement of vast areas of good farming land,
where auricultural operations can be carried (jn at comparativelv
small cost, has at once handicapped the occupiers of the older anl
more artihcially cultivated districts, and has increased the avail-
able amount of food products to a very large extent ; the substi-
tution of machinery for manual labour, and the continuous process
(»f improveinent which it is undergoing have at once diminished the
number of those able to tind employment, and increased the output
of manufactured products. The inevitable consequence in both
these cases is the lowering of jn-ices, or cheapness ; and it can only
be remedied by a cessation, partial, or complete for the time, of
production. Such a cessation, of course, diminishes the profits of
the producer, and throws out of employment a number of persons
encaoed in the production ; but it is, as I have said, inevitable,
because there is a point beyond which cheapness cannot be obtain-
ed except at a loss ; and the natural causes are conp'-antly tending
to this point. They tend to create cheapness fo'- a more or less
lengthy period, and then a reaction ensues, anrl prices rise, when

THE GROUND BIKD.

they come into action again. Tliere is a tide in all the affairs
of men upon earth, and a regular ebb, and flow, and high
tide: or, to use a perhaps better simile, mundane m» .-rs are
like the pendulum of a clock — the sweep may be long or short,
but it always eventually returns to the point from which it
started.

So far then, there s nothing objectionable or morally wrong in
cheapness : it is only when man interferes with natural laws that
things go all astray. But is the cheapness dear to most hearts,
iinJ especially to the feminine mind that is always hunting after
biirgains, one which is created by natural laws, or an artificial one ?
[ am very much inclined to believe it is the latter. The cheap-
ness to which I allude is not caused by the laws of supply and
demand, or attributable to competition, and the blame of it rests
not on one class but on all, on those who suffer by it, and on those
who profit by it, for the same madness seems to affect every body,
and a thing is prized the more in proportion as it can be got
cheap. '

This may not be at first apparent in the wealthy few, many
of whom value a thing mainly for the high price paid for it, yet I
rather fancy that if we could see below the surface we should find
that the real satisfaction, even here, in the purchase of any article,
lies in the belief of having got it "a bargain." But, whether my
fancy be true or not, the rest of the world will scarcely purchase
any article, not imperatively needed, unless it be cheap. There
are two evils that arise out of this ; the manufacture of worthless
goods, and the adulteration of food in the first place ; the grinding
down of th3 poor in the sacond place. Of the th-st evil I don't
complain much : there are alleviations- If, for instance, coffee at
25 or 30 cents per pound satisfies my taste as well as that at 40
or 45 cents, I am perfectly willing to call it coffee, 'though I know
that that bean forms a very small portion of tlie whole compound,
aui that tha rest, if I am lucky, is composed of Boston Baked
Beans, and Chicory. T say ' if I am lucky,' because there is some-

THE (UiOUNU BIRD.

J'''

I-

i::.

.*!

times tobacco dust mixed in. [ iiin perfectly willing to allow that
cottolene, or oleomargarine is creamery butter ; not the very best,
of course, but butter, and cheap at the jtricc!. I iiave no objection
to aolid gold rings at 25 cents, and diamond pins at lil'ty ; if the
one is not gold, and the other i.i nut a diamond, they are sulhciently
like the real article to pass eareles-s must M' — " Don't disturb
Camarina " ; don't en([uire too curiously into what you eat and
drink, and wherewithal you are clothed. The I'ruit of the tree of
knowledge lias never agreed with any one since the earliest days
of our race. An English sailor, according to the late Mr. Leech,
once landed at Canton, and feeling hungry, went into a Chinese
restaurant where he was served with such a delicious ragout that
he cleared the dish. If he had paid his bill ami gone (piietly out,
he would have been all right, but he didn't, lie must needs
know what the delicacy was, and as he could not speak tht;
language resorted to signs. Pointing to the dish, and patting
his stomach, lie remarked eu([uiriiigly to the waiter " Quack-
quack ? " and that functionary with a solemn shako of his head
ansvrered " Bow-wow ' " Before Jack rcnciied his shi]), he might
just as well have eaten no tlinnor a' all. Better ! Where cheap
Jack reigns it is not well to enquire too closely into the nature of
things.

Polly, and Bloomah, and the whoh; tribe of their sisters
occasionally visit the cities, and liring bai/k with them bundles of
all sorts of articles got cheap — some of which they assure me they
would not make for the price — women's blouses and capes, men's
.-'hirts, towels, all sorts of things. Take a white shirt for instance,
which I liuve seen occasionally — (on Sundays and holidays) — and
therefore know something about. The women tell me that thev
couldn't buy the cotton, or linen, and nuike the article at the price
they paid for it. And they plume themselves at having got it
" so cheap." But wli;it does that shirt nujan to me ? It means
that somewhere or other, a poor famished creature has been doing
the work on it, and others like it, for twenty-five or thirty cents a
dozen ; it means that this, and other articles of " cheap ready made

m '^i

i i

THE GROUND BIRD.

clothing," are \vrung from the suffering of brothers and sisters; that
they represent starvation, dishonour, suicide. They are the
garments of Death, and the " hitest fashions " of Hell, The
trader will not he defrauded of his profits though he sells in
the long run "so cheap," and has " bargain days " and " slaughter
sales," and " thirty per cent discounts," and " reductions below
cost prices " ; it is out of the working man and woman that
the cheapness comes, and the general public must have cheapness.

RalDyahs Last Rids.

1':;^

\l'

J cannot get out of my head to-day an Arabian legend I once
heard or read , it is so long ago tliat 1 furget which, and had
forgotten the tale itself, till it suddenly ruse up from the grave of
memory, and has been haunting me ever since. We all of n.s, 1
fancy, have had some such experienco, similar to that of Alark
Twain pursued by the rel'rain,

" Punch, brothers, punch ; |)unch with care ;
i'unch in the prosonco of tho pivsiiun^au'O."

In such cas2S, when th3 phrase, or the tune, or tha memory
is persistently obtra3ive, the besL sv.iy is to 1 jt it have its full swing,
and m )re ; just as you cure a harsj given Co running away by com-
pelling him to kcv-'p on when he g>^ts tireJ and wants to stop; sol
have put this tale into verse, and so killed it; i nearly killed myselT
at the same time with the effort, anl I shouldn't M'onier if the reader
wished I had done so altogether. However, that is his affair, not
mine; so here is the tale itself. It would have becui a tine poem
if I h- i not adhered as faithfully as I could to the original, which
has given it, so to spe;ik, a llavor of prose, and may lead some to
recall HooJ's title for a volume of tales and poems, " Prose and
Werse." It is called

RABYAH'S LAST RIDE.

This is the tale of a man, Rihyah, the sou of MokadJeni,

Chief of the Bani Firaz, of the eldest sons of ALlain,

Lords of the w.iste and the desert, who dwell in the midst of the sands.

Who live by the bow and spear, and thirst fur no other lands.

RABYAH S LAST RIUE.

101

Wide ftro tho siiiJs of thu dosort, (inl on thoir borders the beiist
()t tho iiifidols tears uj) t!ij grivo^ anJi liiiiglis o or liis lia'lily fuiist ;
And tho tnboH thit dwvill by thu wolls wlioro clio lordly iiftlm troob soar.
Start ua tliey lie in thoir touts fit llui lion s ihuiidorous loar.

« *

But wo ftro the Bjtii Fiiviz. NVhuii Allnh iii >al l.-d tho clay
Of which thoy siy iill t'liii^s wor^ imlo, ws wi-ro tho men of the day.
Tiio sun uovuT sh )iin on tho world, sinco ovor a mm w.is oti earth
But he siiiilod on tho Bjiii Pivu tint took from Ailim thoir birth,

* *
*

And wont out into the desert. To whom else could Allah give

\Vi"h tho shiftiit; smls, and biiniinL; suns, and tlio droid simoon to live t

Wlio but tho Bisni Finz could havo dr.iwn io tho du.scrt's breath,

And nurtured women and men in tho vory jaws of death !

* *
♦

Death ! It is no great thing, and we face it every day,

Tho spear of a fooman may brin^; it, or a swerve from t'le beaten way.

Death is tho intidel s biij^bi-ar : no son of our tiibo is afraid

To die as his fathers died, and bo laid whore his fathers are laid.

We are the men of men, the bravest of sons of Adam,
And cliitf Of tho Beni Firaz is Ra'iy.ih, the child of Mokaddem ;
And this is tho tale of his stand when tlio fatal shaft had sped.
And tho Beni Suleiman curs yajjped from afar at tho dead.

* *

|i..1

»-i;.''4fEj

1*1. '-Hm
"M

The Bpni Suleiman pressed us ; pressed bard in the ancient days ;

They swooped upon us like engles ; they rode upon nil our ways :

F< r a blood-feud had risen between us, and though the price hud been paid.

The road tbtvt was safe for men was unsafe for matron and maid.

p I

102

rabyah's last ride.

Tho land wan aere, and the woIIh wore dry as a jackal-gnawed bone,
When up to tho Ohazai pnHs caino uur women, unkept, and alone ;
Unkupt save by Rabyah, the son of Mokninmod, who brought up the rear
The matrons and maids of Firaz the charge of a single spear I

« «

The mother of R'ibyah turned her head, "What, son of my heart, dost

thou see ? "
" A whirlwind of dust, and the glint of spears, and horsemen riding free ;
But speed thou on, my mother, until the Ghazai be past.
And I will stay liere and hold back the foe that cometh on fa.st.

* «

And there as ho turned and drew rein a wind clave the dusty cloud.
And he saw the spurkle of steel, and the rush of a mighty crowd ;
And lo ! at its head was Nubaishali, of whom it was said that Death.
Nurser of Vultures, rude by his side, and lived in Nubaishah's breath.

« *

But the sister of Rabyah shrieked when he drew his bridle rein.
And the cries of her women re-echoed her wail o'er the arid plain ;
But his mother knew better her son, " Fools ! what is the cause for fear,
Though the curs of the Beni Suleiman bark, if Rabyah bo near ? "

* ♦

Ifi I

Then they loft him standing alone, and swift as an onrushina flame,
Three of the best and bravest of all Beni Suleiman came ;
But his first shaft pierced tho tliroat, and the second sought out the heart,
And the third went straight through the eye to the brain; so sure was the dart.

* *
*

And the men of the Beni Suleiman shrank, as a man might shrink
Fromtheeyos of a lion couched by the spring at which he has stooped todrink ;
And Rabyah pressed them hard witli his arrows, and drove them back
As the South winds push back the storm, and melt into tears its rack.

•mm

raryah's last ride.

103

Then he turned to follow rhp wnnuMi, and Boiii Suleiman turned,
Vclpod on tho Irick of his good groy iii iro, pantod, and thirsted, and burned ;
Uurnod, and thirstod and pintoil, till lie iiunsod onco more in hia path.
And aj^ain tho arrowH Nped lionu-, and a<r.iiii tlioy .shrank fntin hiH wrath.

So through tho loni; hot day th« combat ! ur^od f'land fro,
.Vnd still ar4 ho inado a .>tand, they shnmk from his di'adly bow ;
And still as ho turned, they fnlhtwod, until "iir pass wis in .^ight,
.\nd tho sun was behind the hills,- tlu light was i.ho eyes of night.

.\nd so an the dark came down tho pursuers and pursued

Drew tf) th') GliHzai pass where tho grevt hills watch and brood ;

\\n\ into tho edge of th"ir blickuoss he nvle f >r the tmal stand ;

Rut his quiver hud lost il ! ■ ■ shaft, and thero was but the spear to hia ha',d.

The great black horses were weary, their sweat fell from them like rain,
As the well-filled water skin swiiifs in the heat of the desert plain ;

Rut Rabyah's mare was as dry as the jackal's bone is dry,
.\nd the flimo that I»ro;ithoil from lur no-strils was .shade to the fire in
her eye.

* *

Rut against him thundered Nubaishah. Nubaishah of whom 'twas said.
That he rode with the Nin-ser of Vultures, Death, who covered his head ;
When thero came a cry from thopas-i, "The victory is not won ;
Oive them the sword and the spear ; give them the spear, my son."

* *

E'en at the word he charged, but Nubaishah drew bridle rein,

Poised his spear for a space, then sent it hurling amain.

Strong was tho arm of the chief, and straight was the aim, and true ;

And the steel met Rabyah oncoming, and pierced him through and through.

, «

Ait

104

RABYAH S LAST RIDE.

Loud laughed Nubaishah then, as he saw how the shaft had sped ;
" Take thou my love-gift, Rabyah, that soon shalt be with the dead.
Here will I wait through the night till the earliest dawn of day ;
Then, if thuu hast a mind, try thou to bar my way. '

» ♦
*

But Babyah turned as untouched, though ever his entrails flowed
From the mouth of the wound hs he wenf, and tracked out all his road.
And there at the mouth of the pass he saw his mother, and cried,
*' Give me to drink, my mother, or I shall fall as I ride. "

* *
*

Give me to drink ; for the fever is coursing through all my veins,
And fiercer the thirst of Death than the thirst of the burning plains.
I have ridden my last ride, mother, have fought my last good fii;ht ;
Give me to drink that I die ; but speed thou on through the night."

* *

She dropped the veil from her face, and stood before him unveiled
As none but his father had seen her, and e'en ii the doing, paled ;
Then flushed again as the daybreak flushes pv.d piles, and flushes
Ere the rising sun comes up, and the sky at his coming blushes.

* *

She stooped and kissed his wound that gaped like the camel's lips
When he shows his teeth with a grin, white-set with their cold blue tips
" To drink is to die, my son, and thou must tight to the last.
Lo ! we go, as thou sayest ; stay thou till tlio strait be past."

* *
*

*' What is thy thirst to thy wound ? What ia thy wound to the shame
That, failing thee, will befall the women that bear thy name ?
What is the death of a man to the honor of maiden and wife ?
Take thou my kiss for thy drink, my Rabyah, my soul, my life ! " •

,;H:>'f)ilBij

nABYAH'S LAST RIDE.

105

Parched and bleeding he waited alone, and watched for the foe
That stole through the darknesa upon him, till he saw them down below,
And charged with a sliout up<in tliem, and sent them reeling, until ,
The jackals whined over the plain ; but silence kept the hill.

* *
*

At the mouth of the pass in the dawning was standing the old grey horse,
And the lance of her rider was couched in rest — the lance of a corpse.
But the Beni-Suleiman shrank ; shrank back from the levelled spear,
.\nd circled about the pass ; circled in doubt and fear.

* *

Till the great round sun uprose, and the maiden, morning, flushed
At the toucli of his crocus tingurs, trembled awhile, and blushed,
And then Nubaishah saw that the hero drooped his head
A little, as if in sleep, and knew that the life was fled.

* *
*

Called to a bowman and asked, " Hast thou an arrow, my son.
Loft to thy bow ? " and was answered, " Master, I have but one.
And that is my life, my master ; niy life, for R ibyah is near ;
And his rush is Azrael's rush, and Azrael guides his spear. "

* *
*

" Nevertheless, must thou shoot ; but do thou shoot at the mare,
Neither to kill nor to wound, but aim thou to graze the hair,"
So he shot, an I the gi'oy mire swerved from the bolt, and her rider fell
Prone on his face to the ground midst the Beni Suleiman',' yell.

* *
*

The dead man lay in the pass, and over his body the foe

Halted, and mused, and wondered that such a mm should lie low ;

But the women were safo in our tents, and we waited for news till there cams

The riderless steed of Rabyah, foam flecked, with her eyes aflame.

':^^.i'

106

RABYAH S LAST RIDE.

And then we rose as one man ; our horses devoured the way,
Till we came to the mouth of the pass where the son of Mokammed lay,
And there we raised him a cairn ; and there to this day it stands
Looking out from the Ghazai pass over the desert sands.

* *

Rabyah, son of Mokammed, thy grave is heaped up with stone,
But under the desert jairn thou dwelleat not all alone,
For wherever thy tale is told, the women give thee a part
Of their life and love, and thou livost ever more in their hearl.

* *
*

.Now this is the tale of a man. A tale that is easy to read,
But one that is hard to be fashi.med out into m luly deed,
For men now die for tlieir lust, but {{abyah died for the right ;
Stood for the honor of women, and, dying, won the fight.

* *

What are our women to us ? Slaves to our bow and spear.
Bought and sold in the market without or a blush, or a fear.
Mon I Do we call ourselves men ? In the face of Heaven, we lie
We trample upon the weak, but not for the pure ones die.

* *
«

We are a race of cowards ; robbers that steal away
The purity of our women, and think it the daintiest play :
Vultures that feed on corruption, ourselves corrupt and debased.
With the stamp of lust on our hearts, and (mr mother's image defaced.

* «

But wherever a woman is honored, there too shall Rtbyah's name
Be written upon the heart in living letters of flame ;
And wherever the tale of a man, a loyal man, shall be told
Women shall tell how Rabyah rode in the days of old.

flloncf the C0\\?-Path.

boss ! Co' boss ! Co' boss ! Bossy, bossy, bossy ! " There's
Bloomah at the gate of the clearing summoning home
" the railky^ mothers of the herd," or, as Nathan calls them, " them
ere pesky critters." Nathan is not very enthusiastic in his
admiration of the cows, for at c'rtain seasons of the year, when
they are turned into the clearing to pick up what they can get,
they are apt to make for the other end of it as soon as they fancy
no one is looking at them, and explore the recesses of the bush.
Then, when the voice of the charmer, Bloomah, is heard at the
gate at eventime, some of the animals, generally the young
heifers, are out of the sound of its fascination, and Nathan has to
go and hunt them up ; an exercise which sometimes keeps him
employed till night fall. The old cows do not as a rule play truant
in this fashion ; they are just as ready and willing to be milked as
Bloomah is to milk them, and I see them coming out one by one
from the woods, and sauntering leisurely down to the gate, nipping
oft' a blade or two of grass on their way, just about the time that
that fair damsel may be expected. But the younger members of
the bovine family are not so reliable ; whether they have not yet
gained experience sufficient to enable them to tell what o'clock it
is, or whether they prefer the freedom of the bush to the restraint
of the farm yard, or whether they stray too far off and lose their
way, I cannot determine, but certain it is that they frequently are
conspicuous by their absence at the proper time, and equally
certain that Bloomah is not going to trouble her head about them,
and will start Nathan after them on her return as soon as siie sets
eyes on that much ruled individual. Add he doesn't like it.

I suppose I shall be told that 1 ought to keep my fences up.
The remark is not an original one, and it betrays a very superficial
acquaintance with the nature and peculiarities of clearing fences,

.i-^f ',•■ ■

K I,

"^m

If'' ■

108

ALONG THE COW-PATH.

■I'l.

■;• i

writing an

which differ considerably from all others. I am not
agricultural treatise, neither am I engaged by Government as a
professional member of the Society for promoting agricultural
knowledge among farmers, or I would take the opportunity to
deliver a lecture on fences in general, and clearing fences in
particular. I simply remark that in these latter, there is always
one irreclaimable gap in the side bordering on the bush, some-
times two or three. Indeed, I have known many cases where
farmers, recognizing this peculiarity, have dispensed wiili a fence
on this side altogether, which simplities matters, but dues not mend
them. Where they have not adopted this plan there is, as I have
said, invariably one gap at least in the fence, and it has this pecu-
liarity, that there is not the slightest use in mending it. Fill it
up in the evening, and before noon next day it will yawn as wide
as ever. Whether this is a natural defect of tlie clearing fence, or
the cows are responsible, or the wood nymphs, is a moot question,
but the fact remains, though unexplained, and the wise man
recognizes it, and acquiesces in it accordingly. I am myself rather
inclined to put the blame on the cows, though they look so inno-
cent about it, as I have observed that there is a well beaten track
leading straight from the gate to the gap, and this is the cow-path
par excellence. There are other little ])aths converging into it
from all quarters of the enclosure, but these are faintly defined,
and obviously accidental byways ; private lanes debouching on
the cow's highway.

Now it may not strike you as a very remarkable thing that
when you travel along this path, it all dei)ends on the direction
you take whether you get home to dinner or supper, or get lost in
the woods. That looks too obvious to merit any notice whatever.
But did it ever strike you that in the ways of human life the same
thing happens ? That your happiness and comfort, and safety, all
depend on the direction towards which you set your face ? Perhaps
you will say that you did not give the thing any particular thought,
but that you are fully aware of it, all the same. Well, then ! let
me press the matter a little further. Have you ever thought what
life really is ; and what is its real duration ? Do you consider it

ALONG THE COW-PATH.

109

to be rather indefinite as to term ; lasting with some eighty, with
some sixty, with some forty or thirty or twenty years ? Then you
are wrong. Lita is a very delinite term, inasmuch as a thing can
be said to be truly your.s only so long as you have certain posses-
sion of it ; and tliore is not a created being on this earth that is
secure of life beyond the present moment. Of course, we all of
us know that, though thjru are few of us that act as if we believed
it; as, indeed, it is uiurally certain that we don't believe. Men
are willing enough Lo confess that there is a possibility that they
may die tlie next mjuient ; but they never admit the probability.
If a human career is cut olf sooner than we anticipate, we call it
sudden doath. All men die suddenly, however much they may
have prepared for it ; " The Son of man cometh at an hour that ye
think not." Safety at home, or loss in the bush, depends on the
direction of the face at the moment.

Nor is this consideration of less value in matters not involving
eternity. The rule is the same in every transaction of life, that
its success or failure depends mainly on the way in which we set
abjut it, the direction fri)m which we approach it. The lesson of
the sclio)! child is mastered just so far as there is the desire and
the will to m.isLor it; it is unlearned just so far as these qualities
are deficient or non-exi.stent ; when itcomplaius that " the lesson is
too hard," it is either b. 'cause the courage to overcome its difficulties
is wanting, or the will. Many men are but grown-up children in
tliis respect, an I hen ie the reauirk. of the poet, "The many fail,
the few succeed." Moreover, there are always two ways of doing
anything, the right way, and the wrong one. Take the right way,
and you come out at the gate ; take the wrong way and you will
spend the night in the bush. " You pays your penny, and you
takes your choice." And you must recollect that this choice is to
be made at every instant of your life, and at every step in the
matter in which you may be engaged, be it one of business, or one
of pleasure. In either case if you go the right way to work you
will come out riglit ; if you don't, you won't.

I wan't you to cast your eyes on this track again : it is well
beaten, tolerably straight, and serves a distinct purpose, that of

110

ALONG THE COW-PATH.

travelling from one end of the clearing to the other. So long as
the cowsj keep to it, there is no harm clone ; it ia only when they
go beyond it that Bloomah cries till she is hoarse ; and Nathan
subsequently travels along it as sulky as a bear with a sore head.
From which I draw another deduction, that all things are made
for use, and that it is only when they are abused that they become
pernicious. T know that I shall tread upon a great many corns
in laying down this sweeping general assertion, but I believe it to
be true, and I further believe that it is UKjre dangerous to hide or
deny the triith than it is to confess it at once. Neither do I say
that because everyl^nug is made to be used, and enjoyed, it should
be so used under every circumstanc;3, and without further restric-
tion than the knowledge that it is injurious to abuse it ; I remedy
the indestructible gap in my fence, by putting boards over the eyes
of the young heifers that wander through it and ;.;et lost ; there are
things whose use is so easily perverted that it is right and prudent
to surround them with restrictions ; but I don't block up my cow-
path. I may go further, and say tliat I certainly should so block
it up if the face-boards proved totally una\ailing, and Nathan's
journeys became of daily occurrence. But in that case I should
not say that the cow-path was a wrong thing, never meant to be
used as a road. This is the mistake that a great many worthy
well-meaning people Ml into ; they see that a thing is often
abused and leads to a great ()eal of crime and misery, (there are
other things l)esides liquor, so don't fancy tliat I am referring
especially to the temperance (question), and they wish, some of
them, to restrict it, some to forbid its use altogether. I am prepared
to support them, but it is one thing to forbid for sound reasons the
use, and another thing to deny the usefulness. We never gain
anything in the long run by distorting or exaggerating the truth.
" Co' boss ! Co' boss ! " There come the cows at last. A cow
is a favorite study for landscape painters, and it is a very easy
thing to draw. At least it used to be when I was a child, and
was drawn on strictly mathematical principles ; also, on our slates
at school. You took a rectangular parallelogram for the body of
the cow ; affixed an equilateral triangle at one end for its head, in

\LONG THE COW-PATII.

Ill

which were three circles representing the eyes and mouth ; two
truncated elli[)ses represeriied the ears, and two quarter-circles the
horns : the line of beauty curving gracefully to the ground depicted
the tail, and four straight lines, of une([ual lengths, and at different
angles, were ])laced under the parallelogram, two at each end,
which were legs ; and there you had a loautiful cow. It is very
interesting from a ))hilosophical point of view, and may be of use
lo the advocates of evolution, to observe that this cow was the
triumphant result of an attempt at depicting minor animals ; wo
began with the cat, or the dog, according to the sex of the artist ;
went on next with the dog or the cat ; mounted to the horse, and
linally reached the culminating point in the cow, which, having
horns, was the most complex animal. I say this may be of use as
tending to prove the theory of evolution, because the original
conception, tlie mental idea of the animal was the same througiiout,
and (with the exception of the horns) the same drawing served for
cat, dog, horse, and cow, tlie only diiference being the size, and the
direction of the tail. This last in the cat was curved gracefully
between her legs ; in tlie dog, over his back ; in the horse it was
fore-shortened and not allowed to touch the ground as it did with
the cow. In fact, tlie evidence of one simple original plan
pervading all was so marked that to prevent mistakes we had to
write under our drawings Tins is' A katt ; this is a doug ; and so
on. Later on, we grew more expert ; our portraits then had a very
short and straight tail ; and we wrote under it this IS a bare.
Finally wo made our drawing stand up ; removed the ears, put the
two fore legs on at right angles, shortened the hind legs, and
abolished the tail. So we arrived at " the human form divine."
If you have followed my description carefully, you will see how
the evolution was carriaA out by a simple modification of the tail.
Alan, as we all know, is not perfect, though nearly so, and
anatomists inform us, I believe, that he has got the rudiments of a
tail yet, though overgrown with Hesh. Our men were perfect, and
the evolution was complete in their case ; they had not even the
rudiments of tails.

Bt»'2i> Turtle.

^ HE little stream that comes out of the woods and runs through
*^ the clearing empties, a couple of fields oif, into a brook, and
the brook into our river. It is not much of a river, being what we
should have called in the North of England a " beck ;" but such as
it is, it is the biggest stream of water we have, and we call it,
politely, a river. In the summer time it has a little thread of water,
a few mud-bottomed pools, lots of stones, and some sand and gravel
banks. It also has turtles ; mud ones. Now, I am aware that a
mud turtle, however estimable an amphibian he may be, cannot
strictly be classed among the denizens of a clearing ; but we must
not be too accurate, even in philosophiziug, and Br'er Turtle, as
Uncle Kemus calls him, if not one of the inhabitants of the cleariug,
is a distant connectior, (through the brook and the stream) and may
be looked upon as a fifth or sixth cousin. Cousins five or six
degrees removed, unless they haj)pGn to be young and pretty, and
of the opposite sex, are not generally held to be of much account ;
neither is Br'er Turtle ; at the same time, we are compelled by com-
mon fairness to allow that since they are brought into the worlil
they must have some right to exist, however difficult it may be to
discover it sometimes ; and, by a parity of reasoning, the same right
must be conceded to the mud turtle. Generally speaking it is so
conceded, just as we grant it to the distant cousins, by ignoring him
completely, beyond, perhaps, a passing bow, or, what is in his case
equivalent to it, a stone thrown at his head when he is sunniug
himself on an old log, or sand bank ; but when the small boy gets
hold of him, his existence is trammeled with conditions that would
make life utterly insupportable to a less phlegmatic animal, and
even as it is I don't think he always likes it, though he puts up
with it and " says nuften." I remember in the earlier days of the
now flourishing grammar school of Bishop's College, Leunoxville,

br'er turtle.

113

how one of the boys, in his lialf-holiday wanderings, once came on
u very juvenile specimen of Br'er Tiuvle, and captured him before
he had time to make good hi.s retreat into the water. He was, (the
tm'tle, not the boy), a very, very little fellow, about the bigness of
a Mexican silver dollar, but not so pretty to look at, and of still
less value in commercial transactions. Neither was he good to eat.
1 never knew of anyboily eating mud-turtles, though I have been
a.'>.-jured that the thing has liuen done, and also tliat they were
delicious eating, which 1 doubt ; but in any event this particular
turtle was not lit for that purpose for the very suliicient reason
that there was not enough of him to make a bite of Take away
his ujiperand lower shell, his head, his little tail, and his thppers,
and what was there left of him ? I suppose he had a stomach,
but, if he had, that was al)out all, and you can't eat a turtle's
stomach. So his captor, (which his baptismal name it was Charlie),
was puzzled what to do with him when he had got him ; a thing
which is peculiarly exasjierating to a boy. Long time he stood,
" dividing the swift mind this way and that," till linally it occurred
to him that he possessed a steel watch-guard, but no watch, and
that, faute de rnieux, young master Turtle would serve as a time
piece. He was just about the size, and very nearly the shape of an
old fashioned silver hunting watch, and besides being of use in keep-
iug the watch chain in a proper position relative to his waistcoat
pocket, possessed the obvious recommendation of being qualified in
this mamier for surreptitious exhibiiion during school hours, and
also for being constantly at hand whenever wanted. So Charlie
jjicked him up, and carried him off home. But when he got there
an unexpected ditliculty arose. How was he to be attached to
the chain, or the chain to hii:i ? The easiest solution of the
question appea: d to be to run tiio guard right thiough him from
end to end; but, upart from the ditliculty of getting master Turtle
to open his mouth wide enough for the purpose, Charlie had very
natural doubts as to whether the operatioa would not seriously
disturb the digestive faculties of his prize : he could not be certain
of the turtle's internal economy, but it looked as if it might be
8

^<m

114

br'er turtle.

I'i'l

that way, and he concluded to take no risks. There only remained
the method of boring a small hole in the under shell, and thia
would have been easy enough if he could only have been sure which
was the right end. For litll j Br'er Turtle hud gone into retirement at
the moment of his capture, and stayed there. He tucked in his
head and covered it with a pair of his ilippurs ; and he drew in his
tail, and guarded it with the other pair, so that however closely
you inspected him you "couldn't tell tother end from which."
Now the burning a hole in a gentleman's coat, even if it is a bony
one, is not calculated to evoke feelings of the liveliest satisfaction,
and Charlie was rather afraid that if he made a mistake, and took
the wrong end, he might chance to get his lingers nipped during
the operation. So as oldei scientists have done before him, liu
proceeded to make experiments to test the truth of his theory as
to whicii end of the animal the head was at. He got a little bit
of stick and prodded ; but the more he prodded the closer were
the flippers drawn in, and it was evident that no result could be
expected from that end. So he tried the other. The effect was
magical. Almost at the first touch of the stick the head flew out
at the opposite end, and a very emphatic hiss proclaimed the
owner's disgust at the liberty taken with his tail. The most
convincing argument, and the one that never fails to tell, is the
argumentum a posteriori. The question was solved triumphantly,
and for many days after JMaster Charlie lightened his scholastic
labours by pulling out Master Mud Turtle to see whether it was
time for intermission yet. I forget what became of the latter. I
fancy that one night when his owner was asleep, he managed to
free himself from the chain, crawl out of the watch pocket, drop to
the ground, and disappear. " He never came back any more," and
probably by this time has grandchildren, to whom he relates how
he used to study in his younger days when he was preparing for
College, and who look up to him with the same deep awe and
reverence with which we contemplate a Rural Dean, or the Chan-
cellor of a University. It is now nearly forty years since, but
Charlie's use of the turtle has since then been improved upon, and
not very long ago, young men and women used to wear little

.. it

BUER TUUTLE.

115

lizards attached to cliniiis to make themselves more attractive.
We are oidy big boys and girls after all, however old we get to be.
Thert! are many points of simihirity between IJr'er Turtle, and
man, and also many points of dissimilarity ; the latter of necessity,
lis otherwise there would be no telling the one from tlie other.
Among the former, I notice, for instance, that he can get along in
the world without brains ; doesn't appear to miss them when he
loses them; and is supremely indifferent as to whether he has
them or not. The loss does not atl'ect his health, or his appetite,
ur his enjoyment of life. There are a great many men in the
world who pass through this troublous life much in the same
way : they have no brains, but they prosper just as well as if they
had, and they are inclined rather to despise than admire others who
are better endowed than themselves. It does not sound quite
orthodox to advance such a proposition as this, but then just ask
yourself whether you have not often virtually admitted it in your
thoughts. Run your mental eye over the list of your acquaintances
and friends, and see how many of them there are whom in your
heart of hearts, though of course you are too polite to say it openly,
you consider to be " perfect fools," and wonder how on earth it is
that they manage to get a living at all, to say nothing of being,
very often, more prosperous than yourself. You will find a great
number, if you will only deal truly, and the most of these will be
in the inner circle of the men that you really have the warmest
affection for. " Pity," says the poet, " is akin to love," and
probably this is the reason why the superior intellect is seldom
beloved, though it may be regarded with feelings of admiration and
esteem, while the whole heart goes out to the inferior understanding,
especially if the possessor of it is of a happy accommodating
disposition, and contributes to your amusement without getting
into your way. I am fully of Br'er Turtle's opinion ; I don't
regard the lack of brains as an altogether deplorable deficiency ;
and I speak with authority, and as one well qualified to know ; for
I am perfectly content with my lot ; I possess plenty of friends,
and, so far as I know, no enemies ; and this happy state of affairs
I attribute, under Providence, to the fact of which I have been eo

)im

116

Btt ER TURTLK.

li"

il:

,1'«1 .:?»•. -J

I ■"''«;•"

ropeateilLy assured, both privately by my intimates, and publicly
by gentlemen oi' the press, that 1 am a person of weak intellect ;
an J, indeed, some people are so kind as to pronounce me an
" unmitigated idiot."

But lest this should fall under the eyes of some boy or girl,
as from the tendency of modern youth to devour all sorts of literary
trash it is not unlikely to do, and he or she should jump at the
conclusion that the bigger f ol a num is, the greater prospects of
success in life he has, let me hiislen to guard my position with a
qualitication. The old term for an idiot was "a natural," and to
prevent any misconeeption on the subject the adjective "born"
was added to it; "a born natural," and these were held to be the
especial care of Providence. An urtihcial idiot, that is to say, one
who does not use and cultivate to the best of his ability whatever
intelligence he possesses, is not supposed to be the subject of any
special ii.ierposition in his behalf; he is not a fool, but simply
" stupid ; " in a state of intellectual coma ; whereas the fool, as
everybody can testify, is wide awake, and very much alive. Now
a man or woman who passes through life in a comatose state, can
never nuike it a success ; by which I mean, cannot pass through it
at peace with himself and his neighbours, content to enjoy tLe
moderate blessings which may come to his lot, without too eager
grasping after more, and envy of those who are in a better pecuniary
condition than himself. The stupid man will spend the whole of
his life in the blind pursuit of riches or station ; and will be torn
by envy and jealousy ; the fool will not. He does not run after
hinus to which he cannot attaiu, or for the attainment of which
he must sacritice all his natural innocent enjoyments to tind that
he gains his end too late ; but that does not prevent him from
exerting his intellectual faculties, such as they are, to the utmost.
Br'er Turtle, when he has a brain, uses it ; when scientific gentle-
men deprive him of it, he makes the best of things as they are,
and he is wise in doing so.

Br'er Turtle, as is evident, has a singular power of adapting
himself to circumstances, wherein is the secret of life. Had you
or I been uaforluuate enough to have our brain removed, we

BR'ER TURTLE.

117

should probably have made a fuss about it, and declined to continue
to exist unJur such altered conditions. Br'er ''^urtle does no such
silly thing ; he just waddles off, and if it is aUout his dinner time,
sets to work on the first article of food that conies in his way.
He altogether declines to acknowledge that ho h;i3 no brains : the
fact is not altered thereby, it is true ; ))ut that makes no dilTcenco
to him. " No brains ? Well ! I'll get along without them as long
as I can. I'm not going to break my heart about it." When
Master Turtle was transferred to Charlie's vest iiocket, with a hole
bored in his lower shell, and a chain fastenel to it, he did not kick
and fuuie about it ; hi; tucked himself couifortably in and appeared
to go to sleep. He was biding h'u time, knowing that " all things
come to the turtle who v'lits," and when his time cam;3 he acted
with decision. Until tli i he adapted himself to the circumstances
as well as he could.

SnctKca.

("^ RUIVING one day a little later than usual at ray accustomed
^Jy\^.stum]), 1 found the ground preempted, and a little snake
ahout eighteen inches long lying stretciied out and basking in the
sun between a couple of the roots that buttressed him on either
side. Whether he was bona fide asleep, or was merely in a
philosophic and meditative mood, I cannot pretend to say : which-
ever it was, I got quite near him before he was aware of ray
presence, and then, presto, he coiled himself up, with the slender
head and neck elevated, the bright eyes glancing, and the delicate
tongue rapidly vibrating, and in this attitude he followed every
change of base on my part. It was a very pretty, and very
audacious attempt at bluff, for, on advancing the point of ray stick
a little nearer to him, down went the little head, out flew the coils,
and the rogue had disappeared before I had breath enough to make
use of Nathan's favorite ejaculation of surprise, " Gosh ! " As tlie
illustrious poet remarks, " He was oft' before you could say, ' Jack
Robinson'."

I have no doubt that all the time my little friend was putting
on his brave show of resistance he was in a dreadful fright : I
dare swear that his heart was beating three or four times faster
than it usually does ; and not without reason. If it had been
Nathan instead of myself, the little lithe body would have been
lying maimed and writhing in the death agony before it had time to
make good its escape : if it had been Bloomah, the poor reptile
would have been saluted by a volley of screams " fit to deave the
dead," and driven into a state of temporary idiotcy, as I once saw
a lady do to a rat. She mounted a snuill table, and keeping her
skirts gathered tight about the ankles, screamed at him till he
finally lost his senses, and tried to hide under some impossible
place, I forget what exactly, but I think it was an old envelope,

SITAKES.

119

and so fell an easy victim to his male pursuer, to wit, myself.
And in this, I consider tiiat the rat was fortunate ; had he been
alone with the lady, those terriKc aiiu ear-piercing streams must
have continued, penetrating to hun in his ill-judg3d asylum, and
inflicting on him all the tortures of horror and despair. I picture
to myself that rat, after vainly attempting to stop his ears with
tlie flap of the envelope, emerging in a state of dc'si)eration, and,
lying on his back in the middle of the room with his four legs
straight up in the air, exclaiming "Now let me die." To be
brained by a philosopher with a kitchen poker was, in comparison
with such a death, bliss ineffable.

I don't think my little friend would have waited for Bloomah
to reduce him to this state of mental incapacity. He would have
glided away leaving her to scream herself hoarse at liGV leisure,
which would have been in about ten minutes, unless ■'.he had suc-
ceeded in attracting a nuile deliverer before that time. In that
case her inarticulate yells would have given place to a gasp of "Kill
him ! kill him ! " Thore is a great deal of unreasoning cruelty in
the feminine heart, but it is the effect of over-mastering fear, and
not of an inherent brutality. It is an instinct very similar to that
wliich will sometimes lead a dog to snap at a person on being sud-
denly awakened, and is more frequently the cause of the attacks of
wild beasts that we are generally disposed to b3lieve. If you come
unawares on any animal, lion, or tiger, bird, or reptile, if it
possesses any weapons of offence whatever, it will attack you in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ; not because it really wishes
you any harm, but becaase it is afraid you may not be equally
well-disposed towards itself If you give it time to consider, it
will get out of your way. More than that ; even if it has good
grounds for irritation, should it by any means come to the con-
clusion that you yourself have nothing to do with the matter, and
ought not to be held responsible, it will not attack you. I have
repeatedly, when a boy, aided in destroying wasps and bumble-
bees' nests with impunity by acting on this principle and standing
quiet in the swarm of enraged insects that rushed out to repel our
attacks, while my companions who ran away md endeavoured to

1!M.

(

t ' ^1

120

SNAKES.

beat them ott" with brunches, or pocket handkerchiefs, or anything'
that came handy, invariably got stunjr. It is true that the rule
failed to work once or twice, but that 1 attribute to some wasj)
being more angry than the rest, and so incapacitated from using
his judgment clearly, or one who was not so an^ry as the others,
and so was enabled to judge only too clearly. The general rule, I
think, 19 that no animal will attack a man, unless it l)elieves that it
will be attacked by him. Or, unless it is hungry; for the stomach
overrules other considerations, and is like tlie lady of the poet :

"And when a stomach's in the case,
All Dthor things, you know, yive [jlace."

However, this is only a theory of mine, and, wliile I liold to
it myself, I do not insist on other people adoi)ting it. " What is
ocvuce for the goose," meaning myself, is not " sauce for the gander/'
meaning everybody else, and a theory which works well enough
for one man may have very disastrous effects wlicn acted on by
another. It is a weapon, the Nalue oi whicb depends greatly on
the skill and judgment of liim wlin wields it. You recollect that
tale told by " Sam Slick," of the man wlio had adopted the theory
that the most savage animal could be cowed if you would turn
your back to it, put your head between your legs, and l)ellow at it ;
how he proceeded to give the assemliled company an illustration of
the modus operandi, and how, in so doing, ]i(> startled a bull-dog
that had been (piietly dozing uudcn- tlv,> tabl(>, aiid that ilew out and
pinned him by the nose. I dire say Ihe theory was all right
enough; it was the practice that was wrong. To "eow" a savage
animal in this way, it is necessary that it should be to a certain
extent prepared for what is coming : if it expects you to " do some-
thing," and that something turns out to l»e what it had never cal-
culated on, the chances are that it will run away : but if you come
on it suddenly, before it has time to reason that you are probably
a harmless lunatic, the chances are tliat it won't retreat. A lady,
it is said, once saved herself from a tiger about to spring on her by

4-\

SNAKES.

121

opening her umbrella in his face : if she had gone up to that tiger
when he was asleep, and done the same thing, I would not have
given much for the umbrella, or her either. "Circumstances alter
cases," as politicians in power say when they are reminded of the
promises they made out of it.

To return to my Bloomahs : the desire for the slaughter of
perfectly innocuous creatures which they evince, arises from an
unreasoning fear of being in some mysterious manner, hurt by
them. It would puzzle them to tell you what mortal injury a
mouse, or a spider, or a harmless little grass snake coidd possibly
inflict ; they only know that they are frightened, and will never
feel safe so long as the small monster is alive. You may call it a
natural repugnance if you like, but it is really fear : mere repug-
nance does not extend to the taking away of life. In man, the
case is different : he kills from a brutal desire of killing; brutal,
in fact, is not tlie word for it, for it is rare that a brute kills
aimlessly, and without reason. IJiit man slays deliberately for
the slaughter's sake, and calls it " sport." T know that he endeavours
to conceal this, and alleges as the principal inducements the
healthy exercise, the excitement of pursuit, the attainment of skill
in the use of wea])ons, and other excuses of a similar nature, but
ask the hunter returning from a run with houmls tliat have failed
to kill, or the sportsman or angler coming home with empty game-
bag, or creel, what sport he has had, and he will tell you " none."
There is no sport without there is at least one death in it. I am
no sentimental humanitarian decrying these things as cruel and
senseless ; I am a philosopher, recognizing in this lust for blood
which has been implanted in the breast of man something which,
if it be not carried to excess, is wise, and necessary for the good
government of the world : and I am merely pointing out as a fact
that this thirst for .slaughter is in itself a savage and barbarous
thing, and peculiar to man, as distinguished from woman.

And I point this out because in the younger members it
degenerates, or is very apt to degenerate, into the wanton killing
and maining of any thing that is weak and helpless. When this

' ,1

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122

SNAKES.

is allowed to go on unchecked, the consequences are far more
serious, and widely extended than we are apt to imagine. The
boy that has no tenderness lor the domestic animals, no pity for
the wild ones, that does not recognize that the claim that every
weaker thing than himself has on his consideration is a paramount
one, grows up to be a man without chivalry, and without generosity ;
a man that knows no law but liis own pleasure and interest, no
restraint beyond the limitation of his power. He has no respect
for the honor of women, or the peace of families ; he will take to
the last ounce the pound of llesli allotted him by law, and a slice
over if he thinks he can do it willi impunity. He is not generally
a coward, but when he is, he is thij meanest and most despicable
of all cowards, a bully. It is this savage itistinct in man that
produces murder, adultery, fraud, and that is brought out in its
fullest and most hideous form when the fumes of alcohol drive
away the restraining power of reason. One of the most important
first principles to be instilled into the young is the abstention of
any form of abuse or illtreatment of the lower animals.

Now, as to my little friend, the snake, who is probably fast
asleep by this time in the sun where he fancies I can't find him,
let me say that he is a perfectly innocent and harmless reptile so
far as you and I are concerned. What the field mice, and frogs,
and ground birds think of him is an entirely different matter, with
which we have nothing to do. For all his brave and threatening
demonstrations when he was coiled up, he could not have done
the least harm, however much he might have been willing. A bee
is a far more serious antagonist, and a black hornet is a terror
compared with him. Even a mosquito could hurt more, and he is
really very pretty with those beautiful eyes of his, if you come to
look at him, and very graceful in the undulations of his movements,
and very swift in them when he is in a hurry. Does it not seem
rather absurd that he should be viewed with such dread and
abhorrence, and clubbed and pelted wherever he is caught ?
Surely God does not give life, and the enjoyment of life to a

SNAKES.

123

creature, even the meanest, that man should take them away
without any reason.

Yes ! I know that there are snakes, and snakes ; that the
bite of some is sudden death, and the embrace of others swift
destruction ; but they don't live hei-e, and we have fortunately
nothing to do with them. There may be, though I have not heard
of any, a rattle-snake or two about ; but a rattle-snake is a gentle-
man that always gives you fair warning that he is going to bite
you if you stay ; and if you don't run away after that he is clearly
not responsible for the consequences. At any rate we have none
of them in the clearing : take ns altogether we aro a very harmless,
])eaceable set of people — that is when the raosciuitoes and sand
Hies are not round.

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" Oh, Wild some power the giftie ^ie us
To sec uur.solvus as utliers see us,"

O ANG Burns, and I dave say you have seen the lines quoted as
-^ conveying a deep moral tiiith. I am not quite sure that
the aspiration is at all necessary, or even desirable to be granted.
It is not the latter, because it would take a jihilosopher to hear the
burden with equanimity, and philosopliL'rs are scarce outside of the
clearing: inside we have plen'.y of thjui. It is not at all probable
that the knowdedge of the estimation in which we are each held by
the general public would, if it were actively obtruded on our
attention, comluce to that love for our neighbour which is the
second great item of the moral law ; and it certainly would not
render any of us a bit more comfortable. It is popularly believed
that such an intimate ac:iuaini;ance with other peojde's opinions of
us would take down our self-conceit, remove all propensity to
" blow," and render us meek and humble, but I very much doubt
it. A man's conceit of himself is part and parcel of his very exist-
ence which nothing that anybody else can say is able to abate one
iota; what they may do is a different matter which does not require
the intervention of a " deus ex machina," to enable us to thoroughly
understand and ajq)reciate. Nor is a man's favorable self-estimate
a thing that is a bad and injurious one in itself; it is one of his
vital forces, and gives him the courage and energy to fight the
battle of life, which would be wholly destroyed if he knew exactly
■hot light his ]iowers and capacities were viewed by his nsigh-
b ,1 1 dearest friends. Take myself, for instance, (for there is
,'o! u : *:ke giving a practical illustration); I have been, in the
cuLiS". of ray life, singularly favoured with the candid expiession

il':''

AS WE SEE "ITHERS.

125

01 public opinion, so candid indeed that at times it has verged on
what I may call a brutal iVankne.si ; if I was to attach any
importance to what I lic.ir, 1 should believe myself an " idiot," a
" fool," and "escapetl lunatic, a "dreary twaddler," an " abominable
old fraud," and a great many other things besides, not less unflat-
tering to ones self-love. All very true, no doubL ; I am not going
to put myself out of the way to contest the point ; but if I were
to allow myself to be in the slightest influenced by these opinions,
generously and liberally furnished me free, gratis, and for nothing,
I should be more dejjcted ai;.l spiritless that the most miserable
tinker's donkey that picks up a scanty living from the thistles by
the road siile. As it is, 1 am perfectly serene and contented,
because I know, philosoiihically s])eaking, that it is not what od;er
people tiunk of am.in that is most iniporLant, but what he thinks of
himself. " i^^ sure you are right, iind then go ahead," is a very
good maxim, but how are you to be sure you are light if you
listen to people telling you every moment that you are wrung ?
That's what the farmer did who was taking his ass to market to
sell, and the conse(|uence was that the two asses, the biped and
the quadruped, tumbled over the bridge into the river, and got a
souul ducking for their pains. Nj ! I don't believe that the
private opinions of my neighbours and friends are of any more use
to me when they hai)pen to be publiely expressed ; and I don't
want any Power to give nu mure of tlum than I get now. I
might be tempted to commit murder ; in any case I could never
drop in of an evening to tea, and eat doughnuts and pies until I
arn on the verge of dyspepsia.

Moreover, if a mm cares to bo honest and just with himself,
it is not necessary for any special Trovidential dispensation to
enable him to hive a pretty accurate conception of the light in
whijh he is regarded by others, and, what is more to the purpose,
of the light in which he ought to be regarded. The motions of
action are so complicated, and the circumstances giving rise to and
directing it are so numerous, and frequently so obscure, that the
judgment of outsiders is more likely to be an erroneous one than

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126

AS WE SEE "ITHERS/

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that of the man himself, if he will only deal fairly. I shall probably
be told that that "if" begs the whole question, but it does not, for
it exists equally on both sides of the equation, and may therefore be
eliminated. There is just as much reason for supposing that his
neighbours will deal unfairly with a man as there is that he will
do so with himself. What is that you say ? The voice of the
majority ? The voice of the majority is about as unreliable a thing
as you can find anywhere, and it is generally wrong, until it
becomes converted to the voice of the minority. We have to
submit to it, it is true ; and we get in time to consider that it is
all right; but, nevertheless, all the persecutions and wars and
oppressions have come from the voice of the majority, and there
never yet has been a step taken in advance, or a beneficial reform
inaugurated, that the voice of the majority has not opposed. And
necessarily so ; for it is the voice of the unthinking and ignorant.
You never catch a martyr in the ranks of the majority ; if you
want one, you have to hunt him up elsewhere.

But how we see ithers is a very different thing, and full of
useful, as well as of interesting speculation. Useful in that the
en(piiry is really a matter of self-research, and teaches us to be
cautious in the judgments that we form of others. There is that
dirty, leather-cased, brown grasshopper, for instance, that dumped
himself down with a clatter of wing case and a whirr right in front
of me over ten minutes ago, and has been solemnly contemplating
me ever since, under the pretence that it is a very sunny spot, and
he must really rest and get back his breath before he goes any
further, whereas I am convinced that he is actually endeavoring to
make out what sort of a creature has got on that stump. He does
not give me the impression that he is a particularly handsome
animal : he is what I should be inclined at first sight to call par-
ticularly ugly ; nothing like that little green beetle that is running
about just behind him, all aglow with fiery metallic lustre ; yet, if
he would let me catch him and put him under the microscope for
a tiny little moment, I should discover that his plain smooth wing-
cases were beautifully bossed and studded, and his dingy appear-
ance would disappear, and make way for a lustre more subdued

AS WE SEE "ITHERS."

127

and toned, but equally lovely with that of the beetle. His legs
that I should have said were decidedly of the spindle variety, and
ridiculously long, taper delicately, and have well-developed thighs,
and even calves, through which you can see the blood coursing in
the slender veins and arteries, and in which you can mark the
graceful and delicate swell of the tiny muscles. His eyes are large
and brilliant, though they looked dull and horny ; and altogether
he is a fairly good-looking grasshopper. Or, he would be, if I took
the trouble to examine him closely : as I don't, I take the liberty
of saying that he is an ugly beast. In seeing itliers, we generally
stick to first impressions ; and these, in nine cases out often, subor-
dinate the good (qualities to what appear to be the bad ones.

Now, there's that fly, that has been persistently trying to
convert my nose into a promenade ground whilst I have been
reflecting on the grasshopper, and which I have only just succeeded
in finally persuading that it would be better for his health if he
would take what exercise he requires some where else. I wonder,
what, if 1 were that fly, would be my opinion of myself. How
did he see me ? I don't know how n)any facets there may be in
the eye of a fly ; there are 12,000 in that of a dragon fly, but then
he is bigger ; and the peculiarity of these is that if an image be
placed between a luminant body, and one of these sets of lenses,
that image will be represented entirely in each individual facet.
To make this clearer, I may mention a microscopic photogvaj)h
which appeared in the Sei)tember, 189C, number of the Strand,
an English magazine, which showed a portrait in every f^icet of a
portion of a beetle's eye, 198 in number. " The eye was first of
all dissected and placed on the stage of the instrument. The
portrait, — on glass, and, of course, exceedingly small — was then
interposed, and the photograph taken through the microscope."
The illustration gives, as I have said, 198 clear and distinct
photograi)hs of a man. Now, assuming a moderate estimate of
only 6,000 facets in the eye of my pertinacious friend, he must
have seen, and fancied that he was walking over, six thousand
noses of six thousand philosophers at one and the same time !

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128

AS WE SEE ' ITHER8.

What a stupendous notiou of his owu importance and agility such
a vision must luive given that tiy ! Is it any wonder that he
laughed to scorn all my eifort.s to banish him, and was not a bit
frightened at seeing six thousand philos()i)hic liauds making a
united dash at his devoted h'jad ? You will observe from this
that an exaggerated estimate of the value of othor people, does not
always tend to give us a lower opinion of ourselves, but just the
contrary. And the other people, after all, may not ba ([uite so
important as we inuigine them to be. It was only onj philosopher
that the tly had to elude and evade, whereas he must have fancied
that he was sporting with six ihousiiml ; and if I had hit him, as
he richly deserved to have been hit, he would have said, " ah !
well ! it's no great thing to kill a poor little lly, when the odds are
six thousand to one against him," and so would have died happy
and contented.

A great deal depends on the temper we happen to be in at the
time when looking at ithers, and this has to be taken into consider-
atiou in forming our judgment of tiiein. What would pass as a
joke one day, may form a very serious insult the next ; the stupid
conversation at one time, may, on subsequent recalling to mind,
appear a lively and interesting one ; our dearest friend of a week
ago, a heartless and unfeeling monster seven days after. The
things themselves have not changed ; only the manner in which
we see them. And in this sense the philosophy of William of
Ockham, which taught that the material world had no actual
existence further than as it is produced by the mental operations,
or in other words that all things are but thought, since without
thought they have no being so far at any rate as the individual is
concerned, has a very true moaning. " Ithers " are to us, not
necessarily what they really are, but what we conceive them to be ;
just as the traiuoil which takes the place of champagne to the
Laplander is a beverage which we certainly should not dream of
getting intoxicated oti, or the curry of the Hindoo is an abomination
to the Indians of the far North- West. It would save us a great
deal of unnecessary heat in argument, and consequent heart
burnings, if we would remember this, and reflect that a man is not

.! ?''

AS WE SEE "ITHERS.

129

necessarily either a fool or a knave if he disagrees with us ; nay,
more ; that he may be perfectly right from his point of view, as
we are from ours. Truth is many sided, and a great deal depends
on how we take it in.

I do not pretend to treat of things in more than a desultory and
rambling fashion, but I think I have said sulfiuiont to suggest to
my readers, who are more sober and sensible than myself, that a
careful examination of how we see ithers may bo more important
an:l useful both to ourselves and them than too close an enquiry
into how ithers see us. It is only a suggestion, but I think it is
worth sleeping upon.

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^ HIUSTMAS Day has been the subjoct of many writers, and
^"^ vievvod from many stanJpoints — Christmas in Al'rican
wilih; in Australia; in the; bush; in a liglitliouse ; in the mines;
in prison ; even in a balloon, though of this last I am not quite
sure ; but I don't think anybody yet has looked at Christmas Day
in a clearing. At the very best of times, few go to the clearing
unless they have business there ; Bloomah and Nathan after the
cjws, or the children to pick berries ; but in winter it is deserted.
Even its usual residents shun it ; the frogs are deep in the mud ;
the chipmunks are snugly ensconced under some tree root ; the ants,
and bees, and black wasps are either asleep or dead ; and where tin;
ground-birds have gone to, unless they have turned into chickadees
and migrated to the woods, is a mystery only known to themselves.
In winter time the whole interest of life appears to centre in the
homestead in country parts, whether it bj the home of man, of
bjast, or bird ; there is very little travelling about, a sleigh or two
on the roads ; a rabbit, or a partridge track in the fields ; now and
then a hurried little delicate trail in the snow where Mrs. Field
Mouse, or Mr. Chipmunk has braved the cold for a friendly call
and a little gossip ; and great wreaths of smoke rising from the
farm house chimneys to tell of the warmth and enargy withiu ;
these are the only signs of activity in the comiivy. In the towns,
it is different. There the full tide of life '.'bl's and Hows through
the noisy streets, noisier even than in summer by reason of the
wrangle of the multitudinous sleigh bells ; the snow has scarcely
ceased falling, before on roadway and sidewalk it is trampled down
into a hard dirty mass that might be some novel kind of patent
pavement, only it is a deal too slippery ; but in the country there
is not enough life stirring out of doors to do this ; and the whole
landscape is covered with a glaring white sheet which obliterates

CHRISTMAS IN THK CLEARING.

131

iill peiMiliuritios, luul reiiiovos all luiuliiiiirks, so that the most
practised ui,'ricultural lecturer could not distiii^Miish hclwoeii u
stubble and a ineadinv, or tell which had been a patch of " «,'arden
sass," and which a potato tield. Yet, the clearing still preserves its
marked individuality, though its po[ui!ation has deserted it, and is
reposing in its several beds, either temporary, or eternal, and its
grasses and wild flowers have all withered away. It is still as
aggressively assertive of its rank and i)osition in rural society as
are the middle classes amongst men. The lire-blackened, lichen-
covered stumps rise dehantly out of the snow that threaten^ to
cover them, but never fullils its threat, for the wind takes care of
that, and whirls it away in eddies from th j stump roots. " There's
the bush," it says ; " I suppose you can see that : and there's the
cultivated land: you can see that too. No ! you can't either; for
anything you know, it may be a lake, or a swamp, instead of
meadow and ploughed fields. But at any rate, you can see me ;
for I come of a high lineage, and am desceniied from the great
pines, and maples, and hemlocks, whose degenerate descendants
form the bush behind me. Look at my stumps." There is a
sturdy self-consciousness, and self-assertiveness about a clearing^
as if it knew exactly what it was, and was not going to make any
pretence about it, but was rather proud of it, that makes it not
unworthy of a visit on a Christmas Day, especially if the sky be
blue, and the sun bright, and tliu wind has gone off about his
business elsewhere.

Such, however, is not the case to-day. The sky is a uniform
grey ; and the l>ig snow flakes are falling fast, and softly. There
is no wind at present, but he is not far off; for I hear him breathing
among the bare tops of the deciduous trees in the bush, and
whispering in the branches of the spruce and hemlock. Bye and
l)ye he will wake up, and then if the big pines, on one of whose
stumps I am sitting and meditating, had been still in existence,
should have heard a roar that is like nothing so much as the
beating of the ocean waves on the coast ; but now all is quiet ; so
quiet that you might fancy you heard a silvery tinkle as each
snow-crystal touches its sisters that have already fallen to the

132

CHRISTMAS IN THE CLEARmO.

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ground. It is very peaceful ; and perhaps such a day as this is
more fitting for that on which we commemorate the birthday of
the Prince of Peace, than the glare on the cloudless sky of the
winter sun, and the responsive glare of the snow fields lying below,
and the keen nipping frost that is never still in the air.

Peace ! That is what we all sigh for, (when we give ourselves
time to think about it), and more frequently than not, we all fail
to get. There is very little peace to be had for you, or for me, or
for any animate thing in this world, for perfect peace here means
stagnation, and stagnation is death. Transient glimpses of it we
may have, rifts in the whirling storm-clouds of life, but long and
continuous peace is not for us ; we soon pass from under the eye
of the cyclone, into the struggle of the tempest again. I speak of
peace in what I believe to be the popular acceptation of the word,
as signifying a state of complete rest and repose ; what I conceive
to be meant by the term is something very different, as I may show
later on, but at present I am considering peace as meaning
quiescence and rest. That is not attainable for any length of
time by any animate being ; it is only that which is doad that has
it ; dead temporarily, as are the trees in the bush with their pulses
stilled in the winter cold ; as are the dormice, and other hybernating
animals, wrapt in their winter sleep ; or dead actually, as is this
stump on which 1 sit, or the bodies that are slowly mouldering
into dust in their graves. But apart from this, there is no cessa-
tion of activity for any prolonged period : even the popular idea of
the Heavenly rest pictures the blessed ones standing and
continually singing hymns of praise, an idea which I do not
hold to, any more than I hold to the conception of a life hereafter
which is devoid of action, and the ititerest which attends upon
action. And I think that He who was born as on this day meant
to teach this among other things when He said " I came not to
send peace upon earth, but a sword." Doubtless in these words
He foretold the troubles and persecutions that should follow the
acceptance of Him and His teaching, but I think that He also
signified that He came not to bring rest and inactivity, but a very

CHRISTMAS IN THE CLEABINO.

133

active and persistent strife during the earthly life, continuous
with the evil that is in the world, and in ourselves.

Yet he is the Prince of peace, and His coming to men was
heralded by the express declaration "Peace upon Earth." There
was, then, a peace that He did briu:;, and that His Apostles prayed
"might keep the hearts" of those who believe in him ; not at in-
tervals more or less prolonged, but continually. Strange paradox
this, that peace should be coexistent with strife, or, if I may
venture to use the term, co-equal to it. It seems to me that the
paradox vanishes if we substitute another word for Peace and call
it Love, without which it can have no existence. The heart that
is filled with the love of its God can never be disturbed by pain,
or sorrow, or care ; the heart that is filled with the love of its
neighbour, cannot be torn by envy, jealousy, or contention ; and
the heart that goes out to all creation, to the dumb animals, and to
Nature in all her varied moods, has an exquisite sense of rest and
enjoyment in them, which other hearts cannot attain to. " Peace,
and good-will." And this is what I hold to be the peace of
Heaven, which must be begun on earth — love to every created
thing, and love to its Creator, I do not hold the future life to be
one that is spent continually in praise, further than as all thankful
and innocent enjoyment of God's gifts is praise, nor do I hold it to
be one in which there is nothing to be done, and nothing to be
learned, as I believe that He who is incomprehensible can be com-
prehended in no less a period than eterni':/ ; but I take it that the
future life will be an active life of that .o^e which He came to
announce from the Father, to exem olify in ^ilimself, and to enjoin
on all His disciples — and such a lift is peaci.

" All this has been said before, and bet ;er." I know it ; but
the thrust of a raw hand may sometimes prove more efficaciouj
than the efforts of a skilful master of fence, and an oft-told tale
may recover the interest it has lost by being dressed in new
phraseology, even though it be less refined, ar the belle of some
half-dozen seasons of futile dressing sometimes proves irraslstible
in the more homely garb of the country house ; and this " oft-told
tale" has been so spun out and travestied, ibav men -re beginning ,

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134

•CHRISTMAS IN THE CLEARING.

to detect a false ring in it, and to mock at it. Amongst the
Christmas cards this year and last I have noticed one as follows : —

WISHING YOU THE SAME OLD

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Between the two lines was the representation of a chestnut, so that

the card read, " wishing you the same old chestnut — Merry

Christmas." A joke, indeed, and manufactured to create a smile ;

but I am philosopher enough to know that there are things of deadly

earnest that can only be safely mentioned under cover of a

joke.. The Christmas spirit has been lost sight of; smothered

under the weight of Christmas gifts, which so long as they were

made to the poor and needy, to the children from the parents, and

to the parents from the children, were good and healthful. In

these days, instead of fostering the spirit of love, they foster greed,

rivalry, discontent, and extravagance. People give now, not

because it is their desire, but because it is expected from them ;

and their gifts are accompanied with an anxious fear lest they

should be thought too mean, or be less valuable than those sent by

others. Y'ear by year, Christmas presents are becoming more

extended and more expensive ; more regarded for their value in

dollars and cents than in the good will of the giver. Custom, or

rather fashion, takes us by the throat, and calls on us to " stand

and deliver " our money, or our time. No one dares express the

feeling, unless it be such a one as I ; and then he must be out in

the clearing and alone if he would do it ; but it is felt all the same,

and finds vent in the bitter joke that calls the Christmas good

wishes an old chestnut. As no doubt in too many instances it is

To be rid of this, it is necessary that we .should get back to

the old conception of " Peace upon earth ; good will toward men,"

or as it is more significantly translated, " Peace upon earth to men

CHRISTMAS IN THE CLEARING.

135

of good will," and understand that the celebration of the day is
really a sacrament, whose outward and visible signs of gifts
and the expression of good wishes, are valueless without the
inward and spiritual gr^ce of love ; nay ! worse than valueless,
for they are a desecration of it; remembering, further, that when
the pomp and vanity of the world enter in at the door, Charity
flies out at the window.

How softly the snow is falling, and how gently the wind is
stirring the little branchlots of the trees ! They are no great
things, a small snow flake and a breath of wind. Yet the one
keeps warm the tender rootlets of the grasses and wild flowers, as
the other wards off the too deadly attacks of the frost from the
otherwise motionless wood : and the quiet beauty of the one, and
the gentle melody of the other, have spoken to the heart of the
old man sitting on the stump, and made him forget that there is
such a thing as cold, or that Polly and Bloomah are beginning to
get fidgetty because he does not come in to supper.

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Peace in the dreaming sky :

Peace on the starry thrones
That are girt about with the melody

Of the seraphs' joyous tones.
Peace, deep peac« in the Heavens above,
Where sits enthrc • jd the E*-jrnal Love ;
But the earth seni; n; .. ;\1 a bitter cry.

The deadened iatrv'^ulftte moans
Of those that are dazed w. ,:. their agony.
And the sharp-rent sufferer's heavy groans ;
For violence covered her as a flood.
And the thick air reeked with the steam of blood.

Everywhere, sight and sounds of fear ;

Death lurked hid in each country glen.

And murder stalked through the cities of men ;

Clash of armour, and glint of spear.

Gleaming of sword, and catapult's rattle.

And the war horse neighing to snuff the battle -

Woe to the widows and orphans then —
Fraud and deceit in the wares at the mart.

Cruelty rampant where men were s^ld ;
While the princes and judges sat apart,
Or traded the innocent lives for gold.
The Halls of Justice were foul to the eaves ;
And the Holy place was a den of thieves.

Ill

Blood-red the sun rose up in the mom ;

Blood-red he sank to his rest at night ;
As was the promise of early dawn.

So its fulfilment through the light ;
As was the threat of the Western wave.
So did night bring with her Death, and the Grave.

Jl CmtlBTMAS CAROL.

137

*' Lift up your heads, Everlasting gates,
And be thou lift up. Eternal door.
For the time hath come that the earth awaits,
And the Lord of Hosts is going to war.
For the comfortless needy's sighing,
For the widow and orphans' crying,
The Lord hath buckled His armour on ;
Lift up your heads, that He may be gone. '

No trumpet's martial sound

Echoed the skies around.
No angel cohorts mustered for the strife ;

No glint of sword and spear.

No hedge of arms drew near.
To compass, as He went, the Lord of life ;

The everlasting portals

Where dwell the blest immortals
Stood open that an army might march on.

And lo ! a little sigh.

Faint as an infant's cry,
Passed through them for an instant, and was gone.

A dreamy stillness reigns

Upon the grassy plains
O'er which the crags of Bethlehem hold guard.

And peaceful slumbers keep

The lambs and mother sheep.
The while the simple shepherds keep true ward.

The little laughing rills

That babble down the hills
Grow silent, as they steal amcmg the flowers ;

The breeze, that all day long

Swept by with murmured song,
Lies netted in vine-tendrila in the bowers.

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A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

VII

The song-birds dream 'mid leaves ;

The sparrow in the eaves
Chirps soft good night above the stable door ;

The full-fed kine within

Lie down before the bin,
Chewing tha lazy cud upon the floor ;

And by the manger stands,

A mother with clas})ed hands,
And eyes all moist with happy dews and mild.

Watching his calm repose

Where, wrapt in swaddling clothes.
Lies the Desire of earth, the promised Child.

VIII

And overhead, the star.

Clear-shining from afar,
Summons the ." ' sten i ';s from distant coasts

To lay beforo his feet

The monarch's tribute, meet
For Him who goes to war, the Lord of Hosts ;

And lo ! the battle cry

Resounding through the sky ;
Startles the shepherds watching on the plain,

The shout of myriad voices.

As when a world rejoices,
Sending from Heaven to Earth the glad refrain.

And this the song they sang

The while the welkin rang.
And the stars trembled in the blue profound ;
" To you this happy morn

The promised child is born
And in the stable manger may be found ;

Peace upon earth, goodwill ;

Peace upon earth : " and still
"Peace and goodwill with this, the iiaviour's birth."

Nor changed the angelic lay.

As faint it died away,
" Hosannah in the highest : peace on earth 1 ''

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

iS9

Is there a lesson in this ; a lesson yet to be taught

Though the years have come and gone by centuries since that day ;

A lesson easy to learn, and not far oft' to be sought,

Though we shut our hearts to its teaching, and pass unheeding away ?

We set up race against race, and we set up creed against creed ;

Man arms himself against man, and friend against bosom friend ;

We listen to naught but our lusts, and the promptings of malice and greed,

And we struggle, and tight, and rend, from the cradle unto the end.

And the trader cheats in his wares, and justice is bought and sold,
And the cry of famine goes up from the helpless, and poor, and oppressed.
What matters ! We must have lands, and we must have houses and gold ;
Let each one fight for himself, and leave Heaven to care for the rest.

Lo ! Peace is a fair-seeming fraud, deep-set in the midst of alarms ;
Wars, and rumors of wars, from east and west, south and north ;
And the nations are hostile camps, bristling with horrible arms.
And ready to fly at each other's throats when the word has gone forth.

Not so does the Lord go to battle : He takes not the sword and spear.
When He comes forth to right the opi)res8ed from the throne of glory above
Not His the shout of the warrior that strikes on the foeman's ear.
But peace, and the word of forgiveness, and proft'er of infinite love.

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And these are His battle cries yet, till the whole wide world shall bow down,
Conquered and won at the last, by the tender touch of His hand ;
And so when that day shall come, it is love that shall wear the crown,
No longer a crown of thorns, in the midst of the ransomed band.

« *

Can we not learn the lesson, this Christmas time of the yeir,

An>1 walk in the path it points out during all the days that we live,

That perfect love casteth out distrust, and malice, and fear.

And he has conquered his foe who has learned to say, "I forgive ? "

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Ml ELIS CatTis ; you may add, if you like, the specific " domesticus,"
. to distinguish him from his cousin, who passes the whole of
his life in the woods, and also to mark the general appreciation of
his character conveyed in the final syllable, but felis catus, at any
rate, is his proper designation when he makes his appearance in
the clearing; for though we are not much to look at here, we
know better than to treat visitors with undue familiarity by with-
holding from them their social titles, and felis catus does not often
favour us with a visit ; neither are we, that is the ground birds,
field mice, and chipmunks, who form the upper crust of clearing
society, at all anxious for him to give us a call. When f. c. is at
home, he is a she, and is known by various names ; " pussy,"
" kitty " when basking by the stove or in the sunshine, and under
the aegis of feminine favour ; " the cat," whenever there is any
breakage to be accounted for, or pie, or cream mysteriously
disappears from the dairy.

There is another thing noticeable, too, in the subject of these
remarks, who just at this moment is under the impression that the
squirrel using the most offensive language to me from the next
stump but three, and sitting with his back turned to him, hasn't
seen him come into the clearing, and is not perfectly well aware
that he is looking for a meal. He not only changes sex and
name when he goes " foreign countries for to see," like a four
footed Lord Lovell, but he changes character too. By the fireside,
Pussy, the cat, is sweetness and light, dear to the women and the
children, and purring all the time unless you accidentally tread on
her tail, or a strange dog comes in ; but directly she leaves the

PELIS CATUS. THE CAT.

141

domestic precincts, he becomes quarrel-some and noisy, a rowdy, a
thief and an assassin, with all the masculine vices, and with none
of the feminine virtues except artfulness. The sudden change in the
Jack Daw of Rheims after the Cardinal's curse was removed was
not more complete and astounding than is that in the cat when he
goes abroad. During the fall, winter, and spring, the theatrical and
operatic season in fact, he generally chooses night for his per-
ambulations, and from the company he then keeps, and the
observations I have occasionally heard him make, 1 should, if I
were a believer in the doctrine of metempsychosis, imagine that he
was a former frequenter of the London music halls, and Bowery
saloons, undergoing a purgation of his musical tastes. But in the
summer time he chiefly affects the day for his peregrinations, and
after repeated castigation coupled with threats of total extinction
has convinced him that it is not lawful, (or rather, that it is not
profitable) for him to take tithes of spring chickens and ducklings,
he may be seen, as he is now, roving into the clearing in search of
an unwary ground bird, or chipmunk, or even, if these are scarce, a
meditative toad, or a philosophizing frog. He has no objection to
a squirrel either, and will stalk him also if occasion serve, but you
can gather from his looks that he has a very poor opinion of his
chances of success ; as, in truth, he may well have, for the bushy-
tailed little fellow keeps a pretty sharp look out, and unless he is
very indignant indeed about something or other, he is more than a
match for F. C. Besides, he very seldom comes inside the clearing
proper, and only haunts its fences as a rule.

At home, Thomas Cat, Esquire, dons petticoats, figuratively
speaking, assumes the baptismal name of Tabitha, and the surname
of Puss ; Pusheen cat, as pretty little Norah O'Connor calls him.
The word is, I am informed, derived from the Persians, and this
again from the Egyptians, who deified Thomas ; on what principle
I cannot make oat, unless as a deprecation of his powers of evil in
the musical line ; and called him Pasht. The Romans very
probably had this name in mind, when they designated any wide-
spread and terrible disease " pestis," for undoubtedly Pasht when

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FELIS CATU8. THE CAT.

III:

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he lifts up his voice in the yards, and oa the house tops, is a most
unmitigated pest, and I should not be at all surprised to learn that
the Egyptians themselves had much tlie same opinion of him, for
they not only deified him under the above name, but they
mummified him also, thus evincing their stern determination that
he should " dry up " some time or other, if it took a couple of
thousand years, or more, to effect their purpose. And, if I am
rightly informed, they took the precaution to store the mummified
cats away in company with crocodiles, also mummified, so as to
have the saurian handy in case the feline should wake up and
begin to sing. We haven't got any crocodiles in Canada, and
perhaps that is the reason why we don't go into the preserved cat
business in the shape of mummies, but I am credibly informed that
we do the next best thing, and when a cat, by some lucky chance,
happens to die, he is immediately converted into sausages in the
country, and mucton pies in the towns in summer, and into rabbits
in winter. If this be a fact, it is one that is highly creditable to
Thomas, as showing that hs possesses what might be called a
cosmopolitan flavour, ranging from the strong taste of pork, and
the gamy soupcou of hare, to the delicate innocence of Mary's
little lamb, I hope that it is true, for it is about the only thing I
have ever heard of to his credit.

Of course, it may be urged that he has musical tastes, and
possesses a voice unequalled in volume and compass by the best
prima donna that ever appeared on the stage. Far be it from me
to dispute this ; but I may venture to observe that it is not a cul-
tivatad one. He does his best to cultivate it, and with such vigor
that his hair, as well as that of his audience, stands upon end, and
his tail swells to four times its ordinary size, which must be very
uncomfortable for him. Oh, yes ! He is conscientious enough
about the matter of practice, I allow ; far more conscientious than
a great many young ladies when they are running over the scales ;
but he does not succeed. It is difficult to sing with melody when
one's attention is partly diverted to dodging old boots, chunks of
wood, spittoons, books, and other hard-hearted missiles, and a

;l,' : i.

reus CATUS. THE CAT.

143

finely sustained high note is apt to be suddenly converted into a
shriek when the performer is hit in the ribs by any one of these ;
but after making every allowance it must be confessed that the
voice of Mr. Cat is not capable of artistic cultivation. I have heard
that such an effort was once made, and that a genius conceived the
idea of a cat-piano. It was a task requiring some time before it
could be accomplished, for the inventor had to search amongst
innumerable felines to get all the notes, and in the several octaves.
Then the piano had to be built expressly for the purpose, contain-
ing narrow compartments for the different cats, with their heads
turned from the player, and their tails brought up through little
round holes, and attached by pieces of cat-gut to the keys. When
one of these, say C, was struck, tiie G cat's tail was pulled, and the
required note at once produced. So far, the experiment justified
the expectations of the inventor, but when it came to playing a
piece it was found that the note could not be stopped by simply
removing the finger from the key, but was prolonged indefinitely,
and the patentee sadly turned his attention to pigs. He might,
with patience, have ultimately succeeded in producing a cat organ,
or harmonium, but both these instruments were undreamed of in
those days, and all attempts at cultivating Thomas' voice were
thenceforward given up.

Yet, we must not be hasty in our judgments ; and an incident
occurred some two or three years ago which tends to show that,
under certain circumstances, Thomas is capable of harmony more
than earthly, and verging on the seraphic. Of him it may be said
in the wor^s of Moore,

" The soul of music Klumbors in its shell
Till stirred and wakened by the master's spell ;
And pious hearts, touch them but rightly, pour
A thousand melodies unheard before."

For " pious hearts " read " wandering cats," and thelinea are

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144

PELIS CATUS. THE CAt.

applicable to the Tliomaacs whose experiences I am about to

relate. ' ■;

The story, as I read it, ran something in this way. "Once
upon a time," namely three years ago, there was a very nice young
man who buarded in a house in Muntreal, whose yard was the
nightly rendezvous for all the cats in the neighbourhooJ, and the
scene of innumorable feline soirees musicales. Every morning the
yard was heaped up with boots, slippers, broken bottles and
crockery, bootjacks, etc., and once a tasseled nightcap was found
amongst the s})oils ; but these practical tokens of disapprobation
had no clfect on the performers, and the human audience was
driven to the verge of insanity, ifow this young man was an
ardent lover of canned salmon, and had accumulated a reserve fund
of empty cans, which, one dark night, in a moment of peculiar
exasperation, he gathered together, and hurled, like a volley of
grape-shf)t, at the enemy. There was a fearful crash, and then a
dead silence ; so, after listening awhile to see if the defeated forces
would return, the nice young man went off triumphantly to bed
to dream of the nice young lady on the second flat, for whom he
had long sighed in vain. Half an hour later he woke with a start,
and sat up in berl, listening. All round him floated notes of exquisite
melody ; the tender strains of love ; the pathetic outpourings of
sorrow ; the jubilant voice of martial music, with the clash of
cymbals , all mixed together in wonderful harmony ; rising and
falling ; from the yard ; from the yard- walls ; from the house-
tops. Up went the windows on all sides, and heads, capped
and uncapped, were thrust out drinking in those weird yet
seraphic strains. When the sun rose, the maid of all-work
rose with him, and went out into the yard, where the mystery
was solved, for

" There in the morning cold and grey
Lifeless, yet beautiful, they lay,"

seventeen departed Thomas Cats, each with its head securely

1. I Mi

PRLI9 CATUR. THE CAT.

145

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fixed in a salmon-can. Tlieir last song had been like the death
song of the swan ;

" Tho Tom cut's death hymn took the soul
Of thiit wiiste yiml with joy
Hidden in sorrow ; iit first to tho ojir
The wiirblo wiw low imd Hoft nnd cleiir ;
And Hoating iihoiit the under Hk>,
Prevailing in weaknoHS, the coronach Htole
SoiuulunuH afar, and HomutimoH anear ;
lUit anon his awful jubihmt voice,
With a muHic strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth in a carol free and bold ;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms and with cymbals, and harps of j^old.

And that day the nice young lady, with many blushos. (Iianked
the nice young man for his lovely serenade, and thiic was a
larriage just a month after.

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Fe^ns crnd pzy^n Seed.

^'lEJlNS do uot form a markedly prominent part of tlie clearing
vegetation. They like shade, and, as I had occasion to remark
once before, shade is an almost unattainable blessing here ; they
also, as a rule, lilce moisture, and the only moisture to be had is
in a little swampy bit near the edge of the bush, and that is too
much of a good thing ; or along the banks of the little stream that,
I was going to say, runs through it, but that would be an extreme
stretch of courtesy during the summer months at any rate, for then
it doesn't run, it only perspires like everything else about except
the grasshoppers. With the exception of the swamp and the
stream, the clearing is as dry in summer as an Arkansas Colonel
in a Prohibition State, than which I know of nothing drier, and it
is obviously no place for the moisture loving ferns. Still, there
are a few straggling clumps by the tree roots, and in the open,
which last are jjrincipally the fern known as the brake, or bracken
fern, which is not such a thirsty bit of vegetaticm as its congeners.
I have never felt c^uite certain in my own mind concerning the
bracken : I have an uneasy suspicion that he has a double, for I
recollect being told when a boy that if you cut him, not socially,
but literally, and transversely with a knife, you would find a very
good representation of a miniature oak tree inside him. I have
repeatedly tried the experiment, sometimes successfully, and f'ome-
tiraes just the contrary and quite the reverse, from which I am led
to one of two conclusions : either that there are brackens that have
not swallowed snuxll oaks, or that there is another fern closely
resembling them, and not distinguishable from them by careless
and unbotanical eyes. I am rather inclined to the latter opinion

FERNS AND FERN SEED.

147

because I know that tliere is another member of the family, whose
tender shoots in the early spring form a delicious vegetable when
boiled, and another tliat almost exactly resembles it is a deadly
poison. I used to know how to distinguish them, and would give
the difference here in case any of my readers should be tempted to
make the experiment, but I have forgotten it. At any rate the
matter is of small importance. If this book should lead anyone
into making the trial and a mistfike at the same time, the thought
that he has bouglit and paid for my essays will doubtless prove a
most consoling one, and cause him to bear with equanimity the
cramps in his stomach, and if he has not bought and paid for them,
poisoning is too good for him ; which will also be a consoling
reflection for him. Still, I don't want to have the premature death
of a reader, even if he should not be a perfectly legitimate one, on
my conscience, so I will volunteer the advice not to eat of a dish
of ferns till somebody else has jireviously partaken of them and
shown no symptoms of approacliing dissolution. This, I am aware,
is not good Christian doctrine, but it is sound nineteenth century
philosophy, and belongs to that branch of it which is popularly
known as tiie science of learning to shave on your neighbor's chin ;
a science in which the promoters of useless railroads, bridges,
factories, etc., are adepts, as many a municipality knows to
its cost.

There are several species of ferns that are thus duplicated ;
one is the pretty maidenhair fern, that is common enough if you
only know where to look for it if it has a black stem, and rare
if it has a green one ; and a little mite of a fellow that we used to
call at scliool the oak fern which has the same peculiarity ; the
green-stemmed one, I tiiink, inhabiting only three places in England,
it was said, one of which was a good ten miles walk from our
school, and involved a trudge over heather-clad hills placed as near
to each other as possible, and divided only by brooks running in
slender threads between. They were about as steep as houseroofs,
and a great deal higher, so that when you got to the top of one
after much toil and perspiration, and the disturbance of the grouse

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148

FKllNS AND rERN SEED.

that haunted the heatlicr and gorso, you liad immediately to go
down again ; and as soon as ever you reached the bottom, you had
to begin to go up. A twonty-miU' walk under a blazing sun, and
over ground like this, was no joke, yet the reputation of that horrid
little fern iutluced three boys, myself among tlu; numl)er, to take
advantage of a. whole holiday given for a cricket match between
the School and Lancaster, and to set off in search of it. When we
found it, it was about three-ijuarter.s of the way up an almost pre-
cipitous cascade of over ninety feet, and if we had been anything
else but boys, we should liave infallibly lu'oken our necks in get ^
down with our iiriz«>s. It is all very well to talk of the facilis
descensus averni, but when the avernus in question happens to
be the steep sides of a mountain waterfall it is a great deal easier
to climb up than to climb down. However, we obtained our ferns;
but having to make a forced march in order to be in time to answer
our names at evening roll-call, and liaving rolled down several hills
in the marcliing, the fellow who carried them lost them out of his
cap on the way, and, as he was the smallest, received a good
tlirashing when we ascertained the loss. We were not philosophers
in those days, but we were deeply imbued with Christian principles,
and we argued that as we ourselves should have deserved a thrash-
intr if we had done such a thing, so it was right that we should do
10 the third party as we shoulil have been done to. Therefore we
combined, and punched his head, and thereby prevented our
expedition from being altogether without results ; for we got
satisfaction, and he got a licking ; which was fair all round.

There was scarcely a boy that did not nuike a collection at our
school ; most of them, more than one ; for the vicinity was rich in
birds, plants, insects and fossils, of which latter there was an
abundance in the limestone strata that prevailed all around. Some
really good collections were made in this way, though I am afraid
we did not set about it in the modern scientific spirit, and content-
ed ourselves with the things themselves under their local names,
instead of learning their Latin and Greek titles — of Latin and Greek
we had enough and to spare indoors. But we knew to an

FERNS AND FERN SEED,

149

individual how many specimens of egg, or fern, or fossil, or butterfly
were attainable, and we also knew exaiitly whore we might expect
to lay our hands on any of them. Such knowledge was based on
the common experience of the scIkjoI, for there was no jealous
hiding of secrets from each other, unlisss it might be an occasional
nest of the kinglisher, water-ousel, or gulden-crested wren, and was
obtained by keen observation, patient watching, and many a long
walk. But this last was oidy a part of the day's recreation, and I
think there were very few of us t^>at did not ])ut in our six or
eight miles in the twenty-four hours, though we worked hard too,
going into school at seven in the morning for an hour before break-
fast, and finishing nominally at nine in the evening, though the
elder boys used to work with surreptitious candles at Greek and
Latin prose, or verse, till close on midnight. We found time for
lishing also, for the yellow liothcr ran within a five miimtes' walk
of the school, and fell into the silvery Lune about a mile away,
while there was a brook at every half-mile or so, and in it plenty
(jf little brook-trout. We prided ourselves on our cricket also, and
used to defeat with great rejoicing the old fellows that came up
from Cambridge or Oxford, where they had fallen sadly off their
play, we thought, in the great annual match. But collecting (with
a little poaching now and then thrown in as a pleasurable excite-
ment) was the great motive power that was supreme and above all
these other minor employments. P]ven the Head Master used to
collect. He had a great book into which were co[)ied Greek
Iambics, Latin Sapphics and Alcaics, Greek and Latin prose on
different subjects, and even English, (though that seldom got in)
all contributed by scholars, and touched up and corrected under his
supervision. And we used to try and humour liim in the matter,
and feel great delight when any of our original compositions were
thought worthy of being " booked." Yes ! We worked hard, and
we played hard ; and I never heard any complaint of either. We
asked nobody to "explain things" to us; did not find six hours a
(lay in school, and a couple of hours preparing work in the evening,
a very serious strain on our health, and never dreamedof (^uestiou-

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150

FERNS AND FERN SEED.

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ing the capability or fairness of our masters. We had confidence
in them, and in ourselves. But all that is out of date now, and a
school teacher is just about as badly abused as a politician — the
only difference is that the latter makes his abuse pay, and the
former does not. But here have 1 been wandering off to the dear
old Yorkshire and Westmoreland hills, and forgetting all about the
ferns in the clearing. I wonder what it was that led to the old-
time fancy that fern seed rendered people invisible. No doubt, if
you eat enough of tlieui, they will render you invisible by putting
you in a snug little coffin hid away underground ; l)ut that can
scarcely be what is meant, for it is not a thing that is likely to be
greatly desired by anybody ; but apart from this I have discovered
no reason for assigning them this property, though several species
are minute enough to be almost invisible themselves. It is curious
into what vagaries the human imagination is led, and the utterly
unreasonable and preposterous things it will first invent, and then
end by believing in. Take for another instance that gruesome
conception of the Hand of Glory, which was akin to that of the
fern seed, in that though it did not make him that carried it really
invisible, it rendered him jmictically so by throwing the inhabitants
of the house into which it was carried into a state of catalepsy, thus
enabling its bearer to work his own will untrammelled by their
opposition, and unhindered by the bolts and locks that Hew open
at his coming ; the hand of a murderer, cut at midnight from the
body as it hung on the gallows, and having its fingers and thumb
tipped with tapers made of a dead man's fat. Compared with such
a horril>le conception, the legend of the fern seed is beautiful and
harmless. There are occasions, too, in which tlie power of render-
ing oneself temporarily unseen would be very desirable. I
suggested to Bloomah that slie and Nathan should try the experi-
ment the next time he wanted to snatch a kiss behind the buttery
door when I was alrout ; but she scouted the suggestion — said that
he never did it, which I know to be a fib ; and hinted her opinion
that I was a scandalous old reprobate for ever dreaming of such a
thing. But of that charge I am totally guiltless. I never dreamed

FERNS AND FERN SEED.

151

of Nathan's kissing her, any more than I dreamed of myself doing
so. I know it to be a very wide-awake fact — Nathan's kissing, I
mean — don't make any mistake here. Anyway, I am not so sure
that she did not try the experiment, and find it successful, for I
have several times since heard noi.ses in the buttery as if ginger-
beer bottles were blowing out their corks, and have never succeeded
in accounting for it. I don't keep giiiger-beer in the buttery, so it
could not be that ; and moreover, when I have investigated the place,
I have found nobody there but the cat. Nathan says it must have
been the cat ; but though pussy crackles when stroked the wrong
way, she does not make a report like a Martini-Henry — at least
I've never heard her do it, and I don't think she is big enough.

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ly I Y wife has of late evinced u more than usiial interest in my
^^ state both physical and mental. She overheard Nathan
telling Bloomah that " the old man was kinder off his feed," and
JUoomah replying that she had noticed I was not so " perky " as
usual, so Polly, like the good little soul that she is, has been what
she would call " worriting " herself about me, and I have several
times of late detected her surreptitiously criticizing my appearance,
and endeavoring to ascertain how nearly I was reduced to a
skeleton. Finally, the storm burst. " You are not looking at all
well," she commenced, one morning at breakfast, " and I'm sure you
need rest, and a change of air." " Rest ! " I said in some astonish-
ment, " change of air 1 Why, you yourself have been complaining
that I do nothing but go out in the clearing and sit there all day,
coming back so sleepy that you can't get a chance to talk to me."
" That is just it," she replied. " You go and sit blinking like an
owl on that horrid old stump, and think, and think, till you muddle
up what little brains you have got, and lose your appetite, and
come home all " crocked " with the black from the charred wood,
and your hair like a wild man of the woods ; while your clothes
are getting positively indecent. You have forgotten how to dress,
and the scare-crow in the corn field is the]>ink of fashion compared
with you. What you need is travel to enlarge your mind, and
introduce you to civilized society ; so I shall just pack up your
Avliite shirt, and your Sunday clothes, and off you go ! " " Go
where? " I feebly enquired. " Any where you like, but go you
must; and don't dare to come back for a month. If you do, I'll
pour kerosene on the stump and set fire to it." " Don't do that," I
said ; " you'd hurt the centipedes and spiders, and cremate a whole
colony of ants." " Much I care if I do, the nasty things," she made
answer, " but it all depends on yourself. Will you go ? " " An d

if! ,,■

TO LET. A STUMP.

153

who's to look after you and Bloomah ? " " I'll look after myself, and
Bloomah too, — and you," she added, pursing up her lips significantly.
So I thought it best to give in. When a woman closes up her
lips tight, you may depend upon it she is going to bite, and the
sooner you get out of her way the better for your health. Thus it
oame about that at this present time of writing there is a piece of
paper pinned on my stump, signifying that it is to let, ready
furnished and stocked for the space of one calendar month, and I
have been losing myself in the labyrinths, and breaking my shins
down the precipices which they call streets, in a little place you
may have lieard of, and if you haven't it is no fault of its inhabitants,
named Quebec.

Quebec is an oasis in the great Canadian Wilderness, which
is known to a few Americans as a pleasant summer halting place
on their way to the seaside resorts of the Lower St. Lawrence, or

Tho pathless woods where sporting men do go
To hunt the moose, and shoot the bounding roe,
And sand-Sy haunted lakes where anglers fish
For " land-locked salmon," alias ouananiche.

Xobody dreams of going to Quebec on business, but a great
many visit it for pleasure, and, to give the little city its due, they
generally get it ; for the Quebecers are a genial a id hospitable
tribe, and nothing rejoices their hearts more than to get hold of a
posse of American strangers, show them all the sights that can
be seen from Wolfe's Monument on the Plains of Abraham, to the
Montmorency Falls, and entertain them royally in their comfort-
able mansions. So long as the Americans are in Quebec, it is all
sunshine, and when they go away it begins to freeze, and the
snow comes down.

But, summer or winter, Quebec has peculiar attractions of its
own. It is perfectly wonderful what an amount of interesting
matter is stowed away in such a little city. In the first place, it
is very old ; how old, nobody knows exactly. The school books

'«';!

\y] ,

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I'l- I

154

TO LET. A STUMP.

say it was founded by Champlain in 1608, and the Quebecers so
far condescend to Immour the popular delusion as to be on the
point of erecting a monument to that illustrious man in his alleged
capacity of founder of the city, but in their hearts they know
better. If you can get hold of one of the local anticjuaries in a
confiding moment, he will tell you that this is undoubtedly the
city spoken of in Scripture which is " set on a rock, and cannot be
hid ;" and, as a proof, he will whisk you down the Elevator from
Dutt'erin Terrace, and xhoiv you the rock. If you are wise, you
will refrain from hinting that the passage in question was written
many years before America was discovered by Columbus, for if
you do, you will be told that Columbus was a fraud, and so were
the Vikings, and the Welshmen ; that it is a well-known fact that
the Carthaginians used to trade here ; and that certain decaying
timbers have been dug up on the Plains of Abraham which would
seem to render it not improbable that Mount Ararat was the
ancient name for Quebec, and that Noah's ark rested here after the
deluge. The theory does not seem so wild after you have caught
sight of sonu^ of the habitants that come in to sell their produce,
especially on a wet day. They look very much as if they had
just come out of the ark, and I know one old market woman in
particular, who bears a strong family resemblance to the wooden
Mrs. Noah whose paint I sucked off, and nearly poisoned myself
with, in my days of youthful innocence. Moreover she is accom-
panied by her son, who is as much like Mr. Ham as one pea is
like another.

But without insisting on this extreme antiquity, there is no
doubt tliat (Quebec is a very ancient place. The very rocks are so
old that they fall out of sheer decrepitude, and go crashing through
the houses of the confiding inhabitants who have built underneath
them. Nobody tliinks much about the occurrence unless some
one is hurt, and then the Government gets abused for not having
had that particular rock clamped, or plastered, or done something
or other to. The fortifications, too, are old, and want a deal of
repairing ; so the people say, especially in winter time when there
is no other work to be had ; and the gates were old — once on a

TO LET. K STUMP.

155

time — tliey are new ones now, very handsome and imposing, and
more in accordance with modern idca.s. There are quaint ohl
houses in unsuspected nooks, and ([ueer little streets like those of
the He de I'aris in the time of Nostradamus, scarcely broad enough
for two carts to pass, and altogether too narrow for a couple of
modern belles to walk abreast. Some of them go nowhen.', and
others go anywhere ; it does not make much matter which to the
unattended stranger that happens to get into one of them, and
finds it an exceedingly interesting matter to discover how he is
going to get out, and where he will be, if he ever does.

Besides her anti(iuity, another strong point of Quebec is her
history. From time immemorial she has been a battle-ground of
races ; of the red man, and the white, the savage and the civilized.
The arrow and the scalping knife have done their work here equally
with the musket and tlu; bayonet, down from the time when the Six
Nations swept like a devouring flame all along the country from
the Ottawa to the St. Charles, and drove the shattered remnants of
the Hurons to take shelter beneath the walls of Quebec, where
their descendants may still be seen at La Jeune Lorette, some seven
miles off. A quiet people they are now, dwelling in what
llmslopogaas would have called "a place of stinks" in the summer,
owing to the drying of the hides of the deer they kill in their
winter's hunting, which they convert into mocassins, and beaded
purses, and other knick-knacks for the curious. As civilization
lias divested them of many of the characteristics of the "untutored
Indian," so intermarriage with the habitants has effaced in most
nearly all the distinguishing lineaments, yet here and there,
especially amongst the children, specimens may be met with of the
pure racial type. They have a reservation of their own, and a
church, together with a small cannon presented them by George
HI., of which they are immensely proud. It is the last lingering
relic of martial days, and the very sites of their ancient battlefields
are forgotten.

Not so with the rock-fortress that sheltered them of yore.
There, are cannon enough, of all sizes and all ages, grimly looking
out from embrasure and bastion, or quietly reposing in the grass

•*!i
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156

TO LET. A STUMP.

where the boys play football and lacrosse. And there are battle-
fields, and reminiscences of battle enough, from the Dufferin
Terrace, where Frontenac defied Pliipps, and the Church of Notre
Dame des Victoires, where the captnred flag of an English battle-
ship hung, to the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe was married to
Fame by Death, and those of Ste. Foye where de Levis threw a
last ray of glory on the French cause. All these will be shown
the visitor, as well as tlie j)lace where, still later on, the gallant
Montgomery met a soldier's d(iath in his daring but unsuccessful
attempt at a coup de main. Quebec knows the value of her history,
and is careful not to let the interest in it cease. She is perpetually
digging up all sorts of gruesome things, and now- and then, for
variety, she pulls them down out of v/alls, as she did lately when
making a new entrance to the Archbishop's Palace. If you want
a cannon ball or two, or a bullet, she will root them out of the
grounds of the Q. A. A. A. ; if you wish for a skull or a rib, you
have nothing to do but to "prospect" on the Plains, only you must
be careful not to let the governor of the gaol, which overlooks them,
see you ; if you are ambitious, and nothing less than a whole
skeleton will satisfy you, you can get them by the half-dozen on
the Ste. Foye road : that is, if you happen to hit on a burial-trench.
Not long a<io, she discovered the remains of a dozen or more of
Montgomery's soldiers, and buried them decently, putting up a slab
to mark the place of discovery. All these stories are interesting
to the visitor, and properly so — what is the good of one's ancestors'
bones if they can't be utilized ? We are a peaceful and civilized
people now, and don't want to tight any longer, but that is no
reason why we should not get what we can out of those who did
fight. We no longer scalp our enemies ; we tleece our friends, and
there are some of these latter who think they would infinitely
prefer reverting to the older custom.

i" '1

•Ill

n C0\O3 of the Cleaiiinsf.

f OWS, in their relationship to the clearing, come under the head
^■^ of day-boarders, and they are as much harder to keej) in
their proper places, and in good behaviour, than the rest of its
living inmates, as a day scholar is than the one who boards with
the Principal of an institution, or with an assistant teacher. They
are always pretending that they do not get enough to eat, and
breaking down the fences to wander off into the bush, where they
get less. When they are at home, and under the supervision of
their titular Papa and Mamma, by which I mean when they are
in the farm-yard under the conjoint authority of Nathan and
Bloomah, they are on the very best of good behaviour ; they have
nothing to say against the hay, and they always have enough ; in
fact they are so thoroughly content that they lie down, and it is
very difficult to get them to stand up and be milked ; but they
don't lie down when they are put under ray charge in the clearing ;
they are restless and dissatisfied ; turn up their noses at good dry
grass, and burdocks, and roam in a melancholy discontented manner
all over the place till I get tired of watching them, and turn my
eyes away, * About five, or at the most ten, minutes after I have
done so, there is an awful crash in the distance, and " good-bye,
John." At this stage of the proceedings I get up, and go off home,
for it would never do for any of the household to come up to the
clearing and find me cow-less ; and as for going after the truants
and bringing them back, I know by sad experience that it would
be half a hot day's work to do so, and that even then I should
have to sit in the gap to prevent fresh lapses from bovine virtue.
Now a philosopher with his back propped up by a friendly stump
is a reasonable and reasoning being, dignified in his appearance,
and comfortable in his position, but a philosopher sitting in the
debris of a cow-gap, like Marius in the ruins of Carthage, is a
preposterous animal that I decline to recognize. So I saunter off

t^c.

.m l!:

158

THE COWS OF THE CLEARING.

home imcoiici'inedly, as if nothing hiul hii]>pene(l, and at milking
timt) lUooiuah will go to tlm bars and shout till sho gets a " frog
in her throat," and then come back and start Nathan oil", jjist as lie
is washing his hands and face at the pum}> in anticipation ol
sujjper. " Dnit them cows ! " says JUoonuih, who never gets
farther than breaking the commandments of grammar ; I wish I
could say the same thing of Nathan ; but then it must be con-
sidered that he has to go farther after the cows.

The cow is a ruminant animal ; the philosopher is a ruminating
one. This is a very important distinction which we are led to
overlook entirely from a too careless use of words, and a too hasty
jumping at conclusions. The cow, being a ruminant animal, may
be said to ruminate, but the philosopher, though he ruminates, is
not a ruminant animal. This is the essential distinction between
tiie two. There are minor and mon; obvious ones, of course; for
instance, a cow has horns, and hoofs, and a tail, and a philosopher,
— a good i»hiloso])her, 1 mean — has not. There are certain beings
that are popularly supposed to have all these, but they are not
cows ; and the distinction is that they, too, ruminate. 1 mention
this to show you where the real dilference between a cow and ii
philosoi)lier lies, and prevent you from mixing up the two together.
Now a cow is a ruminant animal because she possesses more than
one stomach, and a philosopher is a ruminating one because he
does not. There are no pliilosophers in the city ; they are only
to be found in the country : and to be endowed with more than
one stomach to cultivate dyspepsia in, where the staple for»d of
the aborigines is home made bread, hot soda biscuits, pumpkin
and squash pies, and fat pork, would utterly destroy all a man's
mental faculties ; his whole thought would be concentrated on the
pains in his several stomachs, two or more, as the case might be.
The philosopher chews, and reflects; the cow chews withoi"
reflecting, because the one operation is so constant that it leave
no time for the other. I don't say tluit the cow would not think
if she had time ; but she never has. All her energies are dirrcted
to chewing, and this is the real reason for the defective state of
education in some of the very remote elementary schools where

t:i\

THE COWS 0^ THE CLKARINO.

189

the scholars can easily obtain spruce gum. There, tlioy are likewise
always chewing, and when the little school mariu conlis(^ates one
chunk of gum, ami puts it in her own mouth, they have another
ready for use. The consequence is that they spell " water " with
two t. s, and " very " with two r. s ; forget the niultiplication table
as fast as they learn it ; say " lie you going to skule " ; and grow
up into school connuissioners who are very critical of the school
niarm's intellectual attainnuuits, and sign her report of how the
school acqnitted itself when they visited it with

JAMliS

His X mark
JlLonns.

Before, however, they have achieved this high and responsible
educational ])ositiou, they will have changed the gum of boyhood
for the black tobacco plug of manhood. Tluis, through the act of
chewing there is established a sort ot evolutionary link between
the lower and higher grades of non-intellectual animals, incapable
of ruminating : the cow chews grass; the boy chews gum, and the
man chews tobacco. The cow has an extra stomach to keep her
suj)ply of fodder in ; the boy has his trouser's pocket ; and the man
that of his coat ; and herein we again see the trace of evolution
from the inside and invisible, to the outward and visible.

" And in these lineaments I trace
What time shuU strengthon, not etfiice."

There is a calf-like appearance in the physiognomy of the juvenile
gum chewer that develops into the more sedate and heavy aspect
i-f th(> cow in the mature tobacco chewer.

The daily denouement has not yet occurred, and there is one
of th< "milky mothers of the herd" standing a few yards away, and
quie.y chewing the cud with an appearance of deep thought. She
does not lie down ; no cow of good breeding, and moving in the
first circles of bovine society, ever thinks of lying down in the
clearing unless e fancies that somebody is looking for her, or
wants to delude her watcher into the belief that she is going to

ifff

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160

THE COWS OF THE CLEARING.

behave lierself to-day, and does not intend to smash through the
fence into the bush at the very first opportunity. She makes a
pretty picture as she stands there, with lier gh)ssy sides shining in
the sun, her ears ju'icked forward in(][uiringly in unison with the
direction of lier hirge patient eyes, and motionless, save for the
action of the Jaws, and an occasional switch of the tail at some
imjjertinent liy, IJoth of these movements seem purely meclianical,
almost independent of the volition of the animal, which, but for
tliem, is the perfect picture of contented repose. I hold very
strongly to the belief in the doctrine of compensation ; by which I
mean tliat matters are not so unevenly divided as we fancy, and
that if we only knew enough to enable us to strike the average, we
should find that there was a pretty cNen balance maintained
between the debit and credit sides of hai)piness and unliappiness,
advantages and disadvantages. Now at the beginning of this
chapter I touched half in jest, and with what you will doubtless
think a great deal of nonsense, on the distinction between a
ruminant, and a ruminating being. One has to talk a great deal
of nonsense if one wishes to get the attention of the public directed
t(» a little sense ; to sugar-coat the pill, as it were, if it is intended
to be swallowed ; we used to act on this j)rinci]ile when I was at
school. T think I said elsewhere, that we were obliged to go into
sciiool for an hour before breakfast ; and this was, especially in
winter time, uncomfortable, and sometimes, as Ave always had to
have a lesson and exercise prepared, inconvenient. Then we used
to " fox ; " that is to say, lie in bed, and excuse our non-appearance
by a headache. 1 fancy the Doctor had his own private theory
about these headaches ; at any rate, the result was invariable : an
examination of our tongues ; orders to swallow two pills which the
housekeejier would bring us, and a recommendation to be in school

at 9 a.m. This last injunction we kept religiously ; and the

pills also ; and every month we made a general collection of them ;
bought several gingerbread horses from the village confectioner ;
studded them all over with pills ; and gave them to the doctor's
pigs, which swallowed them. Tiiere was a great deal of squealing
and commotion in the pig stye that day, but it did them good, I

THE COWS OF THE CLKAKING.

161

am convinced. Occasional opening medicine is as necessary to a
pig's health as it is to a hoy's, liut it would not have heen swal-
lowed, had it not heen for the giiiger-hread. Similarly, though not
ill the slightest degree comparing you witli those very respectahle
and useful memhers of the community who furnish us with smoked
hams and Hitches of bacon, if I did not talk a great deal of nonse.ise
1 should despair of getting you to swallow any sense. The parsous
can't do it, and their congregations go to sleep.

Now, what I want you to notice in this fanciful distinction
of nune between a cow and a j)hiloso])her, is what is taught by
the attitude of liie animal I am cimtemplating. The intellectual
pleasuHiS are denied to the low(U' animals ; they have not the
reasoning faculty in that full extent wliich confers the power of
sustained and connected thought ; and the same thing may be said
in a less degree of certain men and classes of men. That, you
will readily admit, is a very great diminution of the happiness of
life ; or rather, it would be, if it were not compensated by a
greater enjoyment of absolute repose. I might refer to the almost
unlimited capacity of dogs and cats for sleep ; to the evident
pleasure which a horse takes when standing still ; and to number-
less other instances in the brute creation ; to the Italian lazzaroni,
who bask in the sun in the streets of Rome and Naples ; to men
whom we have known ourselves, and whom we call lazy, but who
are not lazy, but simply non-intellectual. The most remarkable,
and the most beautiful instance however that I know of is given
by the butterfly ; and who that has seen the pretty thing settle on
a leaf, and sit motionless for a time, till its wings begin to quiver
with the exquisite delight of its quiet can doubt for a moment of
the extent of its pleasure, so much greater 'han when it was on
the wing, and flitting from flower to flower. There is, and always
must be activity and unrest where there is the intellectual faculty ;
and in proportion as it is wanting there is inactivity and repose.
The pleasure derived from the one, js not imequal to the pleasure
derived from the other, and I see a proof of Creation by design in
this balancing of the possibility of the happiness oflifetoall things
living by Him whose tender mercy is over all His works.
11

Tli2 (sizn^tri of a Wet Day.

^■

JF I recollect viglit, there is some such a rule as this in the
Latin grammar of early youth : "Substantives of the Fifth
Declension are Feminine, except dies, a day, which in the singular
is sometimes Masculine, and sometimes Feminine, and in the plural
always Masculine." If the announcement excited any passing
emotion at the time it was simply that of satisfaction to find that
there was any of the five declensions that was so reasonable in the
matter of gender and had not a host of exceptions to the general
rules that were a 'ways tripping a fellow up unexpectedly when he
began to parse, ri.'d bringing down the wrath of the teacher on his
unwary head. I, )oking oat to the clearing to-day, and seeing my
accustomed roosting place tlimly through a drizzling mist of rain,
the old rule comes lack to my mind, and seems worthy of careful
investigation. How was it that the Latins, who were so certain of
the gender of all the other words in the fifth declension, were
puzzled and uncertain about this one ? How was it that this
uncertainty only lasted whilst considering the individual day, and
disappeared when they were taken in the aggregate ? And how
was it that the olil Latins decided that days were certainly masculine,
while one day might be either masculine or feminine ? I am
thankful to say that these questions did not occur to me when I
was painfully studying my Latin grammar as a boy. I bolted it
whole, as an owl does a mouse, without stopjjiug to trouble myself
with inconvenient speculations ; and even if I had not, I doubt
whether I should liave been ablo to solve the enigma satisfactorily.
Philologists w(juld probably put tlie emiuirer on a course of
roots, and just as evolutionists' would derive the whole of the visible
created world from a stupid little blob of jelly dignified with tlie
high-sounding title of Protoplasm, so philologists would present to
me some particular one of the grunts or squeaks, which, I under-

THE GENDER OF A WET DAY.

163

stand, formed the method by which primeval man publicly expressed
his private opinious, and would tell me that the said grunt or
squeak signified Light, which, as it was the great fructifying prin-
ciple of all things living, might be said to be their parent, and hence
might be regarded as Papa or Mama, according to the fancy of the
moment ; and they would talk about l)is, and Diospiter, (from pater
a father), and bring in the worship of the sun, and the myths
allegorical of the seasons. It is sufficient to say in refutation of
this theory that when men conveyed their ideas to each other by
differently modulated grunts, and groans, and squeaks, (if they ever
did), the feminine gender was a thing absolutely unknown.
Directly Eve was introduced into Paradise she began to talk, and
we may be very sure that she did not confine herself to inarticulate
sounds; in proof of which we find Adam quite advanced enough to
give names to the different animals within a very short time after
he was married ; proba])ly before the end of the honey-moon. It
makes one tremble to think of the flood of words that must have
been poured into Adam's ears when Eve first got at him, to enable
him to talk fluently in such a brief period ; but it is evident that
he had made progress enough in the art of language to enable him
to master the science of zoology. It is highly probable that he did
nothing but grunt or squeak until Eve came, for we do not hear of
him speaking before that event ; and, no doubt, he often grunted
after she came ; but no language before the advent of woman
could have the idea of the feminine g^-^der, and any language after
it was composed of words, not dubiou, .oots.

The grammarians, while they do not absolutely scout the '
science of philology, get along very well without it, and will not
allow that gender comes within its sphere of action. They will
refer this ambiguity about the sex of the Latin day, to the com-
parative ignorance of those times, when there was not a fresh
grammar published every six months for the benefit of the author
and the publishers, and there were no elementary or model schools,
no Teachers' associations, no Inspectors' reports, no Government
examinations, and no diplomas. Under such circumstances there
must naturally have been a deplorable ignorance of gram'^a. * .ven

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164

THE GENDER OF A WET DAT.

in the educated classes, as anybody may see tliat has pored over
the choruses of ^schylus, and tlie lower classes must have had
very confused ideas on the subject. Hence local idioms crept in,
and solecisms abounded ; and while, in latter days, the Principal
of the Model School at Rome was teaching his scholars that dies
was masculine, and the Elementary schoolmarm at Brindisium
was impressing on the tender minds of the infants under her
charge that it was feminine, the great mass of the ratepayers came
to the conclusion of the Yorkshireman who was asked to decidii
whether e, i, t, h, e, r, spelt eether or ither, and declared that other
would do. And wlien the ratepayers say a thing, it is useless for
the teacher to protest tliat he, or she, knows better, as witness the
general use of such expressions as " that's him "; " I seen him done
it " ; " between you and I," in spite of all the grammars to the
contrary thereto made and provided. Hence the grammarians
made the best of a bad job, and compromised matters that dies
might be either masculine o" feminine according to taste. The
theory is a very plausible one, but as it does not account for the
word dropping its femininity in the plural, and becoming sternly
masculine, it is very evident that it cannot be regarded as tenable.
You see that there is really a very interesting question here,
and a mystery of which neither the philologist, nor tlie grammarian,
is able to give a solution which will commend itself to the general
acceptance on investigation. Looking at the matter, however,
from a philosophical point of view, I conceive that the subject
presents little, or no dilliculty, and that the key to the secret lies
in the state of tlie weather. The state of the weather has a deal
to do with a great many things where we are least inclined to
suspect its interference". If it is bad, it makes a man a "perfect
brute " when he comes home and finds his dinner not ready ; it
neutralizes the effects of the patent remedies tliat cure every known
ill if taken in bottles varying in number from half-a-dozen to six
hundred ; it paraly/es the beneficent influence of the potato or old
chestnut that we carry in our breeches' pocket to ward off the
malignant attacks of rheumatism ; it even afTocts our religion, and
keeps us in bed on Sundays when we ought to be getting ready

THE GENDER OF A WET DAY.

165

for church ; if, on the contrary it should be good, our temper is
serene, and undisturbed by trifles ; our morals are unimpeachal)le ;
and the general sta.te of our health is most fitly expressed l)y the
word "jolly." It is this potent magician whom I conceive to have
tampered with the grammar of tlie ancient Uonums.

You have doubtless observed that nobody has a good word

for a wet day. Even the lower animals appear depressed by it.

You will see the horses and cows in tlu» pasture, if there is no

friendly tree to shelter them, (and tliere generally isn't), standing

with their backs to the driving rain, lieads down, ears throM'u back,

and looking altogetlier washed out ; the impudent little sparrow

sits up in the tree a round ball of wet featliers, with all his

liveliness gone, and :he rooster in tlie farm-yard beneath gets

under the hay cart with all his tail draggling on the ground. The

farmer has no patience with a wet day. When it was fine he

might have wanted it, but he has no use for it now. If it is doing

good to his seed crops and causing them to sprout, it is also

swelling the brooks and rivers, and making them flood his fields

and carry off his bridges ; if it is benefitting his wlieat and oats, it

is ruining his hay, or making his potatoes rot. Whatever a wet

day does, it is sure to do it wrong, and to be found fault with by

everybody. Therein it is just like a man. He never does anything

right, and if he wants any praise he has got to furnish it for

himself. Therefore the ancients said that " dies " was masculine

— when it was wet.

Now, on the other hand, take a fine day. Everybody likes a
fine day. No matter how hot it may be, you just wipe the
perspiration from your manly brow and exclaim " Beautiful
weather." It cannot go wrong. If the oats hegin to look a little
parched and yellow, the silken tassels of the corn are drinking in
the heat ; if the potato bug is vivacious, the .potatoes themselves
are safe from rot ; if the wells are a little low, tiie first wet day
will cure all that, and in the meantime everything is briglit and
cheerful, and man goes wliistling to his work in the morning and
kisses his wife and tells her he would just as " lief" have the pork

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THE GENDER OF A WET DAY.

burned as not, when he cornea home to dinner. If it happens to
be Sunday,

" Oh then he's drest all in his best
To take a walk with Sally,"

and as he knows that he will find Sally ready on coming out of
church to take the said walk, he attends Divine Service most
religiously twice a day. And in all this, a fine day is just like a
woman. Whatever she does or says, or whatever she doesn't do
or say, she is sure to be right, and he would be a bold man that
would venture to dispute the proposition. Therefore the ancient
Eomans, who were keen observers, said that " dies " was feminine
— when it was fine

So far the solution of the mystery seems easy, and the
diversity of gender in the singular number is duly accounted for
on philosophical grounds. Nor is it any more difficult to explain
the sole use of the masculine gender in the plural. This is done
by the law of averages, and the doctrine of chances. In speaking
of a number of days, it was manifestly impossible to divide them
into the two classes of wet and fine, and to determine accurately
which side was in the majority ; so the ancients took them all in a
lump, and taking the doctrine of chances into consideration decided
that these were in favor of the period being an average wet one.
They were the more induced to do this from the principle that any
unpleasant thing, as, for instance, a rap on the head, is apt to make
a deeper impression than a pleasant one. Hence, although the
majority of days in the period under consideration might have
been fine, yet the wet ones would always be sufficient in numbe^'
to more than counter balance the pleasure received from them.
Therefore the period was, by common consent, allowed to have
been rainy, and in accordance witli the rules fur the singular
number which t have given " dies " in the plural was masculine.

You see what it is to be a philosopher. Don't you wish you
were one ?

Rather* JYIixcd ; IVIud.

^ HE iiitelligcnt reader will probably have guessed from the
subject of the preceding cha})ter that it was written on a wet
day when I could not get to the clearing, or rather, could' not have
stayed there to write if I had gone. And the intelligent reader
would have guessed right. It was a wet day, with what 1 may
term a dry rain falling, and not a wet one. You never heard
of a dry rain before ? Probably not, but that does not prevent
its actual existence ; and probably there are a great many things
in the world that neither you nor I ever heard of, or ever will
hear, but they are there, all the same. It is a very fortunate thing
that the existence of persons or things does not absolutely depend
on their recognition by other persons : if it were otherwise I know
a great many women, who, so far as my wife was concerned,
would have been dead long ago, and to even matters, my wife
would have been in the same lamented case, had it depended on
her recognition by other women. So, though you never heard of
a dry rain, there was one yesterday ; to-day there is a wet one,
by way of variety. Perhaps, however, I had better explain.
A dry rain, then, is one that you may be out in for three or four
hours, if you have an over coat, without getting much more than
uncomfortably damp : if you have a waterproof, you may brave it
all day. It is divided into two classes ; the first, a sort of over-
grown fog or drizzle which can with difficulty be called rain ;
which obliterates all but the very near features of the landscape,
and which renders it desirable to chew up the atmosphere a little
bit before you venture on the experiment of admitting it to your
lungs. The second is a more pronounced rain ; it allows you to
see a little further, and you can draw in your breath without a
feeling of suffocation. It comes down gently, but persistently,
like your wife's efforts to get the money out of you for a new

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RATHER MIXED; MtTD.

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bonnet, or set of furs, or anything else she onght not to have, and
therefore has set her heart on having. The peculiarity about these
two classes is that they do not wet you through as fast as you
have reason to expect they will if you go out in them, and therefore
I call them dry rains. They come Avith due notice, and after a
long preparation of quiet gathering of clouds. The wet rain differs
entirely from them. It comes suddenly with a swirl and roar of
wind, and with big drops that you can see and fancy you can
dodge between, and before you have been out in it three minutes
you might just as well have jumped into the river. That is a wet
rain ; and that is what we are having here to-day. Yesterday
there was a dry rain that laid the dust in the clearing, a thing
that was very much needed ; to-day there is a wet rain that is
rapidly converting the consolidated dust into mud ; a thing that,
in my opinion, wasn't wanted at all.

Mud, in chemical notation may be designated as H D-n.,
H.O. signifying water which is, as everybody knows, a compound of
hydrogen and oxygen, and I) signifying Dust, with the index " n "
added to show that the number of parts of it taken is indefinite.
Some carping critic may urge that dust does not appear on the list
of elementary substances in any work on chemistry ; but liis
ignorance will be apparent in this, since it serves to show that he
is not up-to-date with modern scientific discoveries, and has not
made liimself master of my new book on chemistry whicli will be
published as soon as I have time to write it. Tliere is not the
slightest room to dispute that dust is an elementary object. Man
was made of dust ; and that, I should liopo, is a sufficient proof of
itself. But, after all, I do not wisli-to insist too strongly on a
point which is not material to the purpose. I am writing for
people whose notions of chemistry are probably confined to tlie
comparative merits of cough mixtures, hair-restorers, and pain-
killers, and care very little about scientific terms. That is, they
like to hear them, and be able to quote and talk about them,
without wishing to know anything further. So if the chemists
find fault with my notation of mud, all I can say is that they are
welcome to find a better or more concise one, if they can. I waive

RATHER MIXED; MUD.

169

the point. Tn the meantime, everybody knows mud when he
sees it.

The mud in our clearinj^ is argillaceous, saponaceous,
contumacious, and anything but gracious. It is a friend indeed,
for " it sticketh closer than a brother." A man travelling all day
up and down the clearing with a basket on his back into which to
scrape the mud that adheres to his feet every five minutes, might
gather together in the twelve or fourteen hours a big enough slice

o o or?

of the superficial «rea of the field to make him a comfortable farm
if he could only get a place to spread it out on. And it has a very
insinuating and caressing way of its own. From the boots it creeps
up to the bottom of the pants ; from there it twines lovingly round
the ankles ; from the ankles it steals up to the calves of the legs •
and from them sends out foraging j)artie3 to the knees. Did you
ever try the experiment ofputtinganear of bearded wheat or barley
on the shirt cutf, between it and the coat, and then leaving the
cereal to its own devices ? If you have, you will know that the
probabilities are that in less than ten minutes you will find it
tickling the back of your neck. Well, mud is a still greater
automatic traveller than the ear of bearded wheat or barley. If it
once gets on you it is not content to stay (juiet where it is ; it is as
restless as the deep sea itself, and its motto is ever that of
Longfellow's young man — "Excelsior." You may observe the
same thing also of metaphorical mud ; though that is generally
thrown at a man, and he does not willingly walk in it. It sticks ;
and if there is only a little bit that hits you, -unless you brush it
off quickly it will grow and spread, until the whole person is
covered with it and becomes a disreputable moral scarecrow'.
People aware of this characteristic should be cautious how they
throw metaphorical mud at their neighbour. A chance word, a
shrug, or a sneer is a very little thing ; scarcely a dec it handful ;
but if it hits him it is apt to have very disastrous effects : and
people should also be careful how they put themselves in the way
of having this mud thrown at them.

For mud is easy to acquire, but it is very difficult to get rid
of. It cakes and dries, and requires a scraper to remove the outside

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KATHER MIXED; MUD.

layers, and the diligent application of the brush to efface the inside
ones, and the resulting stains. And here again there is a marked
similarity between literal and metaphorical mud. If it is hard to
get rid of the thing itself, it is equally hard to remove the traces of
it : if it is ditlicult to hunt down tiie slanderer, to disprove the
calumny, to silence the gossiy), it is still more diihcult after all this
is done to eradicate the rankling soreness of the mind that is the
result. There is another resem])lance, also, which may be noted,
and that is in the effect of the mud on the temper of the ])erson to
whom it is, ])ro tem, attached. If a man has got himself all be-mired
in his walk, he does not feel half so annoyed as he does by a splash
or two of mud from a runaway horse, or a careless driver of waggon
or cart, because, as I take it, the first damage has been done as it
were by his own consent, himself virtually aiding and abetting ;
whereas in the second case he has in no wise contributed to the
position he Hnds himself in. It is the same thing with metaphorical
mud ; wlien a person has been injured by the petty gossip, (not
always meant to be illnatured), which we are all of us prone to
indulge in respecting even our dearest friends, behind their backs,
he is a great deal less angry witii the disparaging remarks made on
liim when he ha])pens to hear of them, as he is pretty certain to
do, if he knows tliat they were in some measure well-founded, than
if his conscience acquitted him of all blame. I am aware that the
opposite view is the one most generally held, and the epigrammatic
legal dictum "The greater the truth, the greater the libel" may be
held to lay down the principle that the bigger scoundrel a man is,
the less justified you are in calling him one, but in saying this, the
law is, I fancy, considering the case of libel more from a pecuniary
than a moral point of view, and that by the words "the greater the
libel" all that is meant is that the damage done by proclaiming the
delinquencies of the individual is commensurate with the enormity
of them. Now, wliat I am contending for is that it is easier to
forgive a thing to which we .have ourselves partly contributed,
than one to which we have not. The mud that we get on our
clothes ourselves, is tolerated with more equanimity than that
•which others put on them.

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RATHER MIXED; MUD.

171

The father of Ham, (1 don't mean Noah, though he too had a
great deal to do with mud in his day, but the domestic pig) has
been generally set down as an unclean beast, on account of the
enjoyment he takes out of a good roll in a mud wallow, provided
it be stiff enough. His big cousin, (Hiuckuroo, as some of the
African tribes term the rhinosceros, is just as fond of his roll, if
not fonder, but I have never heard him stigmatized as dirty on
tliat account ; proba))ly because Chuckuroo is a very bad temjiered
individual, and has sometimes one, and sometimes two horns,
which he uses pretty effectually when anything puts him out,
whereas you can't get anything out of J^iggy but a grunt. All
animals as a rule are extremely cleanly and neat in their habits,
and piggy is no exception in a wild state : when domesticated, he
is dirty per force. Before you condemn him, just consider what
you would be yourself in his place, cooped up all the days of your
life in a little pig pen, with perhaps half a dozen other pigs as big
as yourself cooped up with you. Now dun't take oti'ence, and
Hing the book to the other side of the room, because if you do,
you'll be sure to spoil the most important part of it, the binding,
without discomposing me in the least. F don't mean to say that
you are an actual, or even a metaphorical pig, but am only treating
you, for the time being, as a pig hypothetical ; given the same
conditions, you would be dirty yourself, though I grant that you
might not like it. And indeed, when you come to think of it
there are plenty of human beings in the great cities living under
conditions not dissimilar to tliose which surround piggy in his
stye, and held thus for the profit of the owners of the tenements
they inhabit, just as pigs are kept by the farmers ; and who are
looked on with the same disgust by the daughters of the said
owners as they pass them in the streets, as that with which the
city-educated farmer's daughter contemplates her father's pigs.
There is, however, one huportant difference between the biped and
the quadruped : the farmer feeds his pigs, and the landlord doesn't
feed his.

And, after all, I do not see why mnd should necessarily
be looked upon as dirty and unclean. If it happens to be of an

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itATmni >nxEi); mud.

ar{^illii(;i(»u3 n.'ituro, and has been consolidated by time into tht;
consistency of clay, tliero are tribes in South America I am told
who inakt! tlieir meals oil' it, and consider it very delicate eating' ;
und it is a well kiKiwii fact that in (^)uebec the natives at certain
seasons of the year driidc it in a mor« or less diluted form, and
ajtpcar to thrive c»n it. The number of uidicensed stills, and the
lar^'e amount of smui,'i,di'd whiskey amnially seized liy the Customs
oUicials in the city and the vicinity would seem to show that
there is a minority which objects to takin;^' its li(iuid in a semi-
solid form thou},di it is colored a didicately beautiful red-brick
color, and is driven to anti-jirohibitionist absoi'ptions much against
its will; but that the majority is absolutely content with its mud
and water is plain from the fact that the City Council, though
repeatedly urged, has persistently neglected to build a filter for
the li([uid with which it supj)lies the town. Even the sentiments
of the minority on the subject are doubtful, for I have heard it
maintiiiued that the abnormal consumption of excommunicated
spirits is due to the fact that su(;h whiskey is much cheaper than
water at the ])rescnt water-rates.

There are some things which r^ither go to support this
contention, th(»ugh I must do Quebec the Justice to say that they
are not to be found there. Tn the sister city of Montreal, the
authorities cut off the supply of water altogether from those who
are unable or unwilling to pay for it. There aro always people
to be found who will find fault, and this proceeding has from time
to time l)een stigmatized as harsh and cruel, and prejudicial to the
sanitary state of the city, but it has been altogether overlooked
that though the authorities have been economical, even to the
verge of severity, in the matter of water, they have been very
liberal, on the other hand, in the granting of licenses for saloons
for the retailing of whiskey. They are evidently of opinion that
whiskey in its natural state is more easily obtainable than water,
and that the num who cannot afford to pay his rates can easily
spare money for his whiskey. Men must drink something, and
the less the water imbibed, the more the whiskey. Moreover, the
more whiskey a man drinks, the dirtier he gets.

Rn Intcwuption.

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OW much lunger I should have made the preceding chaj)ter
had I not been interrupted, it is im{)o.sdihle to say. My
subject was, as I stated, rather mixed, and I shouldn't wonder if I
was getting rather mixed myself. Xot that thai is a thing to be
ashamed of; we taiie everything mixed in this world, from our
religion d(j\vn to our whiskey ; and though, doubtless, it would be
a very good thing for us in many instances if we didn't, if for
instance we took our religion without our worklliness, and our
water without our whiskey, yet the general law is mixture, and
there is no evading it. "Simplex munditiis " is a poet's ideal lo
which no woman now dreams of paying attention ; the nineteenth
century femininity is not simplex but corni»lex ; and where woman
leads we have all of us got to follow. So I am rather proud of
being a little mixed at times, and the day was the very thing for a
long and rambling meditation. It was raining heavily, and I could
not get out to the clearing. Xow, though the clearing is productive
of thought, yet it is not favorable to the lengthy exercise of it.
It is soon either too hot, or too cold ; too windy, or too still ;
though it is never lonesome or uninteresting, for there are plenty of
ants and mosquitoes about ; but at home, in an easy chair, with
an equable temperature, the rain beating steadily on the window-
panes, and Polly and Bloomah deep in the mysteries of household
enjoyments, and consequently forgetful for the lime being that I
was comfortably doing nothing, there was every reasonable ju'ospect
of my prosing away till I fell asleep, when the door suddenly
opened, and one of my oldest and dearest friends walked in.
When I say oldest, I refer to the time I have known him, which
is ever since I used to stand him on the form for improving
himself in the art of conversation, and neglecting the study of his
Latin rudiments. He is still young, comparatively speaking, and

''^■'i

AN INTKUllUrTION,

^reen, tlion<Tli he won't allow it, with the bump of reverence for
lii.s elders almost entirely luuleveloped, and what, when a boy, ho
wouhl have called " altogether too cheeky " in anybody else. As
a proof of his irreverence, I may mention that instead of addressing
me by my i)r()]ier title of IMiilosopher, he abbreviatcis it into
Flossie, a name which is usually applied only to j^ii'ls and pet
poodle-dogs. "Hello! Flossie," he exclaimed as he entered, "in
the dumjis, old man ? Look about as cheerful as an owl in an
ivy-bush, and not half as wise. What have you been after?"
" Hob ! " 1 V(>plied with tlignity, shaking hands with him as I spoke ;
"Bob! I have been ex.cogitaLing." "Oh! ah! 1 see! thinking,
you nu'an. Why on earth can't you use i»lain words ;' I should
think you might ; you are plain enough yourself." "That's what
my wife tells uxv, but you had better not let her hear you say so.
Her o])iuion of me, ]>rivately expressed, is Just the one thing on
which she will not allow the general public to agree with luu- ; she
makes n\) for it by insisting that they should share her idiias on
everything else." "Oh! Mrs. P.! I have no fears on that score.
Hloomah is going otV to a ball, or concert, or sonu^thing of that
sort ; and she has just got a ])aper pattern for a dress. So the two
have wheeliMl the dining-room lalile into a corner, and are sitting
on the tloor with the diiferent pieces laid out between thcni,
debating which goes where, and trying, with tears in their eyes, to
nuike the ])i( ce for the sleeve fit in as a collar for the neck, and if
not, ^\hy not ? just as I looked in. So we're safe for a good cou}>le
of hours." " What (U) you know about women's dresses ! " 1
enquired severely, " Vou are not a uuirried man." " You call
yourself a philosopher," he returned with a shade of contempt in
his tone, " and don't know that an unmarried man is more up in
the subject of lailies' dresses than even the dear creatures them-
selves, to say nothing of a stupid hum-drum married man who has
lost all interest in the matter excejit when he is called on to foot
the bills. ' The proper study of mankind ' may be, as the poet
says ' man ' ; no doubt it is for the married portion of mankind,
though I have noticed that you occasionally evince symptoms of
studying Bloomah. Oh, yes ! unconsciously of course ; it's a habit.

AN INTKRRUVTION.

175

of yours to study, and you're not always very parlictilar as to the
objects — l)ut the |)roj)or study of tlie unniurried port ion is woman ;
how else can it <,aiide its steps arij,di(, and ultimately evolve into
l*hilosophers '. " It is not at all a proper study." " How do you
know \ Did you ever try it ? " " And, besides " 1 said, ii^noriui:,'
the question with disdain, " that does not explain lujw y(ju oonui to
be so well acquainted witli the mystei'ies i f ladies' dresses."
" Heaven send you more wit, I'lossie," lie I'c.plied : "dress is the
more important ])art of a woman; it is tlie <i:(-,'ter part of ]u3r,
just as, if yon take the feathers from a hummiiiif l)ird th(!r(! is
iu)thin<.,' left but the beak and claws. If you want to <,feL an
accurate idea of a woman, study her drc^s. Yon foi't,'et, I think,
that if I haven't got a wife, I'm ])la^ued with thrcse sisters. " So
I did; 'the three draces'." "Hum! you may call them so if you
like, but there are times when I should rather say 'the three
Furies '." " V'es ? When you have been luore than ordinarily
saucy, I supi)ose. I don't bhuue them." " Xeither do T, to tell
you the truth," said Bob; "they are dear, <rood j^irls, but there are
times" — "when you would provoke a Saint." "May l)c ; but
that is no excuse; they're not saints. l^)iit come ; I am .ishamed
of your frivolous conversation, Flossie. You liave been writin<f, I
see. It's to be hoped that you write more sense than you talk."
With that, he seized on my unfortunate M.S.S. which were
lying on the table, sank into a chair, and proceculed coolly to
peruse them without evincing any recognition of my jiresence,
more than if T had been a wooden block. TIk^ rain descended, and
the wind began to rise, and still he read on. 1 was beginning to
feel llatterod with the interest that kept him so a])3orbud, wh(in he
tlirew the pa})ers on the table, lighted a pi]ie, and opcuied fire.
" Going to publish ! " " Yes." " < lot your life insured ? " " Xo."
" Then your wife will have some reason, at any rate, to be sorry
when you're hung." "Shouldn't wonder; it isn't everybody that
will be regretted after his death ; eh, Bob ? IhiL what is all this
about ? " " Nothing ; only that your caeology is heterodox ; your
science a fraud; your moralizing a set of old platitudes ; and your
originality m^." "That all? It wasn't worth while making a

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AN INTERRUPTION.

fuss about ; only observe that I ain't got no theology ; I ain't got
no science ; and I ain't got no originality ; (I think you said that last,
yourself) ; the old platitudes I confess to, and am proud of them."
" Now, look here, l»ob. If you want to get along in the
world, don't set yourself up for an original : people don't like it.
It startles them, and they take their revenge by saying, ' Bob? oh,
yes ! a clever fellow, but a little eccentric ; a kind of a crunk, you
know, in some things ; ' tlie said things being precisely those on
which you plumed yourself for }■ ur originality. And you are
lucky if you escape thus easily, and are let oif with a passive good-
natured contempt. The general jtublic is apt to be more severe
with original men ; it used to burn them ; assassinate them ;
imprison them ; fine them ; at present it either ostracises them, or
sucks their blood. It is rarely the inventor that makes any profit
out of his inventions, and when he does, the chances are that he
has simply improved on some other fellow's ideas, and is not the
original Simon Pure himself. The father of printing is to this day
represented as having sold his soul to the arch-enemy ; the discoverer
of the motive power of steam died in a lunatic asylum. Men do
not like originality ; they are afraid and suspicious of it ; and the
only original that they will tolerate is original sin, because that is
so handy to lay tlie blame of all subsequently acquired sin on.
But they like worn-out old platitudes that they have been
accustomed to, and when they come across them in a book say
' Ha! that is just what I always thought myself; an uncommonly
sensible fellow that writer is." Authors are like the planets and
satellites; they shine with the light of the sun, alias the reader,
pro. tem., and not with any inherent light of their own ; they are
witty or stupid, geniuses or cranks, just as they happen to
coincide with the oi)inions of the public, or to disagree with them.
Now, if you want to please the great mass of mankind you must
talk platitudes : when you can't do that, the next best thing to do
is to talk nonsense. Why is it that oyster j)atties, and Charlotte
Ilusses arc such general favorites with dainty palates ? Because,
thou'di they are quite large to look at, there is nothing in them
when they are once in the mouth. Don't despise common places,

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177

my boy. A goose feather is a very rnrnmon and insignificant
trille, but you can tickle a man to death with it."

The rings of meditative smoke msn lazily from liis pipe. You
can always tell when a smoker is lliinking seriou.sly by that; at
other times the incense from his clay or briar-r. .t rises in formless
puffs, or, if a ring occurs, it is jjlainly by accident. But when a
man is debating a vexed question with himself, he " draws it mild,"
and ring after ring ascends into the circumambient air. At last he
thought he had found out a weak point. " But if you are not
original, you are a plagiarist, Flossie ; a regular fraud, trading on
other men's ideas, though you may not, perhaps, use exactly the
same language." " And what of that ? If plagiarism is really the
wicked thir ,r that some people, (generally jealous authors), make
it out to be, don't you think that I deserve some credit for not
giving anybody else an opportunity of plagiarizing from me ? Next
to the mo,n who does nothing wrong himself, the best man is he
\\] '■ pii'\ents others from doing wrong, as far as he is able. When
you weie a boy, and used occasionally to go out plundering orchards
at night, did not you strip all the best trees in order that other
boys might not be tempted to follow your bad example ? At leasti
that's what I overheard you telling Joe Benson, (you recollect
Joe ?) the day after my magnum bonum plums had mysteriously
migrated during the night. You two were up in my hay-mow, if
you remember, and saying what fine ones they were, and how
blank the old governor looked when he found them all gone. I
was so struck with the soundness of the reason you assigned, that
I would not listen to Polly when she wanted me to put the matter
in the hands of the village constable, and I kept your secret
religiously till now ; but I took it out of you all the same. You
both had headaches next day, and couldn't go to school. There
was my opportunity, and I seized it. I think it is Shakespeare
that says ' For this be sure thou shalt have cramps.' F^h, Bob ?
Do you recollect that dose of six big Ayer's pills ? Yes ! I see
you do." He laughed ; " so that was the reason why you doubled
the ordinary dose ? You designing old villain ! I'd rather have
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AN INTERRUPTION.

taken half .a dozen canings." " No doubt, Bob ! no doubt. But, you
see, it wasn't what you'd rather, but what I'd rather. It was far
less trouble to tell you to swallow half a dozen pills than it was to
cane two boys even once ; and, besides, you wanted the bile taken
out of your system."

"Plagiarize ? What is everybody but a confirmed plagiarist,
in the sense that very little he possesses is due to his own exertions ?
You nourish your body with the bodies of other animals, you clothe
it with their skins, and you ornament it, at least the women do,
with their feathers ; why should you not nourish your intellect
with the intellects of other people ? " " That's all right enough,
Flossie, but it is not the nourisliment of our own intellects that is
in question, but the trying to feed other people's." "Nonsense!
When you have got anything peculiarly nice to eat, I suppose you
may give a dinner, and invite your friends. And you don't say
' this is turkey, and it came from Mr. Jones ; this is hani I'rom one
of Mr. Brown's pigs.' You make believe that it is all your own.
" Yes J biit I pay for it." " Does that alter the fact of original
possession ? You did not think it necessary to inform Joe that
you had stolen my plums, did you ? " " Of course not: that w^s a
self-evident fact." •' Well ! a plagiarism is generally an easily
recognizable one, and when it is not, what saith the law ? 'Inscienti
non fit injuria; ' a man is not injuved if he doesn't know it."

He meditated again. " I am shot if I can ever make out
when you are in earnest, and when you are not, Flossie. You will
drop into a bit of dry moralizing, or wander out into the sentimental
and pathetic in the midst of a joke ; and jr.st as you have got one
in a serious or melting mood, you will turn it all off with a laugh.
Do you ever know what you mean yourself ? I can never quite
und(U\stand you." " It is not worth while trying, old friend : grave
and gay, laughter and tears are inextricably mingled together in
this life ; the sweetest waltzes are those that have an under-harmony
of sadness running througli them, and, strange as it may seem,
there is often a sensation of pleasure in the very sharpness of a
pain. And so, a joke may possibly cover something more serious
than a sermon does, and a highly moral discourse bo nothing more

AN INTERRUPTION.

179

than a huge joke. If a man sugar-coats his intellectual pills, the
chances are that he pills his sugar-coats, if I may use the expression.
The effect on the swallower depends not so much on what he
swallows as on the assimilative powers inside him. Tliere ! there's
a pretty bit of plagiarism for you." He looked up enquiringly, and
I laughed. " Oli ! if you can't detect it, I am not going to tell
you. Look up your Dickens, old boy, and study Captain Cuttle.
But come ! we'vi talked nonsense long enough, let us think of
more serious things and see if the womenkind are going to give
us anything for dinner." And so we went into the dining room,
where we found the pair of amateur dressmakers with the pattern
neatly spread out on the table restored to its former position of
dignity, and

*' The sun of sweet content
Re-risen in Polly's eyes, and all things well."

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Old Logs.

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^ HE amouut of old logs to be found in a clearing depends very
much on its age. If it is in its infaiu-y, the number is a
tolerably large one ; there are felled trees that hav(3 been valueless
for the lumber market, (jr, for some cause or other, have not been
cut up for fire-wood, lying about in every direction, with sharp
spikes of truncated branches projecting, and with a wealth of rank

vegetation growing under tlieir sheltering sides, and overmountiug
them in a tangled maze of fern, blackberry, raspberry, and [)erehance,
nettle. As the clearing grows older, these are gradually removed ;
the smaller ones are built round a lai'ge one ; the scattered branches
are heaped over them, and the bush fires leave a mass of charcoal
and ashes in their place. Some of the l)est and soundest are also
chopped up at odd times by the boys on the farm, and curried off
to the wood pile. By-and-by there only remain one or two of the
largest, eaten to the core with dry rot, and ready to crumble away
at the touch; the rest are coveretl over with vegetable mould and
grass, and form their own graves. Then the plough comes ulong
and buckwheat, or it may be oats are sown ; and the next year
there will probaltly be potatoes and potato-bugs, and the clearing
has gone for ever. The stumps have berui [julled out and burned ;
the stones gathered together in heaps for carting away ; the old-
make-beliove fence that was the s(;(U'ii and contemjit of the cows
has been replaced by a newer and better (Uiu ; and the field of
civilization has been evolved. ]\Iy clearing has not yet arrived at
the final catastrophe : there are still stumps throwing out sinuous
roots to clasp the ground, and still a fnv old logs visible, and
presenting an appearance of solidity which I know by sad experience
to be illusory and deceptive.

Unsightly and dead as they look to the careless eye, it is
wonderful what a world of beauty, and what an amount of variety
of life they present to a more critical examination. Their bark is

• OLD LOGS.

181

mmm

■nmlm

stained with the grey and green lichens, amid which rise the
crimson tipped chalices of the cup-mosses. Other mosses there
are, too, soft, and of varying shades of green, and an occasional
little fern, but these last do not seem to me half so beautiful as
their sisters with the blood-riinmel gublets, or half so mysterious,
and when I see clumps of tliciu growing, I always recall to mind
Jules Verne's fmciful description of the strange world in the
interior of the earth whore the explorers, amongst other adventures,
walked in the shade of a forest of gigantic toad-stools. I imagine
that these cup-mosses must be looked upon in much the same
light by the minute insects that run to and fro under their shade,
and by whom the small red spider must be considered as an
outrageous and formid[il)le giant. Underneath the bark the red-
brown centi[)ede, and the iron-clad niilli])ede work their devious
ways ; the carpenter wasp, and one of the ichneumon flies bore
holes for tlieir eggs in the sounder parts ; beetles there are innumer-
able, and of all sizes ; and ants ! l)ut it's no use talking about ants ;
they are everywhere in tlie Js.ariug, except where it ha})i)en3 to be
damp ; and there are wood lice. There are other tribes besides of
which I know nothing beyond th'i fact shown by the microscope
tliat they do exist ; and, taken altogether, the population of a good
sized log that is not too dead may be calculated at about that of
the United States.

Of course, this wealth of life and beau* 3-, at A\hich I have
scarcely done more than hint, is not peculiar to the log as a log,
and would have equally attached itself to it, if the tree had
perislied while yet standing. What I see, and what I want you to
see with me, is that there is no waste in the scheme of the Creator.
Man wastes and destroys. He has exterminated the Imffalo tliat
formerly used to range the western plains till only a few scattered
remnants are left of the miglitv herds that once fed there, and
their skeletons lie by the hundreds to mark tlie places when they
have been slaughtered for the sake of their hides, and left to rot on
the ])rairie. The beavers and the seals are sharing tlie same fate ;
there is scarcely anything left of the wild pigeons, whose cloudy
cohorts darkened the sky, and broke down the branches of the

'■-li

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182

OLD LOGS.

'' „'

! I

-'r:y

trees at their roosting places with the weight of the hirds that
settled on them ; nothing but a tradition. Our brooks and streams
are troutless ; our lakes depleted of their fish ; and all this because
these things have been abused, even in the using of them, and the
season of their abundance has also been the season of their wanton,
I had almost said deliberate, waste. Those logs that lie before me
as I muse, are only a chapter in the universal tale. At the time
that they were felled they were allowed to lie, because there were
others that were better and would command a higher price close
by, and to be had for the chopping ; if they were standing now,
they would be looked on as a prize ; but it is too late. So far as
man is concerned they are perfectly useless : worse than useless, for
they only cumber the ground.

But in the plan of the Maker and Creator there is nothing
wasted. It seems to me that there is a hint of this, as well as a
moral lesson conveyed, in the instruction of the Saviour to His
disciples after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand on the
five barley loaves and two small fishes ; " gather up the fragments
that remain, that nothing be lost." Here is the Divine mind ; the
principle on which He acts, that of all He gives there should be
nothing lost or wasted. And we may be assured that there is
nothing so wasted. We can never see this with a perfectly clear
eye ; though we see traces of it continually, if we will look
carefully, as in the instance of these decaying trunks of trees,
which, even in decay, are ministers to beauty and life, and the
enjoyment of life : but generally the very opposite to this seems
to hold good, and we fancy we see a great waste in the natural
world, and in the life of man. The seeds of a maple or poplar
would, if they were all allowed to grow, cover hundreds of acres
with forest ; the eggs of a generation of fishes, if they all came to
maturity would fill a lake ; the fruitfulness of nature is so great
that if it were not checked, and rendered to some extent useless,
would result in an over population of all living things. So great is
this apparent waste that it raised a quasi-doubt in the mind of
England's dead laureate which he thus expresses :

OLD LOOS, 183

" Are God and Nfituro then ftt strife

That Nature lends such evil dreams ?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds

She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar stairs

That slope through darkness unto God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all.

And faintly trust the larger hope."

He sees an apparent disregard of the individual life, while
clinging to the belief that the type of which it is a member is held
in more consideration; but even this is dispelled on further
reflection.

" • So careful of the type ?" but no.

From scarped cliflF and quarried stone
She cries ' a thousand types have gone :
I care for nothing, all shall go.' "

Yes ! Destruction with a purpose we can understand, but this
apparently purposeless destruction is a riddle that has puzzled men
in all ages, and in all countries. Now, it is obviously impossible
for the finite to understand the purposes of the infinite mind, or to
grasp even an infinitesimal part of the great web of infinity and
eternity. Yet what we cannot understand, we may at least have

' *'

It.*/, a

184

OLD LOGS,

the assurance of, and I think that assurance is given in the
command " gather up the fragments that remain." It is not the
purpose of the Most High that any, tlie smallest crumb, should be
lost. Life and death ; joy and sorrow ; labour and ease ; all are to
be utilized. Nay, further ! if I may say it with all reverence, when
the world was ruined by the introduction of sin, He came to it to
seek and to save that wasted and lost creation. Man wastes and
destroys ; but not God.

And when man wastes, is there no remedy ; nothing that can
be done but to lament ? Each one of us, looking back over what
has already ])ast of his life, cannot fail to recall wasted opportunities,
wasted friendships, wasted love, wasted enjoyments, ay !and wasted
grief. Are all these to remain so wasted ? You will tell mo that
they must ; that nothing can recall the past, or undo what has been
done. To this assertion I answer, " In one sense, yes ! in another
sense, no ! There is a promise, as well as a reason given in those
words ' that nothing be lost.' " Do you understand ? Nothing :
not even that Avhich has long ago been wasted and destroyed, if
only you gather up the fragments that remain. Then, and only
then, your past will revive and be utilized. I think that was what
the poet — Alice Carey, I think it was, — meant when she said she
thanked God, even for her sins. It sounded harsh and out of
tune, if not irreverent, but I fancy that she meant that the
knowledge — that knowledge of good and evil which is so dangrerous,
and often so fatal — gained from them had been utilized for the
support of a better life growing up in her. Gather up the fragments
that remain, and you may dc})end u})on it that nothing will have
been utterly wasted. You cannot bring this about, any more than
I can utilize this rotting log which is nevertheless not without its
uses — another must do that ; and will.

I once embodied some such thoughts as these in a few lines
written for a New Year's Ode. It is not New Year's Day now,
but what of that. Every day sees a new year commencing, and
an old one dying ; so I add the verses here.

OLD LOOS.

185

The snow lies white an a nhroud on the plain.

And steoly-bluo ia the passioDlcss sky ;
The rivers are duml) in their it-y chain,

And the cliill windHhiver.s past with a nigh.
The music of laughter and tulle is still,
From the farm in the vale to the cot on the hill.
For the day has come, and the day has gone.
And the hours of night are speeding on :
Night, that bends o'er the infant's bed ;
Nigiit that wakes o'er the sleeping dead.
And night shall come, and night shall go
As the time- waves down to the great sea flow ;
The Sea of Kternity, lying in wait
For the lives that shall sink in it, soon or late ;
And tl.d old year hastens to its embrace
With its work all finished. It dies apace.
Wliat does it leave wherewith to greet
1 he coming on earth of the New Year's feet I
Laughter and Sorrow, — Hope and Fear,
Are the heritage left to the coming year.
No more ? Ah, yes I When the old years die
They leave behind them Memory.

Whore st(jops the grassy plain.
Gemmed with star-flowrets, scented with wild thyme,
To where the waves of blue Gennesaret
With many a lapping kiss and foamy fret
Curve, and recurve, and mount again, and climb

Upon the sounding shore
With ring of pebble and deserted shells,
Th >t makes faint music in the distint dells
Which dimple all the land-slope, there He fed,
From scanty 3t(jre of fishes and of bread,
The multitude that came from all around
To hear him. Faint with hunger, on the ground
By companies arranged, they t^at. and saw,
With wonder ever growing into awe,
The lad's few loaves and fishes furnish food
For all the needs of that vast multitude,
And still consumed, and still again supplied.
Till at the last, when all were satisfied,

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(716) 872-4503

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186

OLD LOGS.

uw-

And that strange fe<iBt, so free of cost,

So ample and bo bountiful, was o'er,

He spake, who spake as never man before :

> *' That nought of what was given may be lost.

Gather ye up the fragments that remain.

# »
*
So, hour by hour, and day by day.

As pass the seasons of the year away,

As to the greatest, so unto the least,

Hjp fapreids for each the appointed feast.

The bread of Time and Life.

Strange feast it is of mingled joy and pain,

Of laughter and of tears, of dull despair

Changed into hope, and hopes dispersed in air ;

Of friendsliip's sweet communings, and of strife ;

Of meetings and of partings, toil and rest ;

Of straitened means, of sudden gleams of wealth ;

Of all the lusty glow and pride of health,

And of the Shadow of the Unwelcome Guest ;

But when the feast is done, and by and Hy

The fu 1-orbed year has come at length to die.

And of the now past days

Time leaves us nothing but the memory.

He brings our life before our eyes, and says,

' Gather ye up the fragments that remain.'

« *

Oh ! sweet were the hours when Hope was young,
And sweet were the songs her mating birds sung :
'We have f(mnd a place in the old elm tree
Where the nest on the branch shall swing safe and free,
And the eggs of pn mise shall be unstirred
Neath the soft warm breast of the mother-bird,
And the father beside her the whole day long
Shall pour out his treasures of happy song.'

Though the storm swept down on the elm tree's crown
And the branch was cleft by the lightnina;'s stroke.

And though torn the nest from its p'ace of rest.
And the brooded eggs lay shattered and broke,
The storm has passed, and I hear the strain
A'one of the mating-birds again.
Treasured up in the memory,
As my heart once treasured them up for me,
And I gather the fragments that remain.

i:i|l^

•t:

OLD LOGS.

Oh ! sadly and slowly the days went by

When Pain anc* Anguish stood by the bed,
And bleep fled far fron' the straining eye,

And a weary wakefulness watched instead ;
When the clock was a burden through the night ;

And the silence was full of whispered ill ;
And the I'inged-for reign of the busy light

Was but a weight and an agony still.
But dear were the friends, and the sympathy,

As Love bent over the couch of pain.
And their looks and their words live in memory,

As I gather the fragments that remain.

Oft from the beaten path I strayed

In the yearly stas^e of the journey of life.
In pleasure's bowers a halting made

, Where the sensuous flowers of sin grew rife ;
And often I wandered apart, alone

Into the wilderness, bleak and bare,
Quagmire planted, and strewn with stone,

That lies in the rcHlm of Faithless Care.
O love unfaltering, constant, deep I

That sought, and brought again to the way.
Each time that it wandered, the truant sheep.

And fed and tended it day by day.
What shall I garner in Memory ?

The cleansing love, and the cleansed stain,
As, of the life that is left, for Thee

I gather the fragments that remain.
The midnight bells ring out to tlie earth
The cradle song of the New Year's birth.
The blessing-grace for the feast that is near.
The thanksgiving grace of the past old year
With its joy and sorrow, its pleasure and pain.
Gather its fragments that remain ;
Gath T them up that there be no loss.
And lay them down at the foot of the Gross,

187

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Tocfd-Stools.

'• Five little white hencls peepe-i out of the mold,
When the dew was dump, and the night was cold ;
And they crowded their way throu^^h the soil with pride,

* Hurrah ! we are going to be mushrooms ! ' they cried.

Bu' the sun came up, and the sun shone down,
And the little white heads were shrivelled and brown
Long were their faces, their pride had a fall—'
They were nothing but toad-stools, after all."

t 1

{x'A

^ IIUS sang Walt-^r Learned in St. Nicholas, dear to cliildren,
^ and I am debating wliat useful lesson either in morals or in
botany could be intended to be conveyed in these apparently
simple rhymes. It will not do to pretend that nothing further
was meant than the mere delectation of children, because this is a
practical age that scorns amusement pe>' se as something
altogether unworthy of regard ; it must be of some practical
benefit either to the intellect, the body, or the purse, to be acceptable.
As for the soul, that does not so much matter ; we have really
very little time to spare to look after that ; but the other three
things are important, the most important being the last, to which
the two former are sul>sidiary. So our cliildren must be taught
something, even in their nursery rhymes of modern days, and the
dear old nonsensical ones of respected Mother Goose have been
fitted up with divers meanings, until ])ungent political satires have
been discovered in some of them. Therefore I take it for granted
that Air. Learned had a deep meaning in view in his tale of the
five little mushrooms that turned out to be toad-stools eventually,
and I am a loss to decide whether he wished to warn children of
the difficulty of discriminating between the edible fungus par
excellence, and its congeners; or wished to inculcate the lesson

TOAD-STOOLS.

189

that " Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a
fall " ; or to moralize on the futility of human hopes, and the
deceptiveness of youthful expectations. I incline to the latter ; I
think he wished to say, (guardedly, of course), " My dear young
friends ! Don't imagine that you are going to turn out anything
very remarkable in after life, presidents, or premiers, or judges, or
savants in different branches, or merchant princes, or bloated
monopolists ; the chances are a hundred to one that after the fierce
sun of the strugf'f^ for life has had an opportunity of causing you
to "drv up," " jur beautiful little white mushrooms will turn out
to be shrivelled up toad-stools, after all.

Well ! and if they do, are we any the worse for having
indulged for a time in a pleasing illusion ? Are we not rather tlie
better ? Granted that the awakening is all the uu)re bitter for the
previous dreaming, what sp.ith tlie poet in his wonderful tribute
to the memory of his dead friend ?

" I hold it true, whiite'er befall ;

I feel it, when I sorrow most ;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."

And so the day-dreams of our childhood, castles in the air though
they were, to be shivered into fragments in the contact with actual
life, were a real pleasure, so long as they lasted, and, it may be,
helped to ennoble and invigorate the future manhood. There is a
great deal of comfort to be got out of blowing soap-bubbles; and it
is none the less, because the bubble soon breaks, and leaves nothing
but a little stain of soapy water that miglit represent a tear. The
child's philosophy is the true one. H(i does not desi)ise the bubble
because it burst ; and he immediately sets to work to bio another.
There are some of us that are children all our lives in tiiis respect,
and I don't think they are the least happy and contented of
mankind. I question whether they are the least useful.

However what Mr. Learned meant is, as the village folks say,

I i' 3

■na

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vMy

190

TOAD-STOOLS.

" neither here nor there," and I only mentioned him because the
sight of what api)eared to be a " ti-uly truly " mushroom greeted
mo to-day as I v/as raml>ling about in the clearing, and reminded
me of his rhymes. A mushroom in a clearing is an incredible
fungus. I don't go so far as to say that it is an impossible one,
but there are many things which may be conceded as possible and
of which the actual existence is, nevertheless, rejected as increuible.
This was one of them. There are, indeed, certain infallible tests
for deciding on the true inwardness of what pretends to be a
mushroom, and no one need have any doubt on the subject so far
as the tests go : the trouble is that you have to reckon with the
fallibility of the tester. The proofs are all right enough ; it is the
application of them that is apt to be wrong ; and the consequences
of a wrong application vary from considerable internal incon-
venience up to the qmilihcation for a lot in the cemetery. I
remember a case in point which was brougiit before my notice
when I was staying with a friend at Eawdon, a. little village at
that time, in Montcalm County, many years ago. One day, ray
friend called my attention to a strapping young fellow, six feet
three inches in his stockings, and I am afraid to say how many
inches across his shoulders, quick as a flash in all his movements,
and I think one of the most splendid specimens of muscular
manhood I have ever seen ; and I have seen a great many, for I
have been up in Megantic County where the descendants of the
antediluvian giants still live ; at least they would have been their
descendants, if the said giants had not all got drowned. Of whom
I then and there heard the following tale, which I have every
reason to believe a true one. Some year or so before, Dan, (that
was his name) having undergone the common lot of young men,
and fallen an easy prey to the bright eyes of a young girl who
lived a couple of miles out of the village, set out one evening k la
froggie, that is to say, a-wooing. It was a dark night, with barely
light enough to pick his way, and the road was a lonely one after
the village was left behind. A mile and a half out, it descends
down a moderately steep incline to a brook whose waters turned a
saw-mill a few yards above, and at the top of the incline stands,

(i'f I

TOAD-STOOLS.

191

or stood at that time, a particularly large elm tree with a
particularly large bc^e. As Dan approached this, two black animals
ran out from behinu it, and, thinking that tin y were the two dogs
of the brother of the young lady he was going to visit, he stooped
down to caress them. As he did so a tall form rushed out and
approached him in a menacing fashion, but without causing him
much apprehension, and he called out to the supposed owner of
the dogs, " It's no use, Jim ; you can't scare me ! " Dan was,
however, considerably scared the next minute, when he discovered
that " Jim " was a remarkaljly healthy she-bear, whose cubs he had
been taking liberties with without having been previously
introduced, and who was bent on taking liberties with him in
return. He was alone and unarmed ; the next house was half a
mile off, and it was no use shouting for aid ; so Dan faced the
music like a man. As Mrs. Bruin ap])roached to give him a
friendly hug, he shot out his right arm, caught her by the throat
and forced her back, holding her at arm's length despite of her
struggles and clawings, till she was choked. Then he let her fall
on the ground, and made the best of time to his friend's house
where he told his story to the inmates. Guns and a lantern were
soon in requisition, and the old farmer, his son, and Dan returned
to the scene of the late action, only to reenact the experience of
the lamented, but popular. Mother Hubbard :

" When they got there
The cup board was bare,"

or rather, it wasn't bare, for there was no bear there, and no
anticipated bear steaks. Mrs. Bruin had recovered from her faint
as speedily as other ladies do when tliere are no gentlemen round,
and departed with her family to regions where the social con-
venances are more ceremoniously observed. There was nothing
left but her tracks, and the lair behind the elm tree where she had
proposed to put her babies to bed for the niglit. I did not see the
tracks myself, for I only came a year alter the occurrence, but I

192

TOAD-3TO0L3.

i'l' ■

ill

saw Dan, and I saw the elm-tree, and the road, which was the
next best thing. Moreover, I have no reason to doubt the accuracy
of the tale, almost incredible as it may seem.

Now, a man that can hold a she-bear olf at arm's length, and
choke her into a state of temporary insensibility, is one that, it will
readily be allowed, is by no means deficient in courage and strength ;
yet I learned two years later that Dan had become a perfect
wreck, as weak and as nervous as any young girl ; and this change
was brought about by a relation of my friend, the toad-stool. In
one of his wanderings in the woods, Dan had found what he
thought looked like some very fine and large mushrooms, and
beingignorantof the fact that mushrooms never grow in the woods,
and very seldom in the clearings unless tliLy have gone into the
transition-state of slieep j)astures, he took them home, and had them
cooked. He not only did that, but since the whole family had a
taste of the soi-disant mushrooms, he made his father, mother,si3ters
and little brother very sick for a week, and all but succeeded in poi-
soning himself fatally. His youth, and magnificent constitution
pulled him through eventually, but only after a severe and protracted
illness, and when he was at last able to get about, his nerves and
strength were gone. I never heard whether he ever recovered them.

A toad-stool, (for after all, mushrooms are only edible toad-
stools) is not a thing to be treated with disrespect, if you are
thinking of eating him. There are some, I am told, which are
delicious if you venture on them, and it is a wonder that such an
abundant and tasty article of food should be so much neglected.
Remembering Dan, I don't participate in that wonder. We can't
all study botany, and if we could, it u-ould not help us much ; the
toad-stool is a fungus, [jer se, and totally independent of botanical
rules, when he is treated as an article de cuisine. He may be
very nice, but the culinary rules concerning him are capricious ;
one is harmless eaten raw ; another, if he is fried ; another, if he is
boiled ; a fourth, if you eat enough salt and pepper with him ; a
fifth, if you don't eat any ; but one and all will poison you if you
neglect the especial rule. They may not all kill you ; they vary
in deleterious effects, but, at the very best, an hour's cramp in the

T0AD-8T00LS.

stomach, and a dose of emetics is not a very alluring prospect to
contemplate. Muslirooms, and the substitutes for mushrooms, are
what the Scotch call '* Kittle cattle to shoe " for the inexperienced,
and the safest plan is to fight shy of them altogether, unless you
can buy them from the market gardener, or grocer, or some other
responsible person whom you can sue for damages if he happens
to kill you by mistake. At any rae, your hoirs can, if that is any
satisfaction. The only reliable fungus is tlie truftle, who is a
negro, lives underground, and las to be hunted by pigs, or dogs
trained for the purpose. But I never heard of his being a native
of Canada, and though ray pigs root about in the clearing when-
ever they can get in, they have never informed me of having come
across any truffles. I don't think they have.

There are no mushrooms, however, in the clearing, though
there is a toad-stool that marvellously resembles them when it is
young, even simulating the peculiar color of the tender flesh, and
only distinguishable from the mushroom by the difficulty of
peeling. It may be harmless, for anything I know, but I would
rather see somebody else dine of it first ; and I may say the same
thing with respect to that very appetizing looking sphere commonly
called the " puif ball," which I am told is delicious, cut into slices,
and fried in butter. I shouldn't wonder if it was — for some
people, but I have my doubts about it myself, remembering the old
saw that " What is one man's meat is another man's poison."
Probably it never struck you that there might be a deeper and
more literal meaning in this proverb than the one generally
assigned to it, and that it need not be taken as simply referring to
the likes and dislikes of different individuals. The word jjoison is
an indeterminate one, if I may use the expression. It means in
common parlance something that produces deleterious, if not fatal,
effects on the human system. Now it is very doubtful to me
whether there is anything on which we support life that does not
do this to a greater or lesser extent. We breathe poison ; we drink
poison ; and we eat poison. Very likely you will exclaim at this,
and as I am not engaged in writing a scientific treatise, I'm not
going to defend my position ; but, aUow me to point out to you
13

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TOAD-STOOLS.

that there is not a more invc.torato destroyer of all matter than
this same oxy^'cu without which you couhl not live an instant,
unci which compels you to look sharp after your nieals in order to
rejdace in your bodies that portion of tlu-m which il is incessantly
burniu}^ up. Death is the great nurse and noiirisher of life ; by
which r do not mean that all living beings are nourished at the
expense of tiie existence of others, but that those things which in
theiuselvtis are the invcterute enemies of life are com[telleil to
supjiort and maintain it ; a curiotis material foreshadowing of the
higher spiritual idea expressed in the words "Death is swallowed
up in victory." Our bodies avo as much nourished by poison as
was that of the legendary sorcerer's daughter whose kiss was fatal.
Now on the hypothesis that everything we eat and drink is
naturally a poison, deleterious or otherwise accortiing to the
anu)unt of it consumed, and, also, according to the constitutions of
the consumers, it is easily seen how I can assent to the statement
that some people can get a great deal of gastronomicid enjoyment
out of toad-stools, whilst I decline to make the'exi)eriment in my
own proi»er person, or to advise others to make it. Man should
always be ilistrustful of himself; that is, of the ililferent })arts that
go to make himselt up ; and of all these, there is not one to be
nuire suspicious of than the stomach. You can never be too
cautious t)f wh it you contido to its keeping, bj ^aus;3 you can never
be certain of what it is going to do with it. [ one; knew a boy who
had only oaten for supp;3r half-a-dt)zen ia;i)n3ut buikwh.iat pan-
cakes, (each the size of a dinner-plate, and jiroportionately thick),
who woke up at two a.m. to see the ghost of liis great-grandfather
sitting by his bed side, and preparing to extract the pancakes from
their depository with the ghost of a carving-knife. He was so
alarmed at the sight that he jumped out of betl, and ran to the
bottom of the hall stairs, where he seated himself, and where I
found him scantily arrayed, and shivering, (it was a morning in
January) when I came down at seyen o'clock. If it had not been
for the hall stove, he would have been frozen so hard that even
the knife of his lamented great-grandfather would have made no
impression on him. Perhaps he reckoned dimly on this.

Th^ Fl0Wci>3 of t\iz Clcapinff.

J wish to bo as truthful us original sin, and tho contemplation
of tho oxanipio set nie by my (\.'llo\v-mun, will allow mo to
be, and therefore I may at once confess lliat the clearing is not a
pretty thing to look at. I look upon it an a tViend, it is true ; but
what's the use of having a fri(Mul if you may not candidly acknow-
ledge and bewail his little failings when you are in conlidential
intercourse with other people ? " So-and-so is a very gO(;d fellow,
but 1 must allow that he is a Utile hasty at tiuKJS ; " " Maiule is a
sweet girl, and she would be positively lovely, but then, jioor
thing, she has no tasto in dress." We don't tell So-and-so, or
Maude, of these drawbacks to their perfection : we tell our friends,
and we say how sorry we are that there should be these " spots iu
the sun ;" but then. ..etc., etc. So I am willing to confess that the
clearing is not pretty to look at ; and that the more readily,
because any one who has seen it knows it for himself without my
telling him. In its earlier stages it is suggestive of snakes, and
bears, and babes in the wood ; later on it has an untidy, frowsy
look ; and still later on it seems a desolate waste. My own
peculiar clearing that I am talking about has arrived at this "last
stage ; it is not inviting ; and most people would hesitate to
believe that it is really a garden of Eden, a garden in perpetual
blossom from early spring before the snows have all gone away to
swell the brooks and rivers, and carry off the country bridges, till
after the frosts have nipped the phlox and asters before the house

door, and the great Virginia creeper that mantles above it has
turned a dusky red,

" Oh, yes ! wild flowers ! " Well ! why should you look down

on a flower because it does not grow in a garden ? When it does

try to do so, poor thing, you pull it up and call it a weed. You

have got an idea in your head that your own are better because

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THE FLOWERS OF THE CLEAllING.

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tliuy are lavj^or, and more "perf(?ct ;" married tlowurs, so to speak,
that is to say, double instead of singJL'. Vou may bu ri;,'lit.
Man is large in liis views; he lovos size, and he likes eoniplexity
rather than simplicity ; the only instance in wliich I havi; known
him to deviate I'rom this, is when lie has been invited to partake
of hash in a boarding house : then he prefers a k-g of mutton. It is
not a iiealthy taste that leads us to set made dishes above plain
ones, and i)lum-i)udding abovo apple pie ; and it is not a healthy
taste that induces us to have a low opinion of Nature as compared
with Art. 1 am not saying, mind, that made dislies, and plum-
pudding and art, are not good things ; but I think the other tilings
are also worthy of respectful, and even loving, consideration —
especially ajjple-pie, when it is well matlc And as for size, man
is a very small animal compared with the earth on which he wulks •
still snudler viewed in relation to the planetary system ; and an
utterly insigniticant atom when you get beyond that. He 'aw
good reason not to " despise the day of small things," being so
small himself. What does Victor Hugo call him ? " An ant,
cursing God i'rom the top of a blade of gr.iss " ? He is not very
far wrong ; but he is not complimentary to the ant, which, though
conceited enough, as I well know, is not half so conceited as man,
and which has never seemed to me at all dissatisfied with his
condition in life, as man, too generally, is.

The wild flowers have a beauty all their own, and a subtle
essence of loveliness which we search for in vain in their civilized
sisters. I think there is nothing more exquisitely delicate than
the buds of the wild rose that blooms in the English hedge rows ;
the tender ])ink blush is only equalled by that which you see
sometimes in the interior of sea-shells. We don't have them iu
Canada, but we have the -dittle speedwell with its pretty blue
flowers, and another more " deeply, beautifully blue " plant, which
I don't know the name of — to my own satisfaction at least. I am
told it is the Blue-eyed grass, a plant of the Iris family and
described as being rather common in wet meadows amouijst the
grass, which so far corresponds with the one 1 am talking about,
but Sir James LeMoine, in " Maple leaves," says that " it has an

THE FLOWERS OF THE CLEARINO.

197

umbel of very pretty hluo flowers which open and wither in a day,
succeeding each other fur some time in tlie same umbel," which
my plant certainly has not. It lias one star of vivid blue springing
from the middlt! of the lance -shapi.Ml leaf. That's not a very
scientific description ; but, jx-rliaps it will be thu easier understood.
There is no blue in the garden flowers that in richness and
brilliancy of colour surjuisses, or even fijUiils these two that I have
mentioned, as there is no white so pure as that of the bloodroot, or
so rich as that of the wiutl llower, the anemoiit; that haunts
tJanadian woods. Xu douljt, the garden flowers are very hand-
some ; they ure the bu.iety belles of the floral world, but in a
clearing they W(juld be aa much out of })lace as our violets, may-
flowers, and ])uttercups would be im h garden. Chacun o son
godt ; n-hich 1 one ..e;ird a bov U'auslate " Every one has got the
gout ;" for my part, 1 adu a'e the garden flowers, and 1 love the
wild Oiies. That is, v, lieu they are in their proper places, the
meadows and the, marshes, the clearings and the wuods. When
they are adopted into civilized haunt'^, and begin to undergo the
process of evolution, my interest in them ceaseri.

Experiments of this sort have been often tried, and generally
resulted disastrously ; possibly, owing to the want of skill in the
exj)erimenters. The usual result has been that the transplanted
ones have obstinately refused to be transplant <^d, and died off;
just in the same manner that a wild bird will die, if caught and
caged. There are some plants, however, that you can't kill,
however much you may want to do it ; and the best thing you
can do is to keep them as far as possible off your premises. The
Marguerite, or ox-eyed daisy, is one of these, and a curious tale
was once told me of the fatal results that attended an effort to
settle this really pretty flower in a garden. Many years ago, I
was passing along the Craig's Road from the station of that name
pn the line of the Grand Trunk up to Leeds, and I noticed with
some astonishment, for the sight was new to me then, that the hay
fields looked more like snow fields from the number of daisies that
were growing in them. I was told that, a few years previously,

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THE FLOWERS OF THE CLEARING.

the plant was unknown ; but that a young lady who had gone on
a visit had seen it blooming elsewhere, and fancying it would
make a pretty addition to her garden, brought home a few roots
and planted them in it. From this centio of operation Madame
Marguerite had worked her way, and at the time that I was there
had colonized and possessed every farm for miles round. Once in
a while she shows herself in my clearing, and when she does, is
instantly rooted up and burned. The American alien law is
strictly enforced in our floral world.

We want no interlopers ; we have flowers enough of our own,
though you have to search carefully before you find them ; not
because there are few of them, but because they are, with the
exception of the buttercup, modest ab^ retiring, and reluctant to
obtrude themselves onthe notice of the public. At the far end of
the clearing the woods keep up a sort of connection by supplying
us with the anemone, May flowers, and an oijoasional trillium ;
at the other end the cultivated fields supply us with buckwheat,
thistles, and the burdock, for which last we are not particularly
grateful ; and we ourselveg possess the violets, white, blue and
yellov ; the dog violet, wild oats, strawberry, and partridge berry.
" Nut very much to boast of," you say. Well ! that depends. If
you took an interest in them, watched for the earliest appearance
of each as it came into bloom, and hunted for the last survivor ; if
you could say with almost absolutely certainty " that fallen tree
will shelter the first white violets ; and that other one, the first
blue ones ; the earliest ripe strawberries will be found on that
mound, and the latest strawberry bloom on that," you would
perhaps think differently. Men tiilk of the intrinsic value of
things ; the intrinsic value of anything is that which each individual
assigns to it for himself. The little toy-horse that runs on wheels
is as precious to the child as the animal with a long pedigree and
a record is to the man. The politician does not attach more
importance to the premiership, or the lawyer to a seat on the bench,
than he did long ago to the stocking which he hung up for Santa
Glaus to fill.

THE FLOWERS OF THE CLEARING.

199

" For not to desire or admire, if a man could but learn it, were more
Than to walk all day, like the Sultan of old, in a garden of spice."

Thus Tennyson sings in Maud ; btit the philosoi)hy is not that of
the poet himself, but of the rnorbid man whom he represents as
speaking — and being so, is a false one. Vet, if a man could learn
neither to desire nor admire, it would doubtless comluce more to
his peace of mind than the possession of great wealth and luxury,
and power. But a man cannot learn this ; he cannot refrain from
admiring something or other, and to admire implies desire. And
if he could do these things there is scarcely a conceivable state of
more utter wretchedness than that in which the eyes are closed to
all excellence, of whatever sort it may be, and view the outside
world with the passionless gaze of the sphinx looking out over the
dreary waste of the Egyptian sands. It is well that man should
admire, and in so doing desire; ay I and that both admiration and
longing should ever attach themselves to higher aiid higher thmgs,
and things more and more unattainable ; that in this respect there
should be a spirit of unrest in him which ever impels him onward,
as " his own thought " drove Sir Bedivere, "like a goad." It is
well, too, that man should not content himself with small things
and those that are easily attainable : it is well, also, tliat he should
recognize that these are the sources from which alone he can draw
the purer and best part of his enjoyment of life.

And, therefore, if in my lau ''ition of the wild flowers of the
clearing as com])ared with their cultivated sisters of the garden,
of the child a rocking-horse as compared with the racer, of the
Christmas ."cocking as compared with the direction of a people or
the administration of the law, I have seemed to decry the higher
and nobler things for the elevation of the smaller and ignoble, I
have not succeeded in conveying to you my real meaning, which I
faintly hinted at when I said that man had good reason not to
"despise the day of small things." The most really precious
things are the most common ; those from which pleasure is most
easily obtained are, at the same time, most easily attainable. Light

200

THE FLOWERS OF THE CLEARINO.

and air, the society of our friends, the colors and perfume of the
flowers, the beauty of the starry skies, these, and a hundi'ed other
things, are in the power of the poor as well as the rich ; can be
understood by the least intell: ^ent, and felt by the most apathetic :
all that is required is a loving L irt, and, thank God, there is no
heart incapable of love. If there were such a thing, it would be
that of a devil.

There is nothing so coarse that love cannot beautify ; nothing
so low and common that it cannot ennoble ; more than this ; like
the quality of mercy, which is but one form of it, love beautifies
both the giver and the receiver. Nor is it to natural objects that
this {lione api)lies, but to our dealings with each other, and our
estimates of human souls. He is the wisest and happiest man
who can search out patiently for good in even the most unpro-
mising subjects ; he is also the most successful, for the good is
there for him tc find. Not without deep meaning did the Master
call all the works of His creation good, nor does His word perish,
or change with time. The ore of the gold is there, though it lie
deep under superimposed rock, and be covered over with earth
and vegetable refuse ; there, for each one of us to dig out.

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Th^ striped Ones.

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^ HE Striped one is a name which, if I rocollect right. Rudyard
*^ Kipling bestows on the great cat of the Indian jungles : we
have got two varieties of them here, of " Striped ones " I mean,
not of cats, big or little, which generally affect the barn yard and
house. One variety is to the manor born, and lives under ground
in snug family mansions excavated beneath the stump roots, and
is known to zoologists as Tamias Striatus, alias the ground squirrel,
alias the chipmunk ; the other, 1 am liappy to say is not a native ;
I don't know where he resides when he is at liome, and I am not
anxious to know, either. He visits the clearing during the summer
season, and stands in the same relation to it as tlie summer yirl
does to the seaside ; both frequent their respective resorts for the
purpose of preying on the unwary ; and both have airs and graces
peculiarly their own. " Native airs and native graces " do well
enough for us in the clearing ; and we do not tolerate perfumes,
even in our wild flowers. Now mephitis mephitica always carries
a scent bottle with him, and he is very liberal in the bestowal of
its contents if you come too near him. Mephitis mephitica is the
zoological name for the other striped one that may be seen very
early in the morning, and very late in the evening in summer at
the edge of the clearing nearest the bush ; as for ids common or
vulgar name I decline giving it, it is so very vulgar. I d(jn't
mind saying "Chipmunk," but when it comes to dropping the
" Chip," and substituting " sk," for the " m," why, I really can't
do it. In the observations I have to make concerninst the
gentleman, we will call him, if you please. Mephitis, or for the
sake of brevity, Meph.

I never had the pleasure -^f a tiger's acquaintance, and thus,
not knowing him intimately, can only judge from hearsay, but lam
led to believe that he is a great deal more honest and truthful an

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animal than Meph. A tiger does not take you in with false
pretences ; wlien you see him, you want to run away from him. If
you can't run away from him fast enough, and consequently get
caught and eaten, that is not the tiger's fault ; it is your own. You
can run away from Meph fast enough, and he is equally willing to
accelerate his speed in a contrary direction, but here the villainous
deceit of the animal comes in, and brings strangers to him to grief.
He is to all appearance a very innocent gentleman, in a lovely fur
coat with beautiful black and white stripes, and such a tail ! It is
as long as his body, and so broad and bushy that he can cover
himself with it, and use it as an umbrella in case of a shower ; but
when he does put it up, the shower doesn't come from the clouds,
by any means. To those who do not know him by sad experience,
Meph seems so sweet and guileless that, instead of wanting to run
away from him, they want to catch and pet him. If you were
to come suddenly on a tiger in an Indian jungle, and were to
attempt to pet him, the chances are you would only do it once ; the
same remark may be made in the case of any one attempting to
interview Meph. They don't try it again. Not long after I came
to reside at Slab City, I was out walking one evening with a couple
of young ladies, the daughters of my host, when suddenly we
perceived a youthful scion of the house of Meph standing in the road
about thirty yards before us, and looking enquiringly in our direction.
There were two simultaneous feminine cries of admiration, " Oil '
what a dear little cat ! " and the couple started off enthusiastically
in chase, bent on capturing and fondling it. I followed more
soberly, not being at all awaro of the true state of the case, and
making a mental memorandum that the Canadian cat was a totally
new species to me, as I had never before seen a black and white
striped one with a large bushy tail that it carried over its back.
" The dear little cat " gazed for a moment at the advancing ladies ;
ran a little way ; halted ; ran a little way again ; then made up
its mind to stand the consequences. The ladies came within a few
paces of it, and then — Well ! I can't exactly say what happened
then. I know they suddenly lost all interest in the cat, but I
don't know where the cat went to. In fact when I got close to

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THE ST'XIPED ONES.

203

them, I had reason to believe that there had not been a cat there
at all ; only Me ph.

Not that Meph is a bad fellow in his way if he is not put
out : the trouble is that a very little thing puts him out, and then
everybody about gets put out too. My bedroom at that time
looked on a little narrow bit of garden £e})arated from the high road
that ran through the village by a low stone wall surmounted by
an iron fencing ; and during the summer time I used to have my
windows open all night. Soon after tlie incident I have related,
Meph, or one of Meph's brothers, sisters, or cousins, used to select
that stone wall just underneath my open window as a favorable
spot for astronomical studies, and come punctually to sit there
every night about eleven o'clock. Cats would occasionally try the
same place ; but they are not contemplative. When a cat gets on
a fence or a roof, he always wants to sing. Meph does not.
What he likes, is to be quiet and think. There can be no objection
to that, and would not have been on my part if Meph had not
been gifted with a singularly nervous temiieraraent. He starts at
the slightest noise, and becomes hysterical ; not noisily hysterical,
you understand ; he is not obtrusive ; but what I might term a
silent cry comes from him that is magnetic, and you sniff the air
and say " Poor dear Mejih ! What a sensitive creature that is."
At least, that's what you ought to say, if you have any Christian
feeling in you ; that, however, is not what I said ; but, after about
a week's nightly ministrations, I filled all my pockets with stones
before I went to bed, and when ^leph made his appearance I
stoned him off the wall ; and ran down stairs and stoned him up
the road to the turn ; and up the turn to the old school house ;
and from the old school house half way up the hill. Every now
and then, he would stop and pre] tare to make a remark as soon as
I got near enough, and then I would stop too, and lay in a fresh
supply of ammunition. So I engaged him at long range and
defeated him gloriously. " And he never came back any more."

It is not a general thing, however, that anybody having,
either of malice prepense or involuntarily, a difference of opinion
with Meph comes off .so jubilantly as I did on the above occasion.

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THE STRIPED ONES.

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I have had several little disputes with him myself, and have had
good reason to remember most of them, not altogether without a
lingering feeling of regi'et. He never attempted to what I may
call serenade me but once ; his conduct, however, in after years was
still more objectionable to me, and brought the Meph of that day
to a lamentable, and I think very uncomfortable end in consequence.
You see, Meph is cosmopolitan in his ideas : he does not confine
himself to the bush where lie was brought up, or to occasional
visits to the clearings where he hunts frogs and young birds and
such like small deer for his breakfast or sui)per, but he also comes
into the barn yard by night, and breaks the eighth commandment.
He is very fond of eggs, and also of chickens ; but these latter are
unattainable witliout serious trouble being raised by their mamma,
and so Meph is reduced to taking them, like oysters, in the shell.
If he can catcli an old hen sitting on a dozen or fifteen eggs, he is
sure of a good supper. He wait till it is very late, and the old
lady is fast asleep, and then he ' snuggles up to her," and gives
her a little shove. She thinks it is another old hen, and makes a
bit of room, not without a grumble, and a sleepy peck or two, and
the mischief is done. After a few minutes, Meph insinuates his
nose under the old lady, gets out the eggs and eats them; or
rather, some of them ; for, of course, such villainy cannot be
expected to be altogether overlooked, and by and by Biddy wakes
up to the perception of what is going on, and gives the alarm. I
was sitting up late one night when one of these disturbances
occurred, and rushing out to the hen-house, arrived just in time to
see Meph's tail disappearing u]) a sort of covered burrow formed
by some boxes and the wall. There was a long iron rod in the
place and a hoe, and I pinned Meph to the wall with the one, and
punched him in the ribs with the other, until I punched all the
breath out of him. I was very nearly in the same condition,
myself, by the time that I effected this, for the atmosphere in the
shed might possibly have been eaten, but it was a deal too tliick
to be taken into the lungs. That night I had scarcely been back
in my study five minutes, when all my household woke up and
began to cough and sneeze as if they were laboring under a violent

THE STRIPED ONES.

205

attack of la grippo, and presently a voice from up stairs called out
" Philosopher ! Philosopher ! Fm sure Moph has got into the
kitchen. Don't you smell him ? " " Meph, my dear," I replied,
" is, I regret to say, at this moment lying an unconsidered cor[.3«
in the hen-house ; ' none so poor as do him reverence,' and no
one to ' kiss him for his mother ';" and then 1 exj)lained.
" Well ! " said the voice as soon as it had got through a fresh tit of
sneezing, " of uU the old — wait ! i'm going to throw you down
a complete cliange of everything, and you'll go out into the porch
this minute and put it on. Afterwards you may go and bury
what you've taken oil', and don't you come back to the house for half
an hour," Heigh — ho ! Long before 1 heard the last of that night's
work I was willing, nay 1 anxious, to change places with poor dear
Meph. Still I there were compensations : if yoi: never get the fat
of this world without the lean, you also never get the lean without
a streak of fat. The hoe handle with which I punched Meph was
of great service to me for years after. I used to lay it for two or
three days at a time amongst my early cabbages, or tomatoes, or
wherever I though it was needed at the moment. The plants
used to think that there was a top dressing of guano just put on,
and the vigorous way in which they would grow astonished every-
body who was not in the secret. " I really don't see how it is,"
they would say, " tliat your plants look so healthy and vigorous.
Your soil must be much better than mine." And then I used to
smile gently, and think tenderly of poor ^leph.

Tamias Striatus is no relation of Meph, who belongs to the
weasel tribe, while Tammy belongs to the shade-tail, or squirrel
tribe. He is an energetic, busy little fellow, and I'm always glad
to see him, which is more than I can truthfully say of Meph. A
triile peppery ; at times, I fancy, a little given to unnecessary fixult-
finding, as your energetic fellows generally are, for I hear him
scolding away at a great rate sometimes, when there is really no
reason for it that I can discover. He generally looks as if he were
suffering from the malady known as " the mumps," or else an
excessively bad toothache, owing to his habit of packing away a
large quantity of eatables in pouches inside his cheeks. I have

■ H',

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206

THE STRIPED ONES.

I
m

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W:\

ill

known boys do the same sort of thing at oyster suppers, so-called,
and bring home a vast amount of cakes and candies in their trouser's
pockets in addition to what they had laid in by way ol supper.
Tammy's pockets are inside his cheeks, and very funny he looks
when the buckwheat is ripe, and he has made a successful raid on
it. Sometimes I see him when he has only got half through, aud
looks one-sided about the head, and then I am tempted to forget
what's the matter, and shout out " Try a linseed poultice. Tammy."
But this is very rarely the case ; more often, he has got both sides
of his head swollen almost to burstint;.

He is a great friend of mine, and therefore I would not for a
moment hove you think hiui greedy. Tammy is simply doing
what it is thought to be the duty of a uuin to do, that is laying up
a sullicieucy for his m.iintenance wlien he can't work any longer.
He is carrying that buckwheat, or those nuts, or whatever else it
may be, to a snug little burrow of his where he expects to pass the
winter, and where lie is laying up Christinas and New Year's
dinners for himself aul Mrs. Tamiuy. If I remember my Greek
right, thougli it is so long since I learned it that it would be no
wonder if I had forgotten it, he gets the first part of his learned
name from this propensity, tamias signifying steward, or house
provider ; his second name being Latin, and signifying striped —
" the striped house-provider," alias chipmunk. "Si non e vero, e
bene trovato; " anyway, that's what he does ; and very tantalizing
it must be to carry home a lot of good things in your mouth, and
have Bloomah take them out and store them in the pantry, telling
you to look sharp and bring in another load before supper. But I
suppose he takes the precaution to make a good square meal
before he sets to serious business. I know I should in his place.

Hi;

Ro)5ei>t of Lincoln.

iji'i

' i

H'l

(ROBERT of Lincoln, called affectioaatelyBob-o* link, sometimes
-^J\^tak(;3 a look into the clearing — but that is because it is
next door to a meadow patch where he has hia summer residence,
and where Mrs. Robert is hatching out and bringing up a progeny
of Masters and Misses Lincoln. Mrs. Robert never favors ua with
the pleasure of her company ; she is too much engaged elsewhere,
but Bob will occasionally tumble in upon us out of tlie skies as he
is finishing some unusually rollicking song, and he always does it
as if he had intended to light on the fence and finish his tune there,
but had changed his mind all of a sudden because he was afraid
Mrs. Robert might see him. He's a wild dissipated bird, is Bob,
and whether he belongs to the family of liarks, as I am told he
does, or not, he's always up to larks, and ought to be ashamed of
himself. He never is. He does not care for public opinion in the
least, and is as supremely indifferent as to what his audience may
think as any prima donna. In fact, he is very like a prima donna
in some respects : he will stop in the middle of his song, and
pretend he is not well ; and when he does sing you can only hear
the notes, and can make nothing of the words, though I once knew
a man who said he could, and on being pressed to state them
produced the following : gorgaly worgaly ; swiggle-waggle ; wiggle-
waggle, wiggle-waggle ; splitter-splatter, splutter-splitter ; zip, zip ;
chee, chee, chee ; sloom, sloom ! " But you can't make any sense
out of that. This is what Steele says : " The grotesque, though
charming song of the Bobolink is a curious medley of jingling,
incomprehensible notes, uttered with a volubility and earnestness
that borders on the ludicrous ; but when the listener is just
beginning to be enraptured, the music ceases as suddenly as if an
organ bellows had burst." It is just at these times that he comes
tumbling down amongst us on our side of the fence, and after

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ROBERT OF LINCOLN.

J: II'

ji h\

Nil' ' '
1 '

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looking round to see that none of us are watching him, makes a
little run under it, and so, under cover of the grass gets quietly
homo, and persuades Mrs. Itobertthat he had only gone a little way
otV because he thought ho saw a nice juicy caterpillar that he was
sure she would like.

For Hobert and his wife, when they come to Canada, confine
tlitiiiiselves almost entirely, if not quite, to an insect diet ; which
is probalily the reason why they have such good times, and are
heartily welcomed, instead of being molested, " Way down south
in Dixie," they have a dilferent reputation, and a different name,
being termed the Rice-eaters, or rice birds, because there they give
uj) animal food, and take to grain, becoming the p^sts of the wheat
fields in spring, and the rice plantations in autumn. Partly on
awjuunt of their misdoings, and partly because in consequence,
they become as fat as butter, and a very great delicacy for the
table, they lead very precarious lives, and come to the conclusion
that tlie rnited States is a very unfit place to bring young people
up in, so they migrate to Canada for that purpose, and instantly
become moral, and cease to break the eighth commandment. I
snp])ose that there must be something in the air of the Dominion
that conduces to moral and law abiding habits, and something in
the air of the United States that has the very opposite effect ; for
it is a curious fact that however blameless a life Robert has led
during his summer vacation, directly he begins to go south on the
approach of cold weather, he suffers a relapse into bad habits, and
by the time he gets as far a? Pennsylvania is an utterly reprobate
and abandoned marauder, who gets lynched accordingly.

" It takes all sorts of people to make up the world," says the
old saw, and one of the sorts is an animal that goes by the name
of vegetarian. His i)rincipal doctrine is that flesh, if not injurious
to the human body is, at any rate, not necessary to its proper
maintenance. I know papers that furnish medical advice to their
subscribers, gratis ; a very proper proceeding, considering the nature
of the advice, which mainly consist in an injunction to refrain from
meat, and adhere strictly to a vegetable and farinaceous diet. The
prescription is like a patent medicine, and applicable to all cases.

ROBERT OF LINCOLN.

209

If you are sufloring from Cntmdian cliolorft, eat jioiTulge ami abstain
from moat ; if you aro just tlio ruvursu, abstain from meat and eat
porridge : if you are dyspeptic, a steady adherence to an oatmeal
diet, and as steady an avoidance of llesli will set you all right,
especially if you swallow a tumbler full of boiling water before
meals ; if your appetite is abnormally ravenous, you can cure
yourself by steadily avoiding Uesh, and adhering to u farinaceous
diet, and tiie cure will be more rapid if you preface each meal by
taking a good drink from the spout of a boiling kettle. Tliere is
no evil under the sun that cannot be cun-d in this way, except,
perhaps that which is caustjd by the guillotine, and that is only
irremediable bjcause, when the head is cut off, there is no possibility
of eating porridge and cornstarch.

" Wiiat has all this got to do with the Bob-o' link ? " Wait a
bit, and I'll tell you. Vegetarianism is fre(iuently defended on
the ground that it was universally practised by man before the
deluge, when the average timeof human life was much longer than
it is now, and that the ijermission to eat flesh, which was given
after that event, marked the commencement of an earlier mortality,
and the ultimate fixing of the span of the average man's existence
at seventy years. Hence it is argued that if man had stuck to his
potatoes and porritlgo, and eschewed canvas-backed ducks and
oysters on the half shell, he would still be only just approaching
maturity after he had numbiired five centuries, and would have
been a baby when he was a hundred years old, and going to school
when he was two hundred. If you come to look into the matter
closely, the prospect of spending a hundred years in the cradle at
home, and in tlie perambulator abroad, is not an alluring one, and
the further prospect of a couple of hundred years more at school is
perfectly maddening; but I suppose we should become accustomed
to it in time ; and 1 may concede at once that a strictly vegetable
diet is shown to have been eminently conducive to longevity. It
does not follow that it is desirable. However good an influence it
may have on the body, it has a very bid one on the morals, ami I
have only to adduce as a proof of this the fact that the world which
14

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210

ROBERT OF LINCOLN.

i ■

was drowned for its excessive wicktMliiess was a vegetarian, and not
a carnivorous world. You usked nio just now what Robert of
Lincoln had to do with uU this, and I am ready t(j answer you. llu
is a living corroboration of what 1 have just said. When he eats
wheat and rice, tor of course lie can't get jxirridge and starcii, li«
becomes greedy aJidathief; he is trapped, and shot, and eaten
himself : when he comes to Canada and devours insects, he is a
respectable householder, and the father of a family. You may
dejtond upon it that one of the nuxin essentials of a virtuous life is
a good 8Uj)ply of beef-steak, and legs of mutton ; and one of the
greatest jn'ovocatives to a vicious one is the want of them. The
principle is one that is acted upon V>y government, perhajjs
unconsciously; it feeds its criminal classes, when it catches them,
on the food most congenial to them ; bread and water gruel; but
it nourishes its Jack Tars on salt beef and pork : even the shij)
biscuits, I am told, are often full of weevils.

" Robert of Lincoln," says Bryant in his charming little poem
on our friend,

" Roberto! Lincoln is m. *'" '''•"ct-.

Wearing -. ori'^iit black wedclii.i< coat ;
Wliite are liis shoulders and white liis crest.
Hear him call in his merry note.

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife.

Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
Passing at homo a patient life.

Broods in the grass while her husband sings."

I never could get a very distinct idea of Bob's dress myself, though
I once brought up a whole family of young Lincolns, but I have
no doubt Bryant accurately descrilies it. The contrast between
him and his wife, Mrs. Bob, is very striking, and is common to a
great many birds, and insects, the male being by far the most
brilliant and ornate. In birds the distinction has been accounted
for by the protection afforded by her quieter colours to the female
when brooding on her nest, but I have some doubts as to whether

." I'

ROBERT OF LINCOLN.

211

[ have
3tween
n to a
most
)unted
Ifernale
Ihether

this bo really tho reason, fur it must bo reinemberoJ that the male
bird li to do his sluro of tho sitliny; us wuU as tho foiualo — Mrs.
Bird tiikod g0(jd carj of that. Shj proviilj.s tho oapitul fur tho linn
in tho sha[)o of eggs, but tlio hinl).iu 1 lias U) liolp in ihj c.irryiiig
on of tho bu.sinoss, as woll as in tho constniolioii and furnishing uf
tho sioro. Tho lady allows no shiil<iiig, and that is why Master
Bob, when ho has been a little mure riotous than usu.il, and hud
stayed out singing " Wo won't go home till morning " till h« has
e.\oeedod his time, cuts his song short al)ruj)tly, and drops down on
our side of the fence, intending to sneak home through the grass
quietly. I once had a little canary who came to mu one day as I
was sitting on the verandah sand-iiai)cring a wooden paper knife,
perched on the knife, and said in what aiij>ears to be the universal
bird language, " cheep." 1 called to uiy wife, and she brought out
a large breeding cage which a morning or two before had contained
a couple of birds, but which contained them no longer, thanks to
our cat. This she set on the Uoor of tho vcrandaii, and sprinkled
a few seeds at the bottom of it, " Dot," as I afterwards called him,
watching hor very closely from tlie blade of the knife wliich I was
holding all the time, and when she withdrew, Hying down and
taking possession of it at once. 1 never could find his owner,
though I made enquiries all through the village; ; but ho had
evidently been a great pet, and as such he had generally the run of
the sitting room, his cage being regarded by him merely in the
light of a bedroom. He breakfasted, dined, and supjjod w ith us,
sampling the loaf and cakes, and making occasional raids on the
sugar bowl, but his great delight was to get on the top of a'l old
fashioned rockin<4 ciiair in wdiich I used to sit, and sidle alojii'from
one end to the other to get a hemi)aeed from between my linger and
thumb. I provided him with a wufe, and in due lime a snug little
.nest was built in Dot's bedroom, five little eggs were laid, and Dot
and Dorothy settled down to the serious business of life. Dot,
however, soon found the proceeding monotonous, not to say stupid,
and he never wanted to come back and take his turn at silting.
The programme that followed was very amusing. When Dot's
time came, Dorothy would call to him from the nest, and instead

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212

ROBEUT OF LINCOLN.

of answering like a good little bird, he would lly down on the llooi,
and make for the door of an adjoiniilg bedruoni. Then Dorothy
would call again; this time, more iMnphatically; and Dot, lutviiig
got behind the door, would answer tuintly, as if he were a long-
way oil'. Finally Dorothy would leave her uust to hunt u|) the
delinquent, and when .'die found him, would try and drive him up
to Ids duty, scolding vigorously all tin- wliilc. Jt took (j^uite a
little time to do this, for, as I knew by my own i'X)n.'rieuce, it was
very hard to make Dot go wlierc he didn't want to go, but when
she .succeeded. Dot went to stay, and don't you fovgi'l it. There
was no mor.^ coming olf thai nest for iiim lill it was time to go to
bed: lu^ would jilead veiy earnestly for Just a minute to stretch
his wings, but Dorothy wa.j relentless, and u.'\er went ut'ar the
nest aiiain till she went for the niulit. Poor Dot! 1 woidd sjive
him a heinpseed now and then, when Dorothy wasn't hjoking,
which comforted him a little, and he would try to wink as if it was
all a joke — but it was a very mournful wink.

So, you see, 1 am able to say from my om'u personal observa-
tion that the gentleman has to take equal turns with the lady
during the day time in the business of hatching, and thus the
protection theory to account for the sober colours of the latter can
scarcely hold good. It is diilicult to assign any reason that is
perfectly satisfactory: ])0ssibly the possession oi song, and the
more brilliant plumage of the male are intended to m.irk the vast
superiority of that sex over the feminine one. TIm'o are a great
many truths diudy hinted a.t in the works of creation, and this i.s
one of them. Polly says that it is no such thing, and that the
true reason is that the masculine sex is so ileticient in good
qualities that a little extraneous adornment is necessary to make
it at all tolerable. That is a new view of the eas", and is well
worth careful consideration, without winch 1 am not jjrepared,
wholly to reject it. If the j)riuci[tle is true, and is to be held good
with the lower animals, it will also hold good with man, and will
explain why it is that brilliant apparel belongs, by conimon consent,
to the " Woman's Kingdom," and why it is that she does the most,
not only of the singing, but of the talking too. . .

Violets.

Wlieii l)ecclien buds begin to swoU

Ami woods the blue-bird's warble know.

The yellow violet's modest bell

Peejis from the last ^ oar's leaves below.

III! ,|

Of !iU hrr train, the hands of spring

Fiist pl.uit thoe in the wurery mould,

And T hi'vo seen tiiee blos.soiinng

liesidv: the snow bank's edges cold.

■•i.n

/fN "The wild flowers of Canada" published by the Montreal
^ Sfar, from wliieli I take these lines, I find tliis assertion of
Bryant's criticized on the qroun I that tlie ■y ellow violet " blossoms
in April in the South, but further nordiward in May, long after
the last 'snow bank' has disa))peared." C'est selon ; thee are
violets in plenty, yellow, wliite, blue, and dog in the clearing, and
I have myself found tlie former, and, indeed, all of them in April,
and v/hilst there were plenty of patches of snow left. In fact, so
far as my experience goes, the violets are the earliest spring
flowers to blossom in ilie open; tlu; dog-tooth, which is not a
violet at all by tlie way, but belongs to the lily family, is much
later, and somewl^'rii al)out contem])oraneou with, ihe May-
flower. T think, however, that the difference Itetween my own
ex])erience and that of the critics of Mr. Bryant is easily exjilained,
and that while they are talking of the different flowers in ([uostion
as they put forth their buds on the outskirts of the; bush where
they have been snugly blanketed all winter by the dead leaves, I
am talking of them as they make their appearance in tlie clearing
beneath the sheltering sivles of fallen L)gs, or on the more or hiss
moss covered hillocks which mark the place of a decayed and
buried stump. In hunting up the earliest spring flowers I go to

BX:

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214

VIOLETS.

the clearing for the violets, and to the outskirts of the bush for the
Mayflower, and dog-tooth, and I generally find the first two or
three tlays before the last begin to open out. Which of the three
violets i.i first to be found depends a great deal on the season, and
on the place .vhere you look for them ; they make their appearance
about the same time, but I have a faint impression that the
yellow violet generally comes first ; at any rate, I recollect, having
very good reason for doing so, that in 1858 I gathered a few
yellow violets on the day before Easter Day, which in that year
fell on iVpril 4, and that these and a stray white one were the only
flowers 1 could find.

Howo.vcr, that is " neither here nor there," as the old women
say. I don't set up for an authority on Intany, or anything else,
and ann rather at a little, quiet, inlbr' chat with my reader,
than at scientific or any other discussions. " Then I had no
business to contradict other people." Well ! perhaps not ; but if
they don't mind it, as they probably won't, you need not trouble
yourself about that. " Itscienti non fit injuria," those who do not
read this book will not be offended ; and this class embraces every-
body deeply versed in scientific studies, botany among them.
What you have to see, my son, is that in the remarks I have just
been making I wished to impress upon you the fact that we have
got all the three colours of violets in our clearing. If you did not
understand that, you would not understand how I came to write
about them : now that you do, it is a matter of perfect indifference
whetlur there is any snow left when they begin to flower, or
whether there is not; whether they can be found in April, or are
undiscoverable till May. They are here, and that is quite enough.
I don't say this in a vain-glorious spirit : it is not so much to
boast of as you may think, though the poets have glorified the
violet, and affixed the ei)ithet of "modest" to it. Next to the
politician and newspaper man, who may be bracketed equal in the
class-list of consummate humbugs, is the poet; (I do a little in that
line myself, so I ought to know). " Modest " quotha ! I have
caught the blue violet absolutely winking out of the moss, or round
the corner of an old root, hundreds of times, and no modest flower

,(.,

VIOLETS.

216

does that. In fact it is not a flower at all, but simply the eye of
one of the old pagan divinities that haunted the woods, who got
himself into trouble on account of this very peculiarity of hiding,
and peeping out at you from unexpected places, making you jump
when you caught a glimpse of him. Ilis name was Pan; and to
this day the violet, when it gets into the gardens and obtains a
floral normal school certiKcate of first-class education, is called the
pansy ; Pan's eye, that is ; and not a corruption of pensee as
sentimental lady botanists make out. But here is the truth, the
whole truth, and a great deal more than the truth, for you in verse,
being

•r'i

THE LEGEND OF THE PANSY.

In olden times, as the poets sing,

When there dwelt a spirit in every thing.

When every stick and stone
And every breeze, and every beam,
And every valley, and every stream,

Had at least one soul of its own,

■!ii!

« «

A spirit there was that haunted the bowers,

(See Tennyson), hid in the leaves and the flowers,

But his home was not merely there :
He dwelt wherever water ran,
Or breezes blew, and they called him Pan,

For the rascal vt 3 everywhere.

♦ *

A strange and antic spirit was he,
Full of what we call diablerie,

And all sorts of quips and quirks ;
With a leering face and a shaggy coat.
And logs like the hinder legs of a goat.

And beard as long as a Turk's,

i ■

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;

216

VIOLETS.

But the strangest thing was his eyes. Their hue
Was the sweetest teiiderest violet- blue,

Full of doi'p thought, and weird.
Who ever saw them, his pulsts stirred
Like the passionati) heart of a handled bird,

Loving, although it feared.

« »

The laborer, wending his homeward way
ThriiU'^h the scented fields »t the close of day

Would start with a sudden fear.
Silence his whisthng, and turn to fly
With Parthiui glances, he knew nor. why.

But was sure that Pan was near.

And the youth that, deep in some forest glade,
Wooed with sift whispers some lialf-coy maid,

VV«»uld drown her shriek with hi.s sliout
As thi^y saw a stealthy tieuior and li'.;.it
In the velvet mosses beneath tlieir feet,

And the eye of Pan peep out.

« »

if ■^:^

I) '

Nay, more ! when the bitHe was all but won.
The victors themselves would turn and run

As fast as the vanquished ran.
Seized with a sudden and vague alarm.
For sheltered beneath s)'iie dead man's arm

Were the violet eyes of Pan.

« *

But the children, hunting the flowers thnt hide
In sunny nooks by the burnio's side.

Would utter a joyous cry.
And rush to secure the elusive prize
With treintdous hands and rounded eyes,

Whenever the rogue was nigh.

liJ!

VIOLETS.

Till one day, Jove, who h^d set out to court
In a manner no decent iannoital ouyht,

Stopped sh(n-t in his nauijihty ways.
For there, (it gave e%'en hiui a shock).
He spied, halMiidden beliind » mck,

That mischievous, twinkling gnze.

*
«

He shonk for a second or two — no more —
Then, vexed at, his terror, Jupiter swore

As only that heathen can.
And the twinkling sudde(dy changed to a stare,
For the angry god had fixed it there,

The beautiful eye of Pan.

217

If '*

Alas, poor Pan ! Has not Milton said
That a voice cried out " g^eat Pan is dead " ?

As indeed he was from that hour.
When the catolier of others hiin-elf got caught,
And naught was left of the wood-god — naught
tut his eye in a woodland tlower.

But the pansy knoweth the name it bore
In the good o'd-fashioiied Mge.s no more.

And, in our elegant way,
The fl'iwer that ty|iities hidden thouglit,
And sndilen fancies that conui unsoiiglit,

We have ro-baptizeJ ''pensde."

Ill

* *

I cling to the old name. Mothinks I see
In the uncouth lieathon fantvsy

A meaning more deep and rare ;
A hint of Lov^' with his searching eyes
Love, masking itself under many a guise,

The Pan that is everywhere ;

li't

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S ! !

218

VIOLETS.

The mischievous Love with his groundless fears ;
The frolicsome Love with his quips and jeers,

The torment of man and maid ;
Love st-iying the blow of the upraised arm ;
L'lve, of whose witchery and charm.

The children are never afraid.

* *

Then, turning my eyes to the heavens above,
I think of the Everything, truest Love,

That cxme upon Earth to die ;
I think of His tender humility,
And the violet carries my fancies free

Beyond the violet sky.

"^^

if!

I'd be cf Buttciiny.'

(T) EING a dry sunny spot, the clearinf,', at the proper season of
-J^J the year, abounds in butterilies. Tlie cabbage and tortoise-
shell pay us visits from the grass lields and ploughed lands at one
end, and the swallow-tail, emperor, aud other larger and more
gorgeous butterfles drop in at the other when they are tired of
sailing about the branches of the overhanging maples. These are
our visitors ; summer-girls of the butterliy world that come from
the aristocratic mansions of the foreit, and common tramps from
the cultivated lands ; but besides these we have butterflies of our
own, and quite as pretty as any that come to see us. There is one
before me just now ; a multitudinous butterfly, if I may be allowed
to call him so ; a jolly little yellow fellow who is immensely social,
and is never seen alone if he can help it. Directly one settles
down he is joined by another, and then by a third, until finally
there is collected a whole congregation, which resembles a human
one in this that it seems to settle itself down to a quiet sleep. I
should not be at all surprised to learn that this was really a
butterfly church meeting, and that one of them was preaching a
sermon, though, of course, I can't hear what he says, and can only
guess that he occasionally grows emphatic by seeing a pair of yellow
wings lazily opening and closing, here anl there, as if their owners
were just half awake. Bye and bye, the address will be finished,
and then the whole assembly will rise, not to disperse and go
about the several business of the individual members, but to settle
down somewhere else in a comfortable nook, and enjoy another
sermon and sleep. My little friends do not, however, always
affect dry places, and dry discourses ; sometimes I come upon
them gathered together on the sand which the brook heaped up
when it -wis a brook, that is to say, when the melting snows of
the spring furnished it with a supply of water, and which is even

■'.'[ '.

I !

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220

"I'd be a BUTTERrLY."

f-iii;

now (lamp, as if it wore pevsjiirin!:^. Here, tlioy are muoh more
lively and vosllcss ; the wini,' quivei'in<^s are more fivquent and
guioral; the stay is shorter in one si'iis'', and lotiLfLU' in another,
for thr)ngh the niectin;,' rises, it settles down again immediately in
almost thj same spot, lilce a committer of the Legislature reporting
progress and asking leave to sit again.

There was a song, very ]->opular in my youthful days, and,
perhaps, not quite forgotten even now, which expressed a desire
for the l(jt of a buttei'lly, not, apparently, because it was, or
seemed to be, a joyous life, free from all care and anxiety, but
because it ended abruptly.

" Id bo a buttorfly, born in a bower, . .

\Vli;it tliouyh you tell me oiioh ^,iy little rover
F.ulos iiH the leaves that iu .lutiiuiu decay i
Belter, far better, wlien suimiu'r i> over,
To die when ;ill fair things are fading away.

1 ;i

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Well ! I don't know about being " born in a bower." Some
butterllics are, no doubt, but the geaeral L)t falls almost anywhere
else; wherever, in fact the cater])illar lias been taken suddenly ill,
and strung himself up just iu time to await his " transmogrification."
But, granting the bovrcr, I don't see, myself, what ]»artieular
advantage there is being "born" in on >, an 1 I should deciiledly
object to the manner of the " birlh." How wouM you like to be
packed in a tight-fitting oilskin ease with your arms close to your
sides, Imng up by a stout rope, head dAvnwurds, and left to kick
and struggle till ynu burst open your covering and were able to
crawd out at where your shoulders had been ? If a butterfly seems
to have an easy time ai'ter he is "born," he deserves it, for he had
a miuht y hard time of it liefore. As a matter of fact, no butterfly
ever is born, ho is simiily an evolved caterj)illar. The latter is
born, but not the former.

We have most of us heard, tliough it is probable that com-
paratively few of us know, tlui okl ])agan legend of Cupid and
Psyche. The English of Psyche is "the soul," and her emblem

"I'd 1!E a liUTTERFLY."

221

was the Initterlly. If lliu okl yiils, (I iiican tlio young girls of tlio
old tiiur), wl'ic a.s gorgeous as ihosu ol' Uu'. prcseul gviiuralion, iiiul
as volulile and hard to catcli, one can easily sue why tlu' anciiMits
should r(.'[iM,'SiMit I'syclii', cousidLrvnl a-i .i nu'r.' woman, l)y a
bulterlly : there may have been, also, some ha/.y idea of a
conneetiou between lli; two from th.j habit of entoniolngists of
sticking pins into bulterilies, and the haliit of women of slicking
them all over themselves; one which has considerably startled
ingenuous young nieu b.;fore now when the jiins hai)iii'ned to be
in the region of the waist; but i'^ is not so easy at lirst sight to
perc'ive tlie [jropiicty of cudilematizing the human sold b

fra-'-ile a tiiin.

as a

biitterlly, however lovidy it may be.

S(jmc-

times wonder if the fan.'y was not an inspiration, h)r if it be true,
us 1 have soniewdiere read, that the [lerl'ijct Itutterlly exists in the
body of the eaterpUlar from which it s[)rings, no mure lilt

enibleiu of the soul couUl well be imauiuin

I; th.! 1;

iiv.i

ni'i

itself

representing the body concealing the soul wiihin, which passes
through the death like trance of the (du'vs.dis into its linal and
perfect state. Hence, as i said just now, there is no birth of a
butterlly ; it is a resurrection.

" Fanciful !" Perlia])s so : and yet tlie world gets a great deal
more out of [/ure f

iine

lan we are willing to believe, and

"castles in tlie air" have their own particular usefulness, if m'g
only know how to set about extracting it ; wdiether we know, or
not, in fact. After a!l, it is ni;)t wnrth debating much about
whetlier a butterfly is " born in a hnv/er," or resurrected on the
inside of a cabbag(! leaf. iSpecukitioni conci^rning the pku'e and
manner of the nativity (»f a bulterlly are, like other s].eeulations,
very interesting, even if of doubtful proiit, but the sidiil fact of its
existence is independent of all these. You recollect the story of
Dan Mur[)hy, and tlie widow- .Mulrooney's pig? Perhaps you
never heard it though. L)au had eoniideil to the ]»riest under the
seal of confession that the disappearaece of the widow's pig which
she was lamenting was due to Ids ardent attachment to that
animal, which was by this time converted by him into hams and
flitches of bacon, and the reverend gentleman was in vain exhorting

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222

"I'd be a butterfly."

him to make restitution. " What will yo do, Dan," he enquired
" when the widow and the [lig ri.so up against ye in judgment, and
ye're usked, ' Dan Murphy ! where's tlie widow Muliooney's pig ^'
Whiit will ye say, Dan i " The culprit was rather taken ubaek at
the prospect thus held out, and moved uneasily from one foot to
the other, till a happy thougiit struck him. " Did yer riverence
say that the pig w'ould be there, too ? " ho eu(|uired. " Yes, Dan ! "
was the answer, " the pig wdl be there to bear witness against you
unless you make reslituliun." "Thin, yer riverence, I'll &ay,
' Widdy Mulrooney, there's yer pig !' " Whenever, and wherever
it was born, there's the buLtertly.

" Better, far better, when summer is over, .
To die when iiU fair ihiiigs mo fading away,"

.if:

Well, now ! I don't hold to that philosoph} , I don't believe that
it is l)elter fur num, wonmn, or child, to have all the good things of
this life, and none of its evils, than to take the fat with the lean,
and to have the itnier peace that conies from the patient endurance
of pains and griefs nobly and courageously borne with. It is a
selHsh thought, and a coward's sliiiking of the common lot of man :
a distemi)ered view of life which often leads to the madness of
suicide. For to most of iis who live long enough there come times
when to our thinking all fair things are fading away, and there is
no longer joy, or prospect of joy, in life. Wlmt then ? Are we
to hold that, when these occasions come to ns, it Mould be better
for us to die, and have done witii it, as the prophet Jonah held,
when the gourd had withered and there was no shelter for Inm
from the glare of the sun and the bufl'eting of the east wind ? I
trow not : for after the storm came the calm, and clear shining
after rain : other fair things blossomed out to take the place of
those that had faded away ; other interests rose from the graves of
the dead ones. '

And yet, as a matter of fact, we do, all of us, die when all
fair things are fading away, or, to put it more clearly and accurately,

««t'

ID BE A BUTTERFLY.

223

the fair things of life, be they few or niiiiiy, gorgeous or huinUe,
continue with us until its end. The pleiiaures of childhooii vuni.sh
as youth conies on ; the dreiuus of youtli give place to the aspira-
tions of niiinhood ; and these in turn are merged in the ([uietude
and rest of olii aije. And as there is no season of life that has not
its own distinctive enjoyments, so there is no life so utterly
desolate and miserable froni which no sort of happiness can be
extracted ; not even that of the scantily clad little waifs that
appease their hunger from the garbage picked out of the gutters of
city streets, or of the pallid seamstress toiling over shirts at
twenty-five cents a dozen. There are lives dreary and desolate
enough. Heaven knows ; and Heaven forgive us whose selfish-
ness and thoughtlessness helps to make them so ; but there is none
of unadulterated misery and despair. The gold-seeker washes
bucket after bucket of sand, content if he finds in each after his
hard toil only a few grains of tiie precious metal. His is the true
philosophy of life that disregards the great mass of worthless
matter for the little good that it holds concealed in it. Wo
should all of us be much happier and better if we would oidy
persistently look out for the good in the persons and things
around us, and in the various happenings that befall ourselves.
I don't mean to say that we should ignore the evil, the ])ain,
the sorrow, or the loss : there is not much danger of that ; but that
we should not dwell upon them. It is a hard thing to do, but it
may be done, if we will only try earnestly enough, and the results
will be well worth all the trouble taken.

Now, if I were disposed to be fault finding, I should say that
the butterfly, regarded from a feminine point of view, was a
decidedly objectionable insect. It looks pretty enough, I grant,
but it must be very dirty. You never saw a butterfly washing
itself, and I don't believe it ever does. Flies do : they spit on
their feet and then rub it all over their backs. It's not what you
might call a refined kind of washing, but it is the best they can
do, and they ought to be respected for it, just as his constituents
respect a member of the Legislature for making a long speech
about nothing. But a butterfly does not even spit on its feet, and

III

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224

"I'd be a nUTTERFLY."

wliL'ii you considov lliat the. colors on it.s \vin,i,'s tliat coint! ofi' on
your hands when you cati-h it aro nally u mass of fine fcullicrs,
and furtlujr n-llucl on ihu utuount of dust that thu insect ilica
thruu;;h in tht; cours'! of oven oud day, you will easily sou that it
must be very dirty indeed. 1 will venturi'. to say, however, that
nobody entertains the C()nct'i)tiMn of a dirty butterlly ; any more
than a society bijlle witii })aiut and i)owder on her face is usually
reifariled as a very dirty u'irl. Ami it is as wi.dl that it should be
so in both cases, otherwise what jdeasurc should M'e take, as we
undoubtinlly do, in lookiujj; at either. If we were janned down to
the solid f.icts, we should have to confess that th(;y were both dirty
thinj,rs ; but what of that ? They are pretty : and in admirin;^
th(!in, to the extent of wantiiifj to catch them and have them for
our "ownest own," we are actinij; on the jirinciple that I have been
trying to impress upon you of always locjking at the bright side of
thincfs.

Waritsd,— fl DonHcy.

OXCUSE me ! I know exactly what you are goinj? to say, so
^ _jr-. you needn't put youi'delf to any trouble. You are about
to I'euMrk tliiit you dou'c see what i)articuliir need there is of a
do:i!<ey in the cluaring .since I am there myself. It is the old tale
of the uu()hil().si)phic min I, hasty as usual, and jum|iiii;^ rashly at
coiijlusiou.s bjc.iuse it either will not, or cannot, view thiuj^'s in
m M'o ih.ui on !, or at the most two liglits. There are donkeys, —
an I donkeys : thj intelligent ass like myself, and the stupid ass
likj — wjU! souieboly you an I I know. Then there is tlu two-
leg^ id a^s, an J thj four-legged ass ; and it is one of these latter
thic is w.m.ed in the cle.iring ; so long as you and 1 are in it, it is
well supplied with the two-legged ones, as you very kindly
prepared to observe before I anticipated you. But the asinnie
biped cum Jt e.it thistles, and the quadruped can ; so as, I am suj-ry
to say, there are several of these prickly children of Nature in llie
cleiring, and about h.ilf-a-doz.;n of them in unpleasant proximity
to my stump, I want an ass to eat them up. I can't do it; and
you can't; the only resource is to endeavour to get somebody or
sometliiug that can.

I have a groat respect for a thistle, whether it b3 the common
orCmiia one; the Sjotch variety I do not remember to have
seen in a wild state in Cinidi, tlio igh 1 hive two or three timjs
nut with them in gardjus, where they were much jietted, and
regirded as sabred plants. NjeJless to say that the owaei's of the
Slid girdens Were iS.;oLch either by virtue of birth, or virtue of
descent. ^Sentimiut plays curijus tricks sometiniis. Hal these
gantlemen been in Scotland aul found thiitles growing in thjir
gar lens thjre, th-iy would have called them misty weeds, and have
taken prompt measures to get rid of them, but. being in Canada,
15

'«!■••

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226

WANTED. — A DONKEY.

ill 'M

^. I

nothing is too good for these same thistles, and they are shown to
the visitor with a pride scarcely inferior to that with which a
young mother shows her first born baby. I think we, who seem
to need all our energies and all our thoughts lor the present in this
ever increasing struggle of life, who can barely find time to give
even a few hours of the week to the momentous issues of the
future, have but little idea of how much we unconsciously live in
the past; not the past of our lives, but in that of those who
preceded us, so that we are in very truth " heir of all the ages."
The thistle represents to the Scotchman the long and brilliant roll
of warriors and statesmen, sages and poets, the equals of any that
the world can show, and the less showy, thougli not less noble,
examples of that national characteristic which placed Duty and
Honour at the head of all earthly things, and which clave to it
amid the storms of persecution, the presence of poverty, and the
loneliness of adventure in foreign lands. All this is his heritage
from his forefathers, and the thistle is the sign of it. It is not the
most imposing, or the most valuable things of the world that touch
the deepest chords in our heart, or even can touch them : it is the
unconsidered trifles of life ; a bit of ribbon, or a strand of hair, more
than a bracelet or a diamond ring ; the tone of a chance word, or
the glance of an eye, that are more tenderly remembered afterwards
than greater and more practical testimonies of good will. These
may win gratitude ; the former win love.

Not being a Scotchman myself, the Scotch thistle does not
affect me ; and besides, as I said, I very seldom see one. It is
the English, or common thistle that I have the most veneration
for, and this sentiment was instilled into me by my father
when I was a boy. He didn't waste any words about it either,
but did it in that English practical way which is very effective,
but peculiarly irritating to those who are exposed to it against
their will. He armed me with a long pole at the end of which
was fixed a sort of broad sharp chisel some two inches wide,
and sent me out into a field which was over run with the beasts
to stub thistles in the summer holidays, when I had otlier views
of amusement. My instructions were to drive my stabbing spear

WANTED, — A. DONKEY.

227

into the earth at the root of each individual thistle iu that field,
cut it off underground, and tlien pull it up and throw it away :
and I was also informed, as an inducement to thoroughness on my
part, that if I omitted any they would be sure to seed, and the
work would all have to be done over again next summer vacation.
I believe my respected parent quite endorsed the maxim that

" Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do, '

and was resolved to get ahead of Satan so far as I was concerned
by keeping me fully employed when I came home for the holidays ;
considering that I had quite enough to do at school to keep me out
of mischef, and was only in danger of falling when under the
parental roof-tree. Between the two of them, my father and
headmaster, I had as much trouble to go wrong as most boys
have to go right, which was very depressing to the spirits, and
stubbing thistles in a hot July sun, when I wanted to go riding or
fishing, was not calculated to elevate them. But this was not the
worst of it. Unenticing as the occupation of thistle-stubbing might
be, there was at any rate the satisfaction of taking vengeance on
the unconscious authors of my discomfort, but when it came to
laying hold of the tops and pulling them up, the vengeance was
'.1'c.nsferred to the other side of the account, and I pricked my
fi'igors dreadfully. They tingle even now at the remembrance,
and I have ever since retained the highest respect for a thistle and
give, it as wide a berth as I conveniently can. It would have
bee 1 well for me had I been philosopher enough then to have seen
and profited by the lei^:^ that was there ready to be learned.
The rooting up of thistles is u necessary operation, whether they
grow in the ground or in the heart, and it is also a painful one •
but it is batter than letting them grow up and run to seed, if
that is done, the fi"<lfl, whether it be a literal or a metaphorical
one, is a pasturage only fit for asses.

biice I bad su">: experience in managing English thistles,

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228

WANTED. — A DONKESr.

perhaps you wonder why I do not avail myself of it at present,
instead of wanting to call in the assistance of a quadrupedal
donkey. The reason is that the Canada thistle is an utterly
irrepressible bit of vegetation, and like the Canadian lord of the
soil, obstinately refuses to give in. Xuthiug short of subsoil
ploughing for live square yards around him will have any eifect
on a Canadian thistle, and even then, if you don't pick him out of
the ground and burn him, the chances are a hundred to one that
you have only succeeded in subdividing him into numberless
other thistles. " Hoots extensively creeping " is the description
given of him in botanical treatises, and y(ju can't stub him uj) as
you would an innocent English one. Now, a donkey will nibble
him oif just as fast as he grows up, and it becomes simply a trial
of which will get tired first ; the donkey of eating, .or the tliistle of
growing, I'll back the quadruped against the vegetable every
time. There are a great many uses to which a donkey may be
put, and thistle-eating is one of them.

Strictly speaking, a donkey is not a donkey at all. I fancy
that we should all of us be very mucli astonished to find out how
many things there are in this world that are " not at all what they
are cracked up to be," when we come to examine into them closely.
Even a ghost, which in virtue of its belonging to another world
might be supposed to be exempt from the rules which govern
material objects in this one, always turns out to be something else
when it is investigated. You recollect the story of the countryman
returning home late one night from the villan-e tavern and
astounding his wife wdth the declaration that, as he had passed by
the church-yard, lie had been frightened nearly to death by seeing
a ghost in it. " What was the ghost like, John ? " she enquired.
" It was like a great big ass," he replied. " Get thee to bed, thou
fool ! " was the disappointed commentary ; " it was only thy own
shadow thou saw'st." There was a great general principle at the
bottom of the remark, and ghosts are not the only things which
are simply the shadows of our own imaginations. It is this that
makes actual life one continued series of disappointments, in which
we are perpetually clutching after objects that when attained do not

WANTED. — A DONKEY.

229

yield us the pleasure and satisfaction that we anticipated from
th'jni. Wealth, honors, powers, luxury and ease, on the possession
of wliich we have set our hearts, and for which we have toiled so
earnestly and painfully, and have sacrificed so much, what are
they when gained, hut incentives lo fresh desires and fresh
struggles, or apples of Sodom wh i-^c taste is bitter, and whose
contents, dust ? " I might be expected to say this," you think, and
imagine that it is the part of a philosoi)hical mind to despise and
belittle " the pomps and vanities " as tlie catechism has it, " of this
wicked world." Xo ! it is no true philosophy that despises, or
affects to despise, anything ; no true philosophy that refuses to
recognize the good that is in everything created or ordained, even
though it be latent, and hid in a superincumbent mass of evil.
All these things that I have mentioned are good things in them-
selves, but they fail to satisfy us because we have not pictured
them to ourselves as what tlu^y really are, but as something
different whicli we expect them to be ; they are not ghosts, but the
shadows of ourselves.

The donkey is, strictly speaking, not a donkey at all ; he is a
horse: "equus asinus; " an ass of a horse. I should not at all
wonder if he were an evolution of a balky horse, for a more perfect
ass than such a quadruped it is ditficult to conceive. Did you
ever happen to be driving one with a deep ditch on either side of
the road? And did you ever find him take advantage of the
situation to balk and refuse to proceed ? If you did, you will
know that any application of the whip results in the backing of
the waggon towards the nearest ditch ; and if you get out and try
to lead the brute along, the only change in the situation is that
the probabilities are that, if you persist, you will go into the ditch
on the top of the horse, instead of having him (i-^l on the top of
you. Lucky for you, if this takes i)lace on a by-road where
there is not much danger of interruption, aiul you can jjossess
your soul in i)atience, seated in the waggon till such time as it
pleases your gallant steed to move on. In the nu^anwhile you can
relieve your feelings by calling him an ass, with as many oppro-
brious adjectives tacked on to the noun as you can recollect, and

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WANTED, — A DONKEY.

your conscience will allow you to use ; but you need not make
any mistake about the real thing. It is not the horse that is an
ass, but yourself. At any rate, that was the conclusion I came to
when I got served as I have just describad. After I had succeeded
in getting half the circumference of the hind wheels over the brink
of the ditch, I concluded that discretion was the better part of
valour, and, desisting from any further efforts, contented myself
with thinking disrespectful things of my enemy for fully ten
minutes. At the expiration of that time I remarked aloud,
•' Philo30])her ! you look like a confounded ass," The horse turned
his head, nodded, sneezed, and went on. It was as if he had said
" I thought you would see things in their proper light, if you only
had time to consider the matter."

t i

SI' -t' .

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ThQ Druin-IYlajoi*.

(^AP-RAP! Rap, rap, rap! R.ip ! The sound breaks with a
^ X^^^startling ett'ect upon the ear in the clearing, when a grass-
hojiper oi»tvvo arc the only living things en evidence, and the air
is full of the drowsy droning of unseen insects in the grass. In
the woods you know you may expect to hear it any minute, but
in the clearing it is a different thing, and makes you give a little
laalf-jump when you first hear it. However, it proceeds from a
very innocent source, our drum-major, called by country folks the
sap-sucker, and mentioned by poets as

;

1. !

" The woodpecker tapping the hollow elm-tree."

There are no elm-trees, hollow or otherwise for him to tap here, but he
is an accommodating bird, and doesn't turn up his beak because we
are not quite up to his re'iuirements in high art. For want of a
tree he will take a stump — that is, provided there are plenty of
grubs in it — ^just as a country constituency will take anybody that
comes, along for its representative, doctor, lawyer, merchant, even
an old resident farmer who has to get his campaign speeches
written out for him that he may learn them by heart, provided
that he has plenty of money to spend on his election. The
constituents regard the candidates much as the woodpecker looks
on trees and stumps, the grubbier they are, the better. And,
indeed, this is a weakness that we all have in more matters than
politics : we value persons and things, not so much for what they
have in them, but for what we ourselves can get out of them. I
have taken politics as an illustration of the reason why the wood-
pecker will sometimes desert the trees of the forest for the stumps
of the clearing, because the principle is, perhaps, more easily

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THE DRUM-MAJOR.

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discerned here than in other matters, and because it explains why
our Legislatures are, if anything, a little more stupid than other
assemblages, and have got our laws into such a muddle that even
the lawyers themselves don't understand them, and they require
to be revised and codified afresh about as often as it is necessary
to take a census. Given the candidate that the constituency
believes, or is lei to believe, that it can get most out of, and he
will be returned though his name were Dogberry, and that of his
opponent, Solomon.

The gentleman who so noisily announced his presence,
previously unsuspected, a little while ago, is tlie commonest of all
tiio wooii[)ecUer tribe, and the plainest, though he is really a
handsome bird if you examine him closely. In the far corner of
th-i cle iring, where there is a bit of swamjiy ground, you will
sometimes come ajross several of the golden-winged wo()d[»eGkers,
larger, and more gorgeous, but these do not haunt the stumjjs at
any lime, and are seldom, if ever, met with beyond their little bit
of mirsh. Tliey seem to me to bj gregirious. whereas the drum-
mijor only hunts in couples, and not always that. He is a bird
with the bump of c lutiousn^^ss strongly developed, and unless you
come upon him suddenly, and he is so interested in his bu.ainess
as not to notice your approach for the moment, you won't get much
chance of seeing him at work. But he is not what 1 should call a
timid bird. If he flies off directly he perceives you, you may
understand that it is because he has ne.irly finished where 'he is,
and does not think thattliere is any prospect of advantage sufficient
to make it worth his while to stay. This, indee.l, is what gencr.dly
takes place in the clearing, where there is but a limited field of
operation on each stump, anl where the stump itself has been
exploited again and again, and the lirvre are few and far between.
On the standing trees in the bsish the case is different, and theon'y
sign that he gives of his bsing aware of your presence is the
extreme care with which he keeps the trunk of the tree between
you and him. That done, the rap-rapj)ing will go on as loudly
and merrily as ever, till, all of a sudden, it will stop, and you think
he has gone off to parts unknown. Then, iu another minute or

TW! DRUM-MAJdR.

233

two, it will begin again, apparently in the same tree. During the
interval, if you have been watching carefully, you would have seen
a little head with a dab of red on it pop suddenly round the trunk,
and a pair of little black eyes looking inquisitively at you. He
had just stopped work to have a peep at you and see what you
were doing, and having satisfied himself on that point, had resumed
operations with fresh vigour. It is his way of "going out to see a
man" between the acts ; and a very pretty and graceful little way it is.

So pretty and graceful that it is impossible to feel ofYonded at
what seems to imply a ciinsiderablj distrust on his part of your
peaceful intentions; anl, indjed, I am sometimes in doubc whether
to set his behaviour down to timidity, or to a certain shy play-
fuln..'ss which you may observe showing itself in much the same
manner in young cluldren, especially girls. I often think when I
see my friend, the drum-major, doing this, tliat he is wanting to
have a little game at hide and .seek, but, having arrived at bird ?»
estate, and being probably a househol ler, with a wife and family,
he thinks it necessary to combine business with pkmsure, and
attend to the grub on hand, or, rather, in the tree, at the same time
that he has a little fun with me. I dare say you have noticed a
squirrel doing much the same sort of thing. I mean, keeping
himself persistently out of view on the other side of the trunk of a
tree, except when he occasionally runs round to have a squint at
you. Now, whatever may be said of the woodpecker, this similar
behaviour on the part of the squirrel cannot be fairly put down to
the score of cautiousness. Skug, as we used to call him at school,
is as bold as brass, ani his mor.il cheek is as much developed as
his physical tail. If he is disposed to regard you as an unprin-
cipled and bloodthirsty villain, he will not stand upon any
ceremony in giving you his candid opinion of you, and the only
precaution he will take will be to get up on the highest brinoh, as
far as possible out of the reach of stick or stone, and deliver his
remarks from that coign of vantage. Afraid of you ? Not a bit of
it ! In however bad a light he may regard you, he knows better
than to be afraid of a great clumsy animal that can't climb trees

234

THE DRUM-MAJOR.

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;i, >

i;ii

and jump down from tliem at need. So when, instead of sitting
in high places and swearing at you, he condescends to keep quiet
and peep round the tree at you, you may feel flattered, and consider
that he thinks you are not such a bad sort after all, an4 a person
whose acquaintance it might be worth cultivating. At any rate, I
like to fancy that it is so. I like to trace in such little things as
these, a faint vestige of the times when man and the brute creation
were on friendly and confiding terms, and when no wanton and
repeated slauglitcr on the one side had raised up an insuperable
distrust on the other. We call the animals that we have not
subjugated to our uses, and domesticated "wild," for they have
good reason to be so ; and yet wherever we can persuade them that
they have not anything to fear from us, nothing can be more
graceful or more touching than the affectionate confidence they
bestow on us. •

That the drum-major has his failings, I must confess. In the

first place he has an awfully long tongue. Where he puts it to

when it is not in use, I can't make out: a butterfly keeps his

coiled up in a sort of spiral, but I don't think the woodpecker does.

He must draw it back into his stomach, or crop, or whatever he

calls the receptacle for food inside him, and yet I should think

that that was calculated to interfere materially with his digestion.

Any way, he has a tongue as long as that of a village gossip, and

he uses it much for the same purpose, to wit, to destroy helpless

and unoffending creatures. If he could talk with it, he would be

an eligible candidate for membership in the association that meets

nightly at the village store and post office, or at the teafights of

the village matrons. Also, his tongue is barbed, and when once

he gets it into a victim any contortions and wrigglings that may

be made might just as well be dispensed with at once for all the

good they are ; a proposition that holds good with the subject of

gossip, whether it be in country and town. So far there is a

resemblance between the long-tongued feathered biped, and the

long-tongued featherless ones, but here the resemblance ceases, and

the difference begins, much to the advantage of the drum-major.

THE DRUM-MAJOR.

235

I don't mean in the matter of toes, of which he has only three,
while his human confreres have five, which is a decided advantaf»e
when we consider what pain and trouble corns are ; I am referrinjr
to his character. For the drum-major is a candid bird ; he does
not pretend that he impales the grubs and swallows them after-
wards ior any other reason than his own personal interest, and the
gratification of his own ])ersonal appetit'.^ whereas the gossip
will maintain that he, or slie, is actuated solely by a sense of duty,
and a concern for the morals and respectability of society, and so
far from deriving any enjoyment from it, is absolutely pained to
say anything at all.

■Vil

111'

11-

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The Fcriec3 of t^c ClcaiMng,

il ;5'

r 4

1^^^

\J II KX 1 sny "the fences of the clearing," I speak advisedly.
11' it luul been eii'inilar in sliiipe it wouM, of course, have
had only one ; not beinjf so, it has more. As a matter of fact, it
has three, and may be <,'eo<j;riiphieally deseribed as beitif^ bounded
on the nortii by the bu.sh ; on the east, by the meadow ; on the
west, by the ])otato field, and on the south, where it comes to a
point, l)y Nathan and Bloomah's lan<'. Tiius it is hemmed in on
three sides, and eaeh of tlie.se has a distinctive fence of its own.
That which scspar.ites it from the bush I have referred to before;
it is a fraud and an imi)osture, a weariness to the soul of man and
maid, and the lauj^hing' stock of cows and calves ; the potato, (vice
buckwheat) Held is separated from the clearing by a low wall
composed of all the stones ])icked up and jdoughed u]) in it, and
surmounted by old roots and dozy logs from the clearing itself,
while that which guards tlie meadow from bovine incursions is
couimonly known as a snake fence. It is a similar one to that
referred to by a gvuthnnan in his eloqnent and picture3(|ue descrip-
tion of the misfortune that befell him while makiug the best of
his way out of the roach of a bull that was ])hilanthropically
desirous of giving him a lift in the worhl. "The bull roared lii'ce
thunder," said he afterwards, "and I ran like lightning ; and getting

over a zig-zag fence, I split my br ]iants, as if Heaven and

Earth were coming together." I shouldn't wonder if he did. The
zig-zag fence is com})osed of rails and trunks of young trees,
generally hemlock or balsam, laid over one another at an oblique
angle, and kept from sei)arating and tumbling down by posts
driven into the ground on each side at the apex of tlio angle; and when
the top rail hai)pen3 to be a young tree, on which there are left
the projections of topped ofl' branches, getting over requires more
circumspection than a hurried flight will allow of. A young friend

THE Ff:NCES OF THE CLEARING.

237

of miuo once cainu to ;^riof on tliis very cloiiriiig fence that I am
tulkin;^ abuiit, owing to thid pocnluirity of it, l£c hud buen j)icking
raspbcriie.j at the udgi) near tliu birsh, iind t'oniing home iuid
varied his occupation by chiising and atoning the eosva, in which
pursuit ho was detected by JMooniah. Slie immediately assumed
the otfensive, and my young friend fcjund it advisable to change
his base, but unl'ortunately selected the wrong line of retreat, and
instead of making for the gate, which he could easily have passed
through, or the potato fence, over which he could have escaped
without scathe, directed his forcd march on the /ig-zag, and
scaled it with great celerity and success. On proceeding, however,
to evacuate his eomiuest, his rear guard became involved with a
sharp projecting s[)linter of the hemlock trunk which formed the
fence's tcte du pont, and overlooking this circumstance, or neglecting
in his hurry to extricate his rear guard from its entanglement, it
was pierced, and the wIkjIc corps tVarmic was involuntarily
compelled to pivot on it, in which coudilion it was surjirised and
captured by JUoonudi, and got its ears well culfcd. It was very
merciless on Bloouiah's part, for the spectacle of a small boy
suspended btitween Heaven and Earth by the seat ot his trousers
frojn a knot in the topmost rail of a snake fence might draw tears
from the eyes of a potato, but the feminine heart is hard towards
masculine urchins. When they get larger it is a different thing,
and then the bigger and wilder scamps they are, the more soft and
tender does the said heart grow to them. If it had been Nathan,
now, that had been caught that way ! But it's no use speculating
on any such thing : the cloth is not woven that would have held
Nathan up long enough.

The clearing fence is offensive and defensive. Its primary
uses are to keep the cattle out, an') ■ l:0 to keep them in ; that is,
out of the potatoes and hay grass, and in witli the ferns, thistles
and burdocks. Besides these, which are purely human devices,
it serves as a means of rapid transit to the si^uirrels and chipmunks
and its posts at the re-entering and salient angles serve as pulpits
to them from which to address the clearing population generally,
and me in particular. In the matter of simple transit, the two

;

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THE FENCES OK THE CLEAKINO.

little Ibllows have each their own method, ami, as it were, social
jtosiliori. The si[uirrel, who representa the ari.stocraciy by reason
ot his luiviiii,' liis resilience in a real live tree, takes the to[)iuost
rails to run aloii^', while the more plebeian ('hiiiuiunk who lives, at
the visry best, in the basement, but more generally in a hole at the
loot ol' an oltl slump, riinsalon«^ the lo' les, or, if he is of an

aspiring disponiioii, will even get as hi„.. as the middle rail, but
no higher. Hut this social distinction vanishes into thin air
directly they eateh a sight of me, who am only a member by
suH'erance of the clearing, and, apparently, a very objectionable one
at that. At these times, Mr. Sipiirrel or Chipm\mk, as the ease
may be, makes for the nearest upright post, ami sitting on t lie very
top of it will thence deliver an oration that for impassioned
ehi({uenee beats any fashionable clergyman that 1 ever heard, and
far surpasses in fury and invective any member of the opposition,
whether Liberal or Conservative. 1 should like to know what is
said on these occasions ; but no ! on second thought I wouldn't :
I can form a very tolerable idea, and for the rest, " Where
ignorance is bliss, 't is folly to be wise." n't stir up Camarina,"

said the heathen oracle in response to a certain enquiry. Camarina
was not the name of the emiuirer's wife, or his best girl, though
you might very naturally think so, but of a certain fountain in
(.Jreece whose waters were jdienomenally clear, and whose bottom
was jihenomenally muddy. The warning, or advice, is expressed
in the old adage " Let well enough alone :" if you see one of those
hornet's nests that look like coarse wrapping paper, don't poke
your linger in the hole at the bottom to see if it is finished inside ;
if anyl)ody should oiler you ten dollars for your Thomas cat just
about the time that the elections are coming oil", don't insist upon
knowing the causes for the sudden rise in the market value of cats,
and then you won't be called on to explain them to the judge in the
subsei|uent contested election trial ; if your wife is niore than
usually attentive to your comfort, and more than usually
affectionate, " take the good the gods provide you " in thankful
silence, remembering that the spring fashions are just in, and
content to keep the knowledge to yourself — if you can.

THE FENCES OF THE CLEA.UINO.

239

Thoro are things tliat it is vitally nncosaary, and othnrs that it
is fTfoatly ik'siiMl)l(( to know, but tlio muiilmr of tln^sn i.s liiiiileil,
and l)oy(iiul thoiii the loss a in.ui knows tlu) liaj)[iii'r ho is. That
is iho reasoi) wliy 1 niy.siilt', ami all jthilosmihcrs, an; hapi»y iiumi ;
we know very liLtlo nioie than the tact of our ij^noranco, ami that
knowludL,'"! is ulxnit as nuich as a man can convt'iiiuntly carry :
some men never attain to it all their lives, notwithstanding,' all the
efforts of their friinuKs and aciinaintances to enable them to do so.
If you do not absolutely know a thinj,' you are entitled to imagine
ju3t what you please about it, and what you iuiiijine is ])retty
certain to please you. Facts are hard thing's, ana v •.; break our
heads and our hearts in eominij into eontact with them ; castles in
the air are rosy-colored and soil, too ethereal you think for any
wise man to talk of living,' in thiun, and yet it is wonderful how
gieat a proportion of our liv(;s from the eradlt; to the i,'rave is
passed in them. Hope, Faith, Trust, Love, what are all these; but
castles in the air? No ! don't think that I am decryinLi; them. If
castles in the air are founil in the clouds, remember that the clouds
are real, and no figment of the im.jgiuation any more than are the
gorgeous hufs of purj)le, crimson, and gold with which their snowy
battlements are topped. However, 1 am wandering away from
my subject, and shall act like a man and a philosopher; that is to
say, I shall put into ])raetice the very opposite to what 1 have
been preaching. We all do that, and therefore, as my (y'amarina is
just at this moment sitting on the post op])osite me, and making a
tremendous racket, I am going to disturb him by throwing a stone
at him. He is off, and the vexed air is at peace again. Cm you
draw the lesson from that ? Tliere are times whin Gamarina oudit
to be disturbed ; it depends ujjon how you do it, and for what
reason.

Moreover, there is a lesson that (Jamarina hersi'lf — that is to
say, in this instance, the S(|uirrel who has been sitting on the
topmost ]ieak of the fence indulging in unwarrantable abuse of me, —
that Gamarina herself, I say, miiy learn : to wit, that fences were
not made to sit on. It is only very small people that can do it
with any ease to themselves, whether they take their seats with

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240

THE FENCES OF THE CLEARING.

both legs on one side, or sit straddle-wise. You never see a cow
sitting on a fence ; or a horse ; or even an ass ; it is only small
things like squirrels or birds. Similarly a boy, or a girl may
assume that position, and I have even caught Nathan doing it,
though not for any lengthened period. But Nathan has not yet
come to years of discretion; he wants to marry Bloomah ; and
Bloomah will sometimes sit on the fence, concerning whose
discretion, the same thing may be said; she doesn't want to marry
Nathan ; but wise people, like myself, do nothing of the sort ; we
recognize that a fence is intended for a dividing line, and is there-
fore too narrow to afford a sufficient base to sit on comfortably.
The position is also not a desirable one : it is just sufficiently elevated
above the common to incite those on the ground to throw stones
at its occupier, and it is not enough so to keep him out of danger
from the missiles. •

These remarks are applicable not merely to the small fry that
seat themselves on the literal, but also to the people that pose in a
similar nuinner on the metaphorical fence. There are plenty of
them that do so, but the most frequent, and peihaps most easily
observed case, is that of the politician, or newspaper editor. These
are continually getting on the fence, and therefrom proclaiming
their own independence and the servility of all the rest of the
world. The rest of the world,, very naturally, begins to throw
stones at them till they get off again, and dump themselves down
on one side or the other, according to which they find the most
convenient. It is a very great mistake to suppose that the mere
fact of sitting on a fence clianges a man, or that he is a whit the
more worthy of respect and confidence because his feet are, for the
moment, unclogged by the blue marl of the Conservative turnip
field, or the red clay of the Liberal brickyard : he is only debating
whether turnips or bricks will prove the more profitable invest-
ment, and in the meantime he is the mark for clods from both
fields until he comes down. Moreover, it is only the smaller, and
more stupid members of either class that sit on the fence ; the
prominent and intelligent members have no need to do it : they are
satisfied in their own minds as to the relative market values of

;ii

THE FENCES OF THE CLEARING.

241

turnips and bricks, and, if they have anything to do with the fence

at all they jump it.

I have taken my illustration out of the political world because
it is one that is open to everybody in this nineteenth century,
even the women being unable to keep out of it, but the principle
I am endeavoring to lay down holds good everywhere, and in every
state and condition of life, social, commeiciul, labouring, and moral.
The material fence represents the metaphorical one, the dividing
line between Honour and Dishonour, Right and Wrong, Life and
Di3ath, and all other opposites. It is narrow, and a seat on it is
uncomfortable to the sitter ; it is conspicuous, and exposes its
occupiers to attacks provoked by the prominence it gives ; and since
it is these two, it is untenable. Where questions of principle are
involved there is no such thing as a middle way, there is only a
dividing line, which, if a man straddles, is not productive of
advantage to him. You recollect the tale of the old Scotchman
who put half-a-crown in the collection-plate instead of a penny
and, instmtly discovering his mistake, wished to rectify it. On
the collector refusing to allow this he solaced himself with "VVeel !
weal ! I'll get credit for it up abune, Jamie." " Na ! na ' " was the
reply, acoompanied by an emphatic shake of the head ; " Ye'il juist
get credit for the bawbee ye intended to gie."

■(;

1 I

Thz Cr>eep2T>3.

^ HERE'S a big red- vested bully of a robin has just got hold of
^ an unwary worm by the head, and is trying to pull hini over
the door-step of liis own house, and then " run him in " for
vagrancy. The worm objt , as is very natural, and just at
this present moment a "tug ot war " is going on between the two,
as to the issue, of which most men would back the robin. He has
not got all the odds in his favor though : I expect Mrs. Worm is
holding on tight to Mr. Worm's tail, so that it is two to one, in
the first place ; and, in the second place, while Mrs. Worm can let
go for a brief space to get a better grip on her husband, Mr. Kobin
can't do anything of the sort, for, if he did, the worm of contention
would pop back into his hole like a flash of lightning. He is far
better off, in this respect, than one of his big cousins whom I once
saw acting as a vermicular championship medal between two water-
newts who had seized him, one at each end. The "joint commission"
plan worked very well at the commencement, as joint commissions
generally do, but, also as joint commissions generally do, when the
tinal settlement had to be reached, it didn't work at all. At first,
all went well, for the worm, being held at both ends, couldn't
wiggle and make his captors' jaws ache, so each proceeded to
swallow his part down with the greatest equanimity, until suddenly,
to the great surprise of both, a good hearty swallow apiece brought
their noses into violent contact. It was a very embarrassing, not
to say distressing, moment, and the more so because it never
occurred to either of them to bite off what he had in his mouth and
have done with it. In a physiological point of view, the situation
was extremely interesting. We have most of us heard of two
hearts beating as one, and have regarded the expression as a mere
poetic metaphor, but here were two stomachs digesting as one, with
a big lob-worm forming a bond of sympathy between them, and

THE CREEPERS.

243

converting their owners into reptilian Siamese Twins. I have
heard of somewhat similar instances occurring in which two
snakes have got hold of a squirrel, but in those the larger snake
arranged matters satisfactorily by swallowing the smaller one,
but here the newts were of about tlie same size, neither could
contain the other, so that solution of the difficulty was out of the
question. The only one that remained was for the larger one to pull
what had been swallowed by the other out of his stomach and
swallow it himself as he proceeded ; haul it in, as it were, hand
over hand ; and this was accordingly done. Mr. Eobin hasn't got
this resource ; he has only nipped his victim by the head, and all
he can do is to hop back a little bit every time Mr. and Mrs. Worm
" give "; if he opens his beak for a second the game is all up.
No ! it's not, what you suppose, a mere (juestion of time ; at any
rate, in this case. Mrs. Worm has evidently got a strong pre-
emption claim, and I fancy that the matter will reduce itself to a
compromise. I thought so. The strain upon Mr. Worm has been
too great and he has gone pop in the middle. Mr. Robin would
fall head over heels if he did not very promptly back himself up
with his tail, and Mr. Worm has disappeared in his hole ; minus
his head, it is true, but that makes no difference ; he can easily
grow another, and in the meantime he won't be subject to headaches,
or dyspepsia, for he can't eat, or curtain lectures, for he can't hear
till he gets another head. There is always some good or other to
be got out of our misfortunes, even when they are as great as that
of losing our heads : and the next time you lose yours, my son,
which will be the next time you get into a rage, let the remembrance
of this help you to the speedier cooling down. You may take an
example, too, from Mr. Worm, who, you may be very certain,
when he had parted with his upper end did not go home and abuse
his wife, and make things unpleasant for his family, generaUy
Come to think of it, he couldn't very well, there being nothing left
of him but his little tale of grief, but that need not detract from
the lesson I am giving you. You remember what the late Bill
Nye, (or was it Artemus Ward ?) said about the Father of his
country, " George Washington couldo't tell a lie ; I can — but

244

THE CREEPERS.

lit

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won't ?" Very well ! Say to yourself " Mr. Worm couldn't make
a row with his family when things went wrong with him outside ;
I can, but wont." We are all poor worms of earth, why should
we be above learning from an earth-worm ?

So the fierce contest, which threatened to involve issues no
less important than those of life and death, has ended, as such
contests most frequently do, in a compromise : it is only in minor
differences that a complete surrender taives place on one side or
the other; where important interests are at stake, and the strength
of the opposing parties is not too markedly une([ual, the ultimate
result must be a compromise. It is very necessary to see this
clearly, because it has an important bearing, not merely on our
own private disagreements, but also on the settlement of political
"live" questions, and of the too fret[ucnt fallings out between
Labour and Capital, In trifling matters, a disputant, whether man,
party, or combination, will yield, provided the opposition be strong
enough, rather than incur trouble, annoyance, and expense; but in
important matters there must either be a war of extinction or a
compromise. This being the case, the sooner a compromise is
effected the better, and the aim at the beginning of a dispute should
ba to make arrangements for its termination, and not for its
continuance. It may be noted, also, that the sooner a compromise
is effected the more it is to the advantage of the weaker party: if
Mr. Worm had been willing to settle matters at once when Mr.
liobin seized him by the scrufT of his nock the minute he put his
head out of the hole, he would only have bjen minus head and
shoulders ; as it was, he prolong(!d the argument until he was drawn
half way out and had to snap off at his waist, very nearly losing
his stomach into the bargain. Doubtless, Mr. Worm felt very sore
on the subject when the thing was all over, and he had leisure to
reflect on it ; and doubtless, Mr. liobin did not feel as well filled as
he had calculated on being, but that is an essential of a compromise.
Neither party feels satisfied, and vents his discontent more or less
opeidy. Unreasonable, perhaps, but natural. It is not what he
h IS got, but what he hasn't got, that is of ths most importance in
a man's eyes, although the actual value of the two may be really

THE CREEPERS.

245

reversed. It does not detract from the merits of a compromise to
have both sides <^ruiubhii>,' at it.

What with onu thing, and what with another, a worm has a
very hard time of it. If he mikes his appearance above ground
during the day, or gets up a little too early and comes out bijfore it
is dark, there is always some horrid bird looking out for him to
snap him up. If he comes out at night, (so far as the cle.iring is
concerned), there are the shrew-mice ready for him, and, I shrewdly
suspect, the held-mice also. If lie stays at home and reads the
paper, he is nevcjr certain that Mr. Mole won't suddenly burst into
his parlor and eat him up. Besides these, man calls him an "angle-
worm," as if he were created, like arlilicial Hies, expressly for
fishing purposes, and after digging him up, imi)ak!S him on a barbud
hook and jjroceedsto druwn him. It is not at all surprising under
these distressing social conditions, that he is of a retiring disposition,
and gen(!rally considered incapable of affection. That he really is
so I don't believe. 1 see no reason for concluding that he is an
exception to the general law, and has not the marital, paternal, and
social instincts which are more or less evident in the other members
of animal creation. Of course, he is not likely to be very
enthusiastic on the subject of singing birds, which are the class that
chiefly regard him as an article de, cuisine, and 1 don't su})pose he
would much care to have thein hung np in a cage in his ])arlor, if
it were big enough ; but with regard to man the case is dill'erent.
Certainly man treats him more cruelly than the birds do, for they
only swallow him alive as we do oysters, whilst man tortures him
before killing him ; but this consideration does not api)ear to have
much weight with the lower living creatures, as is shown by the
horses or dogs tha^ evince a deep attachment to their owners in
spite of cruel treatment, and yet I have never heard of a worm
being made a pet of. I have heard of tame fish, tame buttertlies,
tame spiders, even of tame snakes, but never of tame worms. I
recommend this to the serious attention of those engaged in
cultivating new fads. An earth worm that would come at your
call, and play tricks, wouM be quite a refreshing novelty.

I am glad that Mr. Eobiu did not succeed in his murderous

246

THE GBEEPERS.

I,.

designs, for there are not many worms in the clearing, so far as I
can tinil out, and we can't afford to lose one. There goes another
of the clearing creepers of a different sort, who is supremely
indifferent to Mr. Robin and all his clique, and doesn't care a
button whether he is around or not. He is a stout burly little
fellow, all covered with reddish bristles, and he goes by the name
of Woolly Bear among the children. He is fussy : for all the
world like those little, round, red whiskered and red faced men that
we meet with that are always in a hurry, and can't take anything
coolly. Woolly Bear is just the same. When you see him he is-
sure to be running as fast as ever he can go ; never walking. If
you put a stick before him, he has seldom any time to reflect that
it wasn't there a minute ago, and has no business to be there now,
and so crawls over it as if it were a matter of course, and hurries
on. Sometimes he will take a fancy to see where the stick leads
to, and run up it so nimbly that he is on the hand that is holding
it before one has time to realize what is happening. Then you
drop the stick and shake hiin off. That rather astonishes him ;
and when he reaches the ground, he incontinently curls himself
up, and presents a hairy emblem of eternity. I suppose he thinks
of the occurrence till he goes to sleep ; and after a bit he will wake
up, stretch himself to see that he is all right, and scurry off again
as if determined to make up for lost time. No bird will touch
Master Woolly Bear ; a mouthful of bristles is not an alluring
th'ng. He is the caterpillar of the Tiger moth, and perfectly .
harmless ; not so his cousin, the caterpillar of the Fox moth, which
is longer, and better proportioned. This gentleman is the porcupine
of the insect world, and his bristles come off when touched, pro-
ducing irritation and swelling in the hands, as I know from sad
experience. However, he does not belong to our clearing, and,
indeed, I do not know whether he is a Canadian or not. When I
had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, it was in the North
of England.

There are a few cherry trees in the clearing, wild and choke,
known to botanists as Prunus Pennsylvanica, and Prunus
Virginiana, though why Pennsylvanica and Virgiuiana more than

THE CREEPERS.

247

Canadensis I cannot say. On these trees you will find large webs
looking like exaggerated spiders' webs made up into bags, which
are the dwelling places of another creeper, the tent caterpillar. I
am sorry to say that I can scarcely find a good word for these
gentry : they are insect gipsies, and just as objectionable neighbors.
I am told that they are great pests and do a great deal of damage
to the shade trees, and in orchards, which I can well believe, as
they kill any branch of the cherry tree here on which they may
set up their tents ; but as I have nothing to do with shade trees
and orchards, and as there will always be enough apples to be had
to supply my wants. 1 have no great quarrel with them on that
account; neither do I very much grudge them a branch or two of
the wild or choke clierry, but tiiey are dreadfully dirty little
wretches aud make messes. Now we are not much to look at in
the clearing, but we are clean; even the black on our stumps is
pure charcoal, and the dust is clean dust. The tent caterpillars,
therefore, are an eye-sore to us ; not because they are caterpillars,
but because they won't wash. They object to be rained on, which
no true habitu^ of the clearing ever does ; and they make their
preposterous tents to keep themselves from getting wet. A rainy
day is a fast day for them ; and it is the only one that is. At
other times they do nothing but eat, eat, eat ; but then, they
have to stay in doors and stew. Consequently, they are not nice :
they are oflensive to the touch and to the olfactories, so much so
that though they are destitute of any other means of defence, no
respectable bird will eat them. The blue jay is fond of the eggs
that produce them ; he is fond of other eggs than these, the gorgeous
thief ; but when once out of the shell he cuts them entirely, Tlie
only proper treatment for them is to cremate them — nest and all.

fl Clccfpii^g Out,

f .

WW',

II;

m:.!

"/p-F the making of books there is no end." There is this
\^ peculiarity about language that you can scarcely put half-
a-dozen words together to form a sentence to which different
persons will not attach different meanings. I suppose that this
really arises from the actual poverty of language, through which
one word is made to do duty for a number of ideas, partly through
local associations, partly through the laj)se of time, though I have
sometimes wondered whether man's intellect was not a more
complex thing than we imagine it to be, and that what we call an
idea might not, on analysis, be found to consist of several ideas,
just as in chemistry bodies at one time regarded as elementary
have subsequfutly been found to be cai)able of solution. It seems
a paradox to say that every sin)ple statement of fact is a com] lex
one, but after all it is only another form of saying that Truth is
many-sided. Solomon was a very wise man, and though I don't
go the length of asserting that he meant more than he said, yet I
am inclined to believe that he intended more than he is generally
supposed to have done. Now, the sentence with which 1 have
headed this chapter may be taken generally to state that fresh
books are continually being written, and will be to the end of time.
That is the generalization ; the particularization in my own
individual case is that when you sit down to write a book it seems
as if you were never going to get a chance to stop : the making of
a book is like the cable which Paddy was reproached for being so
long in hauling up ; " Be jabers, sorr ! some one must have cut olf
the end av' it." Now that I am approaching the close, and clearing
out of the clearing, I may as well confess that I have frequently
felt as if I were never going to get through. It is not impossible
that my readers may have felt the same thing. In that case I
may feel confident of the success of these pages, for no author can

A CLKAKINC OIT.

'24'J

i this
half-

Teient

it this

whicb

irougli

1 have
more

call an
ideas,

leutary

t seems

cim]'lex

'ruth is

1 don't

yet I

merally

I have

it fresh
of time.
ly own
it seems
lis in g of
jeiiig so
! cut oif
clearing
quently
ipossible
b case I
thor can

hope to win the favour of thepuhlic unless he can establish a bond
of sympatiiy between liis readers and himself. If, then, we both
of us thought that I was never going to get done, the re(|uisite
fellow-feeling is at once establislied.

I said in the l)eginning, that is in my preface which wasn't
the beginning, that 1 stood to win in either event ; I love con-
sistency, and therefore I repeat tiie remark at the end. Those who
have read so far without being bored will have derived .some
pleasure from the reading ; tiiose who have not will be happy to
find that the work is done ; so tliat Ijotli classes will be contented,
and I shall have been, in my humble way, a benefactor of my
fellow-men, which is a highly satisfactory thought. When I was
at college, any man desiring to change from one college to another,
or from one university to another, had to provide himself with a
certificate of character from the authorities of his institution, which
was given in the words "Bene discessit." This was generally
taken to mean, " He has left in good standing," but T have known
cases in which it would have required a considerable exercise of
Christian charity on the part of the authorities to give such an
interpretation to the phrase, and 1 hold that in these the more
accurate ti'anslation of it would be " It's a good job he's gone." In
tliis final chapter I am appealing to tlie reading university to give
me my " Bene discessit," and I am not without hopes of getting it
in one sense or tlie other,

" What on earth induced me to write ? " Well I that, as Hamlet
remarks, " is tlie question." I don't think I was actuated by any
feeling of malevolence to my species ; I am very certain it was
not ambition ; I know the average fsite of authors too well to
expect a financial success. Really, I can't say what was the
motive power, except it might be a want of something better to
do : it is a want that is responsible for a great deal of unintentional
mischief in this world. And after all, I haven't really written a
book. I intended to do so, but instead I have simply committed
to print the trivial conversation that might take place between any
old friends, such as I have felt my possible readers to be. In one
17

I'GO

A CLEARIXC on',

(»f thu inaimfactuvini,' towns hi V.w^huul an iKJiicst artisan, who was
a HiiMnbur oF a (loosu-i'lnb, out' Midiaelnias Kve bore home in
triumph to his wife a tine specimen ol' that fowl, and instructed
lier to pre])are it for the next day's dinner. " And what's I to
stuff it wi' -lohn," enquired the inexperiencetl housekeeper.
" ( )wt at's green ;" (anything that's green) ; " ( )wt at's green, ma
hiss " said -Fohn, and thought no more about it. The goose was
served uji in due time, and John plunging in his fork for the
stutling, drew out yard after yard of a long green siring. " What
on airth is this ? " he demanded. " Why, J(jhn," slie said, " thee
tellt mo to stuff it wi' owt at's green, and 1 liad naught green i't
hoose but a skein o' green yarn." She had stuffed it with green
worsted I Well '. she had done the l)est she could, and, after all,
there was the goose, if the stutling was exceptionable. ])e me
fabula narratur. I have done the best I could, and if the inside of
the book is nothing but green worsted, at any rate you have got
the binding. That's all right ; there's nothing the matter with
that. There are more geese, I mean books in the world than
this, whose chief merit is ou the outside and not in the stulHng.
Console yourself with this reflection, aud so,

VIVH, VALKtil'l':.

COn^TEaSTTS.

4.
5.

-At till) (ifitu of tlu! L'loiii'iiij,'.

Piiusiiii,' fit till! (iatu. IVeffico.

In tlio Clcirinj,'. On I'locon-
toivod MoHs.

Oil tlio Stiiiii|i. rolitics.

At the Foot (jf till- Stump.
Diinciii''.

<>. Ill H Tangle.

7. — Recover! 11 j^.
iSchoohs.

Aid to Pnblie

!>.
10.
11
IL'.

i:{.

14.

15.

Ifi.

J7.

18.

I".).

20.-

21.-

22.-

2a-

— A Winter Ffinta.sy.
—Musings (It Nightfiill.
-By the Wuter iJourses.
-Products of the Cle.iring. Weeds
— Vly C(jusin8, the Ants.
— Dulce et Decorum Kst.
-After Sunset.
-The Learned Pig.
— Starligiit.
-Daybreak.
-Under the Maple.
-The Choir of the Clearing.
-A Summer Day-Dream.
-The Ground- Bird.
-Rabyah's Last Ride.
-Along the Cow- Path.

24. IJr'er Turtle.

2."). Snakes.

2(J. As We 800 "Ithers."

27. — ChristinaH in the Cleariuij.

28. —A Christmas Carol.

2'.». Felis Catu.s, the Cat.

.'10. — Ferns and Fern Seed.

.'>1. — To Let, A Stump.

.'{2 - Tiie Cows of the Clearin^;.

.'!.'].— The Gender of a Wet Djiy.

y4. Rather Mi.ved ; .Mud,

•io. — An Interruption.

.•5<).— Old Logs.

37.- Toad Stools.

.'W.--Tiie Flowers of the Cleariii''.

.'jy. —The Striped Ones.

40.— Robert of Lincoln.

41. -Vicdets.

42.— I'd be a Butterfly.

4.'{. — Wanted, A Donkey.

44.— The Drum-Major.

45.— The Fences of the Clearing.

40. — The Creepers.

47. — A Clearing Out.