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OUR grammar-school reader,
called, I think, "Maccoulough's Course of Reading," contained a few
natural-history sketches that excited me very much and left a deep
impression, especially a fine description of the fish hawk and the bald
eagle by the Scotch ornithologist Wilson, who had the good fortune to wander
for years in the American woods while the country was yet mostly wild. I
read his description over and over again, till I got the vivid picture he
drew by heart, — the long-winged hawk circling over the heaving waves, every
motion watched by the eagle perched on the top of a crag or dead tree; the
fish hawk poising for a moment to take aim at a fish and plunging under the
water; the eagle with kindling eye spreading his wings ready for instant
flight in case the attack should prove successful; the hawk emerging with a
struggling fish in his talons, and proud flight; the eagle launching himself
in pursuit; the wonderful wing-work in the sky, the fish hawk, though
encumbered with his prey, circling higher, higher, striving hard to keep
above the robber eagle; the eagle at length soaring above him, compelling
him with a cry of despair to drop his hard-won prey; then the eagle
steadying himself for a moment to take aim, descending swift as a
lightning-bolt, and seizing the falling fish before it reached the sea.
Not less exciting and
memorable was Audubon's wonderful story of the passenger pigeon, a beautiful
bird flying in vast flocks that darkened the sky like clouds, countless
millions assembling to rest and sleep and rear their young in certain
forests, miles in length and breadth, fifty or a hundred nests on a single
tree; the overloaded branches bending low and often breaking; the farmers
gathering from far and near, beating down countless thousands of the young
and old birds from their nests and roosts with long poles at night, and in
the morning driving their bands of hogs, some of them brought from farms a
hundred miles distant, to fatten on the dead and wounded covering the
ground.
In another of our
reading-lessons some of the American forests were described. The most
interesting of the trees to us boys was the sugar maple, and soon after we
had learned this sweet story we heard everybody talking about the discovery
of gold in the same wonder-filled country.
One night, when David and I
were at grand-father's fireside solemnly learning our lessons as usual, my
father came in with news, the most wonderful, most glorious, that wild boys
ever heard. "Bairns," he said, "you needna learn your lessons the nicht, for
we're gan to America the morn!" No more grammar, but boundless woods full of
mysterious good things; trees full of sugar, growing in ground full of gold;
hawks, eagles, pigeons, filling the sky; millions of birds' nests, and no
gamekeepers to stop us in all the wild, happy land. We were utterly, blindly
glorious. After father left the room, grandfather gave David and me a gold
coin apiece for a keepsake, and looked very serious, for he was about to be
deserted in his lonely old age. And when we in fullness of young joy spoke
of what we were going to do, of the wonderful birds and their nests that we
should find, the sugar and gold, etc., and promised to send him a big box
full of that tree sugar packed in gold from the glorious paradise over the
sea, poor lonely grandfather, about to be forsaken, looked with downcast
eyes on the floor and said in a low, trembling, troubled voice, "Ah, poor
laddies, poor laddies, you'll find something else ower the sea forbye gold
and sugar, birds' nests and freedom fra lessons and schools. You'll find
plenty hard, hard work." And so we did. But nothing he could say could cloud
our joy or abate the fire of youthful, hopeful, fearless adventure. Nor
could we in the midst of such measureless excitement see or feel the shadows
and sorrows of his darkening old age. To my schoolmates, met that night on
the street, I shouted the glorious news, "I'm gan to Amaraka the morn!" None
could believe it. I said, "Weel, just you see if I am at the skule the
morn!"
Next morning we went by rail
to Glasgow and thence joyfully sailed away from beloved Scotland, flying to
our fortunes on the wings of the winds, care-free as thistle seeds. We could
not then know what we were leaving, what we were to encounter in the New
World, nor what our gains were likely to be. We were too young and full of
hope for fear or regret, but not too young to look forward with eager
enthusiasm to the wonderful schoolless bookless American wilderness. Even
the natural heart-pain of parting from grandfather and grandmother Gilrye,
who loved us so well, and from mother and sisters and brother, was quickly
quenched in young joy. Father took with him only my sister Sarah (thirteen
years of age), myself (eleven), and brother David (nine), leaving my eldest
sister, Margaret, and the three youngest of the family, Daniel, Mary, and
Anna, with mother, to join us after a farm had been found in the wilderness
and a comfortable house made to receive them.
In crossing the Atlantic
before the days of steamships, or even the American clippers, the voyages
made in old-fashioned sailing-vessels were very long. Ours was six weeks and
three days. But because we had no lessons to get, that long voyage had not a
dull moment for us boys. Father and sister Sarah, with most of the old folk,
stayed below in rough weather, groaning in the miseries of seasickness, many
of the passengers wishing they had never ventured in "the auld rockin'creel,"
as they called our bluff-bowed, wave-beating ship, and, when the weather was
moderately calm, singing songs in the evenings, — "The Youthful Sailor Frank
and Bold," "Oh, why left I my hame, why did I cross the deep," etc. But no
matter how much the old tub tossed about and battered the waves, we were on
deck every day, not in the least seasick, watching the sailors at their
rope-hauling and climbing work; joining in their songs, learning the names
of the ropes and sails, and helping them as far as they would let us;
playing games with other boys in calm weather when the deck was dry, and in
stormy weather rejoicing in sympathy with the big curly-topped waves.
The captain occasionally
called David and me into his cabin and asked us about our schools, handed us
books to read, and seemed surprised to find that Scotch boys could read and
pronounce English with perfect accent and knew so much Latin and French. In
Scotch schools only pure English was taught, although not a word of English
was spoken out of school. All through life, however well educated, the
Scotch spoke Scotch among their own folk, except at times when unduly
excited on the only two subjects on which Scotchmen get much excited,
namely, religion and politics. So long as the controversy went on with
fairly level temper, only gude braid Scots was used, but if one became
angry, as was likely to happen, then he immediately began speaking severely
correct English, while his antagonist, drawing himself up, would say: "Teel,
there's na use pursuing this subject ony further, for I see ye hae gotten to
your English."
As we neared the shore of the
great new land, with what eager wonder we watched the whales and dolphins
and porpoises and seabirds, and made the good-natured sailors teach us their
names and tell us stories about them!
There were quite a large
number of emigrants aboard, many of them newly married couples, and the
advantages of the different parts of the New World they expected to settle
in were often discussed. My father started with the intention of going to
the backwoods of Upper Canada. Before the end of the voyage, however, he was
persuaded that the States offered superior advantages, especially Wisconsin
and Michigan, where the land was said to be as good as in Canada and far
more easily brought under cultivation; for in Canada the woods were so close
and heavy that a man might wear out his life in getting a few acres cleared
of trees and stumps. So he changed his mind and concluded to go to one of
the Western States.
On our wavering westward way
a grain-dealer in Buffalo told father that most of the wheat he handled came
from Wisconsin; and this influential information finally determined my
father's choice. At Milwaukee a farmer who had come in from the country near
Fort Winnebago with a load of wheat agreed to haul us and our formidable
load of stuff to a little town called Kingston for thirty dollars. On that
hundred-mile journey, just after the spring thaw, the roads over the
prairies were heavy and miry, causing no end of lamentation, for we often
got stuck in the mud, and the poor farmer sadly declared that never, never
again would he be tempted to try to haul such a cruel, heart-breaking,
wagon-breaking, horse-killing load, no, not for a hundred dollars. In
leaving Scotland, father, like many other home-seekers, burdened himself
with far too much luggage, as if all America were still a wilderness in
which little or nothing could be bought. One of his big iron-bound boxes
must have weighed about four hundred pounds, for it contained an
old-fashioned beam-scales with a complete set of cast-iron counterweights,
two of them fifty-six pounds each, a twenty-eight, and so on down to a
single pound. Also a lot of iron wedges, carpenter's tools, and so forth,
and at Buffalo, as if on the very edge of the wilderness, he gladly added to
his burden a big cast-iron stove with pots and pans, provisions enough for a
long siege, and a scythe and cumbersome cradle for cutting wheat, all of
which he succeeded in landing in the primeval Wisconsin woods.
A land-agent at Kingston gave
father a note to a farmer by the name of Alexander Gray, who lived on the
border of the settled part of the country, knew the section-lines, and would
probably help him to find a good place for a farm. So father went away to
spy out the land, and in the mean time left us children in Kingston in a
rented room. It took us less than an hour to get acquainted with some of the
boys in the village; we challenged them to wrestle, run races, climb trees,
etc., and in a day or two we felt at home, care-free and happy,
notwithstanding our family was so widely divided. When father returned he
told us that he had found fine land for a farm in sunny open woods on the
side of a lake, and that a team of three yoke of oxen with a big wagon was
coming to haul us to Mr. Gray's place.
We enjoyed the strange
ten-mile ride through the woods very much, wondering how the great oxen
could be so strong and wise and tame as to pull so heavy a load with no
other harness than a chain and a crooked piece of wood on their necks, and
how they could sway so obediently to right and left past roadside trees and
stumps when the driver said haw and gee. At Mr. Gray's house, father again
left us for a few days to build a shanty on the quarter-section he had
selected four or five miles to the westward. In the mean while we enjoyed
our freedom as usual, wandering in the fields and meadows, looking at the
trees and flowers, snakes and birds and squirrels. With the help of the
nearest neighbors the little shanty was built in less than a day after the
rough bur-oak logs for the walls and the white-oak boards for the floor and
roof were got together.
To this charming hut, in the
sunny woods, overlooking a flowery glacier meadow and a lake rimmed with
white water-lilies, we were hauled by an ox-team across trackless carex
swamps and low rolling hills sparsely dotted with round-headed oaks. Just as
we arrived at the shanty, before we had time to look at it or the scenery
about it, David and I jumped down in a hurry off the load of household
goods, for we had discovered a blue jay's nest, and in a minute or so we
were up the tree beside it, feasting our eyes on the beautiful green eggs
and beautiful birds, — our first memorable discovery. The handsome birds had
not seen Scotch boys before and made a desperate screaming as if we were
robbers like themselves, though we left the eggs untouched, feeling that we
were already beginning to get rich, and wondering how many more nests we
should find in the grand sunny woods. Then we ran along the brow of the hill
that the shanty stood on, and down to the meadow, searching the trees and
grass tufts and bushes, and soon discovered a bluebird's and a woodpecker's
nest, and began an acquaintance with the frogs and snakes and turtles in the
creeks and springs.
This sudden plash into pure
wildness - baptism in Nature's warm heart — how utterly happy it made us!
Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons,
so unlike the dismal grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us.
Here
without knowing it we still
were at school; every wild lesson a love lesson, not whipped but charmed
into us. Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Everything new and pure in
the very prime of the spring when Nature's pulses were beating highest and
mysteriously keeping time with our own! Young hearts, young leaves, flowers,
animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly,
gladly rejoicing together!
Next morning, when we climbed
to the precious jay nest to take another admiring look at the eggs, we found
it empty. Not a shell-fragment was left, and we wondered how in the world
the birds were able to carry off their thin-shelled eggs either in their
bills or in their feet without breaking them, and how they could be kept
warm while a new nest was being built. Well, I am still asking these
questions. When I was on the Harriman Expedition I asked Robert Ridgway, the
eminent ornithologist, how these sudden fittings were accomplished, and he
frankly confessed that he didn't know, but guessed that jays and many other
birds carried their eggs in their mouths; and when I objected that a jay's
mouth seemed too small to hold its eggs, he replied that birds' mouths were
larger than the narrowness of their bills indicated. Then I asked him what
he thought they did with the eggs while a new nest was being prepared. He
didn't know; neither do I to this day. A specimen of the many puzzling
problems presented to the naturalist.
We soon found many more nests
belonging to birds that were not half so suspicious. The handsome and
notorious blue jay plunders the nests of other birds and of course he could
not trust us. Almost all the others — brown thrushes, bluebirds, song
sparrows, kingbirds, hen-hawks, nighthawks, whip-poor-wills, woodpeckers,
etc. — simply tried to avoid being seen, to draw or drive us away, or paid
no attention to us.
We used to wonder how the
woodpeckers could bore holes so perfectly round, true mathematical circles.
We ourselves could not have done it even with gouges and chisels. We loved
to watch them feeding their young, and wondered how they could glean food
enough for so many clamorous, hungry, unsatisfiable babies, and how they
managed to give each one its share; for after the young grew strong, one
would get his head out of the door-hole and try to hold possession of it to
meet the food-laden parents. How hard they worked to support their families,
especially the red-headed and speckledy woodpeckers and flickers; digging,
hammering on scaly bark and decaying trunks and branches from dawn to dark,
coming and going at intervals of a few minutes all the livelong day!
We discovered a hen-hawk's
nest on the top of a tall oak thirty or forty rods from the shanty and
approached it cautiously. One of the pair always kept watch, soaring in wide
circles high above the tree, and when we attempted to climb it, the big
dangerous-looking bird came swooping down at us and drove us away.
We greatly admired the plucky
kingbird. In Scotland our great ambition was to be good fighters, and we
admired this quality in the handsome little chattering flycatcher that whips
all the other birds. He was particularly angry when plundering jays and
hawks came near his home, and took pains to thrash them not only away from
the nest-tree but out of the neighborhood. The nest was usually built on a
bur oak near a meadow where insects were abundant, and where no undesirable
visitor could approach without being discovered. When a hen-hawk hove in
sight, the male immediately set off after him, and it was ridiculous to see
that great, strong bird hurrying away as fast as his clumsy wings would
carry him, as soon as he saw the little, waspish kingbird coming. But the
kingbird easily overtook him, flew just a few feet above him, and with a lot
of chattering, scolding notes kept diving and striking him on the back of
the head until tired; then he alighted to rest on the hawk's broad
shoulders, still scolding and chattering as he rode along, like an angry boy
pouring out vials of wrath. Then, up and at him again with his sharp bill;
and after he had thus driven and ridden his big enemy a mile or so from the
nest, he went home to his mate, chuckling and bragging as if trying to tell
her what a wonderful fellow he was.
This first spring, while some
of the birds were still building their nests and very few young ones had yet
tried to fly, father hired a Yankee to assist in clearing eight or ten acres
of the best ground for a field. We found new wonders every day and often had
to call on this Yankee to solve puzzling questions. We asked him one day if
there was any bird in America that the kingbird couldn't whip. What about
the sandhill crane? Could he whip that long-legged, long-billed fellow?
"A crane never goes near
kingbirds' nests or notices so small a bird," he said, "and therefore there
could be no fighting between them." So we hastily concluded that our hero
could whip every bird in the country except perhaps the sandhill crane.
We never tired listening to
the wonderful whip-poor-will. One came every night about dusk and sat on a
log about twenty or thirty feet from our cabin door and began shouting "Whip
poor Will! Whip poor Will!" with loud emphatic earnestness. "What's that?
What's that?" we cried when this startling visitor first announced himself.
"What do you call it?"
"Why, it's telling you its
name," said the Yankee. "Don't you hear it and what he wants you to do? He
says his name is `Poor Will' and he wants you to whip him, and you may if
you are able to catch him." Poor Will seemed the most wonderful of all the
strange creatures we had seen. 'What a wild, strong, bold voice he had,
unlike any other we had ever heard on sea or land!
A near relative, the
bull-bat, or nighthawk, seemed hardly less wonderful. Towards evening
scattered flocks kept the sky lively as they circled around on their long
wings a hundred feet or more above the ground, hunting moths and beetles,
interrupting their rather slow but strong, regular wing-beats at short
intervals with quick quivering strokes while uttering keen, squeaky cries
something like pfee, pfee, and every now and then diving nearly to the
ground with a loud ripping, bellowing sound, like bull-roaring, suggesting
its name; then turning and gliding swiftly up again. These fine wild gray
birds, about the size of a pigeon, lay their two eggs on bare ground without
anything like a nest or even a concealing bush or grass-tuft. Nevertheless
they are not easily seen, for they are colored like the ground. While
sitting on their eggs, they depend so much upon not being noticed that if
you are walking rapidly ahead they allow you to step within an inch or two
of them without flinching. But if they see by your looks that you have
discovered them, they leave their eggs or young, and, like a good many other
birds, pretend that they are sorely wounded, fluttering and rolling over on
the ground and gasping as if dying, to draw you away. When pursued we were
surprised to find that just when we were on the point of overtaking them
they were always able to flutter a few yards farther, until they had led us
about a quarter of a mile from the nest; then, suddenly getting well, they
quietly flew home by a roundabout way to their precious babies or eggs, o'er
a' the ills of life victorious, bad boys among the worst. The Yankee took
particular pleasure in encouraging us to pursue them.
Everything about us was so
novel and wonderful that we could hardly believe our senses except when
hungry or while father was thrashing us. When we first saw Fountain Lake
Meadow, on a sultry evening, sprinkled with millions of lightning-bugs
throbbing with light, the effect was so strange and beautiful that it seemed
far too marvelous to be real. Looking from our shanty on the hill, I thought
that the whole wonderful fairy show must be in my eyes; for only in
fighting, when my eyes were struck, had I ever seen anything in the least
like it. But when I asked my brother if he saw anything strange in the
meadow he said, "Yes, it's all covered with shaky fire-sparks." Then I
guessed that it might be something outside of us, and applied to our
all-knowing Yankee to explain it. "Oh, it's nothing but lightnin'bugs," he
said, and kindly led us down the hill to the edge of the fiery meadow,
caught a few of the wonderful bugs, dropped them into a cup, and carried
them to the shanty, where we watched them throbbing and flashing out their
mysterious light at regular intervals, as if each little passionate glow
were caused by the beating of a heart. Once I saw a splendid display of
glow-worm light in the foothills of the Himalayas, north of Calcutta, but
glorious as it appeared in pure starry radiance, it was far less impressive
than the extravagant abounding, quivering, dancing fire on our Wisconsin
meadow.
Partridge drumming was
another great marvel. When I first heard the low, soft, solemn sound I
thought it must be made by some strange disturbance in my head or stomach,
but as all seemed serene within, I asked David whether he heard anything
queer. "Yes," he said, "I hear something saying boomp, boomp, boomp, and I'm
wondering at it." Then I was half satisfied that the source of the
mysterious sound must be in something outside of us, coming perhaps from the
ground or from some ghost or bogie or woodland fairy. Only after long
watching and listening did we at last discover it in the wings of the plump
brown bird.
The love-song of the common
jack snipe seemed not a whit less mysterious than partridge drumming. It was
usually heard on cloudy evenings, a strange, unearthly, winnowing,
spiritlike sound, yet easily heard at a distance of a third of a mile. Our
sharp eyes soon detected the bird while making it, as it circled high in the
air over the meadow with wonderfully strong and rapid wing-beats, suddenly
descending and rising, again and again, in deep, wide loops; the tones being
very low and smooth at the beginning of the descent, rapidly increasing to a
curious little whirling storm-roar at the bottom, and gradually fading lower
and lower until the top was reached. It was long, however, before we
identified this mysterious wing-singer as the little brown jack snipe that
we knew so well and had so often watched as he silently probed the mud
around the edge of our meadow stream and spring-holes, and made short zigzag
flights over the grass uttering only little short, crisp quacks and chucks.
The love-songs of the frogs
seemed hardly less wonderful than those of the birds, their musical notes
varying from the sweet, tranquil, soothing peeping and purring of the hylas
to the awfully deep low-bass blunt bellowing of the bullfrogs. Some of the
smaller species have wonderfully clear, sharp voices and told us their good
Bible names in musical tones about as plainly as the whip-poor-will. Isaac,
Isaac; Yacob, Yacob; Israel, Israel; shouted in sharp, ringing, far-reaching
tones, as if they had all been to school and severely drilled in elocution.
In the still, warm evenings, big bunchy bullfrogs bellowed, Drunk! Drunk!
Drunk! Jug o' rum! Jug o' rum! and early in the spring, countless thousands
of the commonest species, up to the throat in cold water, sang in concert,
making a mass of music, such as it was, loud enough to be heard at a
distance of more than half a mile.
Far, far apart from this loud
marsh music is that of the many species of hyla, a sort of soothing immortal
melody filling the air like light.
We reveled in the glory of
the sky scenery as well as that of the woods and meadows and rushy,
lily-bordered lakes. The great thunderstorms in particular interested us, so
unlike any seen in Scotland, exciting awful, wondering admiration. Gazing
awe-stricken, we watched the upbuilding of the sublime cloud-mountains, —
glowing, sun-beaten pearl and alabaster cumuli, glorious in beauty and
majesty and looking so firm and lasting that birds, we thought, might build
their nests amid their downy bosses; the black-browed storm-clouds marching
in awful grandeur across the landscape, trailing broad gray sheets of hail
and rain like vast cataracts, and ever and anon flashing down vivid zigzag
lightning followed by terrible crashing thunder. We saw several trees
shattered, and one of them, a punky old oak, was set on fire, while we
wondered why all the trees and everybody and everything did not share the
same fate, for oftentimes the whole sky blazed. After sultry storm days,
many of the nights were darkened by smooth black apparently structureless
cloud-mantles which at short intervals were illumined with startling
suddenness to a fiery glow by quick, quivering lightning-flashes, revealing
the landscape in almost noonday brightness, to be instantly quenched in
solid blackness.
But those first days and
weeks of unmixed enjoyment and freedom, reveling in the wonderful wildness
about us, were soon to be mingled with the hard work of making a farm. I was
first put to burning brush in clearing land for the plough. Those
magnificent brush fires with great white hearts and red flames, the first
big, wild outdoor fires I had ever seen, were wonderful sights for young
eyes. Again and again, when they were burning fiercest so that we could
hardly approach near enough to throw on another branch, father put them to
awfully practical use as warning lessons, comparing their heat with that of
hell, and the branches with bad boys. "Now, John," he would say, — "now,
John, just think what an awful thing it would be to be thrown into that
fire: — and then think of hell-fire, that is so many times hotter. Into that
fire all bad boys, with sinners of every sort who disobey God, will be cast
as we are casting branches into this brush fire, and although suffering so
much, their sufferings will never, never end, because neither the fire nor
the sinners can die." But those terrible fire lessons quickly faded away in
the blithe wilderness air; for no fire can be hotter than the heavenly fire
of faith and hope that burns in every healthy boy's heart.
Soon after our arrival in the
woods some one added a cat and puppy to the animals father had bought. The
cat soon had kittens, and it was interesting to watch her feeding,
protecting, and training them. After they were able to leave their nest and
play, she went out hunting and brought in many kinds of birds and squirrels
for them, mostly ground squirrels (spermophiles), called "gophers" in
Wisconsin. When she got within a dozen yards or so of the shanty, she
announced her approach by a peculiar call, and the sleeping kittens
immediately bounced up and ran to meet her, all racing for the first bite of
they knew not what, and we too ran to see what she brought. She then lay
down a few minutes to rest and enjoy the enjoyment of her feasting family,
and again vanished in the grass and flowers, coming and going every
half-hour or so. Sometimes she brought in birds that we had never seen
before, and occasionally a flying squirrel, chipmunk, or big fox squirrel.
We were just old enough, David and I, to regard all these creatures as
wonders, the strange inhabitants of our new world.
The pup was a common cur,
though very uncommon to us, a black and white short-haired mongrel that we
named "Watch." We always gave him a pan of milk in the evening just before
we knelt in family worship, while daylight still lingered in the shanty.
And, instead of attending to the prayers, I too often studied the small wild
creatures playing around us. Field mice scampered about the cabin as though
it had been built for them alone, and their performances were very amusing.
About dusk, on one of the calm, sultry nights so grateful to moths and
beetles, when the puppy was lapping his milk, and we were on our knees, in
through the door came a heavy broad-shouldered beetle about as big as a
mouse, and after it had droned and boomed round the cabin two or three
times, the pan of milk, showing white in the gloaming, caught its eyes, and,
taking good aim, it alighted with a slanting, glinting plash in the middle
of the pan like a duck alighting in a lake. Baby Watch, having never before
seen anything like that beetle, started back, gazing in dumb astonishment
and fear at the black sprawling monster trying to swim. Recovering somewhat
from his fright, he began to bark at the creature, and ran round and round
his milk-pan, wouf-woufing, gurring, growling, like an old dog barking at a
wild-cat or a bear. The natural astonishment and curiosity of that boy dog
getting his first entomological lesson in this wonderful world was so
immoderately funny that I had great difficulty in keeping from laughing out
loud.
Snapping turtles were common
throughout the woods, and we were delighted to find that they would snap at
a stick and hang on like bull-dogs; and we amused ourselves by introducing
Watch to them, enjoying his curious behavior and theirs in getting
acquainted with each other. One day we assisted one of the smallest of the
turtles to get a good grip of poor Watch's ear. Then away he rushed, holding
his head sidewise, yelping and terror-stricken, with the strange buglike
reptile biting hard and clinging fast — a shameful amusement even for wild
boys.
As a playmate Watch was too
serious, though he learned more than any stranger would judge him capable
of, was a bold, faithful watch-dog, and in his prime a grand fighter, able
to whip all the other dogs in the neighborhood. Comparing him with
ourselves, we soon learned that although he could not read books he could
read faces, was a good judge of character, always knew what was going on and
what we were about to do, and liked to help us. We could run nearly as fast
as he could, see about as far, and perhaps hear as well, but in sense of
smell his nose was incomparably better than ours. One sharp winter morning
when the ground was covered with snow, I noticed that when he was yawning
and stretching himself after leaving his bed he suddenly caught the scent of
something that excited him, went round the corner of the house, and looked
intently to the westward across a tongue of land that we called West Bank,
eagerly questioning the air with quivering nostrils, and bristling up as
though he felt sure that there was something dangerous in that direction and
had actually caught sight of it. Then he ran toward the Bank, and I followed
him, curious to see what his nose had discovered. The top of the Bank
commanded a view of the north end of our lake and meadow, and when we got
there we saw an Indian hunter with a long spear, going from one muskrat
cabin to another, approaching cautiously, careful to make no noise, and then
suddenly thrusting his spear down through the house. If well aimed, the
spear went through the poor beaver rat as it lay cuddled up in the snug nest
it had made for itself in the fall with so much farseeing care, and when the
hunter felt the spear quivering, he dug down the mossy hut with his tomahawk
and secured his prey, — the flesh for food, and the skin to sell for a dime
or so. This was a clear object lesson on dogs' keenness of scent. That
Indian was more than half a mile away across a wooded ridge. Had the hunter
been a white man, I suppose Watch would not have noticed him.
When he was about six or
seven years old, he not only became cross, so that he would do only what he
liked, but he fell on evil ways, and was accused by the neighbors who had
settled around us of catching and devouring whole broods of chickens, some
of them only a day or two out of the shell. We never imagined he would do
anything so grossly undoglike. He never did at home. But several of the
neighbors declared over and over again that they had caught him in the act,
and insisted that he must be shot. At last, in spite of tearful protests, he
was condemned and executed. Father examined the poor fellow's stomach in
search of sure evidence, and discovered the heads of eight chickens that he
had devoured at his last meal. So poor Watch was killed simply because his
taste for chickens was too much like our own. Think of the millions of
squabs that preaching, praying men and women kill and eat, with all sorts of
other animals great and small, young and old, while eloquently discoursing
on the coming of the blessed peaceful, bloodless millennium! Think of the
passenger pigeons that fifty or sixty years ago filled the woods and sky
over half the continent, now exterminated by beating down the young from the
nests together with the brooding parents, before they could try their
wonderful wings; by trapping them in nets, feeding them to hogs, etc. None
of our fellow mortals is safe who eats what we eat, who in any way
interferes with our pleasures, or who may be used for work or food, clothing
or ornament, or mere cruel, sportish amusement. Fortunately many are too
small to be seen, and therefore enjoy life beyond our reach. And in looking
through God's great stone books made up of records reaching back millions
and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn that vast multitudes
of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a good
time in God's love before man was created.
The old Scotch fashion of
whipping for every act of disobedience or of simple, playful forgetfulness
was still kept up in the wilderness, and of course many of those whippings
fell upon me. Most of them were outrageously severe, and utterly barren of
fun. But here is one that was nearly all fun.
Father was busy hauling
lumber for the frame house that was to be got ready for the arrival of my
mother, sisters, and brother, left behind in Scotland. One morning, when he
was ready to start for another load, his ox-whip was not to be found. He
asked me if I knew anything about it. I told him I didn't know where it was,
but Scotch conscience compelled me to confess that when I was playing with
it I had tied it to Watch's tail, and that he ran away, dragging it through
the grass, and came back without it. "It must have slipped off his tail," I
said, and so I didn't know where it was. This honest, straightforward little
story made father so angry that he exclaimed with heavy, foreboding
emphasis: "The very deevil's in that boy!" David, who had been playing with
me and was perhaps about as responsible for the loss of the whip as I was,
said never a word, for he was always prudent enough to hold his tongue when
the parental weather was stormy, and so escaped nearly all punishment. And,
strange to say, this time I also escaped, all except a terrible scolding,
though the thrashing weather seemed darker than ever. As if unwilling to let
the sun see the shameful job, father took me into the cabin where the storm
was to fall, and sent David to the woods for a switch. While he was out
selecting the switch, father put in the spare time sketching my
play-wickedness in awful colors, and of course referred again and again to
the place prepared for bad boys. In the midst of this terrible word-storm,
dreading most the impending thrashing, I whimpered that I was only playing
because I couldn't help it; didn't know I was doing wrong; wouldn't do it
again, and so forth. After this miserable dialogue was about exhausted,
father became impatient at my brother for taking so long to find the switch;
and so was I, for I wanted to have the thing over and done with. At last, in
came David, a picture of openhearted innocence, solemnly dragging a young
bur-oak sapling, and handed the end of it to father, saying it was the best
switch he could find. It was an awfully heavy one, about two and a half
inches thick at the butt and ten feet long, almost big enough for a
fence-pole. There wasn't room enough in the cabin to swing it, and the
moment I saw it I burst out laughing in the midst of my fears. But father
failed to see the fun and was very angry at David, heaved the bur-oak
outside and passionately demanded his reason for fetching "sic a muckle rail
like that instead o' a switch? Do ye ca' that a switch? I have a gude mind
to thrash you insteed o' John." David, with demure, downcast eyes, looked
preternaturally righteous, but as usual prudently answered never a word.
It was a hard job in those
days to bring up Scotch boys in the way they should go; and poor overworked
father was determined to do it if enough of the right kind of switches could
be found. But this time, as the sun was getting high, he hitched up old Tom
and Jerry and made haste to the Kingston lumber-yard, leaving me unscathed
and as innocently wicked as ever; for hardly had father got fairly out of
sight among the oaks and hickories, ere all our troubles, hell-threatenings,
and exhortations were forgotten in the fun we had lassoing a stubborn old
sow and laboriously trying to teach her to go reasonably steady in rope
harness. She was the first hog that father bought to stock the farm, and we
boys regarded her as a very wonderful beast. In a few weeks she had a lot of
pigs, and of all the queer, funny, animal children we had yet seen, none
amused us more. They were so comic in size and shape, in their gait and
gestures, their merry sham fights, and the false alarms they got up for the
fun of scampering back to their mother and begging her in most persuasive
little squeals to lie down and give them a drink.
After her darling short-snouted
babies were about a month old, she took them out to the woods and gradually
roamed farther and farther from the shanty in search of acorns and roots.
One afternoon we heard a rifle-shot, a very noticeable thing, as we had no
near neighbors, as yet. We thought it must have been fired by an Indian on
the trail that followed the right bank of the Fox River between Portage and
Packwaukee Lake and passed our shanty at a distance of about three quarters
of a mile. Just a few minutes after that shot was heard, along came the poor
mother rushing up to the shanty for protection, with her pigs, all out of
breath and terror-stricken. One of them was missing, and we supposed of
course that an Indian had shot it for food. Next day, I discovered a
blood-puddle where the Indian trail crossed the outlet of our lake. One of
father's hired men told us that the Indians thought nothing of levying this
sort of blackmail whenever they were hungry. The solemn awe and fear in the
eyes of that old mother and those little pigs I never can forget; it was as
unmistakable and deadly a fear as I ever saw expressed by any human eye, and
corroborates in no uncertain way the oneness of all of us. |
