A KENTUCKY CARDINAL 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK - BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
A Kentucky Cardinal 
 
 By 
 
 JAMES LANE ALLEN 
 
 Author of " The Reign of Law," " The Choir Invisible" 
 "The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky," etc. 
 
 Ne e w Edition Revised 
 with a New Preface 
 
 with Illustrations by 
 Hugh Thomson 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1913 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
1 
 
 K 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1894, 1899, 
 BY HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 New edition, May, 1913. 
 
 NorinootJ 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
PS 
 
 l c 
 
 ID etjf cation 
 
 This to her from one who in childhood used to stand 
 at the windows of her room and watch for the Cardinal 
 among the snow-buried cedars. 
 
Apprehensions of Falling Weather . 
 
 Cuckoo and Mocking-bird 
 
 We twittered kindly at each other . 
 
 Many an Exquisite Strain 
 
 Touches her Guitar with Maidenly Solicitude 
 
 A Distant Sharpshooter . 
 
 A False Impression of Mrs. Cobb . 
 
 Got down my Map of Kentucky 
 
 Certain Ladies who bow sweetly to me . 
 
 The New Neighbours have come 
 
 " Old man, are you the gardener ? ri . 
 
 I dressed up 
 
 Over to my Woodland Pasture 
 
 PAGE 
 2 
 
 4 
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 8 
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 17 
 
 25 
 27 
 
 32 
 37 
 
 42 
 
 44 
 46 
 
PAGE 
 
 Little Town Boys into my Strawberry Bed . . 50 
 
 Toploftical Strutting 67 
 
 I see People on account of my Grapes and Pears . 74 
 
 Welcomed her gayly 80 
 
 Knocked reproachfully 85 
 
 Putting a Prop under a Too-heavily Laden Limb . 87 
 Thrust Mrs. Cobb out of the House ... 89 
 
 When she fed her Hens 93 
 
 That Whipping 103 
 
 Looking down at the Gate that I made Yesterday . 113 
 Georgiana and her Mother coming out . . .121 
 " But wouldn t I like to have him !" . . .129 
 "What have you done ?" she cried . . . .132 
 
 A Little Saul of Tarsus 138 
 
 "And is that all ?" 143 
 
 Set our Candles in our Windows . . . -144 
 
 VI 
 
gintroDuctfon 
 
 HE first thing in life that I can 
 remember is the fact of being 
 caught up into somebody s arms 
 and of owning a blue tumbler. 
 Possibly when that gigantic person who 
 ever it was seized me by my two handles, 
 I seized my tumbler by its one handle ; and 
 thus the glass and the caress stayed bound 
 together in my memory as parts of the same 
 commotion. But I can never evoke these 
 ill-assorted beginnings of all conscious recol 
 lection without being also obliged to think 
 of a pump on a slippery hill with a brick 
 pavement around it : and a pump and a 
 tumbler and being suddenly snatched off 
 the earth suggest some true story of the 
 times. But, then again, it is impossible 
 
 XI 
 
to recall the image of this pump without 
 instantly dragging into view the head and 
 shoulders of a smiling school-teacher, who 
 held me in his arms and who had the power 
 to give away sweet morsels on that occa 
 sion ; and why be should appear so early in 
 the procession of small knowledge indeed, 
 at the azoic head of it may be a secret not 
 worth discovering, but it is at least quite 
 certain that no one will ever discover it. 
 
 Most likely, these several things, which 
 are now beheld as compressed into a single 
 scene and instant, existed far apart through 
 time and place. A year arrived when caresses 
 began to be conscious experience ; in another 
 I entered upon the ownership of a cerulean 
 mug ; during a third my explorations of the 
 physical world extended to the pump in the 
 yard for one stood there; on some day 
 of a fourth I may have been led across the 
 woods to the school-house on the mud road 
 perhaps some Friday afternoon, when it 
 was customary to have spelling matches, or 
 dialogues and speeches, and when parents 
 
 xn 
 
came and refreshments the arrival of the 
 refreshments being much more important 
 than that of the parents. Be the truth as it 
 may, the matters set down above are all that 
 I can remember on my own account about 
 my birthplace and my earliest years. They 
 are filaments of the obscurest algae, gathered 
 around the coasts of that dim, deep sea which 
 is a child s mind and now resembling nothing 
 so much as a barely traceable bunch of out 
 lines pressed on one small card. 
 
 After this everything vanishes tumbler 
 and teacher, pump and pudding. There is 
 an upheaval, or a downfall ; and when Mem 
 ory begins again the weaving of that long 
 seamless living tapestry wherefrom she has 
 never rested and whereon she is busy yet, I 
 was about two miles away. My father had 
 moved with his family to a farm that had 
 been left to him by his father and entailed 
 for the benefit of us, his children ; and there 
 I continued to live until I was twenty-two 
 years of age, without ever having been out 
 side the state of Kentucky or having seen 
 xiii 
 
more than once or twice any but the nearest 
 village. 
 
 The farm to which the scene now shifts 
 was small. I was the last of seven children; 
 and during the forerunning years of his 
 married life my father, who was of a most 
 generous, unselfish, and trustful nature, had 
 met with reverses ; both his and my mother s 
 independent fortunes were gone. This piece 
 of property represented a fragment of his 
 father s estate, just as his father s estate 
 represented but a fragment of the wilderness 
 lands of a pioneer settler. On it stood a 
 brick house of the Virginia pattern a very 
 good one for the time at which it had been 
 built. In its original shape it consisted of 
 that part which was two stories high ; but 
 later (I do not know when or by whom) 
 there had been added at the southern end an 
 ell containing, besides a pantry and a kitchen, 
 one chamber, the largest room in the house. 
 This was occupied by my father and 
 mother. Thus, in accordance with the com 
 mon custom of the country in those days, it 
 xiv 
 
became the general living-room of the family. 
 Its two good-sized windows opened upon 
 the front yard. One of these was kept 
 closed, because the bed sat against it ; the 
 other was regularly closed at nightfall, and 
 regularly opened the first thing in the morn 
 ing. 
 
 In this room, then, and at this window 
 begins the history of my outdoor life. There 
 my impressions of the physical world took 
 earliest shape and meaning ; whatsoever un 
 important habits of observation I may possess 
 were there formed, directed, and rewarded ; 
 and if I have ever written anything concern 
 ing Nature which shows the slightest knowl 
 edge or feeling if in far later years I have 
 ever lingered over a page, vainly trying to 
 put upon it the reality of external things as 
 they seem to us, and the reality of the emo 
 tions they arouse in us the origin of it all 
 goes back to that time and place. 
 
 Of the other portions of the house, any 
 account would enter but unprofitably into 
 the purpose of these recollections. True, I 
 xv 
 
early acquired excellent information regard 
 ing the pantry next door. It was full of 
 things that once had been in Nature, but 
 were soon to be in Man. And in Me. 
 Substances piled up, simply waiting to be 
 taken in : why keep them waiting ? It was 
 one of the places in which a boy sometimes 
 lengthens his life and sometimes shortens it, 
 but where meantime he invariably broadens 
 his information and his body. The truth, in 
 any case, would be of no value except as a 
 warning, and there is never anybody to take 
 the warning. Of the kitchen also, adjoining 
 the pantry those twin hostelries of little 
 pattering feet I have recollections that go 
 fairly back to Chaos ; but neither have these 
 anything to do with that one especial end in 
 view, which further on perhaps may kindly 
 justify these frank and unexpected personali 
 ties. As for the other rooms the dining- 
 room, the parlour, the bedrooms upstairs, and 
 the enormous garret above these each in 
 time grew discoverable and definite to my 
 spreading intelligence until at last I could 
 xvi 
 
grasp the entire house as a mental whole, 
 consisting of many orderly and separately 
 interesting parts. But their several diverse 
 histories began later ; and none opened for 
 me an eye through which to look out upon 
 the physical world. 
 
 So that there was but one : the window in 
 my father s and mother s room, that single 
 observatory for a delicate child kept much 
 indoors and having no playmates. At this 
 instant, as I test the matter in consciousness, 
 I possess not a single recollection of this 
 window in summer or of anything I ever 
 saw from it during that season : which means 
 no doubt that then I was never there. But 
 from the first chill days of autumn when the 
 white window-sash was lowered, and doors 
 were shut, and a fire was kindled on the 
 hearth from that time until late spring, 
 when the sash was thrown up again and 
 doors were set open and the fireplace was 
 whitewashed for the summer, with a bag of 
 straw rammed up the chimney to keep back 
 soot and swallows the memories of what I 
 xvii 
 
looked out upon through that window are so 
 thick that in all the years since I have never 
 exhausted them, and I have but to develop 
 some unused film of memory to find fresh 
 ones at any moment. 
 
 It has been said that the first thing in the 
 morning the shutters were thrown open. 
 How often, as soon as this was done, would 
 my mother call to me and direct my atten 
 tion to something of interest. Perhaps to 
 the window-panes themselves, silvered and 
 sparkling with frost. What a wonder and a 
 mystery to a child s eyes ! Those landscapes 
 which had settled in a night across his crystal 
 path of vision and now shut out all others ! 
 Until they were melted away by his hot 
 breath, or scratched through with a small 
 curious finger-nail. Sometimes it was as 
 though the distant woods with all its boughs 
 and avenues had thrown its image towards 
 the house not across the sunlight, but 
 under cover of the darkness and this 
 image had been intercepted at the window 
 and fastened there in ice. 
 xviii 
 
About thirty yards away stood a row of 
 large cedar-trees, the well-nigh universal ever 
 green in Kentucky front yards at that period, 
 for nurseries were scarce, and a fir, a larch, a 
 juniper, or the like was difficult or impos 
 sible to get. How often she called to me, 
 on going to the window herself, to look out 
 at these cedars ! At the first snow, piled 
 lightly on the boughs ; at a male cardinal, 
 sitting on a pinnacle of white and green ; at 
 some great sleet, bending them to the earth, 
 rigid and shapeless. It was she who intro 
 duced me to the subject of birds. 
 
 Thus, shut up in a rather lonely farm 
 house with my back to the fire, I learned to 
 send my eyes abroad and to live out of doors 
 with sun and cloud, storm and calm, through 
 out three quarters of the year. 
 
 These window observations went on dur 
 ing many returning seasons. Long before 
 they had ceased, they were overlapped by 
 other lines of experience begun outside the 
 house. First in the yard itself; and has the 
 mature mind ever been able to describe how 
 xix 
 
vast a world a large country yard is to a 
 child ? A summer day there was longer 
 than is the man s brief life ; one corner of 
 it more distant from another than continent 
 from continent to his measuring eyes. In 
 the yard I could draw near to many things 
 which I had been obliged to observe from a 
 distance. I could follow them up, lay hold 
 on them, play the mischief. For one thing : 
 I could run, at winter twilights, out to the 
 cedar-trees and seizing a low bough, shake it 
 and scatter the birds settled down for the 
 night ; thus driving them from tree to tree, 
 backward and forward, their cries growing 
 always more distressing in the darkness : a 
 wonderfully interesting piece of business to 
 me for some unknown devilish reason. And 
 then there was the first trap, and the first wild, 
 fluttering captive after breakfast some morn 
 ing. And when the blue grass with orchard 
 grass mixed in it was at its highest, not yet 
 having been mowed, and the cold showers of 
 early June left the tops dripping and bowed 
 down, out of the depths here and there 
 xx 
 
issued all day the cries of the young, fallen 
 from the nest or unable to rise on callow 
 wing out of that chill forest of stems. A 
 fine chance for adventures and a place where 
 a boy can learn to hate cats and never 
 afterwards get over his aversion. 
 
 Passing on, I must yet pause to say that 
 on a Kentucky farm in those days a child 
 was surrounded by a prodigal bird life of 
 which but traces remain. My earliest recol 
 lections of daybreak are now condensed into 
 one surviving impression : that of hearing 
 all round my father s house, beating close to 
 the walls and surging faintly and more faintly 
 away in every direction, such a sea of song 
 as I think can no longer visit human ears. 
 Of mornings I was often called out of the 
 house to look at the sky, across which wild 
 geese were flying (I can still hear the cry 
 of the leaders up there that highest mel 
 ody of earth). Or far outnumbering these, 
 wild ducks ; or outnumbering the wild ducks 
 a myriad to one, the wild pigeons now 
 entirely gone. Sometimes the flocks of 
 xxi 
 
these dappled for hours the low gray sky 
 over one entire quarter of the heavens : 
 passing, passing, passing. At other times 
 a strangely beautiful sight flying high on a 
 clear frosty morning and spread far out in 
 a thin straight line, they passed under the 
 zenith like a moving arch. A procession of 
 arches ! one after another, all borne in the 
 same direction a single instinct in ten 
 thousand breasts. They were visiting still 
 the vast oak forests of Kentucky. The 
 whole land lay across the ancient paths of 
 migration. Strange species now and then 
 crossed also. I can remember that my father, 
 who was a capital shot, standing one day in 
 his stable lot, winged an immense sea fowl 
 that fluttered far down on a neighbour s estate. 
 He went for it and brought it home; but not 
 he nor any one else knew the name of it. 
 
 Outside the yard, on every side there lay 
 for me as a child the wonderful universe 
 of the farm. I early began to make the 
 acquaintance of this by sitting on the pom 
 mel before my father as he rode over it on 
 xxii 
 
his gaited saddle horse. Later I began to 
 ride behind him, thank heavens ! where 
 there was no upward horn-like projection to 
 be perched on, but where I could straddle 
 a real soft, fat, living back. There was such 
 a difference between riding on a pommel and 
 riding off of it. My father knew the names 
 of all trees of the land and their varieties ; 
 and of weed and grass and shrub. He had 
 his wonderful practical knowledge direct from 
 his father, as his father had drawn his from 
 the foregoing pioneer settler ; and thus in 
 the person of my father I touched in some 
 small way that marvellous utilitarian wood 
 craft possessed by the western frontiersman. 
 Through my father also came the earliest 
 knowledge of the fields. I possess no men 
 tal picture of him older than that of the sow 
 ing of hempseed. He sat on his saddle horse, 
 whose ears he had tied over with his hand 
 kerchief to keep the seed from falling into 
 them. Backward and forward, backward 
 and forward, across the soft brown earth he 
 rode, sowing the hemp. And through him 
 xxiii 
 
there was brought into my life perhaps the 
 most wholesome idea and lesson that has ever 
 entered it, that of getting down to hard 
 work ; and . that whatsoever work my hand 
 undertook, to rest not until it was done and 
 done with thoroughness. Both he and my 
 mother were of inexorable thoroughness and 
 particularity in all their lives. I have never 
 followed their example but with outward 
 profit and inward peace, nor neglected it 
 without loss of both of these. 
 
 What I have now come to and am trying to 
 say is that everything I was set to do, from the 
 beginning to the end of all my small labours on 
 the farm, brought indispensable knowledge; 
 kept me close to the earth ; caused me to 
 know more of the infinite life of out-of-doors. 
 
 I dropped corn, covered it, thinned it (an 
 abominable business, I thought, working a 
 boy s body as though he were a pair of sugar 
 tongs). Sometimes I shucked it in autumn, 
 threw the fodder over to the stock in winter, 
 took the corn to the mill in the spring 
 and took my share of the bread at all seasons, 
 xxiv 
 
I followed the cradles, and shocked oats and 
 wheat, and helped haul the oats to the barn, 
 and the wheat to the stack. And who can 
 do these things without learning a little about 
 the natural history of fields ? I cut weeds in 
 the woodland pasture (what Kentucky boy 
 of those times but looked bitterly forward 
 from year to year to the weed-cutting season, 
 and connected weeds with the original curse 
 of the earth regularly adding an original 
 one unknown to Moses). I cut weeds along 
 fences and in stable lots : on the whole I 
 think I knew weeds pretty well. For several 
 springs I helped to cut the willows for tying 
 the vines in my father s large vineyard. I 
 charred the ends of the stakes over which 
 these vines were to grow, hoed the vines, 
 thinned out superfluous leaves, gathered the 
 grapes for the press, racked the wine in the 
 cellar and sometimes the wine racked me. 
 I prepared the ground for the sowing of veg 
 etable seeds and cultivated the plants after 
 they came up : surely I was made to master 
 the business of gardening. Sometimes when 
 xxv 
 
a tree was felled in the woods, I collected 
 the brush into a pile and afterwards burnt 
 the brush and my breeches. I cut wood 
 for the house at the wood-pile. At the 
 stable I fed the stock: what is there did 
 I not learn about a barn and its kind 
 faithful souls ? 
 
 On the whole, though I was never a hard- 
 worked, hard-pressed boy, there dwelt in the 
 minds of parents of those days the stalwart, 
 sturdy idea that when business stops the 
 devil begins ; and my parents evidently did 
 not wish him to begin. It appeared to me 
 that when they did not keep me busy, they 
 kept me moving : they sent me on errands 
 to the neighbours presumably an amuse 
 ment for the young. In this way, as I now 
 know, I began to extend my knowledge of 
 woods and fields and pathways beyond the 
 farm. Furthermore, one of my regular occu 
 pations (another amusement) was to hunt 
 the turkeys. But long before I started out 
 with the idea of finding the turkeys, the 
 turkeys had started out with the idea of not 
 xxvi 
 
being found by anybody. Apparently they 
 refused grasshoppers until they had reached 
 a place where they had no right to eat them. 
 What wanderings and searchings they origi 
 nated ! And no sooner did they perceive 
 that they were discovered than they began 
 to run cheerfully home zealously pushing 
 each other out of the way as though they 
 had never intended to leave it and were only 
 too glad to return. But they did this every 
 day, and I was not inclined to believe them. 
 It is more to the purpose to record how 
 during these hours of roaming over the 
 summer and autumn land, I received uncon 
 scious lessons regarding it through every 
 busy sense. 
 
 And then there were the child s pleasures 
 of wood and stream and field, during which 
 more knowledge was gotten through sheer 
 joy alone the best way : for as you can 
 not buy joy, neither can you buy the truth 
 that always attends it. Wring out of 
 the heart of a man the last essence of his 
 knowledge of a country, and it will be the 
 xxvii 
 
scenes of boyhood pleasures. Call on him 
 for his best remembrance of an orchard ; and 
 it will be something like this : an afternoon 
 in late autumn when he had climbed the 
 fence of one, during a long hunt, his tongue 
 parched and his stomach empty. But not 
 an apple was to be found : it was too late : 
 they had all been knocked or gathered. Ah ! 
 there was a splendid one, caught in the fork 
 of a limb ; or kicking about among the 
 leaves, he found two, one on top of the 
 other, beside a sprout of blackberry in deep 
 grass near the edge of the limbs ; or, in a 
 little hollow of the ground, he spied a third 
 with a bee hole on one side of it ; a wet leaf 
 stuck to the other and a little white mould 
 under it. 
 
 Through work and errand and pleasure, 
 then, I was ever learning. As I grew older 
 other things helped to furrow habits more 
 deeply. The school to which I was sent lay 
 across the country ; and morning and after 
 noon that country must be traversed. The 
 neighbourhood church lay several miles off in 
 xxviii 
 
another. When I entered college, through 
 part of each year I walked back and forth 
 several miles, across the country still. So 
 that by the end of that time and as the end 
 of it all, I had learned some little about 
 Nature in a neighbourhood. 
 
 One fact is not to be overlooked : that I 
 should probably have learned less, had the 
 neighbourhood contained more children. Of 
 course this neighbourhood contained its chil 
 dren, otherwise it would not have been one. 
 But there were some families with whom we 
 did not exchange visits. I had whole groups 
 and flocks of cousins, away off below the 
 horizon, in two or three directions ; but I saw 
 them too seldom to my sorrow. Then 
 there were much older boys far ahead of 
 me and babies everywhere behind me no 
 trouble about babies. But at a certain period 
 there seemed to have been a lull, and during 
 that lull I was born. So that strictly I had 
 no adjacent contemporaries. Undoubtedly 
 this had its effect this absence of compan 
 ionship : it often led me to follow the negroes 
 xxix 
 
into the fields, where as one result I watched 
 the hemp through all its changes. Another 
 result, more important by far for me, was the 
 dependence it created upon other things for 
 play, study, interest, activity, curiosity, affec 
 tion. So that the other inhabitants of my 
 world domestic fowls, dumb brutes, birds, 
 creatures of the woods took measurably 
 from the first the place of the human species. 
 There has never been reason to regret these 
 universal childhood friendships : none of 
 them has ever been broken : they mean more 
 the longer they last. 
 
 In so far as literature is concerned these 
 same experiences taught me, and have always 
 compelled me, to see human life as set in 
 Nature : finding its explanation in soil and 
 sky and season : merely one of the wild 
 growths that spring up on the surface of the 
 earth amid ten thousand others. I hold this 
 to be the only true way in which to write of 
 Man in fiction, as it is in science. I further 
 hold it to be true that if a writer is ever to 
 have that knowledge of a country which 
 xxx 
 
reappears in his work as local colour, he must 
 have gotten it in his childhood ; that no one 
 ever knows Nature anywhere unless he has 
 known Nature somewhere in his youth ; and 
 that he who has thus known her in one place 
 can, at any time, easily know her in any other. 
 There may be new terms, phrases, groupings, 
 and arrangements ; but it is the same Mother- 
 Speech learned at the knee. 
 
 Behind all that I have written lie the land 
 scapes of a single neighbourhood. They are 
 in The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky,, in 
 Flute and Violin ; still more in A Summer in 
 Arcady, in A Kentucky Cardinal and After 
 math ; and in The Reign of Law. The 
 question is often asked, how can a man in a 
 city write of a country far away that he has 
 not seen for years. But that country is never 
 far away and the man looks over into it un 
 ceasingly. He has but to lift his eyes to see it 
 as clearly as he sees the people in the street. 
 
 Such pictures of outdoor life are for any 
 one a great possession, a divine indestructible 
 wealth ; and it is for the simple sake of try- 
 
 xxxi 
 
ing to spread the love of Nature of 
 scattering broadcast such wealth that he 
 has written down these words with a certain 
 childish figure so much in evidence : but this 
 boy was the only one that he had the right 
 to use as an illustration. 
 
 J. L. A. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY, 
 IO October, 1900. 
 
 XXX11 
 
A KENTUCKY CARDINAL 
 

 
I 
 
 LL this New-year s 
 Day of 1850 the sun 
 shone cloudless but 
 wrought no thaw. 
 Even the landscapes 
 of frost on the win 
 dow-panes did not 
 
 melt a flower, and the little trees still keep their 
 silvery boughs arched high above the jewelled 
 avenues. During the afternoon a lean hare 
 limped twice across the lawn, and there was not 
 a creature stirring to chase it. Now the night 
 
 B I 
 
is bitter cold, with no sounds outside but the 
 cracking of the porches as they freeze tighter. 
 
 APPREHENSIONS OF FALLING WEATHER. 
 
 Even the north wind seems grown too numb to 
 move. I had determined to convert its coarse, 
 
big noise into something sweet as may often 
 be done by a little art with the things of this 
 life and so stretched a horse-hair above the 
 opening between the window sashes; but the 
 soul of my harp has departed. I hear but 
 the comfortable roar and snap of hickory logs, 
 at long intervals a deeper breath from the dog 
 stretched on his side at my feet, and the crickets 
 under the hearth-stones. They have to thank 
 me for that nook. One chill afternoon I came 
 upon a whole company of them on the western 
 slope of a woodland mound, so lethargic that I 
 thumped them repeatedly before they could so 
 much as get their senses. There was a branch 
 near by, and the smell of mint in the air, so 
 that had they been young Kentuckians one 
 might have had a clew to the situation. With 
 an ear for winter minstrelsy, I brought two 
 home in a handkerchief, and assigned them 
 an elegant suite of apartments under a loose 
 brick. 
 
 But the finest music in the room is that which 
 streams out to the ear of the spirit in many an 
 exquisite strain from the hanging shelf of books 
 on the opposite wall. Every volume there is 
 an instrument which some melodist of the mind 
 created and set vibrating with music, as a flower 
 3 
 
CUCKOO AND MOCKING-BIRD. 
 
shakes out its perfume or a star shakes out its 
 light. Only listen, and they soothe all care, as 
 though the silken soft leaves of poppies had 
 been made vocal and poured into the ear. 
 
 Towards dark, having seen to the comfort 
 of a household of kind, faithful fellow-beings, 
 whom man in his vanity calls the lower animals, 
 I went last to walk under the cedars in the 
 front yard, listening to that music which is at 
 once so cheery and so sad the low chirping of 
 birds at dark winter twilights as they gather in 
 from the frozen fields, from snow-buried shrub 
 bery and hedge-rows, and settle down for the 
 night in the depths of the evergreens, the only I 
 refuge from their enemies and shelter from the | 
 blast. But this evening they made no ado / 
 about their home-coming. To-day perhaps none/ 
 had ventured forth. I am most uneasy when 
 the red-bird is forced by hunger to leave the 
 covert of his cedars, since he, on the naked 
 or white landscapes of winter, offers the most 
 far-shining and beautiful mark for Death. I 
 stepped across to the tree in which a pair of 
 these birds roost, and shook it, to make sure 
 they were at home, and felt relieved when they 
 fluttered into the next with the quick startled 
 notes they utter when aroused. 
 5 
 
WE TWITTERED KINDLY AT EACH OTHER. 
 
The longer I live here, the better satisfied I 
 am in having pitched my earthly camp-fire, 
 gypsylike, on the edge of a town, keeping it on 
 one side, and the green fields, lanes, and woods 
 on the other. Each, in turn, is to me as a mag 
 net to the needle. At times the needle of my 
 nature points towards the country. On that 
 side everything is poetry. I wander over field 
 and forest, and through me runs a glad current 
 of feeling that is like a clear brook across the 
 meadows of May At others the needle veers 
 round, and I go to town to the massed 
 haunts of the highest animal and cannibal. 
 That way nearly everything is prose. I can 
 feel the prose rising in me as I step along, 
 like hair on the back of a dog, long before any 
 other dogs are in sight. And, indeed, the case 
 is much that of a country dog come to town, so 
 that growls are in order at every corner. The 
 only being in the universe at which I have ever 
 snarled, or with which I have rolled over in the 
 mud and fought like a common cur, is Man. 
 
 Among my neighbours who furnish me much 
 of the plain prose of life, the nearest hitherto 
 has been a bachelor named Jacob Mariner. I 
 called him my raincrow, because the sound of 
 his voice awoke apprehensions of falling weather. 
 7 
 
MANY AN EXQUISITE STRAIN. 
 
A visit from him was an endless drizzle. For 
 Jacob came over to expound his minute symp 
 toms ; and had everything that he gave out on 
 the subject of human ailments been written 
 down, it must have made a volume as large, as 
 solemn, and as inconvenient as a family Bible. 
 My other nearest neighbour lives across the road 
 a widow, Mrs. Walters. I call Mrs. Walters 
 my mocking-bird, because she reproduces by 
 what is truly a divine arrangement of the throat 
 the voices of the town. When she flutters 
 across to the yellow settee under the grape-vine 
 and balances herself lightly with expectation, I 
 have but to request that she favour me with a 
 little singing, and as soon the air is vocal with 
 every note of the village songsters. After this, 
 Mrs. Walters usually begins to flutter in a moth 
 erly way around the subject of my symptoms. 
 
 Naturally, it has been my wish to bring about 
 between this raincrow and mocking-bird the 
 desire to pair with one another. For, if a man 
 always wanted to tell his symptoms, and a woman 
 always wished to hear about them, surely a mar 
 riage compact on the basis of such a passion 
 ought to open up for them a union of ever- 
 flowing and indestructible felicity. They should 
 associate as perfectly as the compensating 
 9 
 
metals of a pendulum, of which the one con 
 tracts as the other expands. And then I should 
 be a little happier myself. But the perversity 
 of life ! Jacob would never confide in Mrs. 
 Walters. Mrs. Walters would never inquire for 
 Jacob. 
 
 Now poor Jacob is dead, of no complaint 
 apparently, and with so few symptoms that 
 even the doctors did not know what was the 
 matter, and the upshot of this talk is that his 
 place has been sold, and I am to have new 
 neighbours. What a disturbance to a man 
 living on the edge of a quiet town ! 
 
 Tidings of the calamity came to-day from 
 Mrs. Walters, who flew over and sang sang 
 even on a January afternoon in a manner to 
 rival her most vociferous vernal execution. But 
 the poor creature was so truly distressed that I 
 followed her to the front gate, and we twittered 
 kindly at each other over the fence, and ruffled 
 our plumage with common disapproval. It is 
 marvellous how a member of her sex will con 
 ceive dislike of people that she has never seen ; 
 but birds are sensible of heat or cold long before 
 either arrives, and it may be that this mocking 
 bird feels something wrong at the quill end of 
 her feathers. 
 
 10 
 
A P/\Cn OF BLUE DOGS LET L 
 
 II 
 
 RS. WALTERS this 
 morning with more 
 news touching our 
 incoming neighbours. 
 Whenever I have 
 faced towards this 
 aggregation of unwel 
 come individuals, I have beheld it moving 
 towards me as a thick gray mist, shutting out 
 nature beyond. Perhaps they are approaching 
 this part of the earth like a comet that carries 
 its tail before it, and I am already enveloped in 
 a disturbing, befogging nebulosity. 
 
 There is still no getting the truth, but it ap 
 pears that they are a family of consequence in 
 their way which, of course, may be a very 
 poor way. Mrs. Margaret Cobb, mother, lately 
 bereaved of her husband, Joseph Cobb, who fell 
 II 
 
among the Kentucky boys at the battle of Buena 
 Vista. A son, Joseph Cobb, now cadet at West 
 Point, with a desire to die like his father, but 
 destined to die who knows ? in a war that 
 may break out in this country about the negroes. 
 Then there is a daughter, Miss Georgiana Cobb, 
 who embroiders blue-and-pink-worsted dogs on 
 black foot-cushions, makes far-off crayon trees 
 that look like sheep in the act of variously get 
 ting up and lying down on a hill-side, and, when 
 the dew is falling and the moon is the shape of 
 the human lips, touches her guitar with maidenly 
 solicitude. Lastly, a younger daughter, who is 
 in the half-fledged state of becoming educated. 
 While not reconciled, I am resigned. The 
 young man when at home may wish to practise 
 the deadly vocation of an American soldier of 
 the period over the garden fence at my birds, in 
 which case he and I could readily fight a duel, 
 and help maintain an honoured custom of the 
 commonwealth. The older daughter will sooner 
 or later turn loose on my heels one of her pack 
 of blue dogs. If this should befall me in the 
 spring, and I survive the dog, I could retort with 
 a dish of strawberries and a copy of " Lalla 
 Rookh " ; if in the fall, with a basket of grapes 
 and Thomson s "Seasons," after which there 
 12 
 
TOUCHES HER GUITAR WITH MAIDENLY SOLICITUDE. 
 13 
 
would be no further exchange of hostilities. 
 The younger daughter, being a school-girl, will 
 occasionally have to be subdued with green 
 apples and salt. The mother could easily give 
 trouble ; or she might be one of those few women 
 to know whom is to know the best that there is 
 in all this faulty world. 
 
 The middle of February. The depths of win 
 ter reached. Thoughtful, thoughtless words - 
 the depths of winter. Everything gone inward 
 and downward from surface and summit, Nature 
 at low tide. In its time will come the height of 
 summer, when the tides of life will rise to the 
 tree-tops, or be dashed as silvery insect spray 
 all but to the clouds. So bleak a season touches 
 my concern for birds, which never seem quite 
 at home in this world ; and the winter has been 
 most lean and hungry for them. Many snows 
 have fallen snows that are as raw cotton 
 spread over their breakfast-table, and cutting 
 off connection between them and its bounties. 
 Next summer I must let the weeds grow up in 
 my garden, so that they may have a better 
 chance for seeds above the stingy level of the 
 universal white. Of late I have opened a pawn 
 broker s shop for my hard-pressed brethren in 
 feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; 
 
for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay 
 me back in due time by monthly instalments of 
 singing. I shall have mine own again with 
 usury. But were a man never so usurious, 
 would he not lend a winter seed for a summer 
 song? Would he refuse to invest his stale 
 crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments 
 and a choir of heavenly voices ? And to-day, 
 also, I ordered from a nursery-man more trees 
 of holly, juniper, and fir, since the storm-beaten 
 cedars will have to come down. For in Ken 
 tucky, when the forest is naked, and every shrub 
 and hedge-row bare, what would become of our 
 birds in the universal rigour and exposure of the 
 world if there were no evergreens Nature s 
 hostelries for the homeless ones ? Living in the 
 depths of these, they can keep snow, ice, and 
 wind at bay ; Drying eyes cannot watch them, 
 nor enemies so well draw near ; cones or seed or 
 berries are their store ; and in those untrodden 
 chambers each can have the sacred company of 
 his mate. But wintering here has terrible risks 
 which few run. Scarcely in autumn have the 
 leaves begun to drop from their high perches 
 silently downward when the birds begin to drop 
 away from the bare boughs silently southward. 
 Lo ! some morning the leaves are on the ground, 
 15 
 
and the birds have vanished. The species that 
 remain, or that come to us then, wear the hues 
 of the season, and melt into the tone of Nature s 
 background blues, grays, browns, with touches 
 of white on tail and breast and wing for coming 
 flecks of snow. 
 
 Save only him proud, solitary stranger in 
 our unfriendly land the fiery grosbeak. Nature 
 in Kentucky has no wintry harmonies for him. 
 He could find these only among the tufts of the 
 October sumac, or in the gum-tree when it 
 stands a pillar of red twilight fire in the dark 
 November woods, or in the far depths of the 
 crimson sunset skies, where, indeed, he seems 
 to have been nested, and whence to have come 
 as a messenger of beauty, bearing on his wings 
 the light of his diviner home. 
 
 With almost everything earthly that he touches 
 this high herald of the trees is in contrast. 
 Among his kind he is without a peer. Even 
 when the whole company of summer voyagers 
 have sailed back to Kentucky, singing and laugh 
 ing and kissing one another under the enormous 
 green umbrella of Nature s leaves, he still is 
 beyond them all in loveliness. But when they 
 have been wafted away again to brighter skies 
 and to soft islands over the sea, and he is left 
 16 
 
A DISTANT SHARPSHOOTER. 
 
alone on the edge of that Northern world which 
 he has dared invade and inhabit, it is then, amid 
 black clouds and drifting snows, that the gor 
 geous cardinal stands forth in the ideal picture 
 of his destiny. For it is then that his beauty is 
 most conspicuous, and that Death, lover of the 
 peerless, strikes at him from afar. So that he 
 retires to the twilight solitude of his wild for 
 tress. Let him even show his noble head and 
 breast at a slit in its green window-shades, and 
 a ray flashes from it to the eye of a cat; let 
 him, as spring comes on, burst out in despera 
 tion and mount to the tree-tops which he loves, 
 and his gleaming red coat betrays him to the 
 poised hawk as to a distant sharpshooter ; in 
 the barn near by an owl is waiting to do his 
 night marketing at various tender-meat stalls ; 
 and, above all, the eye and heart of man are 
 his diurnal and nocturnal foe. What wonder 
 if he is so shy, so rare, so secluded, this flame- 
 coloured prisoner in dark-green chambers, who 
 has only to be seen or heard and Death adjusts 
 an arrow ! 
 
 No vast Southern swamps or forest of pine 
 
 here into which he may plunge. If he shuns 
 
 man in Kentucky, he must haunt the long 
 
 lonely river valleys where the wild cedars grow. 
 
 18 
 
If he comes into this immediate swarming pas 
 toral region, where the people, with ancestral 
 love of privacy, and not from any kindly 
 thought of him, plant evergreens around their 
 country homes, he must live under the very 
 guns and amid the pitfalls of the enemy. 
 Surely, could the first male of the species 
 have foreseen how, through the generations of 
 his race to come, both their beauty and their 
 song, which were meant to announce them to 
 Love, would also announce them to Death, he 
 must have blanched snow-white with despair 
 and turned as mute as stone. Is it this flight 
 from the inescapable just behind that makes 
 the singing of the red-bird thoughtful and plain 
 tive, and, indeed, nearly all the wild sounds of 
 Nature so like the outcry of the doomed ? He 
 will sit for a long time silent and motionless in 
 the heart of a cedar, as if absorbed in the tragic 
 memories of his race. Then, softly, wearily, he 
 will call out to you and to the whole world: 
 Peace . . Peace . . Peace. . Peace . . Peace ! the 
 most melodious sigh that ever issued from the 
 clefts of a dungeon. 
 
 For colour and form, brilliant singing, his very 
 enemies, and the bold nature he has never lost, 
 I have long been most interested in this bird 
 19 
 
Every year several pairs make their appearance 
 about my place. This winter especially I have 
 been feeding a pair ; and there should be finer 
 music in the spring, and a lustier brood in 
 summer. 
 
 20 
 
III 
 
 ARCH has gone like its 
 winds. The other night 
 as I lay awake with 
 that yearning which 
 often beats within, 
 there fell from the 
 upper air the notes 
 of the wild gander as he wedged his way on 
 ward by faith, not by sight, towards his distant 
 bourn. I rose and, throwing open the shutters, 
 strained eyes towards the unseen and unseeing 
 21 
 
explorer, startled, as a half-asleep soldier might 
 be startled by the faint bugle-call of his com 
 mander, blown to him from the clouds. What 
 far-off lands, streaked with mortal dawn, does 
 he believe in ? In what soft sylvan waters will 
 he bury his tired breast ? Always when I hear 
 his voice, often when not, I too desire to be up 
 and gone out of these earthly marshes where 
 hunts the dark Fowler, gone to some vast, 
 pure, open sea, where, one by one, my scattered 
 kind, those whom I love and those who love 
 me, will arrive in safety, there to be together. 
 
 March is a month when the needle of my 
 nature dips towards the country. I am away, 
 greeting everything as it wakes out of winter 
 sleep, stretches arms upward and legs down 
 ward, and drinks goblet after goblet of young 
 sunshine. I must find the dark green snowdrop, 
 and sometimes help to remove from her head, 
 as she lifts it slowly from her couch, the frosted 
 nightcap, which the old Nurse would still insist 
 that she should wear. The pale green tips of 
 daffodils are a thing of beauty. There is the 
 sun-struck brook of the field, underneath the 
 thin ice of which drops form and fall, form and 
 fall, like big round silvery eyes that grow bigger 
 and brighter with astonishment that you should 
 
 22 
 
]augh at them as they vanish. But most I love 
 to see Nature do her spring house-cleaning in 
 Kentucky, with the rain-clouds for her water- 
 buckets and the winds for her brooms. What 
 an amount of drenching and sweeping she can 
 do in a day ! How she dashes pailful and pail 
 ful into every corner, till the whole earth is as 
 clean as a new floor ! Another day she attacks 
 the piles of dead leaves, where they have lain 
 since last October, and scatters them in a trice, 
 so that every cranny may be sunned and aired. 
 Or, grasping her long brooms by the handles, 
 she will go into the woods and beat the icicles 
 off the big trees as a housewife would brush 
 down cobwebs; so that the released limbs 
 straighten up like a man who has gotten out of 
 debt, and almost say to you, joyfully, " Now, 
 then, we are all right again ! " This done, she 
 begins to hang up soft new curtains at the forest 
 windows, and to spread over her floor a new car 
 pet of an emerald loveliness such as no mortal 
 looms could ever have woven. And then, at 
 last, she sends out invitations through the South, 
 and even to some tropical lands, for the birds to 
 come and spend the summer in Kentucky. The 
 invitations are sent out in March, and accepted 
 in April and May, and by June her house is full 
 of visitors. 
 
 23 
 
Not the eyes alone love Nature in March. 
 Every other sense hies abroad. My tongue 
 hunts for the last morsel of wet snow on the 
 northern root of some aged oak. As one goes 
 early to a concert-hall with a passion even for 
 the preliminary tuning of the musicians, so my 
 ear sits alone in the vast amphitheatre of Nature 
 and waits for the earliest warble of the blue 
 bird, which seems to start up somewhere behind 
 the heavenly curtains. And the scent of spring, 
 is it not the first lyric of the nose that despised 
 poet of the senses ? 
 
 But this year I have hardly glanced at the 
 small choice edition of Nature s spring verses. 
 This by reason of the on-coming Cobbs, at the 
 mere mention of whom I feel as though I were 
 plunged up to my eyes in a vat of the prosaic. 
 Some days ago workmen went into the house 
 and all but scoured the very memory of Jacob 
 off the face of the earth. Then there has been 
 need to quiet Mrs. Walters. 
 
 Mrs. Walters does not get into our best 
 society ; so that the town is to her like a pond to 
 a crane : she wades round it, going in as far as 
 she can, and snatches up such small fry as come 
 shoreward from the middle. In this way lately 
 I have gotten hints of what is stirring in the 
 vasty deeps of village opinion. 
 24 
 
A FALSE IMPRESSION OF MRS. COBB. 
 
Mrs. Cobb is charged, among other dreadful 
 things, with having ordered of the town manu 
 facturer a carriage that is to be as fine as Presi 
 dent Taylor s and with marching into church 
 preceded by a servant, who bears her prayer- 
 book on a velvet cushion. What if she rode in 
 Cinderella s coach, or had her prayer-book car 
 ried before her on the back of a Green River 
 turtle? But to her sex she promises to be an 
 invidious Christian. I am rather disturbed by 
 the gossip regarding the elder daughter. But 
 this is so conflicting that one impression is 
 made only to be effaced by another. 
 
 A week ago their agent wanted to buy my 
 place. I was so outraged that I got down my 
 map of Kentucky to see where these peculiar 
 beings originate. They come from a little town 
 in the southwestern corner of the State, on the 
 Ohio River, named Henderson named from 
 that Richard Henderson who in the year 1775 
 bought about half of Kentucky from the Chero- 
 kees, and afterwards, as president of his pur 
 chase, addressed the first legislative assembly 
 ever held in the West, seated under a big elm 
 tree outside the walls of Boonsborough fort. 
 These people must be his heirs, or they would 
 never have tried to purchase my few Sabine 
 26 
 
GOT DOWN MY MAP OF KENTUCKY. 
 27 
 
acres. It is no surprise to discover that they 
 are from the Green River country. They 
 must bathe often in that stream. I suppose 
 they wanted my front yard to sow it in penny 
 royal, the characteristic growth of those dis 
 tricts. They surely distil it and use it as a 
 perfume on their handkerchiefs. It was per 
 haps from the founder of this family that 
 Thomas Jefferson got authority for his state 
 ment that the Ohio is the most beautiful river 
 in the world unless, indeed, the President 
 formed that notion of the Ohio upon lifting 
 his eyes to it from the contemplation of Green 
 River. Henderson! Green River region! To 
 this town and to the blue-grass country as 
 Boeotia to Attica in the days of Pericles. Here 
 after I shall call these people my Green River 
 Boeotians. 
 
 A few days later their agent again, a little 
 frigid, very urgent this time to buy me out 
 on my own terms, any terms. But what was 
 back of all this, I inquired. I did not know 
 these people, had never done them a favour. 
 Why, then, such determination to have me re 
 moved ? Why such bitterness, vindictiveness, 
 ungovernable passion ? 
 
 That was the point, he replied. This family 
 28 
 
had never wronged me. I had never even seen 
 them. Yet they had heard of nothing but my 
 intense dislike of them and opposition to their 
 becoming my neighbours. They could not fore 
 go their plans, but they were quite willing to 
 give me the chance of leaving their vicinity, 
 on whatever I might regard the most advanta 
 geous terms. 
 
 Oh, my mocking-bird, my mocking-bird ! 
 When you have been sitting on other front 
 porches, have you, by the divine law of your 
 being, been reproducing your notes as though 
 they were mine, and even pouring forth the 
 little twitter that was meant for your private 
 ear? 
 
 As March goes out, two things more and 
 more I hear the cardinal has begun to mount 
 to the bare tops of the locust-trees and scatter 
 his notes downward, and over the way the work 
 men whistle and sing. The bird is too shy to 
 sit in any tree on that side of the yard. But 
 his eye and ear are studying them curiously. 
 Sometimes I even fancy that he sings to them 
 with a plaintive sort of joy, as though he were 
 saying, " Welcome go away ! " 
 
 29 
 
HE Cobbs will be the death 
 of me before they get 
 here. The report spread 
 that they and I had al 
 ready had a tremendous 
 quarrel, and that, rather 
 than live beside them, I 
 had sold them my place. 
 
 This set flowing towards me for days a stream 
 of people, like a line of ants passing to and 
 from the scene of a terrific false alarm. I had 
 nothing to do but sit perfectly still and let each 
 ant, as it ran up, touch me with its antennae, 
 get the counter-sign, and turn back to the vil 
 lage ant-hill. Not all, however. Some remained 
 to hear me abuse the Cobbs ; or, counting on 
 30 
 
my support, fell to abusing the Cobbs them 
 selves. When I made not a word of reply, 
 except to assure them that I really had not quar 
 relled with the Cobbs, had nothing against the 
 Cobbs, and was immensely delighted that the 
 Cobbs were coming, they went away amazingly 
 cool and indignant. But for days I continued 
 to hear such things attributed to me that, had 
 that young West-Pointer been in the neighbour 
 hood, and known how to shoot, he must infallibly 
 have blown my head off me, as any Kentucky 
 gentleman would. 
 
 Others of my visitors, having heard that I was 
 not to sell my place, were so glad of it that they 
 walked around my garden and inquired about 
 my health and the prospect for fruit. For the 
 season has come when the highest animal begins 
 to pay me some attention. During the winter, 
 having little to contribute to the community, I 
 drop from communal notice. But there are cer 
 tain ladies who bow sweetly to me when my 
 roses and honeysuckles burst into bloom ; a fat 
 old cavalier of the South begins to shake hands 
 with me when my asparagus bed begins to send 
 up its tender stalks ; I am in high favour with 
 two or three young ladies at the season of lilies 
 and sweet-pea ; there is one old soul who espe- 
 31 
 
A 
 
 CERTAIN LADIES WHO BOW SWEETLY TO ME. 
 32 
 
daily loves rhubarb pies, which she makes to look 
 like little latticed porches in front of little green 
 skies, and it is she who remembers me and my 
 row of pie-plant ; and still another, who knows 
 better than cat-birds when currants are ripe. 
 Above all, there is a preacher, who thinks my 
 sins are as scarlet so long as my strawberries 
 are, and plants himself in my bed at that time 
 to reason with me of Judgment to come ; and a 
 doctor, who gets despondent about my constitu 
 tion in pear-time after which my health seems 
 to return, but never my pears. 
 
 So that, on the whole, from May till October 
 I am the bright side of the moon, and the tele 
 scopes of the town are busy observing my phe 
 nomena ; after which it is as though I had rolled 
 over on my dark side, there to lie forgotten till 
 once more the sun entered the proper side of the 
 zodiac. But let me except always the few stead 
 ily luminous spirits I know, with whom is no 
 variableness, neither shadow of turning. If any 
 one wishes to become famous in a community, 
 let him buy a small farm on the edge of it and 
 cultivate fruits, berries, and flowers, which he 
 freely gives away or lets be freely taken. 
 
 All this has taken freely of my swift April 
 days. Besides, I have made me a new side- 
 D 33 
 
porch, made it myself, for I like to hammer and 
 drive things home, and because the rose on the 
 old one had rotted it from post to shingle. And 
 then, when I had tacked the rose in place again, 
 the little old window opening above it made that 
 side of my house look like a boy in his Saturday 
 hat and Sunday breeches. So in went a large 
 new window ; and now these changes have mys 
 teriously offended Mrs. Walters, who says the 
 town is laughing at me for trying to outdo the 
 Cobbs. The highest animal is the only one who 
 is divinely gifted with such noble discernment. 
 But I am not sorry to have my place look its 
 best. When they see it, they will perhaps un 
 derstand why I was not to be driven out by a 
 golden cracker on their family whip. They 
 could not have bought my little woodland pas 
 ture, where for a generation has been picnic and 
 muster and Fourth-of-July ground, and where 
 the brave fellows met to volunteer for the Mexi 
 can war. They could not have bought even the 
 heap of brush behind my wood-pile, where the 
 brown thrashers build. 
 
 34 
 
\ 
 
 MAY I am of the earth, earthy. 
 The soul loses its wild white 
 pinions ; the heart puts forth 
 its short, powerful wings, 
 heavy with heat and colour, 
 that flutter, but do not lift it off 
 the ground. The month comes 
 and goes, and not once do I 
 think of raising my eyes to the 
 stars. The very sunbeams fall 
 on the body as a warm golden net, and keep 
 thought and feeling from escape. Nature uses 
 beauty now not to uplift, but to entice. I find 
 her intent upon the one general business of see 
 ing that no type of her creatures gets left out of 
 35 
 
the generations. Studied in my yard full of 
 birds, as with a condensing glass of the world, 
 she can be seen enacting among them the 
 dramas of history. Yesterday, in the secret 
 recess of a walnut, I saw the beginning of the 
 Trojan war. Last week I witnessed the battle 
 of Actium fought out in mid-air. And down 
 among my hedges indeed, openly in my very 
 barn-yard there is a perfectly scandalous Salt 
 Lake City. 
 
 And while I am watching the birds, they are 
 watching me. Not a little fop among them, 
 having proposed and been accepted, but perches 
 on a limb, and has the air of putting his hands 
 mannishly under his coat-tails and crying out at 
 me, " Hello ! Adam, what were you made for ? " 
 " You attend to your business, and I ll attend to 
 mine," I answer. " You have one May ; I have 
 twenty-five ! " He didn t wait to hear. He 
 caught sight of a pair of clear brown eyes peep 
 ing at him out of a near tuft of leaves, and 
 sprang thither with open arms and the sound of 
 a kiss. 
 
 But if I have twenty-five Mays remaining, are 
 not some Mays gone ? Ah, well ! Better a sin 
 gle May with the right mate, than the full num 
 ber with the wrong. And where is she the 
 
 36 
 
THE NEW NEIGHBOURS HAVE COME. 
 
 37 
 
right one ? If she ever comes near my yard 
 and answers my whistle, I ll know it; and then 
 I ll teach these popinjays in blue coats and 
 white pantaloons what Adam was made for. 
 
 But the wrong one there s the terror ! 
 Only think of so composite a phenomenon as 
 Mrs. Walters, for instance, adorned with limp 
 nightcap and stiff curl-papers, like garnishes 
 around a leg of roast mutton, waking up beside 
 me at four o clock in the morning as some gray- 
 headed love-bird of Madagascar, and beginning 
 to chirp and trill in an ecstasy ! 
 
 The new neighbours have come mother, 
 younger daughter, and servants. The son is at 
 West Point ; and the other daughter lingers a 
 few days, unable, no doubt, to tear herself away 
 from her beloved penny-royal and dearest Green 
 River. They are quiet ; have borrowed nothing 
 from any one in the neighbourhood ; have well- 
 dressed, well-trained servants ; and one begins 
 to be a little impressed. The curtains they have 
 put up at the windows suggest that the whole 
 nest is being lined with soft, cool, spotless love 
 liness, which is very restful and beguiling. 
 
 No one has called yet, since they are not at 
 home till June ; but Mrs. Walters has done some 
 tall wading lately, and declares that people do 
 
 38 
 
not know what to think. They will know when 
 the elder daughter arrives ; for it is the worst 
 member of the family that settles what the world 
 shall think of the others. 
 
 If only she were not the worst ! If only as I 
 sat here beside my large new window, around 
 which the old rose-bush has been trained and 
 now is blooming, I could look across to her win 
 dow where the white curtains hang, and feel that 
 behind them sat, shy and gentle, the wood-pigeon 
 for whom through Mays gone by I have been 
 vaguely waiting ! 
 
 And yet I do not believe that I could live a 
 single year with only the sound of cooing in the 
 house. A wood-pigeon would be the death of 
 me. 
 
 39 
 
VI 
 
 HIS morning, the 3d of 
 June, the Undine f.om 
 Green River ro c _ above 
 the waves. 
 
 The strawberry bed is 
 almost under their win 
 dows. I had gone out 
 to pick the first dish of 
 the season for breakfast; 
 for while I do not care to eat except to live, I 
 never miss an opportunity of living upon straw 
 berries. 
 
 40 
 
I was stooping down and bending the wet 
 leaves over, so as not to miss any, when a voice 
 at the window above said, timidly and playfully, 
 
 " Are you the gardener ? " 
 
 I picked on, turning as red as the berries. 
 Then the voice said again, 
 
 " Old man, are you the gardener ? " 
 
 Of course a person looking down carelessly on 
 the stooping figure of any man, and seeing noth 
 ing but a faded straw hat, and arms and feet 
 and ankles bent together, might easily think him 
 decrepit with age. Some things touch off my 
 temper. But I answered, humbly, 
 
 " I am the gardener, madam." 
 
 " How much do you ask for your straw 
 berries ? " 
 
 "The gentleman who owns this place does 
 not sell his strawberries. He gives them away, 
 if he likes people. How much do you ask for 
 your strawberries ? " 
 
 " What a nice old gentleman ! Is he having 
 those picked to give away ? " 
 
 " He is having these picked for his breakfast." 
 
 "Don t you think he d like you to give me 
 those, and pick him some more ? " 
 
 " I fear not, madam." 
 
 " Nevertheless, you might. He d never know." 
 41 
 
OLD MAN, ARE YOU THE GARDENER?" 
 
" I think he d find it out." 
 
 " You are not afraid of him, are you ? " 
 
 " I am when he gets mad." 
 
 " Does he treat you badly ? " 
 
 " If he does, I always forgive him." 
 
 " He doesn t seem to provide you with very 
 many clothes." 
 
 I picked on. 
 
 " But you seem nicely fed." 
 
 I picked or 
 
 " What is his name, old man ? Don t you like 
 to talk?" 
 
 "Adam Moss." 
 
 " Such a green, cool, soft name ! It is like his 
 house and yard and garden. What does he do ? " 
 
 "Whatever he pleases." 
 
 " You must not be impertinent to me, or I ll 
 tell him. What does he like ? " 
 
 " Birds red-birds. What do you like ? " 
 
 " Red-birds ! How does he catch them ? 
 Throw salt on their tails ? " 
 
 " He is a lover of Nature, madam, and partic 
 ularly of birds." 
 
 "What does he know about birds? Doesn t 
 he care for people ? " 
 
 " He doesn t think many worth caring for." 
 
 " Indeed ! And he is perfect, then, is he ? " 
 43 
 
I DRESSED UP. 
 44 
 
" He thinks he is nearly as bad as any ; but 
 that doesn t make the rest any better." 
 
 " Poor old gentleman ! He must have the 
 blues dreadfully. What does he do with his 
 birds ? Eat his robins, and stuff his cats, and 
 sell his red-birds in cages ? " 
 
 " He considers it part of his mission in life 
 to keep them from being eaten or stuffed or 
 caged." 
 
 " And you say he is nearly a hundred ? " 
 
 "He is something over thirty years of age, 
 madam." 
 
 " Thirty ? Surely we heard he was very old. 
 And does he live in that beautiful little old 
 house all by himself ? " 
 
 "/live with him !" 
 
 " You ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! And what is your 
 name, you dear good old man ? " 
 
 " Adam." 
 
 " Two Adams living in the same house ! 
 Are you the old Adam ? I have heard so much 
 of him." 
 
 At this I rose, pushed back my hat, and 
 looked up at her. 
 
 " / am Adam Moss," I said, with distant 
 politeness. "You can have these strawberries 
 for your breakfast if you want them." 
 45 
 
OVER TO MY WOODLAND PASTURE. 
 
 46 
 
There was a low quick "Oh ! " and she was 
 gone, and the curtains closed over her face. It 
 was rude ; but neither ought she to have called 
 me the old Adam. I have been thinking of 
 one thing : why should she speak slightingly of 
 my knowledge of birds ? What does she know 
 about them ? I should like to inquire. 
 
 Late this afternoon, I dressed up in my high 
 gray wool hat, my fine long-tailed blue cloth 
 coat with brass buttons, my pink waist-coat, 
 frilled shirt, white cravat, and yellow nankeen 
 trousers, and walked slowly several times around 
 my strawberry bed. Did not see any more ripe 
 strawberries. 
 
 Within the last ten days 1 have called twice 
 upon the Cobbs, urged no doubt by an extrava 
 gant readiness to find them all that I feared 
 they were not. How exquisite in life is the art 
 of not seeing many things, and of forgetting 
 many that have been seen ! They received me 
 as though nothing unpleasant had happened. 
 Nor did the elder daughter betray that we had 
 met. She has not forgotten, for more than 
 once I surprised a light in her eyes as though 
 she were laughing. She has not, it is certain, 
 told even her mother and sister. Somehow this 
 47 
 
fact invests her character with a charm as of 
 subterranean roominess and secrecy. Women 
 who tell everything are like finger-bowls of 
 clear water. 
 
 But it is Sylvia that pleases me. She must 
 be about seventeen ; and so demure and confid 
 ing that I was ready to take her by the hand, 
 lead her to the garden-gate, and say : Dear 
 child, everything in here butterflies, flowers, 
 fruit, honey, everything is yours; come and 
 go and gather as you like. 
 
 Yesterday morning I sent them a large dish 
 of strawberries, with a note asking whether 
 they would walk during the day over to my 
 woodland pasture, where "the soldiers had a 
 barbecue before setting out for the Mexican 
 war. The mother and Sylvia accepted. Our 
 walk was a little overshadowed by their loss ; 
 and as I thoughtlessly described the gayety of 
 that scene the splendid young fellows danc 
 ing in their bright uniforms, and now and then 
 pausing to wipe their foreheads, the speeches, 
 the cheering, the dinner under the trees, and, 
 a few days later, the tear-dimmed eyes, the 
 hand-wringing and embracing, and at last the 
 marching proudly away, each with a Bible in 
 his pocket, and many never, never to return 
 
I was sorry that I had not foreseen the sacred 
 chord I was touching. But it made good friends 
 of us more quickly, and they were well-bred, so 
 that we returned to all appearance in gay spirits. 
 The elder daughter came to meet us, and went 
 at once silently to her mother s side, as though 
 she had felt the separation. I wondered whether 
 she had declined to go because of the memory 
 of her father. As we passed my front gate, 
 I asked them to look at my flowers. The 
 mother praised also the cabbages, thus showing 
 an admirably balanced mind; the little Sylvia 
 fell in love with a vine-covered arbour; the elder 
 daughter appeared to be secretly watching the 
 many birds about the grounds, but when I pointed 
 out several less-known species, she lost interest. 
 What surprises most is that they are so re 
 fined and intelligent. It is greatly to be feared 
 that we Kentuckians in this part of the State 
 are profoundly ignorant as to the people in 
 other parts. I told Mrs. Walters this, and 
 she, seeing that I am beginning to like them, 
 is beginning to like them herself. Dear Mrs. 
 Walters ! Her few ideas are like three or four 
 marbles on a level floor: they have no power 
 to move themselves, but roll equally well in any 
 direction you push them. 
 E 49 
 
This afternoon I turned a lot of little town 
 boys into my strawberry bed, and now it looks 
 like a field that had been harrowed and rolled. 
 
 (J [(^l**v 
 >J , T 
 
 LITTLE TOWN BOYS INTO MY STRAWBERRY BED. 
 
 I think they would gladly have pulled up some 
 of the plants to see whether there might not be 
 berries growing on the roots. 
 
 It is unwise to do everything that you can 
 for people at once ; for when you can do noth- 
 50 
 
ing more, they will say you are no longer like 
 yourself, and turn against you. So I have 
 meant to go slowly with the Cobbs in my wish 
 to be neighbourly, and do not think that they 
 could reasonably be spoiled on one dish of 
 strawberries in three weeks. But the other 
 evening Mrs. Cobb sent over a plate of golden 
 sally-lunn on a silver waiter, covered with a 
 snow-white napkin; and acting on this provo 
 cation, I thought they could be trusted with a 
 basket of cherries. 
 
 So next morning, in order to save the ripen 
 ing fruit on a rather small tree of choice variety, 
 I thought I should put up a scarecrow, and to 
 this end rummaged a closet for some last win 
 ter s old clothes. These I crammed with straw, 
 and I fastened the resulting figure in the crotch 
 of the tree, tying the arms to the adjoining limbs, 
 and giving it the dreadful appearance of shout 
 ing, " Keep out of here, you rascals, or you ll 
 get hurt ! " And, in truth, it did look so like 
 me that I felt a little uncanny about it myself. 
 
 Returning home late, I went at once to the 
 tree, where I found not a quart of cherries, and 
 the servants told of an astonishing thing : that 
 no sooner had the birds discovered who was 
 standing in the tree, wearing the clothes in 
 
which he used to feed them during the winter, 
 than the news spread like wildfire to the effect 
 that he had climbed up there and was calling 
 out : " Here is the best tree, fellows ! Pitch in 
 and help yourselves ! " So that the like of the 
 chattering and fetching away was never seen 
 before. This was the story ; but little negroes 
 love cherries, and it is not incredible that the 
 American birds were assisted in this instance by 
 a large family of fat young African spoon bills. 
 Anxious to save another tree, and afraid to 
 use more of my own clothes, I went over to 
 Mrs. Walters, and got from her an old bonnet 
 and veil, a dress and cape, and a pair of her 
 cast-off yellow gaiters. These garments I strung 
 together and prepared to look lifelike as nearly 
 as a stuffing of hay would meet the inner re 
 quirements of the case. I then seated the dread 
 apparition in the fork of a limb, and awaited 
 results. The first thief was an old jay, who 
 flew towards the tree with his head turned to 
 one side to see whether any one was overtaking 
 him. But scarcely had he alighted when he 
 uttered a scream of horror that was sickening 
 to hear, and dropped on the grass beneath, after 
 which he took himself off with a silence and 
 speed that would have done credit to a passen- 
 52 
 
ger-pigeon. That tree was rather avoided for 
 some days, or it may have been let alone merely 
 because others were ripening; so that Mrs. Cobb 
 got her cherries, and I sent Mrs. Walters some 
 also for the excellent loan of her veil and gaiters. 
 
 As the days pass I fall in love with Sylvia, 
 who has been persuaded to turn my arbour into 
 a reading-room, and is often to be found there 
 of mornings with one of Sir Walter s novels. 
 Sometimes I leave her alone, sometimes lie on 
 the bench facing her, while she reads aloud, or, 
 tiring, prattles. Little half-fledged spirit, to 
 whom the yard is the earth and June eternity, 
 but who peeps over the edge of the nest at the 
 chivalry of the ages, and fancies that she knows 
 the world. The other day, as we were talking, 
 she tapped the edge of her Ivanhoe with a slate- 
 pencil for she is also studying the Greatest 
 Common Divisor and said, warningly, "You 
 must not make epigrams ; for if you succeeded 
 you would be brilliant, and everything brilliant 
 is tiresome." 
 
 " Who is your authority for that epigram, Miss 
 Sylvia ? " I said, laughing. 
 
 " Don t you suppose that I have any ideas 
 but what I get from books ? " 
 53 
 
" You may have all wisdom, but those sayings 
 proceed only from experience." 
 
 " I have my intuitions ; they are better than 
 experience." 
 
 " If you keep on, you will be making epigrams 
 presently, and then I shall find you tiresome, 
 and go away." 
 
 " You couldn t. I am your guest. How un 
 conventional I am to come over and sit in your 
 arbour ? But it is Georgiana s fault." 
 
 " Did she tell you to come ? " 
 
 " No ; but she didn t keep me from coming. 
 Whenever any one of us does anything improper 
 we always say to each other, It s Georgiana s 
 fault. She ought not to have taught us to be so 
 simple and unconventional. " 
 
 " And is she the family governess ? " 
 
 "She governs the family. There doesn t 
 seem to be any real government, but we all do 
 as she says. You might think at first that 
 Georgiana was the most light-headed member 
 of the family, but she isn t. She s deep. I m 
 shallow in comparison with her. She calls me 
 sophisticated, and introduces me as the elder 
 Miss Cobb, and says that if I don t stop reading 
 Scott s novels and learn more arithmetic she 
 will put white caps on me, and make me walk 
 54 
 
to church in carpet slippers and with grand 
 mother s stick." 
 
 " But you don t seem to have stopped, Miss 
 Sylvia." 
 
 " No ; but I m stopping. Georgiana always 
 gives us time, but we get right at last. It was 
 two years before she could make my brother go 
 to West Point. He was wild and rough, and 
 wanted to raise tobacco, and float with it down 
 to New Orleans, and have a good time. Then 
 when she had gotten him to go she was afraid 
 he d come back, and so she persuaded my 
 mother to live here, where there isn t any to 
 bacco, and where I could be sent to school. 
 That took her a year, and now she is breaking 
 up my habit of reading nothing but novels. 
 She gets us all down in the end. One day when 
 she and Joe were little children they were out at 
 the wood-pile, and Georgiana was sitting on a 
 log eating a jam biscuit, with her feet on the log 
 in front of her. Joe had a hand-axe, and was 
 chopping at anything till he caught sight of her 
 feet. Then he went to the end of the log, and 
 whistled like a steamboat, and began to hack 
 down in that direction, calling out to her : * Take 
 your toes out of the way, Georgiana. I am 
 coming down the river. The current is up and 
 55 
 
I can t stop. My toes were there first/ said 
 Georgiana, and went on eating her biscuit. 
 Take them out of the way, I tell you, he 
 shouted as he came nearer, or they ll get cut 
 off. They were there first, repeated Geor 
 giana, and took another delicious nibble. Joe 
 cut straight along, and went whack! right into 
 her five toes. Georgiana screamed with all her 
 might, but she held her foot on the log, till Joe 
 dropped the hatchet with horror, and caught her 
 in his arms. Georgiana, I told you to take 
 your toes away, he cried; you are such a little 
 fool, and ran with her to the house. But she 
 always had control over him after that." 
 
 To-day I saw Sylvia enter the arbour, and 
 shortly afterwards I followed with a book. 
 
 " When you stop reading novels and begin to 
 read history, Miss Sylvia, here is the most re 
 markable history of Kentucky that was ever 
 written or ever will be. It is by my father s 
 old teacher of natural history in Transylvania 
 University, Professor Rafinesque, who also had 
 a wonderful botanical garden on this side of the 
 town ; perhaps the first ever seen in this coun 
 try." 
 
 "I know all about it," replied Sylvia, resent- 
 56 
 
ing this slight upon her erudition. " Georgian^ 
 has my father s copy, and his was presented to 
 him by Mr. Audubon." 
 
 " Audubon ! " I said, with a doubt. 
 
 " Never heard of Audubon ? " cried Sylvia, 
 delighted to show up my ignorance. 
 
 "Only of the great Audubon, Miss Sylvia; 
 the great, the very great Audubon." 
 
 " Well, this was the great, the very great 
 Audubon. He lived in Henderson, and kept a 
 corn-mill. He and my father were friends, and 
 he gave my father some of his early drawings 
 of Kentucky birds. Georgiana has them now, 
 and that is where she gets her love of birds 
 from my father, who got his from the great, the 
 very great Audubon." 
 
 "Would Miss Cobb let me see these draw 
 ings ? " I asked, eagerly. 
 
 " She might ; but she prizes them as much as 
 if they were stray leaves out of the only Bible 
 in the world." 
 
 As Sylvia turned inside out this pocket of 
 her mind, there had dropped out a key to her 
 sister s conduct. Now I understood her slight 
 ing attitude towards my knowledge of birds. 
 But I shall feel some interest in Miss Cobb 
 from this time on. I never dreamed that she 
 57 
 
could bring me fresh news of that rare spirit 
 whom I have so wished to see, and for one 
 week in the woods with whom I would give any 
 year of my life. Are they possibly the Hen 
 derson family to whom Audubon intrusted the 
 box of his original drawings during his absence 
 in Philadelphia, and who let a pair of Norway 
 rats rear a family in it, and cut to pieces nearly 
 a thousand inhabitants of the air ? 
 
 There are two more days of June. Since the 
 talk with Sylvia I have called twice more upon 
 the elder Miss Cobb. Upon reflection, it is 
 misleading to refer to this young lady in terms 
 so dry, stiff, and denuded ; and I shall drop 
 into Sylvia s form, and call her simply Geor- 
 giana. That looks better Georgiana ! It 
 sounds well, too Georgiana ! 
 
 Georgiana, then, is a rather elusive character. 
 The more I see of her the less I understand 
 her. If your nature draws near hers, it retreats. 
 If you pursue, it flies a little frightened per 
 haps. If then you keep still and look perfectly 
 safe, she will return, but remain at a fixed dis 
 tance, like a bird that will stay in your yard, 
 but not enter your house. It is hardly shyness, 
 for she is not shy, but more like some strain of 
 58 
 
wild nature in her that refuses to be domesti 
 cated. One s faith is strained to accept Sylvia s 
 estimate that Georgiana is deep she is so 
 light, so airy, so playful. Sylvia is a demure 
 little dove that has pulled over itself an owl s 
 sMn, and is much prouder of its wicked old 
 feathers than of its innocent heart; but Geor : 
 giana what isshej Secretly an owl with 
 thebuoyancy of a humming-bird? Howeyej:. 
 ifsnothing to me. She hovers around her 
 mother and Slvia with a fondness that is 
 
 of Audubon and her father, for it is never well 
 to let an elder sister know that a younger one 
 has been talking about her. I merely gave 
 her several chances to speak of birds, but she 
 ignored them. As for me and my love of birds, 
 such trifles are beneath her notice. I don t like 
 her, and it will not be worth while to call again 
 soon, though it would be pleasant to see those 
 drawings. 
 
 This morning as I was accidentally passing 
 under her window I saw her at it and lifted my 
 hat. She leaned over with her cheek in her 
 palm, and said, smiling, 
 
 " You mustn t spoil Sylvia ! " 
 
 " What is my definite offence in that regard? " 
 59 
 
" Too much arbour, too many flowers, too much 
 fine treatment." 
 
 " Does fine treatment ever harm anybody ? 
 Is it not bad treatment that spoils people ? " 
 
 " Good treatment may never spoil people who 
 are old enough to know its rarity and value. 
 But you say you are a student of nature ; have 
 you not observed that nature never lets the 
 sugar get to things until they are ripe ? Chil 
 dren must be kept tart." 
 
 " The next time that Miss Sylvia comes over, 
 then, I am to give her a tremendous scolding 
 and a big basket of green apples." 
 
 " Or, what is worse, suppose you encourage 
 her to study the Greatest Common Divisor? I 
 am trying to get her ready for school in the fall." 
 
 " Is she being educated for a teacher? " 
 
 You know that Southern ladies never teach." 
 
 " Then she will never need the Greatest Com 
 mon Divisor. I have known many thousands of 
 human beings, and none but teachers ever has 
 the least use for the Greatest Common Divisor." 
 
 tf But she needs to do things that she dislikes. 
 We all do." 
 
 I smiled at the memory of a self-willed little 
 bare foot on a log years ago. 
 
 " I shall see that my grape arbour does not 
 60 
 
further interfere with Miss Sylvia s progress 
 towards perfection." 
 
 " Why didn t you wish us to be your neigh 
 bours ? " 
 
 " I didn t know that you were the right sort 
 of people." 
 
 " Are we the right sort ? " 
 
 "The value of my land has almost been 
 doubled." 
 
 " It is a pleasure to know that you approve 
 of us on those grounds. Will the value of our 
 land rise also, do you think ? And why do you 
 suppose we objected to you as a neighbour? " 
 
 " I cannot imagine." 
 
 "The imagination can be cultivated, you 
 know. Then tell me this : why do Kentuckians 
 in this part of Kentucky think so much of them 
 selves compared with the rest of the world ? " 
 
 " Perhaps it s because they are Virginians. 
 There may be various reasons." 
 
 "Do the people ever tell what the reasons 
 are ? " 
 
 " I have never heard one." 
 
 " And if we stayed here long enough, and 
 imitated them closely, do you suppose we would 
 get to feel the same way ? " 
 
 " I am sure of it." 
 
 61 
 
" It must be so pleasant to consider Kentucky 
 the best part of the world, and your part of 
 Kentucky the best of the State, and your family 
 the best of all the best families in that best part, 
 and yourself the best member of your family. 
 Ought not that to make one perfectly happy?" 
 " I have often observed that it seems to do so." 
 " It is delightful to remember that you ap 
 prove of us. And we should feel so glad to be 
 able to return the compliment. Good-bye ! " 
 
 Any one would have to admit, however, that 
 there is no sharpness in Georgiana s pleasantry. 
 The child-nature in her is so sunny, sportive, so 
 bent on harmless mischief. She still plays with 
 life as a kitten with a ball of yarn. Some day 
 Kitty will fall asleep with the Ball poised in 
 the cup of one foot. Then, waking, when her 
 dream is over, she will find that her plaything 
 has become a rocky, thorny, storm-swept, im 
 measurable world, and that she, a woman, stands 
 holding out towards it her imploring arms, and 
 asking only for some littlest part in its infinite 
 destinies. 
 
 After the last talk with Georgiana I felt re 
 newed desire to see those Audubon drawings. 
 62 
 
So yesterday morning I sent over to her some 
 things written by a Northern man, whom I call 
 the young Audubon of the Maine woods. His 
 name is Henry D. Thoreau, and it is, I believe, 
 known only to me down here. Everything that 
 I can find of his is as pure and cold and lonely 
 as a wild cedar of the mountain rocks, standing 
 far above its smokeless valley and hushed white 
 river. She returned them to-day, with word 
 that she would thank me in person, and to-night 
 I went over in a state of rather senseless eager 
 ness. 
 
 Her mother and sister had gone out, and she 
 sat on the dark porch alone. The things of 
 Thoreau s have interested her, and she asked 
 me to tell her all I knew of him, which was little 
 enough. Then of her own accord she began to 
 speak of her father and Audubon of the one 
 with the worship of love, of the other with the 
 worship of greatness. I felt as though I were 
 in a moonlit cathedral ; for her voice, the whole 
 revelation of her nature, made the spot so im 
 pressive and so sacred. She scarcely addressed 
 me ; she was communing with them. Nothing 
 that her father told her regarding Audubon 
 appears to have been forgotten ; and, brought 
 nearer than ever before to that lofty, tireless 
 63 
 
spirit in its wanderings through the Kentucky 
 forests, I almost forgot her to whom I was lis 
 tening. But in the midst of it she stopped, and 
 it was again kitten and yarn. I left quite as 
 abruptly. Upon my soul I believe that Georgi- 
 ana doesn t think me worth talking to seriously. 
 
VII 
 
 ULY has dragged like a log 
 across a wet field. 
 
 There was the Fourth, 
 which is always the grandest 
 occasion of the year with us. 
 Society has taken up Sylvia 
 and rejected Georgiana; and 
 so with its great gallantry, 
 and to her boundless delight, 
 Sylvia was invited to sit with a bevy of girls in 
 a large furniture wagon covered with flags and 
 F 65 
 
bunting. The girls were to be dressed in white, 
 carry flowers and flags, and sing "The Star- 
 Spangled Banner " in the procession, just be 
 fore the fire-engine. I wrote a note to Geor- 
 giana, asking whether it would interfere with 
 Sylvia s Greatest Common Divisor if I presented 
 her with a profusion of elegant flowers on that 
 occasion. Georgiana herself had equipped Syl 
 via with a truly exquisite silken flag on a silver 
 staff; and as Sylvia both sang and waved with 
 all her might, not only to keep up the Green 
 River reputation in such matters, but with a 
 mediaeval determination to attract a young man 
 on the fire-engine behind, she quite eclipsed 
 every other miss in the wagon, and was not 
 even hoarse when persuaded at last to stop. So 
 that several of the representatives of the other 
 States voted afterwards in a special congress 
 that she was loud, and in no way as nice as 
 they had fancied, and that they ought never 
 to recognize her again except in church and 
 at funerals. 
 
 And then the month brought down from West 
 Point the son of the family, who cut off or cut 
 at Georgiana s toes, I remember. With him 
 a sort of cousin, who lives in New York State ; 
 and after a few days of toploftical strutting 
 66 
 
TOPLOFTICAL STRUTTING. 
 
around town, and a pusillanimous crack or two 
 over the back-garden fence at my birds, they 
 went away again, to the home of this New York 
 cousin, carrying Georgiana with them to spend 
 the summer. 
 
 Nothing has happened since. Only Sylvia 
 and I have been making hay while the sun 
 shines or does not shine, if one chooses to 
 regard Georgiana s absence in that cloudy 
 fashion. Sylvia s ordinary armour consists of a 
 slate-pencil for a spear, a slate for a shield, and 
 a volume of Sir Walter for a bludgeon. Now 
 and then I have found her sitting alone in the 
 arbour with the drooping air of Lucy Ashton 
 beside the fountain ; and she would be better 
 pleased if I met her clandestinely there in 
 cloak and plume with the deadly complexion 
 of Ravenswood. 
 
 The other day I caught her toiling at some 
 thing, and she admitted being at work on a poem 
 which would be about half as long as the " Lay 
 of the Last Minstrel." She read me the open 
 ing lines, after that bland habit of young writ 
 ers ; and as nearly as I recollect, they began as 
 follows : 
 
 " I love to see gardens and arbours and plants ; 
 I love the fine air, but not my fine aunts." 
 68 
 
When not under the spell of mediaeval chiv 
 alry she prattles needlessly of Georgiana, early 
 life, and their old home in Henderson. Al 
 though I have pointed out to her the gross 
 impropriety of her conduct, she has persisted 
 in reading me some of Georgiana s letters 
 written from the home of that New York cousin, 
 whose mother they are now visiting. I didn t 
 like him particularly. Sylvia relates that he 
 was a favourite of her father s. 
 
 The dull month passes to-day. One thing I 
 have secretly wished to learn : did her brother 
 cut Georgiana s toes entirely off ? 
 
VIII 
 
 AUGUST the pale and 
 delicate poetry of the 
 Kentucky land makes 
 itself felt as silence and 
 repose. Still skies, still 
 woods, still sheets of 
 forest water, still flocks 
 and herds, long lanes winding without the sound 
 of a traveller through fields of the universal 
 brooding stillness. The sun no longer blaz 
 ing, but muffled in a veil of palest blue. No 
 
 70 
 
more black clouds rumbling and rushing up 
 from the horizon, but a single white one brush 
 ing slowly against the zenith like the lost wing 
 of a swan. Far beneath it the silver-breasted 
 hawk, using the cloud as his lordly parasol. 
 The eagerness of spring gone, now all but 
 incredible as having ever existed; the birds 
 hushed and hiding; the bee, so nimble once, 
 fallen asleep over his own cider-press in the 
 shadow of the golden apple. From the depths 
 of the woods may come the notes of the cuckoo ; 
 but they strike the air more and more slowly, 
 like the clack, clack, clack of a distant wheel 
 that is being stopped at the close of harvest. 
 The whirring wings of the locust let themselves 
 go in one long wave of sound, passing into si 
 lence. All nature is a vast sacred goblet, filling 
 drop by drop to the brim, and not to be shaken. 
 But the stalks of the later flowers begin to be 
 stuffed with hurrying bloom lest they be too late ; 
 and the nighthawk rapidly mounts his stairway 
 of flight higher and higher, higher and higher, 
 as though he would rise above the warm white 
 sea of atmosphere and breathe in cold ether. 
 
 Always in August my nature will go its own 
 way and seek its own peace. I roam solitary, 
 but never alone, over this rich pastoral land, 
 71 
 
crossing farm after farm, and keeping as best I 
 can out of sight of the labouring or loitering 
 negroes. For the sight of them ruins every 
 landscape, and I shall never feel myself free 
 till they are gone. What if they sing? The 
 more is the pity that any human being could 
 be happy enough to sing so long as he was a 
 ^slave in any thought or fibre of his nature. 
 
 Sometimes it is through the aftermath of fat 
 wheat-fields, where float like myriad little nets 
 of silver gauze the webs of the crafty weavers, 
 and where a whole world of winged small folk 
 flit from tree-top to tree-top of the low weeds. 
 They are all mine these Kentucky wheat- 
 fields. After the owner has taken from them 
 his last sheaf I come in and gather my harvest 
 also one that he did not see, and doubtless 
 would not begrudge me the harvest of beauty. 
 Or I walk beside tufted aromatic hemp-fields, 
 as along the shores of softly foaming emerald 
 seas; or past the rank and file of fields of 
 Indian-corn, which stand like armies that had 
 gotten ready to march, but been kept waiting 
 for further orders, until at last the soldiers had 
 grown tired, as the gayest will, of their yellow 
 plumes and green ribbons, and let their big 
 hands fall heavily down at their sides. There 
 72 
 
the white and the purple morning-glories hang 
 their long festoons and open to the soft mid 
 night winds their elfin trumpets. 
 
 This year as never before I have felt the 
 beauty of the world. And with the new bright 
 ness in which every common scene has been 
 apparelled there has stirred within me a need 
 of human companionship unknown in the past. 
 It is as if Nature had spread out her last loveli 
 ness and said : " See ! You have before you 
 now all that you can ever get from me ! It is 
 not enough. Realize this in time. I am your 
 Mother. Love me as a child. But remember ! 
 such love can be only a little part of your life." 
 
 Therefore I have spent the month restless, 
 on the eve of change, drawn to Nature, driven 
 from her. In September it will be different, 
 for then there are more things to do on my 
 small farm, and I see people on account of my 
 grapes and pears. My malady this August has 
 been an idle mind so idle that a letter from 
 Georgiana seems its main event. This was 
 written from the old home of Audubon on the 
 Hudson, whither they had gone sight-seeing. 
 It must have been to her much like a pilgrim 
 age to a shrine. She wrote informally, telling 
 me about the place and enclosing a sprig of 
 73 
 
I SEE PEOPLE ON ACCOUNT OF MY GRAPES AND PEARS. 
 
 74 
 
cedar from one of the trees in the yard. Her 
 mind was evidently overflowing on the subject. 
 It was rather pleasant to have the overflow 
 turned my way. I shall plant the cedar where 
 it will stay always green. 
 
 I saw Georgiana once more before her leav 
 ing. The sudden appearance of her brother 
 and cousin, and the news that she would return 
 with them for the summer, spurred me up to 
 make another attempt at those Audubon draw 
 ings. 
 
 How easy it was to get them ! It is what a 
 man thinks a woman will be willing to do that 
 she seldom does. But she made a confession. 
 When she first found that I was a smallish 
 student of birds, she feared I would not like 
 Audubon/ since men so often sneer at those 
 who do in a grand way what they can do only 
 in a poor one. I had another revelation of 
 Georgiana s more serious nature, which is 
 always aroused by the memory of her father. 
 There is something beautiful and steadfast in 
 this girl s soul. In our hemisphere vines climb 
 round from left to right; if Georgiana loved 
 you she would, if bidden, reverse every law of 
 her nature for you as completely as a vine that 
 you had caused to twine from right to left. 
 75 
 
Sylvia enters school the ist of September, 
 and Georgiana is to be at home then to see to 
 that. How surely she drives this family before 
 her and with as gentle a touch as that of a 
 slow south wind upon the clouds. 
 
 Those poor first drawings of Audubon ! He 
 succeeded ; we study his early failings. The 
 world never studies the failures of those who 
 do not succeed in the end. 
 
 The birds are moulting. If man could only 
 moult also his mind once a year its errors, 
 his heart once a year its useless passions ! How 
 fine we should all look if every August the old 
 plumage of our natures would drop out and be 
 blown away, and fresh quills take the vacant 
 places! But we have one set of feathers to 
 
 last us through our three-score years and ten 
 
 one set of spotless feathers, which we are told 
 to keep spotless through all our lives in a dirty 
 world. If one gets broken, broken it stays ; 
 if one gets blackened, nothing will cleanse it. 
 No doubt we shall all fly home at last, like a 
 flock of pigeons that were once turned loose 
 snow-white from the sky, and made to descend 
 and fight one another and fight everything else 
 for a poor living amid soot and mire. If then 
 the hand of the unseen Fancier is stretched 
 
forth to draw us in, how can he possibly 
 smite any one of us, or cast us away, because 
 we come back to him black and blue with 
 bruises, and besmudged and bedraggled past 
 recognition ! 
 
 77 
 
IX 
 
 O-DAY, the ;th of 
 
 September, I made a 
 discovery. The pair 
 of red - birds that 
 built in my cedar- 
 trees last winter got 
 duly away with the 
 brood. Several times 
 during summer ram 
 bles I cast my eye 
 about, but they were not to be seen. Early 
 this afternoon I struck out across the country 
 towards a sink-hole in a field two miles away, 
 some fifty yards in diameter, very deep, and 
 enclosed by a fence. A series of these cir 
 cular basins, at regular intervals apart, runs 
 across the country over there, suggesting the 
 78 
 
remains of ancient earth-works. The bottom 
 had dropped out of this one, probably commu 
 nicating with the many caves that are charac 
 teristic of this blue limestone. 
 
 Within the fence everything is an impene 
 trable thicket of weeds and vines blackberry, 
 thistle, ironweed, pokeweed, elder, golden-rod. 
 As I drew near, I saw two or three birds dive 
 down, with the shy way they have at this season ; 
 and when I came to the edge, everything was 
 quiet. But I threw a stone at a point where 
 the tangle was deep, and there was a great 
 fluttering and scattering of the pretenders. And 
 then occurred more than I had looked for. The 
 stone had hardly struck the brush when what 
 looked like a tongue of vermilion flame leaped 
 forth near by, and, darting across, struck itself 
 out of sight in the green vines on the opposite 
 slope. A male and a female cardinal flew up 
 also, balancing themselves on sprays of the 
 blackberry, and uttering excitedly their quick 
 call-notes. I whistled to the male as I had been 
 used, and he recognized me by shooting up his 
 crest, and hopping to nearer twigs with louder 
 inquiry. All at once, as if an idea had urged 
 him, he sprang across to the spot where the 
 first frightened male had disappeared. I could 
 79 
 
WELCOMED HER GAYLY. 
 
 80 
 
still hear him under the vines, and presently he 
 reappeared and flew up into a locust-tree on the 
 farther edge of the basin, followed by the other. 
 What had taken place or took place then I do 
 not know ; but I wished he might be saying : 
 " My son, that man over there is the one who 
 was very good to your mother and me last win 
 ter, and who owns the tree you were born in. 
 I have warned you, of course, never to trust 
 Man ; but I would advise you, when you have 
 . found your sweetheart, to give him a trial, and 
 take her to his cedar-trees." 
 
 If he said anything like this, it certainly 
 had a terrible effect on the son ; for, having 
 mounted rapidly to the tree-top, he clove the 
 blue with his scarlet wings as though he were 
 flying from death. I lost sight of him over 
 a corn-field. 
 
 One fact pleased me : the father returned to 
 his partner under the briers, for he is not of the 
 lower sort who forget the mother when the 
 children are reared. They hold faithfully to 
 gether during the ever more silent, ever more 
 shadowy autumn days ; his warming breast is 
 close to hers through frozen winter nights ; and 
 if they both live to see another May she is still 
 all the world to him, and woe to any brilliant 
 G 81 
 
vagabond who should warble a wanton love-song 
 under her holy windows. 
 
 Georgiana returned the last of August. The 
 next morning she was at her window, looking 
 across into my yard. I was obliged to pass that 
 way, and welcomed her gayly, expressing my 
 thanks for the letter. 
 
 " I had to come back, you see," she said, with 
 calm simplicity. I lingered awkwardly, strip 
 ping upward the stalks of some weeds. 
 
 "Very few Kentucky birds are migratory," 
 I replied at length, with desperate brilliancy and 
 an overwhelming grimace. 
 
 "I shall go back some time to stay," she 
 said, and turned away with a parting faintest 
 smile. 
 
 Is that West Point brother giving trouble? 
 If so, the sooner a war breaks out and he gets 
 killed, the better. One thing is certain : if, for 
 the next month, fruit and flowers will give Geor 
 giana any pleasure, she shall have a good deal 
 of pleasure. She is so changed! But why 
 need I take on about it? 
 
 They have been cleaning out a drain under 
 the streets along the Town Fork of Elkhorn, 
 and several people are down with fever. 
 
 82 
 
EW-YEAR S night again, and 
 bitter cold. 
 
 When I forced myself 
 away from my fire before 
 dark, and ran down to the 
 stable to see about feed 
 ing and bedding the horses 
 83 
 
and cows, every beast had its head drawn in 
 towards its shoulders, and looked at me with 
 the dismal air of saying, " Who is tempering 
 the wind now ? " The dogs in the kennel, with 
 their noses between their hind-legs, were shiver 
 ing under their blankets and straw like a nest 
 of chilled young birds. The fowls on the roost 
 were mere white and blue puffs of feathers. 
 Nature alone has the keeping of her creatures ; 
 why doesn t she make them comfortable ? 
 
 After supper old Jack and Dilsy came in, and 
 standing against the wall with their arms folded, 
 told me more of what happened after I got 
 sick. That was about the middle of September, 
 and it is only two weeks since I became well 
 enough to go in and out through all sorts of 
 weather. 
 
 It was the middle of September then, my ser 
 vants said, and as within a week after taking 
 the fever I was very ill, a great many people 
 came out to inquire for me. Some of these, 
 walking around the garden, declared it was a 
 pity for such fruit and flowers to be wasted, and 
 so helped themselves freely every time. The 
 old doctor, who always fears for my health at 
 this season, stopped by nearly every day to 
 repeat how he had warned me, and always 
 84 
 
KNOCKED REPROACHFULLY. 
 
walked back to his gig in a roundabout way, 
 which required him to pass a favourite tree ; and 
 once he was so indignant to find several other 
 persons gathered there, and mournfully enjoy 
 ing the last of the fruit as they predicted I 
 would never get well, that he came back to the 
 house with two pears in each duster pocket 
 and one in his mouth and told Jack it was an 
 outrage. The preacher, likewise, who appears 
 in the spring-time, one afternoon knocked re 
 proachfully at the front door and inquired 
 whether I was in a condition to be reasoned 
 with. In his hand he carried a nice little work- 
 basket, which may have been brought along to 
 catch his prayers; but he took it home piled 
 with grapes. 
 
 And then they told me, also, how many a 
 good and kind soul came with hushed footsteps 
 and low inquiries, turning away sometimes with 
 brightened faces, sometimes with rising tears 
 often people whom I had done no kindness or 
 whom I did not know ; how others whom I had 
 quarrelled with or did not like, forgot the poor 
 puny quarrels and the dislike, and begged to do 
 for me whatever they could ; how friends went 
 softly around the garden, caring for a flower, 
 putting a prop under a too-heavily laden limb, 
 86 
 

 PUTTING A PROP UNDER A TOO-HEAVILY LADEN LIMB. 
 
or climbing on step-ladders to tie sacks around 
 the finest bunches of grapes, with the hope that 
 I might be well in time to eat them touching 
 nothing themselves, having no heart to eat; 
 how dear, dear ones would never leave me day 
 or night ; how a good doctor wore himself out 
 with watching, and a good pastor sent up for 
 me his spotless prayers; and at last, when I 
 began to mend, how from far and near there 
 poured in flowers and jellies and wines, until, 
 had I been the multitude by the Sea of Galilee, 
 there must have been baskets to spare. God 
 bless them ! God bless them all ! And God 
 forgive us all the blindness, the weakness, and 
 the cruelty with which we judge each other 
 when we are in health. 
 
 This and more my beloved old negroes told 
 me a few hours ago, as I sat in deep comfort 
 and bright health again before my blazing hick 
 ories ; and one moment we were in laughter and 
 the next in tears as is the strange life we live. 
 This is a gay household now, and Dilsy cannot 
 face me without a fleshy earthquake of laughter 
 that I have become such a high-tempered tiger 
 about punctual meals. 
 
 In particular, my two nearest neighbours were 
 much at odds as to which had better claim to 
 88 
 
THRUST MRS. COBB OUT OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 89 
 
nurse me ; so that one day Mrs. Walters, able 
 to endure it no longer, thrust Mrs. Cobb out of 
 the house by the shoulder-blades, locked the door 
 on her, and then opened the shutters and scolded 
 her out of the window. 
 
 One thing I miss. My servants have never 
 called the name of Georgiana. The omission is 
 unnatural, and must be intentional. Of course 
 I have not asked whether she showed any con 
 cern ; but that little spot of silence affects me 
 as the sight of a tree remaining leafless in the 
 woods where everything else is turning green. 
 
 90 
 
J)O-DAY I was standing at 
 _ a window, looking out at 
 the aged row of cedars, 
 now laden with snow, 
 and thinking of Horace 
 and Soracte. Suddenly, 
 beneath a jutting pinnacle 
 
 91 
 
of white boughs which left under themselves 
 one little spot of green, I saw a cardinal hop 
 out and sit full-breasted towards me. The idea 
 flashed through my mind that this might be 
 that shyest, most beautiful fellow whom I had 
 found in September, and whom I tried to make 
 out as the son of my last winter s pensioner. 
 At least he has never lived in my yard be 
 fore ; for when, to test his shyness, I started 
 to raise the window-sash, at the first noise of 
 it he was gone. My birds are not so afraid 
 of me. I must get on better terms with this 
 stranger. 
 
 Mrs. Walters over for a while afterwards. I 
 told her of my fancy that this bird was one of 
 last summer s brood, and that he appeared a 
 trifle larger than any male I had ever seen. 
 She said of course. Had I not fed the parents 
 all last winter? When she fed her hens, did 
 they not lay bigger eggs ? Did not bigger eggs 
 contain bigger chicks ? Did not bigger chicks 
 become bigger hens, again ? According to Mrs. 
 Walters, a single winter s feeding of hot corn- 
 meal, scraps of bacon, and pods of red pepper 
 will all but bring about a variation of species; 
 and so if the assumed rate at which I am now 
 going were kept up a hundred years, my cedar- 
 92 
 
WHEN SHE FED HER HENS. 
 
 93 
 
trees might be full of a race of red-birds as large 
 and as fat as geese. 
 
 Standing towards sundown at another win 
 dow, I saw Georgiana sewing at hers, as I have 
 seen her every day since I got out of bed. Why 
 should she sew so much ? There is a servant 
 also ; and they sew, sew, sew, as if eternal sew 
 ing were eternal happiness, eternal salvation. 
 The first day she sprang up, letting her work 
 roll off her lap, and waved her handkerchief 
 inside the panes, and smiled with what looked 
 to me like radiant pleasure that I was well 
 again. I was weak and began to tremble, and, 
 going back to the fireside, lay back in my chair 
 with a beating of the heart that was a warning. 
 Since then she has recognized me only by a 
 quiet, kindly smile. Why has no one ever 
 called her name ? I believe Mrs. Walters 
 knows. She comes nowadays as if to tell me 
 something, and goes away with a struggle 
 that she has not told it. But a secret can 
 no more stay in the depths of Mrs. Walters s 
 mind than cork at the bottom of water; some 
 day I shall see this mystery riding on the 
 surface. 
 
 94 
 
XII 
 
 *ES, she knew ; while 
 unconscious I 
 talked of Georgi- 
 ana, of being in 
 love with her. Mrs. 
 Walters added, 
 sadly, that Georgi- 
 ana came home in 
 the fall engaged to 
 that New York 
 
 cousin. Hence the sewing he was to marry 
 
 her in June. 
 
 I am not in love with her. It is now four 
 
 weeks since hearing this conventional fiction. 
 
 and every day I have been perfectly able to 
 
 repeat : " I am not in love with Georgiana ! " 
 95 
 
There was one question which I put severely to 
 Mrs. Walters : Had she told Georgiana of my 
 foolish talk? She shook her head violently, 
 and pressed her lips closely together, suggest 
 ing how impossible it would be for the smallest 
 monosyllable in the language to escape by that 
 channel; but she kept her eyes wide open, and 
 the truth issued from them, as smoke in a hol 
 low tree, if stopped in at a lower hole, simply 
 rises and comes out at a higher one. " You 
 should have shut your eyes also," I said. 
 " You have told her every word of it, and the 
 Lord only knows how much more." 
 
 This February has let loose its whole pack of 
 grizzly sky-hounds. Unbroken severe weather. 
 Health has not returned as rapidly as was 
 promised, and I have not ventured outside the 
 yard. But it is a pleasure to chronicle the 
 beginning of an acquaintanceship between his 
 proud eminence the young cardinal and myself. 
 For a long time he would have naught to do 
 with me, fled as I approached, abandoned the 
 evergreens altogether and sat on the naked 
 tree-tops, as much as threatening to quit the 
 place altogether if I did not leave him in peace. 
 Surely he is the shyest of his kind, and to my 
 fancy, the most beautiful ; and therefore Na- 
 
 96 
 
ture seems to have stored him with extra cau 
 tion towards his arch-enemy. 
 
 But in the old human way I have taken 
 advantage of his necessities. The north wind 
 has been my friend against him. I have called 
 in the aid of sleets and snows, have besieged 
 him in his white castle behind the glittering 
 array of his icicles with threats of starvation. 
 So one day, dropping like a glowing coal down 
 among the other birds, he snatched a desperate 
 hasty meal from the public poor-house table 
 that I had spread under the trees. 
 
 It is the first surrender that decides. Since 
 then some progress has been made in winning 
 his confidence, but the struggle going on in his 
 nature is plain enough still. At times he will 
 rush away from me in utter terror; at others 
 he lets me draw a little nearer, without moving 
 from a limb ; and now, after a month of persua 
 sion, he begins to discredit the experience which 
 he has inherited from centuries upon centuries 
 of ancestors. In all that I have done I have 
 tried to say to him : " Don t judge me by man 
 kind in general. With me you are safe. I 
 pledge myself to defend you from enemies, 
 high and low." 
 
 This has not escaped the notice of Georgi- 
 H 97 
 
ana at the window, and more than once she has 
 let her work drop to watch my patient progress 
 and to bestow upon me a rewarding smile. Is 
 there nearly always sadness in it, or is the 
 sadness in my eyes ? If Georgiana s brother is 
 giving her trouble, I d like to take a hand-axe 
 to his feet. I suppose I shall never know 
 whether he cut her foot in two. She carries 
 the left one a little peculiarly ; but so many 
 women do that. 
 
 Sometimes, when the day s work is over and 
 the servant is gone, Georgiana comes to the 
 window and looks away towards the sunsets 
 of winter, her hands clasped behind her back, 
 her motionless figure in relief against the dark 
 ness within, her face white and still. Being in 
 the shadow of my own room, so that she could 
 not see me, and knowing that I ought not to do 
 it, but unable to resist, I have softly taken up 
 the spy-glass which I use in the study of birds, 
 and have drawn Georgiana s face nearer to me, 
 holding it there till she turns away. I have 
 noted the traces of pain, and once the tears 
 which she could not keep back and was too 
 proud to shed. Then I have sat before my 
 flickering embers, with I know not what all 
 but ungovernable yearning to be over there in 
 
the shadowy room with her, and, whether she 
 would or not, to fold my arms around her, and, 
 drawing her face against mine, whisper : " What 
 is it, Georgiana ? And why must it be ? " 
 
 99 
 
XIII 
 
 HE fountains of 
 the great deep 
 opened. A new 
 heaven, a new 
 earth. Georgi- 
 ana has broken 
 her engagement 
 with her cousin. 
 Mrs. Cobb let it 
 
 100 
 
out in the strictest confidence to Mrs. Walters. 
 Mrs. Walters, with stricter confidence still, has 
 told me only. 
 
 The West-Pointer had been writing for some 
 months in regard to the wild behaviour of his 
 cousin. This grew worse, and the crisis came. 
 Georgiana snapped her thread and put up her 
 needle. He travelled all the way down here to 
 implore. I met him at the gate as he left the 
 house a fine, straight, manly, handsome young 
 fellow, his face pale with pain, and his eyes 
 flashing with anger and bade him a long, affec 
 tionate, inward God-speed as he hurried away. 
 It was her father s influence. He had always 
 wished for this union. Ah, the evils that come 
 to the living from the wrongful wishes of the 
 dead ! Georgiana is so happy now, since she 
 has been forced to free herself, that spring in 
 this part of the United States seems to have 
 advanced about half a month. 
 
 " What on earth will she do with all those 
 clothes ? " inquired Mrs. Walters the other 
 night, eyeing me with curious impressiveness. 
 
 " Let them be hanged," I said, promptly. 
 
 There is a young scapegrace who passes my 
 house morning and evening with his cows. He 
 has the predatory instincts of that being who 
 101 
 
loves to call himself the image of his Maker, 
 and more than once has given annoyance, espe 
 cially last year, when he robbed a damson-tree 
 of a brood of Baltimore orioles. This winter 
 and spring his friendly interest in my birds has 
 increased, and several times I have caught him 
 skulking among the pines. Last night what 
 should I stumble on but a trap, baited and 
 sprung, under the cedar-tree in which the car 
 dinal roosts. I was up before daybreak this 
 morning. Awhile after the waking of the birds 
 here comes my young bird-thief, creeping rap 
 idly to his trap. As he stooped I had him by 
 the collar, and within the next five minutes I 
 must have set up in his nervous system a nega 
 tive disposition to the caging of red-birds that 
 will descend as a positive tendency to all the 
 generations of his offspring. 
 
 All day this meditated outrage has kept my 
 blood up. Think of this beautiful cardinal beat 
 ing his heart out against maddening bars, or 
 caged for life in some dark city street, lonely, 
 sick, and silent, bidden to sing joyously of that 
 high world of light and liberty where once he 
 sported ! Think of the exquisite refinement of 
 cruelty in wishing to take him on the eve of 
 May! 
 
 1 02 
 
"l. 
 
 THAT WHIPPING. 
 
 103 
 
It is hardly a fancy that something as loyal as 
 friendship has sprung up between this bird and 
 me. I accept his original shyness as a mark of 
 his finer instincts ; but, like the nobler natures, 
 when once he found it possible to give his confi 
 dence, how frankly and fearlessly has it been 
 given. The other day, brilliant, warm, windless, 
 I was tramping across the fields a mile from 
 home, when I heard him on the summit of a dead 
 sycamore, cleaving the air with stroke after stroke 
 of his long melodious whistle, as with the swing 
 of a silken lash. When I drew near he dropped 
 down from bough to bough till he reached the 
 lowest, a few feet from where I stood, and 
 showed by every movement how glad he was 
 to see me. We really have reached the under 
 standing that the immemorial persecution of his 
 race by mine is ended ; and now more than ever 
 my fondness settles about him, since I have 
 found his happiness plotted against, and have 
 perhaps saved his very life. It would be easy 
 to trap him. His eye should be made to distrust 
 every well-arranged pile of sticks under which 
 lurks a morsel. 
 
 To-night I called upon Georgiana and sketched 
 the arrested tragedy of the morning. She 
 watched me curiously, and then dashed into a 
 104 
 
little treatise on the celebrated friendships of man 
 for the lower creatures, in fact and fiction, from 
 camels down to white mice. Her father must 
 have been a remarkably learned man. I didn t 
 like this. It made me somehow feel as though 
 I were one of ^sop s Fables, or were being 
 translated into English as that old school-room 
 horror of Androclus and the Lion. In the bot 
 tom of my soul I don t believe that Georgiana 
 cares for birds, or knows the difference between 
 a blackbird and a crow. I am going to send her 
 a little story, " The Passion of the Desert." 
 Mrs. Walters is now confident that Georgiana 
 regrets having broken off her engagement. But 
 then Mrs. Walters can be a great fool when she 
 puts her whole mind to it. 
 
 105 
 
XIV 
 
 N APRIL I commence to 
 scratch and dig in my gar 
 den. 
 
 To-day as I was raking off 
 my strawberry bed, Georgi- 
 ana, whom I have not seen 
 since the night when she satirized 
 me, called from the window : 
 
 " What are you going to plant 
 this year ? " 
 
 "Oh, a little of everything," I answered, 
 under my hat. " What are you going to plant 
 this year ? " 
 
 "Are you going to have many strawber 
 ries ? " 
 
 " It s too soon to tell : they haven t bloomed 
 106 
 
yet. It s too soon to tell when they do bloom. 
 Sometimes strawberries are like women : Whole 
 beds full of showy blossoms; but when the 
 time comes to be ripe and luscious, you can t 
 find them." 
 " Indeed." 
 
 " Tis true, tis pity." 
 
 " I had always supposed that to a Southern 
 gentleman woman was not a berry, but a rose. 
 What does he hunt for in woman as much as 
 bloom and fragrance ? But I do not belong to 
 the rose-order of Southern women myself. Syl 
 via does. Why did you send me that story ? " 
 "Didn t you like it?" 
 
 "No. A woman couldn t care for a story 
 about a man and a tigress. Either she would 
 feel that she was too much left out, or suspect 
 that she was too much put in. The same sort 
 of story about a lion and a woman that would 
 be better." 
 
 I raked in silence for a minute, and when I 
 looked up Georgiana was gone. I remember 
 her saying once that children should be kept 
 tart ; but now and then I fancy that she would 
 like to keep even a middle-aged man in brine. 
 Who knows but that in the end I shall sell my 
 place to the Cobbs and move away. 
 107 
 
Five more days of April, and then May! For 
 the last half of this light-and-shadow month, 
 when the clouds, like schools of changeable 
 lovely creatures, seem to be playing and rush 
 ing away through the waters of the sun, life to 
 me has narrowed more and more to the red-bird, 
 who gets tamer and tamer with habit, and to 
 Georgiana, who gets wilder and wilder with 
 happiness. The bird fills the yard with brilliant 
 singing ; she fills her room with her low, clear 
 songs, hidden behind the window-curtains, which 
 are now so much oftener and so needlessly 
 closed. I work myself nearly to death in my 
 garden, but she does not open them. The other 
 day the red-bird sat in a tree near by, and his 
 notes floated out on the air like scarlet streamers. 
 Georgiana was singing, so low that I was mak 
 ing no noise with my rake in order to hear ; and 
 when he began, before I realized what I was 
 doing, I had seized a brickbat and hurled it, 
 barely missing him, and driving him away. He 
 did not know what to make of it ; neither did I ; 
 but as I raised my eyes I saw that Georgiana 
 had opened the curtains to listen to him, and 
 was closing them with her eyes on my face, 
 and a look on hers that has haunted me ever 
 since. 
 
 108 
 
April the 26th. It s of no use. To-morrow 
 night I will go to see Georgiana, and ask her to 
 marry me. 
 
 April 28th. Man that is born of woman is of 
 few days and full of trouble. I am not the least 
 sick, but I am not feeling at all well. So have 
 made a will, and left everything to Mrs. Walters. 
 She has been over five times to-day, and this 
 evening sat by me a long time, holding my hand 
 and smoothing my forehead, and urging me to 
 try a cream poultice a mustard-plaster a 
 bowl of gruel a broiled chicken. 
 
 I believe Georgiana thinks I ll ask her again. 
 Not if I lived by her through eternity ! Thy 
 rod and Thy staff they comfort me. 
 
 109 
 
POOR devil will ask 
 a woman to marry 
 him. She will refuse 
 him. The day after 
 she will meet him as 
 serenely as if he had 
 asked her for a pin. 
 
 It is now May 
 1 5th, and I have not 
 
 no 
 
spoken to Georgiana when I ve had a chance. 
 She has been entirely too happy, to judge from 
 her singing, for me to get along with under 
 the circumstances. But this morning, as I was 
 planting a hedge inside my fence under her 
 window, she leaned over and said, as though 
 nothing were wrong between us, " What are you 
 planting ? " 
 
 I have sometimes thought that Georgiana can 
 ask more questions than Socrates. 
 
 " A hedge." 
 
 " What for ? " 
 
 "To grow." 
 
 " What do you want it to grow for ? " 
 
 " My garden is too public. I wish to be pro 
 tected from outsiders." 
 
 "Would it be the same thing if I were to 
 nail up this window ? That would be so much 
 quicker. It will be ten years before your hedge 
 is high enough to keep me from seeing you. 
 And even then, you know, I could move up 
 stairs. But I am so sorry to be an outsider." 
 
 "I merely remarked that I was planting a 
 hedge." 
 
 When Georgiana spoke again her voice was 
 lowered : " Would you open a gateway for me 
 into your garden, to be always mine, so that I 
 in 
 
might go out and come in, and never another 
 human soul enter it ? " 
 
 Now Jacob had often begged me to cut him 
 a private gateway on that side of the garden, so 
 that only he might come in and go out ; and I 
 had refused, since I did not wish him to get to 
 me so easily with his complaints. Besides, a 
 gate once opened, who may not use it ? and I 
 was indignant that Georgiana should lightly 
 ask anything at my hands; therefore I looked 
 quickly and sternly up at her and said, " I will 
 not." 
 
 Afterwards the thought rushed over me that 
 she had not spoken of any gateway through 
 my garden fence, but of another one, mystical, 
 hidden, infinitely more sacred. For her voice 
 descended almost in a whisper, and her face, as 
 she bent down towards me, had on it I know 
 not what angelic expression. She seemed float 
 ing to me from heaven. 
 
 May 17. To-day I put a little private gate 
 through my fence under Georgiana s window, 
 as a sign to her. Balaam s beast that I am ! 
 Yes, seven times more than the inspired ass. 
 
 As I passed to-day, I noticed Georgiana look 
 ing down at the gate that I made yesterday. She 
 
 112 
 
LOOKING DOWN AT THE GATE THAT I MADE YESTERDAY^ 
 
held a flower to her nose and eyes, but behind 
 the leaves I detected that she was laughing. 
 
 " Good-morning ! " she called to me. "What 
 did you cut that ugly hole in your fence for ? " 
 
 "That s not an ugly hole. That s a little 
 private gateway." 
 
 "But what s the little private gateway for?" 
 
 " Oh, well ! You don t understand these mat 
 ters. I ll tell your mother." 
 
 " My mother is too old. She no longer stoops 
 to such things. Tell me ! " 
 
 " Impossible ! " 
 
 " I m dying to know." 
 
 " What will you give me ? " 
 
 " Anything this flower ! " 
 
 " But what would the flower stand for in that 
 case? A little pri " 
 
 " Nothing. Take it ! " and she dropped it 
 lightly on my face and disappeared. As I stood 
 twirling it ecstatically under my nose, and won 
 dering how I could get her to come back to the 
 window, the edge of a curtain was lifted, and 
 a white hand stole out and softly closed the 
 shutters. 
 
 In the evening Sylvia went in to a concert of 
 the school, which was to be held at the Court 
 house, a chorus of girls being impanelled in the 
 114 
 
jury-box, and the principal, who wears a little 
 wig, taking her seat on the woolsack. I prom 
 ised to have the very pick of the garden ready, 
 and told Sylvia to come to the arbour the last 
 thing before starting. She wore big blue ro 
 settes in her hair, and at that twilight hour looked 
 as lovely, soft, and pure as moonshine ; so that 
 I lost control of myself and kissed her twice 
 once for Georgiana and once for myself. Surely 
 it must have been Sylvia s first experience. I 
 hope so. Yet she passed through it with the 
 composure of a graduate of several years stand 
 ing. But, then, women inherit a great stock of 
 fortitude from their mothers in this regard, and 
 perpetually add to it by their own dispositions. 
 Ought I to warn Georgiana good heavens ! in 
 a general way, of course that Sylvia should be 
 kept away from sugar, and well under the influ 
 ence of vulgar fractions ? 
 
 It made me feel uncomfortable to see her go 
 tripping out of her front gate on the arm of a 
 youth. Can it be possible that he would try to 
 do what / did ? Men differ so in their virtues, 
 and are so alike in their transgressions. This 
 forward gosling displayed white duck pantaloons, 
 brandished pumps on his feet, which looked flat 
 enough to have been webbed, and was scented 
 
as to his marital locks with a far-reaching pesti 
 lence of bergamot and cinnamon. 
 
 After they were gone I strolled back to my 
 arbour and sat down amid the ruins of Sylvia s 
 flowers. The night was mystically beautiful. 
 The moon seemed to me to be softly stealing 
 down the sky to kiss Endymion. I looked 
 across towards Georgiana s window. She was 
 there, and I slipped over and stood under it. 
 
 "Georgiana," I whispered, "were you, too, 
 looking at the moon ? " 
 
 "Part of the time," she said, sourly. "Isn t 
 it permitted ? " 
 
 " Sylvia left her scissors in the arbour, and I 
 can t find them." 
 
 " She ll find them to-morrow." 
 
 " If they get wet, you know, they ll rust." 
 
 "I keep something to take rust off." 
 
 "Georgiana, I ve got something to tell you 
 about Sylvia." 
 
 " What ? That you kissed her ? " 
 
 " N o ! Not that, exactly ! " 
 
 " Good-night ! " 
 
 May 2 1 st. Again I asked Georgiana to be 
 mine. I am a perfect fool about her. But she s 
 coming my way at last God bless her! 
 116 
 
May 24th. I renewed my suit to Georgiana. 
 May 2/th. I besought Georgiana to hear me, 
 
 May 28th. For the last time I offered my 
 hand in marriage to the elder Miss Cobb. Now 
 I am done with her forever. I am no fool. 
 
 May 2Qth. Oh, damn Mrs. Walters. 
 
XVI 
 
 HIS morning, the 3d of 
 June, I went out to pick 
 the first dish of straw 
 berries for my break 
 fast. As I was stooping 
 down I heard a timid, 
 playful voice at the 
 window like the echo 
 of a year ago : " Are 
 you the gardener?" 
 
 Since Georgiana will not marry me, if she 
 would only let me alone ! 
 
 " Old man, are you the gardener ? " 
 118 
 
" Yes, I m the gardener. I know what you 
 are." 
 
 "How much do you ask for your straw 
 berries ? " 
 
 " They come high. Nothing of mine is to be 
 as cheap hereafter as it has been." 
 
 " I am so glad for your sake. I should 
 like to possess something of yours, but I suppose 
 everything is too high now." 
 
 "Entirely too high!" 
 
 " If I only could have foreseen that there 
 would be an increase of value ! As for me, I 
 have felt that I am getting cheaper lately. I 
 may have to give myself away soon. If I only 
 knew of some one who loved the lower ani 
 mals." 
 
 " The fox, for instance ? " 
 
 " Yes ; do you know of any one who would 
 accept the present of a fox ? " 
 
 " Ahem ! I wouldn t mind having a tame fox. 
 I don t care much for wild foxes." 
 
 " Oh, this one would get tame in time. * 
 
 " I don t believe I know of any one just at 
 present." 
 
 " Very well. Sylvia will get the highest mark 
 in arithmetic. And Joe is distinguishing him 
 self at West Point. That s what I wanted to 
 119 
 
tell you. I ll send over the cream and sugar, 
 and hope you will enjoy all your berries. 
 We shall buy some in the market-house next 
 week." 
 
 Later in the forenoon I sent the strawberries 
 over to Georgiana. I have a variety that is 
 the shape of the human heart, and when ripe 
 it matches in colour that brighter current of the 
 heart through which runs the hidden history of 
 our passions. All over the top of the dish I 
 carefully laid these heart-shaped berries, and 
 under the biggest one, at the very top, I slipped 
 this little note : " Look at the shape of them, 
 Georgiana ! I send them all to you. They are 
 perishable." 
 
 This afternoon Georgiana sent back the 
 empty dish, and inside the napkin was this 
 note : " They are exactly the shape and colour 
 of my emery needle-bag. I have been polish 
 ing my needles in it for many years." 
 
 Later, as I was walking to town, I met 
 Georgiana and her mother coming out. No 
 explanation had ever been made to the mother 
 of that goose of a gate in our division fence; 
 and as Georgiana had declined to accept the 
 sign, I determined to show her that the gate 
 could now stand for something else. So I said : 
 1 20 
 
GSORGIANA AND HER MOTHER COMING OUT. 
 121 
 
"Mrs. Cobb, when you send your servants 
 over for green corn, you can let them come 
 through that little gate. It will be more con 
 venient." 
 
 Only, I was so angry and confused that I 
 called her Mrs. Corn, and said that when sh<j 
 sent her little Cobbs over . . . etc., etc. 
 
 After Georgiana s last treatment of me I 
 resolved not to let her talk to me out of her 
 window. So about nine o clock this morning 
 I took a negro boy and set him to picking the 
 berries, while I stood by, directing him in a 
 deep, manly voice as to the best way of man 
 aging that intricate business. Presently I heard 
 Georgiana begin to sing to herself behind the 
 curtains. 
 
 " Hurry up and fill that cup," I said to him, 
 savagely. "And that will do this morning. 
 You can go to the mill. The meal s nearly 
 out." 
 
 When he was gone I called, in an undertone : 
 " Georgiana ! Come to the window ! Please ! 
 Oh, Georgiana ! " 
 
 But the song went on. What was the matter? 
 I could not endure it. There was one way by 
 which perhaps she could be brought. I whis- 
 122 
 
tied long and loud again and again. The cur 
 tains parted a little space. 
 
 " I was merely whistling to the bird," I said. 
 
 " I knew it," she answered, looking as I had 
 never seen her. "Whenever you speak to him 
 your voice is full of confidence and of love. I 
 believe in it and like to hear it." 
 
 " What do you mean, Georgiana ? " I cried, 
 imploringly. 
 
 " Ah, Adam ! " she said, with a rush of feel 
 ing. It was the first time she had ever called 
 me by name. She bent her face down. Over 
 it there passed a look of sweetness and sadness 
 indescribably blended. " Ah, Adam ! you have 
 asked me many times to marry you ! Make me 
 believe once that you love me ! Make me feel 
 that I could trust myself to you for life ! " 
 
 "What else can I do?" I answered, stirred 
 to the deepest that was in me, throwing my 
 arms backward, and standing with an open 
 breast into which she might gaze. 
 
 And she did search my eyes and face in 
 silence. 
 
 "What more?" I cried again, "in God s 
 name ? " 
 
 She rested her face on her palm, looking 
 thoughtfully across the yard. Over there the 
 123 
 
red-bird was singing. Suddenly she leaned 
 down towards me. Love was on her face 
 now. But her eyes held mine with determi 
 nation to wrest from them the last truth they 
 might contain, and her voice trembled with 
 doubt : 
 
 "Would you put the red-bird in a cage for 
 me ? Would you be willing to do that for me, 
 Adam?" 
 
 At those whimsical, cruel words I shall never 
 be able to reveal all that I felt the surprise, 
 the sorrow, the pain. Scenes of boyhood flashed 
 through my memory. A conscience built up 
 through years of experience stood close by me 
 with admonition. I saw the love on her face, 
 the hope with which she hung upon my reply, 
 as though it would decide everything between 
 us. I did not hesitate ; my hands dropped to 
 my side, the warmth died out of my heart as 
 out of spent ashes, and I answered her, with 
 cold reproach : 
 
 I will _not!" 
 
 The colour died out of her face also. Her 
 eyes still rested on mine, but now with pitying 
 sadness. 
 
 " I feared it," she murmured, audibly, but to 
 herself, and the curtains fell together. 
 124 
 
Four days have passed. Georgiana has cast 
 me off. Her curtains are closed except when 
 she is not there. I have tried to see her ; she 
 excuses herself. I have written ; my letters 
 come back unread. I have lain in wait for her 
 on the streets ; she will not talk with me. The 
 tie between us has been severed. With her it 
 could never have been affection. 
 
 And for what ? I ask myself over and over 
 and over and over for what ? Was she jeal 
 ous of the bird, and did she require that I 
 should put it out of the way? Sometimes 
 women do that. Did she take that means of 
 forcing me to a test? Women do that. Did 
 she wish to show her power over me, demanding 
 the one thing she knew would be the hardest for 
 me to grant ? Women do that. Did she crave 
 the pleasure of seeing me do wrong to humour 
 her caprice ? Women do that. But not one 
 of these things can I even associate with the 
 thought of Georgiana. I have sought in every 
 way to have her explain, to explain myself. 
 She will neither give nor receive an explanation. 
 
 I had supposed that her unnatural request 
 
 would have been the end of my love, but it has 
 
 not; that her treatment since would have fatally 
 
 stung my pride, but it has not. I understand 
 
 125 
 
neither ; forgive both ; love her now with that 
 added pain which comes from a man s discover 
 ing that the woman dearest to him must be par 
 doned pardoned as long as he shall live. 
 
 Never since have I been able to look at the 
 red-bird with the old gladness. He is the re 
 minder of my loss. Reminder? Do I ever for 
 get? Am I not thinking of that before his notes 
 lash my memory at dawn ? All day can they 
 do more than furrow deeper the channel of un- 
 f orgetf ulness ? Little does he dream what my 
 friendship for him has cost me. But this solace 
 I have at heart that I was not even tempted 
 to betray him. 
 
 Three days more have passed. No sign yet 
 that Georgiana will relent soon or ever. Each 
 day the strain becomes harder to bear. My 
 mind has dwelt upon my last meeting with her, 
 until the truth about it wavers upon my memory 
 like vague, uncertain shadows. She doubted 
 my love for her. What proof was it she de 
 manded ? I must stop looking at the red-bird, 
 lying here and there under the trees, and listen 
 ing to him as he sings above me. My eyes 
 devour him whenever he crosses my path with 
 an uncomprehended fascination that is pain. 
 126 
 
How gentle he has become, and how, without 
 intending it, I have deepened the perils of his 
 life by the very gentleness that I have brought 
 upon him. Twice already the fate of his species 
 has struck at him, but I have pledged myself to 
 be his friend. This is his happiest season ; a 
 few days now, and he will hear the call of his 
 young in the nest. 
 
 I shut myself in my workshop in the yard 
 this morning. I did not wish my servants to 
 know. In there I made a bird-trap such as I 
 had often used when a boy. And late this after 
 noon I went to town and bought a bird-cage. I 
 was afraid the merchant would misjudge me, 
 and explained. He scanned my face silently. 
 To-morrow I will snare the red-bird down behind 
 the pines long enough to impress on his mem 
 ory a life-long suspicion of every such artifice, 
 and then I will set him free again in his wide 
 world of light. Above all things, I must see to 
 it that he does not wound himself or have the 
 least feather broken. 
 
 It is far past midnight now, and I have not 
 slept or wished for slumber. 
 
 Constantly since darkness came on I have 
 been watching Georgiana s window for the light 
 127 
 
of her candle, but there has been no kindly 
 glimmer yet. The only radiance shed upon the 
 gloom outside comes from the heavens. Great 
 cage-shaped white clouds are swung up to the 
 firmament, and within these pale, gentle, im 
 prisoned lightnings flutter feebly to escape, 
 fall back, rise, and try again and again, and 
 fail. 
 
 ... A little after dark this evening I carried 
 the red-bird over to Georgiana. . . . 
 
 I have seen her so little of late that I did not 
 know she had been away from home for days. 
 But she was expected to-night, or, at furthest, 
 to-morrow morning. I left the bird with the ser 
 vant at the door, who could hardly believe what 
 he saw. As I passed out of my front gate on my 
 way there, the boy who returns about that time 
 from the pasture for his cows joined me as I 
 hurried along, attracted by the fluttering of the 
 bird in the cage. 
 
 " Is it the red-bird ? / tried to catch him 
 once," he said, with entire forgiveness of me, as 
 having served him right, "but I caught some 
 thing else. I ll never forget that whipping. 
 Oh, but wouldn t I like to have him ! Mr. Moss, 
 you wouldn t mind my trying to catch one of 
 those little bits o brown fellows, would you, that 
 128 
 
BUT WOULDN T i LIKE TO HAVE HIM ! " 
 
 129 
 
hop around under the pine-trees ? They aren t 
 any account to anybody. Oh my ! but wouldn t 
 I like to have him ! May I bring my trap some 
 time, and will you help me to catch one o those 
 little bits o brown ones? You can t beat me 
 catching them ! " 
 
 Several times to-night I have gone across and 
 listened under Georgiana s window. The ser 
 vant must have set the cage in her room, for, 
 as I listened, I am sure I heard the red-bird 
 beating his head and breast against the wires. 
 A while ago I went again, and did not hear 
 him. I waited a long time. ... He may be 
 quieted. . . . 
 
 Ah, if any one had said to me that I would 
 ever do what I have done, with what full, deep 
 joy could I have throttled the lie in his throat ! 
 I put the trap under one of the trees where I 
 have been used to feed him. When it fell he 
 was not greatly frightened. He clutched the 
 side of it, and looked out at me. My own mind 
 supplied his words : " Help ! I m caught ! Take 
 me out ! You promised ! " When I transferred 
 him to the cage, for a moment his confidence 
 lasted still. He mounted the perch, shook his 
 plumage, and spoke out bravely and cheerily. 
 Then all at once came on the terror. 
 130 
 
The dawn came on this morning with its old 
 splendour. The birds in my yard, as of old, 
 poured forth their songs. But those loud, long, 
 clear, melodious, deep-hearted, passionate, best- 
 loved notes ! As the chorus swelled from shad 
 owy shrubs and vines to the sparkling tree-tops 
 I listened for some sound from Georgiana s room, 
 but over there I saw onl^he soft, slow flapping 
 of the white curtains like signals of distress. 
 
 Towards ten o clock, wandering restless, I 
 snatched up a book which I had no wish to read, 
 and went to the arbour where I had so often 
 discoursed to Sylvia about children s cruelty to 
 birds. Through the fluttering leaves the sun 
 light dripped as a weightless shower of gold, 
 and the long pendants of young fruit swayed 
 gently in their cool waxen greenness. Where 
 some rotting planks crossed the top of the 
 arbour a blue-jay sat on her coarse nest; and 
 presently the mate flew to her with a worm, and 
 then talked to her in a low voice, as much as 
 saying that they must now leave the place for 
 ever. I was thinking how love softens even the 
 voice of this file-throated screamer, when along 
 the garden walk came the rustle of a woman s 
 clothes, and, springing up, I stood face to face 
 with Georgiana. 
 
41 WHAT HAVE YOU DONE ? " SHE CRIED. 
 
 132 
 
" What have you done ? " she implored. 
 
 "What have you done?" I answered as 
 quickly. 
 
 "Oh, Adam, Adam! You have killed it! 
 How could you ? How could you ? " 
 
 "... Is he dead, Georgiana ? Is he dead ? . . . " 
 
 I forgot everything else, and pulling my hat 
 down over my eyes, turned from her in the 
 helpless shock of silence that came with those 
 irreparable words. 
 
 Then, in ungovernable anger, suffering, re 
 morse, I turned upon her where she sat : " It is 
 you who killed him ! Why do you come here to 
 blame me ? And now you pretend to be sorry. 
 You felt no pity when pity would have done 
 some good. Trifler ! Hypocrite ! " 
 
 " It is false ! " she cried, her words flashing 
 from her whole countenance, her form drawn up 
 to repel the shock of the blow. 
 
 " Did you not ask for him ? " 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " Oh, deny it all ! It is a falsehood in 
 vented by me on the spot. You know nothing 
 of it ! You did not ask me to do this ! And 
 when I have yielded, you have not run to re 
 proach me here and to cry, How could you ? 
 How could you ? 
 
 133 
 
" No ! No ! Every word of it " 
 
 " Untruth added to it all ! Oh, that I should 
 have been so deceived, blinded, taken in ! " 
 
 "Adam ! " 
 
 " Lovely innocence ! It is too much ! Go 
 away ! " 
 
 " I will not stand this any longer ! " she cried. 
 " I will go away ; but not till I have told you 
 why I have acted as I have." 
 
 "It is too late for that! I do not care to 
 hear ! " 
 
 " Then you shall hear ! " she replied. " You 
 shall know that it is because I have believed 
 you capable of speaking to me as you have just 
 spoken : believed you at heart unsparing and 
 unjust. You think I asked you to do what you 
 have done? No! I asked you whether you 
 would be willing to do it; and when you said 
 you would not, I saw then by your voice, 
 your eyes, your whole face and manner that 
 you would. Saw it as plainly at that moment, 
 in spite of your denial, as I see it now the 
 cruelty in you, the unfaithfulness, the willing 
 ness to betray. It was for this reason not 
 because I heard you refuse, but because I saw 
 you consent that I could not forgive you." 
 
 She paused abruptly and looked across into 
 134 
 
my face. What she may now have read in it I 
 do not know. Then anger swept her on : 
 
 " How often had I not heard you bitter and 
 contemptuous towards people because they are 
 treacherous, cruel ! How often have you talked 
 of your love of nature, of our inhumanity towards 
 ^ower creatures ! But what have you done ? 
 
 " You set your fancy upon one of these crea 
 tures, lie in wait for it, beset it with kindness, 
 persevere in overcoming its wildness. You are 
 amused, delighted, proud of your success. One 
 day you remember? it sang as you had 
 always wished to hear it. It annoyed you, and 
 you threw a stone at it. With a little less angry 
 aim you would have killed it. I have never 
 seen anything more inhuman. How do I know 
 that some day you would not be tired of me, 
 and throw a stone at me f When a woman sub 
 mits to this once, she will have them thrown at 
 her whenever she sings at the wrong time, and 
 she will never know when the right time is. 
 
 " Then you thought you were asked to sacri 
 fice it, and now you have done that. How do 
 I know that some day you might not be tempted 
 to sacrifice me ? " She paused, her voice break 
 ing, and remained silent, as if unable to get 
 beyond that thought. 
 
 135 
 
" If you have finished," I said, very quietly, 
 " I have something to say to you, and we need 
 not meet after this. 
 
 "I trapped the bird; you trapped me. I 
 understood you to ask something of me, to cast 
 me off when I refused it. Such was my faith 
 in you that beneath your words I did not look 
 for a snare. How hard it was for me to forgive 
 you what you asked is my own affair now ; but 
 forgive you I did. How hard it was to grant 
 it that also is now, and will always be, my own 
 secret. I beg you merely to believe this : know 
 ing it to be all that you have described and 
 far more than you can ever understand still, 
 I did it. Had you demanded of me something 
 worse, I should have granted that. If you think 
 a man will not do wrong for a woman, you are 
 mistaken. If you think men always love the 
 wrong that they do for the women whom they 
 love, you are mistaken again. 
 
 " You have held up my faults to me. I knew 
 them before. I have not loved them. Do not 
 think that I am trying to make a virtue out of 
 anything I say ; but in all my thoughts of you 
 there has been no fault of yours that I have not 
 hidden from my sight, and have not resolved as 
 
best I could never to see. Yet do not dream 
 that I have found you faultless. 
 
 " You fear I might sacrifice you to something 
 else. It is possible. Every man resists temp 
 tation only to a certain point; every man has 
 his price. It is a risk you will run with any. 
 
 " If you doubt that a man is capable of sacri 
 ficing one thing that he loves to another that he 
 loves more, tempt him, lie in wait for his weak 
 ness, ensnare him in the toils of his greater 
 passion, and learn the truth. 
 
 " I make no defence believe all that you 
 say. But had you loved me, I might have been 
 all this, and it would have been nothing." 
 
 With this I walked slowly out of the arbour, 
 but Georgiana stood beside me. Her light 
 touch was on my arm. 
 
 " Let me see things clearly ! " 
 
 " You have a lifetime in which to see things 
 clearly," I answered. " How can that concern 
 me now ? " And I passed on into the house. 
 
 During the morning I wandered restless. For 
 a while I lay on the grass down behind the pines. 
 How deep and clear are the covered springs of 
 memory ! All at once it was a morning in my 
 boyhood on my father s farm. I, a little Saul 
 137 
 
A LITTLE SAUL OF TARSUS. 
 
 138 
 
of Tarsus among the birds, was on my way to 
 the hedge-rows and woods, as to Damascus, 
 breathing out threatenings and slaughter. Then 
 suddenly the childish miracle, which no doubt 
 had been preparing silently within my nature, 
 wrought itself out ; for from the distant forest 
 trees, from the old orchard, from thicket and 
 fence, from the wide green meadows, and down 
 out of the depths of the blue sky itself, a vast 
 chorus of innocent creatures sang to my newly 
 opened ears the same words: "Why perse- 
 cutest thou me?" One sang it with indigna 
 tion ; another with remonstrance ; still another 
 with resignation ; others yet with ethereal sad 
 ness or wild elusive pain. Once more the 
 house-wren met me at the rotting gate-post, 
 and cried aloud, " per-se-cu-test per-se-cu-test 
 per-se-cu-test per-se-cu-test! " And as I peeped 
 into the brush-pile, again the brown thrush, 
 building within, said, "thou thou thou!" 
 
 Through all the years since I had thought 
 myself changed, and craved no greater glory 
 than to be accounted the chief of their apostles. 
 But now I was stained once more with the old 
 guilt, and once more I could hear the birds in 
 my yard singing that old, old chorus against 
 man s inhumanity. 
 
 139 
 
Towards the middle of the afternoon I went 
 away across the country by any direction ; I 
 cared not what. On my way back I passed 
 through a large rear lot belonging to my neigh 
 bour, and adjoining my own, in which is my 
 stable. There has lately been imported into 
 this part of Kentucky from England the much- 
 prized breed of the beautiful white Berkshire. 
 As I crossed the lot, near the milk-trough, ash- 
 heap, and parings of fruit and vegetables thrown 
 from my neighbour s kitchen, I saw a litter of 
 these pigs having their awkward sport over 
 some strange red plaything, which one after 
 another of them would shake with all its might, 
 root and tear at, or tread into greater shapeless- 
 ness. It was all there was left of him. If I 
 could have been spared the sight of that ! 
 
 I entered my long yard. The sun was set 
 ting. Around me was the last peace and 
 beauty of the world. Through a narrow ave 
 nue of trees I could see my house, and on its 
 clustering vines fell the angry red of the sun 
 darting across the cool green fields. 
 
 The last hour of light touches the birds as 
 
 it touches us. When they sing in the morning, 
 
 it is with the happiness of the earth ; but as 
 
 the shadows fall strangely about them, and the 
 
 140 
 
helplessness of the night comes on, their voices 
 seem to be lifted up like the loftiest poetry of 
 the human spirit, with sympathy for realities 
 and mysteries past all understanding. 
 
 A great choir was hymning now. On the 
 tops of the sweet old honeysuckles the cat-birds ; 
 robins in the low boughs of maples ; on the high 
 limb of the elm the silvery-throated lark, who 
 had stopped as he passed from meadow to 
 meadow ; on a fence rail of the distant wheat- 
 field the quail and many another. I walked 
 to and fro, receiving the voice of each as a 
 spear hurled at my body. The sun sank. The 
 shadows rushed on and deepened. Suddenly, 
 as I turned once more in my path, I caught 
 sight of the figure of Georgiana moving straight 
 towards me from the direction of the garden. 
 She was bare-headed, dressed in white ; and she 
 advanced over the smooth lawn, through ever 
 greens and shrubs, with a gentle grace and dig 
 nity of movement such as I had never beheld. 
 I kept my weary pace, and when she came up I 
 did not lift my eyes. 
 
 "Adam ! " she said, with gentle reproach. I 
 stood still then, but with my face turned away. 
 
 " Forgive me ! " All girlishness was gone out 
 of her voice. It was the woman at last. 
 141 
 
I turned my face farther from her, and we 
 stood in silence. 
 
 " I have suffered enough, Adam," she pleaded. 
 
 I answered quietly, doggedly, for there was 
 nothing left in me to appeal to : 
 
 " I am glad we can part kindly. . . . Neither 
 of us may care much for the kindness now, but 
 we will not be sorry hereafter. . . . The quar 
 rels, the mistakes, the right and the wrong of 
 our lives, the misunderstandings they are so 
 strange, so pitiful, so full of pain, and come so 
 soon to nothing." And I lifted my hat, and 
 took the path towards my house. 
 
 There was a point ahead where it divided, 
 the other branch leading towards the little pri 
 vate gate through which Georgiana had come. 
 Just before reaching the porch I looked that way, 
 with the idea that I should see Georgiana s 
 white figure moving across the lawn ; but I 
 discovered that she was following me. Mount 
 ing my door-steps, I turned. She had paused 
 on the threshold. I waited. At length she 
 said, in a voice low and sorrowful: 
 
 " Are you not going to forgive me, Adam ? " 
 
 " I do forgive you ! " The silence fell and 
 lasted. I no longer saw her face. At last her 
 despairing voice barely reached me again : 
 142 
 
" AND IS THAT ALL ? 
 
And is thatnil ? " 
 I had no answer to make, and sternly waited 
 for her to go. 
 
 SET OUR CANDLES IN OUR WINDOWS. 
 
 A moment longer she lingered, then turned 
 slowly away ; and I watched her figure growing 
 fainter and fainter till it was lost. I sprang 
 after her, my voice rang out hollow, and broke 
 with terror and pain and longing : 
 144 
 
" Georgiana ! Georgiana ! " 
 
 " Oh, Adam, Adam ! " I heard her cry, with 
 low, piercing tenderness, as she ran back to me 
 through the darkness. 
 
 When we separated we lighted fresh candles 
 and set them in our windows, to burn a pure 
 pathway of flame across the intervening void. 
 Henceforth we are like poor little foolish chil 
 dren, sick and lonesome in the night without one 
 another. Happy, happy night to come when 
 one short candle will do for us both! 
 
 . . . Ah, but the long, long silence of the 
 trees ! . . . \"6 \ V d - 
 
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