The Spring of the Year

“She was laying her course, I thought, straight down the length of this dreadful pasture, when, not far from the fence, she suddenly hove to, warped herself short about, and came back, barely clearing me. I warped about, too, and in her wake bore down across the corner of the pasture, across the powdery public road, and on to a fence along a field of young corn.

“I was somewhat wet by this time, but not so wet as I had been before wallowing through the deep, dry dust of the road. Hurrying up behind a large tree by the fence, I peered down the corn-rows and saw the turtle stop, and begin to paw about in the loose, soft soil. She was going to lay!

“I held on to the tree and watched, as she tried this place, and that place, and the other place. But the place, evidently, was hard to find. What could a female turtle do with a whole field of possible nests to choose from? Then at last she found it, and, whirling about, she backed quickly at it and, tail first, began to bury herself before my staring eyes.

“Those were not the supreme moments of my life; perhaps those moments came later that day; but those certainly were among the slowest, most dreadfully mixed of moments that I ever experienced. They were hours long. There she was, her shell just showing, like some old hulk in the sand alongshore. And how long would she stay there? and how should I know if she had laid an egg?

“I could still wait. And so I waited, when, over the freshly awakened fields, floated four mellow strokes from the distant town clock.

“Four o’clock! Why there was no train until seven! No train for three hours! The eggs would spoil! Then with a rush it came over me that this was Sunday morning, and there was no regular seven o’clock train,—none till after nine.

“I think I should have fainted had not the turtle just then begun crawling off. I was weak and dizzy; but there, there in the sand, were the eggs! and Agassiz! and the great book! Why, I cleared the fence—and the forty miles that lay between me and Cambridge—at a single jump! He should have them, trains or no. Those eggs should go to Agassiz by seven o’clock, if I had to gallop every mile of the way. Forty miles! Any horse could cover it in three hours, if he had to; and, upsetting the astonished turtle, I scooped out her long white eggs.

“On a bed of sand in the bottom of the pail I laid them, with what care my trembling fingers allowed; filled in between them with more sand; so with layer after layer to the rim; and covering all smoothly with more sand, I ran back for my horse.

“That horse knew, as well as I, that the turtles had laid, and that he was to get those eggs to Agassiz. He turned out of that field into the road on two wheels, a thing he had not done for twenty years, doubling me up before the dashboard, the pail of eggs miraculously lodged between my knees.

“I let him out. If only he could keep this pace all the way to Cambridge!—or even halfway there, I would have time to finish the trip on foot. I shouted him on, holding to the dasher with one hand, holding the pail of eggs with the other, not daring to get off my knees, though the bang on them, as we pounded down the wood-road, was terrific. But nothing must happen to the eggs; they must not be jarred, or even turned over in the sand before they came to Agassiz.

“In order to get out on the pike it was necessary to drive back away from Boston toward the town. We had nearly covered the distance, and were rounding a turn from the woods into the open fields, when, ahead of me, at the station it seemed, I heard the quick, sharp whistle of a locomotive.

“What did it mean? Then followed the puff, puff, puff, of a starting train. But what train? Which way going? And jumping to my feet for a longer view, I pulled into a side road that paralleled the track, and headed hard for the station.

“We reeled along. The station was still out of sight, but from behind the bushes that shut it from view, rose the smoke of a moving engine. It was perhaps a mile away, but we were approaching, head on, and, topping a little hill, I swept down upon a freight train, the black smoke pouring from the stack, as the mighty creature pulled itself together for its swift run down the rails.

“My horse was on the gallop, following the track, and going straight toward the coming train. The sight of it almost maddened me—the bare thought of it, on the road to Boston! On I went; on it came, a half—a quarter of a mile between us, when suddenly my road shot out along an unfenced field with only a level stretch of sod between me and the engine.

“With a pull that lifted the horse from his feet, I swung him into the field and sent him straight as an arrow for the track. That train should carry me and my eggs to Boston!

“The engineer pulled the whistle. He saw me stand up in the rig, saw my hat blow off, saw me wave my arms, saw the tin pail swing in my teeth, and he jerked out a succession of sharp Halts! But it was he who should halt, not I; and on we went, the horse with a flounder landing the carriage on top of the track.

“The train was already grinding to a stop; but before it was near a standstill, I had backed off the track, jumped out, and, running down the rails with the astonished engineers gaping at me, had swung aboard the cab.

“They offered no resistance; they hadn’t had time. Nor did they have the disposition, for I looked strange, not to say dangerous. Hatless, dew-soaked, smeared with yellow mud, and holding, as if it were a baby or a bomb, a little tin pail of sand!

“‘Crazy,’ the fireman muttered, looking to the engineer for his cue.

“I had been crazy, perhaps, but I was not crazy now.

“‘Throw her wide open,’ I commanded. ‘Wide open! These are fresh turtle eggs for Professor Agassiz of Cambridge. He must have them before breakfast.’

“Then they knew I was crazy, and, evidently thinking it best to humor me, threw the throttle wide open, and away we went.

“I kissed my hand to the horse, grazing unconcernedly in the open field, and gave a smile to my crew. That was all I could give them, and hold myself and the eggs together. But the smile was enough. And they smiled through their smut at me, though one of them held fast to his shovel, while the other kept his hand upon a big ugly wrench. Neither of them spoke to me, but above the roar of the swaying engine I caught enough of their broken talk to understand that they were driving under a full head of steam, with the intention of handing me over to the Boston police, as perhaps the safest way of disposing of me.

“I was only afraid that they would try it at the next station. But that station whizzed past without a bit of slack, and the next, and the next; when it came over me that this was the through freight, which should have passed in the night, and was making up lost time.

“Only the fear of the shovel and the wrench kept me from shaking hands with both men at this discovery. But I beamed at them; and they at me. I was enjoying it. The unwonted jar beneath my feet was wrinkling my diaphragm with spasms of delight. And the fireman beamed at the engineer, with a look that said, ‘See the lunatic grin; he likes it!’

“He did like it. How the iron wheels sang to me as they took the rails! How the rushing wind in my ears sang to me! From my stand on the fireman’s side of the cab I could catch a glimpse of the track just ahead of the engine, where the ties seemed to leap into the throat of the mile-devouring monster. The joy of it! of seeing space swallowed by the mile!

“I shifted the eggs from hand to hand and thought of my horse, of Agassiz, of the great book, of my great luck,—luck,—luck,—until the multitudinous tongues of the thundering train were all chiming ‘luck! luck! luck!’ They knew! they understood! This beast of fire and tireless wheels was doing its best to get the eggs to Agassiz!

“We swung out past the Blue Hills, and yonder flashed the morning sun from the towering dome of the State House. I might have leaped from the cab and run the rest of the way on foot, had I not caught the eye of the engineer watching me narrowly. I was not in Boston yet, nor in Cambridge either. I was an escaped lunatic, who had held up a train, and forced it to carry me from Middleboro to Boston.

“Perhaps I had overdone the lunacy business. Suppose these two men should take it into their heads to turn me over to the police, whether I would or no? I could never explain the case in time to get the eggs to Agassiz. I looked at my watch. There were still a few minutes left in which I might explain to these men, who, all at once, had become my captors. But how explain? Nothing could avail against my actions, my appearance, and my little pail of sand.

“I had not thought of my appearance before. Here I was, face and clothes caked with yellow mud, my hair wild and matted, my hat gone, and in my full-grown hands a tiny tin pail of sand, as if I had been digging all night with a tiny tin shovel on the shore! And thus to appear in the decent streets of Boston of a Sunday morning!

“I began to feel like a lunatic. The situation was serious, or might be, and rather desperately funny at its best. I must in some way have shown my new fears, for both men watched me more sharply.

“Suddenly, as we were nearing the outer freight-yard, the train slowed down and came to a stop. I was ready to jump, but still I had no chance. They had nothing to do, apparently, but to guard me. I looked at my watch again. What time we had made! It was only six o’clock,—a whole hour left in which to get to Cambridge!

“But I didn’t like this delay. Five minutes—ten—went by.

“‘Gentlemen,’ I began, but was cut short by an express train coming past. We were moving again, on—into a siding—on to the main track—on with a bump and a crash and a succession of crashes, running the length of the train—on, on at a turtle’s pace, but on,—when the fireman, quickly jumping for the bell-rope, left the way to the step free, and—

“I never touched the step, but landed in the soft sand at the side of the track, and made a line for the freight-yard fence.

“There was no hue or cry. I glanced over my shoulder to see if they were after me. Evidently their hands were full, or they didn’t know I had gone.

“But I had gone; and was ready to drop over the high board-fence, when it occurred to me that I might drop into a policeman’s arms. Hanging my pail in a splint on top of a post, I peered cautiously over—a very wise thing to do before you jump a high board-fence. There, crossing the open square toward the station, was a big, burly fellow with a club—looking for me!

“I flattened for a moment, when some one in the freight-yard yelled at me. I preferred the policeman, and, grabbing my pail, I slid softly over to the street. The policeman moved on past the corner of the station out of sight. The square was free, and yonder stood a cab.

“Time was flying now. Here was the last lap. The cabman saw me coming, and squared away. I waved a dollar-bill at him, but he only stared the more. A dollar can cover a good deal, but I was too much for one dollar. I pulled out another, thrust them both at him, and dodged into the cab, calling, ‘Cambridge!’

“He would have taken me straight to the police-station, had I not said, ‘Harvard College. Professor Agassiz’s house! I’ve got eggs for Agassiz,’ pushing another dollar up at him through the hole.

“It was nearly half past six.

“‘Let him go!’ I ordered. ‘Here’s another dollar if you make Agassiz’s house in twenty minutes. Let him out; never mind the police!’

“He evidently knew the police, or there were none around at that time on a Sunday morning. We went down the sleeping streets, as I had gone down the wood-roads from the pond two hours before, but with the rattle and crash now of a fire brigade. Whirling a corner into Cambridge Street, we took the bridge at a gallop, the driver shouting out something in Hibernian to a pair of waving arms and a belt and brass buttons.

“Across the bridge with a rattle and jolt that put the eggs in jeopardy, and on over the cobble-stones, we went. Half standing, to lessen the jar, I held the pail in one hand and held myself in the other, not daring to let go even to look at my watch.

“But I was afraid to look at the watch. I was afraid to see how near to seven o’clock it might be. The sweat was dropping down my nose, so close was I running to the limit of my time.

“Suddenly there was a lurch, and I dived forward, ramming my head into the front of the cab, coming up with a rebound that landed me across the small of my back on the seat, and sent half of my pail of eggs helter-skelter over the floor.

“We had stopped. Here was Agassiz’s house; and without taking time to pick up the eggs that were scattered, I jumped out with my pail and pounded at the door.

“No one was astir in the house. But I would stir some one. And I did. Right in the midst of the racket the door opened. It was the maid.

“‘Agassiz,’ I gasped, ‘I want Professor Agassiz, quick!’ And I pushed by her into the hall.

“‘Go ’way, sir. I’ll call the police. Professor Agassiz is in bed. Go ’way, sir!’

“‘Call him—Agassiz—instantly, or I’ll call him myself.’

“But I didn’t; for just then a door overhead was flung open, a great white-robed figure appeared on the dim landing above, and a quick loud voice called excitedly,—

“‘Let him in! Let him in. I know him. He has my turtle eggs!’

“And the apparition, slipperless, and clad in anything but an academic gown, came sailing down the stairs.

“The maid fled. The great man, his arms extended, laid hold of me with both hands, and dragging me and my precious pail into his study, with a swift, clean stroke laid open one of the eggs, as the watch in my trembling hands ticked its way to seven—as if nothing unusual were happening to the history of the world.”

CHAPTER XII
AN ACCOUNT WITH NATURE

There were chipmunks everywhere. The stone walls squeaked with them. At every turn, from early spring to early autumn, a chipmunk was scurrying away from me. Chipmunks were common. They did no particular harm, no particular good; they did nothing in particular, being only chipmunks and common, or so I thought, until one morning (it was June-bug time) when I stopped and watched a chipmunk that sat atop the stone wall down in the orchard. He was eating, and the shells of his meal lay in a little pile upon the big flat stone which served as his table.

They were acorn-shells, I thought; yet June seemed rather late in the season for acorns, and, looking closer, I discovered that the pile was entirely composed of June-bug shells—wings and hollow bodies of the pestiferous beetles!

Well, well! I had never seen this before, never even heard of it. Chipmunk, a useful member of society! actually eating bugs in this bug-ridden world of mine! This was interesting and important. Why, I had really never known Chipmunk, after all!

So I hadn’t. He had always been too common. Flying squirrels were more worth while, because there were none on the farm. Now, however, I determined to cultivate the acquaintance of Chipmunk, for there might be other discoveries awaiting me. And there were.

A narrow strip of grass separated the orchard and my garden-patch. It was on my way to the garden that I most often stopped to watch this chipmunk, or rather the pair of them, in the orchard wall. June advanced, the beetles disappeared, and the two chipmunks in the wall were now seven, the young ones almost as large as their parents, and both young and old on the best of terms with me.

For the first time in four years there were prospects of good strawberries. Most of my small patch was given over to a new variety, one that I had originated; and I was waiting with an eagerness which was almost anxiety for the earliest berries.

I had put a little stick beside each of the three big berries that were reddening first (though I could have walked from the house blindfolded and picked them). I might have had the biggest of the three on June 7th, but for the sake of the flavor I thought it best to wait another day. On the 8th I went down to get it. The big berry was gone, and so was one of the others, while only half of the third was left on the vine!

Gardening has its disappointments, its seasons of despair—and wrath, too. Had a toad showed himself at that moment, he might have fared badly, for more than likely, I thought, it was he who had stolen my berries. On the garden wall sat a friendly chipmunk eying me sympathetically.

A few days later several fine berries were ripe, and I was again on my way to the garden when I passed the chipmunks in the orchard. A shining red spot among the vine-covered stones of their wall brought me to a stop. For an instant I thought that it was my rose-breasted grosbeak, and that I was about to get a clew to its nest. Then up to the slab where he ate the June-bugs scrambled the chipmunk, and the rose-red spot on the breast of the supposed grosbeak dissolved into a big scarlet-red strawberry. And by its long wedge shape I knew it was one of my new variety.

I hurried across to the patch and found every berry gone, while a line of bloody fragments led me back to the orchard wall, where a half-dozen fresh calyx crowns completed my second discovery.

No, it did not complete it. It took a little watching to find out that the whole family—all seven!—were after those berries. They were picking them half ripe, even, and actually storing them away, canning them, down in the cavernous depths of the stone-pile!

Alarmed? Yes, and I was wrathful, too. The taste for strawberries is innate, original; you can’t be human without it. But joy in chipmunks is a cultivated liking. What chance in such a circumstance has the nature-lover with the human man? What shadow of doubt as to his choice between the chipmunks and the strawberries?

I had no gun and no time to go over to my neighbor’s to borrow his. So I stationed myself near by with a fistful of stones, and waited for the thieves to show themselves. I came so near to hitting one of them with a stone that the sweat started all over me. After that there was no danger. I had lost my nerve. The little scamps knew that war had been declared, and they hid and dodged and sighted me so far off that even with a gun I should have been all summer killing the seven of them.

Meantime, a good rain and the warm June days were turning the berries red by the quart. They had more than caught up to the chipmunks. I dropped my stones and picked. The chipmunks picked, too; so did the toads and the robins. Everybody picked. It was free for all. We picked them and ate them, jammed them, and canned them. I almost carried some over to my neighbor, but took peas instead.

The strawberry season closed on the Fourth of July; and our taste was not dimmed, nor our natural love for strawberries abated; but all four of the small boys had hives from over-indulgence, so bountifully did Nature provide, so many did the seven chipmunks leave us!

Peace between me and the chipmunks had been signed before the strawberry season closed, and the pact still holds. Other things have occurred since to threaten it, however. Among them, an article in a recent number of an out-of-door magazine, of wide circulation. Herein the chipmunk family was most roundly rated, in fact condemned to annihilation because of its wicked taste for birds’ eggs and for the young birds. Numerous photographs accompanied the article, showing the red squirrel with eggs in his mouth, but no such proof (even the red squirrel photographs, I strongly believe, were done from a stuffed squirrel) of Chipmunk’s guilt, though he was counted equally bad and, doubtless, will suffer with Chickaree at the hands of those who have taken the article seriously.

I believe that would be a great mistake. Indeed, I believe the article a deliberate falsehood, concocted in order to sell the made-up photographs. Chipmunk is not an egg-sucker, else I should have found it out. But of course that does not mean that no one else has found it out. It does mean, however, that if Chipmunk robs at all he does it so seldom as to call for no alarm or retribution.

There is scarcely a day in the nesting-season when I fail to see half a dozen chipmunks about the walls, yet I have never noticed one even suspiciously near a bird’s nest. In an apple tree, scarcely six jumps from the home of the family in the orchard wall, a brood of tree swallows came to wing this spring; while robins, chippies, and red-eyed vireos—not to mention a cowbird, which I wish they had devoured—have also hatched and flown away from nests that these squirrels might easily have rifled.

It is not often that one comes upon even the red squirrel in the very act of robbing a nest. But the black snake, the glittering fiend! and the dear house cats! If I run across a dozen black snakes in the early summer, it is safe to say that six of them are discovered to me by the cries of the birds that they are robbing. So is it with the cats. No creature larger than a June-bug, however, is often distressed by a chipmunk. In a recent letter to me Mr. Burroughs says:—

“No, I never knew the chipmunk to suck or destroy eggs of any kind, and I have never heard of any well-authenticated instance of his doing so. The red squirrel is the sinner in this respect, and probably the gray squirrel also.”

It will be difficult to find a true bill against him. Were the evidence all in, I believe that instead of a culprit we should find Chipmunk a useful citizen. Does not that pile of June-bug bodies on the flat stone leave me still in debt to him? He may err occasionally, and may, on occasion, make a nuisance of himself—but so do my four small boys, bless them! And, well,—who doesn’t? When a family of chipmunks, which you have fed all summer on the veranda, take up their winter quarters inside the closed cabin, and chew up your quilts, hammocks, table-cloths, and whatever else there is of chewable properties, then they are anathema.

The havoc certain chipmunks in the mountains once made among our possessions was dreadful. But instead of exterminating them root and branch, a big box was prepared the next summer and lined with tin, in which the linen was successfully wintered.

But how real was the loss, after all? Here was a rough log cabin on the side of Thorn Mountain. What sort of table-cloth ought to be found in such a cabin, if not one that has been artistically chewed by chipmunks? Is it for fine linen that we take to the woods in summer? The chipmunks are well worth a table-cloth now and then—well worth, besides these, all the strawberries and all the oats they can steal from my small patch.

Only it isn’t stealing. Since I ceased throwing stones and began to watch the chipmunks carefully, I do not find that their manner is in the least the manner of thieves. They do not act as if they were taking what they have no right to. For who has told Chipmunk to earn his oats in the sweat of his brow? No one. Instead, he seems to understand that he is one of the innumerable factors ordained to make me sweat—a good and wholesome experience for me so long as I get the necessary oats.

And I get them, in spite of the chipmunks, though I don’t like to guess at the quantity of oats they have carried off—anywhere, I should say, from a peck to a bushel, which they have stored as they tried to store the berries, somewhere in the big recesses of the stone wall.

All this, however, is beside the point. It isn’t a case of oats and berries against June-bugs. You don’t haggle with Nature after that fashion. The farm is not a market-place where you get exactly what you pay for. You must spend on the farm all you have of time and strength and brains; but you must not expect in return merely your money’s worth. Infinitely more than that, and oftentimes less. Farming is like virtue,—its own reward. It pays the man who loves it, no matter how short the crop of oats and corn.

So it is with Chipmunk. Perhaps his books don’t balance—a few June-bugs short on the credit side. What then? It isn’t mere bugs and berries, as I have just suggested, but stone-piles. What is the difference in value to me between a stone-pile with a chipmunk in it and one without. Just the difference, relatively speaking, between the house with my four boys in it, and the house without.

Chipmunk, with his sleek, round form, his rich color and his stripes, is the daintiest, most beautiful of all our squirrels. He is one of the friendliest of my tenants, too, friendlier even than the friendliest of my birds—Chickadee. The two are very much alike in spirit; but however tame and confiding Chickadee may become, he is still a bird and belongs to a different and, despite his wings, lower order of beings. Chickadee is often curious about me; he can be coaxed to eat from my hand. Chipmunk is more than curious; he is interested; and it is not crumbs that he wants, but friendship. He can be coaxed to eat from my lips, sleep in my pocket, and even come to be stroked.

I have sometimes seen Chickadee in winter when he seemed to come to me out of very need for living companionship. But in the flood-tide of summer life Chipmunk will watch me from his stone-pile and tag me along with every show of friendship.

The family in the orchard wall have grown very familiar. They flatter me. One or another of them, sitting upon the high flat slab, sees me coming. He sits on the very edge of the crack, to be truthful; and if I take a single step aside toward him, he flips, and all there is left of him is a little angry squeak from the depths of the stones. If, however, I pass properly along, do not stop or make any sudden motion, he sees me past, then usually follows me, especially if I get well off and pause.

During a shower one day I halted under a large hickory just beyond his den. He came running after me, so interested that he forgot to look to his footing, and just opposite me slipped and bumped his nose hard against a stone—so hard that he sat up immediately and vigorously rubbed it. Another time he followed me across to the garden and on until he came to the barbed-wire fence along the meadow. Here he climbed a post and continued after me by way of the middle strand of the wire, wriggling, twisting, even grabbing the barbs, in his efforts to maintain his balance. He got midway between the posts, when the sagging strand tripped him and he fell with a splash into a shallow pool below. No, he did not drown, but his curiosity did get a ducking.

Did the family in the orchard wall stay together as a family for the first summer? I should like to know. As late as August they all seemed to be in the wall; for in August I cut my oats, and during this harvest we all worked together.

I mowed the oats as soon as they began to yellow, cocking them to cure for hay. It was necessary to let them “make” for six or seven days, and all this time the chipmunks raced back and forth between the cocks and the stone wall. They might have hidden their gleanings in a dozen crannies nearer at hand; but evidently they had a particular storehouse, near the home nest, where the family could get at their provisions in bad weather without coming forth.

Had I removed the stones and dug out the nest, I should have found a tunnel leading into the ground for a few feet and opening into a chamber filled with a bulky grass nest—a bed capable of holding half a dozen chipmunks—and, adjoining this, by a short passageway, the storehouse of the oats.

How many trips they made between this crib and the oat-patch, how many kernels they carried in their pouches at a trip, and how big a pile they had when all the grains were in,—these are more of the things I should like to know.

When the first frosts come, the family—if they are still a family—seek the nest in the ground beneath the stone wall. But they do not go to sleep immediately. Their outer entrances have not yet been closed. There is still plenty of fresh air and, of course, plenty of food—acorns, chestnuts, hickory-nuts, and oats. They doze quietly for a time and then they eat, pushing the empty shells and hulls into some side passage prepared beforehand to receive the débris.

But soon the frost is creeping down through the stones and earth overhead, the rains are filling the outer doorways and shutting off the supply of fresh air; and one day, though not sound sleepers, the family cuddle down and forget to wake entirely until the frost has begun to creep back toward the surface, and in through the softened soil is felt the thrill of the waking spring.

CHAPTER XIII
WOODS MEDICINE

The real watcher in the woods usually goes off by himself. He hates to have anybody along; for Anybody wants to be moving all the time, and Anybody wants to be talking all the time, and Anybody wants to be finding a circus, or a zoo, or a natural history museum in the middle of the woods, else Anybody wishes he had stayed at home or gone to the ball-game.

Now I always say to Mr. Anybody when he asks me to take him into the woods, “Yes, come along, if you can stand stock-still for an hour, without budging; if you can keep stock-still for an hour, without talking; if you can get as excited watching two tumble-bugs trying to roll their ball up hill, as you do watching nine baseball men trying to bat their ball about a field.”

The doctor pulled a small blankbook out of his vest pocket, scribbled something in Latin and Chinese (at least it looked like Chinese), and then at the bottom wrote in English, “Take one teaspoonful every hour”; and, tearing off the leaf, handed it to the patient. It was a prescription for some sort of medicine.

Now I am going to give you a prescription,—for some woods medicine,—a magic dose that will cure you of blindness and deafness and clumsy-footedness, that will cause you to see things and hear things and think things in the woods that you have never thought or heard or seen in the woods before. Here is the prescription:—

Wood Chuck, M. D.,

Mullein Hill.

Office Hours: 5.30 A.M. until Breakfast.

Rx: No moving for one hour.... No talking for one hour.... No dreaming or thumb-twiddling the while....

Sig: The dose to be taken from the top of a stump with a bit of sassafras bark or a nip of Indian turnip every time you go into the woods.

Wood Chuck.

I know that this compound will cure if you begin taking it early enough—along, I should say, from the Fifth to the Eighth Grades. It is a very difficult dose to take at any age, but it is almost impossible for grown-ups to swallow it; for they have so many things to do, or think they have, that they can’t sit still a whole hour anywhere—a terrible waste of time! And then they have been talking for so many years that to stop for a whole hour might—kill them, who knows! And they have been working nervously with their hands so long that their thumbs will twiddle, and to sleep they will go the minute they sit down, in spite of themselves. It is no use to give this medicine to grown-ups. They are what Dr. Wood Chuck calls “chronics”—hopeless hurriers who will never sit down upon a stump, who, when the Golden Chariot comes for them, will stand up and drive all the way to heaven.

However, I am not giving this medicine to grown-ups, but to you. Of course you will make a bad face over it, too; for, young or old, it is hard to sit still and even harder to keep still—I mean not to talk. I have closely watched four small boys these several years now, and I never knew one of them to sit still for a whole hour at home—not once in his whole life! And as for his tongue! he might tuck that into his cheek, hold it down between his teeth, crowd it back behind his fist—no matter. The tongue is an unruly member. But let these four boys get into the woods, and every small pale-face of them turns Indian instinctively, tip-toeing up and down the ridges with lips as close-sealed as if some finger of the forest were laid upon them. So it must be with you when you enter the fields and woods.

The wood-born people are all light-footed and cautious in their stirring. Only the box turtles scuff carelessly along; and that is because they can shut themselves up—head, paws, tail—inside their lidded shells, and defy their enemies.

The skunk, however, is sometimes careless in his going; for he knows that he will neither be crowded nor jostled along the street, so he naturally behaves as if all the woods were his. Yet, how often do you come upon a skunk? Seldom—because, he is quite as unwilling to meet you as you are to meet him; but as one of your little feet makes as much noise in the leaves as all four of his, he hears you coming and turns quietly down some alley or in at some burrow and allows you to pass on.

Louder than your step in the woods is the sound of your voice. Perhaps there is no other noise so far-reaching, so alarming, so silencing in the woods as the human voice. When your tongue begins, all the other tongues cease. Songs stop as by the snap of a violin string; chatterings cease; whisperings end—mute are the woods and empty as a tomb, except the wind be moving aloft in the trees.

Three things all the animals can do supremely well: they can hear well; they can see motion well; they can wait well.

If you would know how well an animal can wait, scare Dr. Wood Chuck into his office, then sit down outside and wait for him to come out. It would be a rare and interesting thing for you to do. No one has ever done it yet, I believe! Establish a world’s record for keeping still! But you should scare him in at the beginning of your summer vacation so as to be sure you have all the waiting-time the state allows: for you may have to leave the hole in September and go back to school.

When the doctor wrote the prescription for this medicine, “No moving for an hour,” he was giving you a very small, a homeopathic dose of patience, as you can see; for an hour at a time, every wood-watcher knows, will often be only a waste of time, unless followed immediately by another hour of the same.

On the road to the village one day, I passed a fox-hunter sitting atop an old stump. It was about seven o’clock in the morning.

“Hello, Will!” I called, “been out all night?”

“No, got here ’bout an hour ago,” he replied.

I drove on and, returning near noon, found Will still atop the stump.

“Had a shot yet?” I called.

“No, the dogs brought him down ’tother side the brook, and carried him over to the Shanty field.”

About four o’clock that afternoon I was hurrying down to the station, and there was Will atop that same stump.

“Got him yet?” I called.

“No, dogs are fetching him over the Quarries now”—and I was out of hearing.

It was growing dark when I returned; but there was Will Hall atop the stump. I drew up in the road.

“Grown fast to that stump, Will?” I called. “Want me to try to pull you off?”

“No, not yet,” he replied, jacking himself painfully to his feet. “Chillin’ up some, ain’t it?” he added shaking himself. “Might’s well go home, I guess”—when from the direction of Young’s Meadows came the eager voice of his dogs; and, waving me on, he got quickly back atop the stump, his gun ready across his knees.

I was nearly home when, through the muffle of the darkening woods, I heard the quick bang! bang! of Will’s gun.

Yes, he got him, a fine red fox. And speaking to me about it one day, he said,—

“There’s a lot more to sittin’ still than most folks thinks. The trouble is, most folks in the woods can’t stand the monopoly of it.”

Will’s English needs touching up in spots; but he can show the professors a great many things about the ways of the woods.

And now what does the doctor mean by “No dreaming or thumb-twiddling” in the woods? Just this: that not only must you be silent and motionless for hours at a time, but you must also be alert—watchful, keen, ready to take a hint, to question, guess, and interpret. The fields and woods are not full of life, but full only of the sounds, shadows, and signs of life.

You are atop of your stump, when over the ridge you hear a slow, quiet rustle in the dead leaves—a skunk; then a slow, loud rustle—a turtle; then a quick, loud—one-two-three—rustle—a chewink; then a tiny, rapid rustle—a mouse; then a long, rasping rustle—a snake; then a measured, galloping rustle—a squirrel; then a light-heavy, hop-thump rustle—a rabbit; then—and not once have you seen the rustlers in the leaves beyond the ridge; and not once have you stirred from your stump.

Perhaps this understanding of the leaf-sounds might be called “interpretation”; but before you can interpret them, you must hear them; and no dozing, dreaming, fuddling sitter upon a stump has ears to hear.

As you sit there, you notice a blue jay perched silent and unafraid directly over you—not an ordinary, common way for a blue jay to act. “Why?” you ask. Why, a nest, of course, somewhere near! Or, suddenly round and round the trunk of a large oak tree whirls a hummingbird. “Queer,” you say. Then up she goes—and throwing your eye ahead of her through the tree-tops you chance to intercept her bee-line flight—a hint! She is probably gathering lichens for a nest which she is building somewhere near, in the direction of her flight. A whirl! a flash!—as quick as light! You have a wonderful story!

Now do not get the impression that all one needs to do in order to become acquainted with the life of the woods is to sit on a stump a long time, say nothing, and listen hard. All that is necessary—rather, the ability to do it is necessary; but in the woods or out it is also necessary to exercise common sense. Guess, for instance, when guessing is all that you can do. You will learn more, however, and learn it faster, generally, by following it up, than by sitting on a stump and guessing about it.

At twilight, in the late spring and early summer, we frequently hear a gentle, tremulous call from the woods or from below in the orchard. “What is it?” I had been asked a hundred times, and as many times had guessed that it might be the hen partridge clucking to her brood; or else I had replied that it made me think of the mate-call of a coon, or that I half inclined to believe it the cry of the woodchucks, or that possibly it might be made by the owls. In fact, I didn’t know the peculiar call, and year after year I kept guessing at it.

We were seated one evening on the porch listening to the whip-poor-wills, when some one said, “There’s your woodchuck singing again.” Sure enough, there sounded the tremulous woodchuck-partridge-owl-coon cry. I slipped down through the birches determined at last to know that cry and stop guessing about it, if I had to follow it all night.

The moon was high and full, the footing almost noiseless, and everything so quiet that I quickly located the clucking sounds as coming from the orchard. I came out of the birches into the wood-road, and was crossing the open field to the orchard, when something dropped with a swish and a vicious clacking close upon my head. I jumped from under my hat, almost,—and saw the screech owl swoop softly up into the nearest apple tree. Instantly she turned toward me and uttered the gentle purring cluck that I had been guessing at so hard for at least three years. And even while I looked at her, I saw in the tree beyond, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, two round bunches,—young owls evidently,—which were the explanation of the calls. These two, and another young one, were found in the orchard the following day.

I rejoined the guessers on the porch and gave them the satisfying fact, but only after two or three years of guessing about it. I had laughed once at some of my friends over on the other road who had bolted their front door and had gone out of the door at the side of the house for precisely twenty-one years because the key in the front-door lock wouldn’t work. They were intending to have it fixed, but the children being little kept them busy; then the children grew up, and of course kept them busier; got married at last and left home—all but one daughter. Still the locksmith was not called to fix that front door. One day this unmarried daughter, in a fit of impatience, got at that door herself, and found that the key had been inserted just twenty-one years before—upside down!

There I had sat on the porch—on a stump, let us say, and guessed about it. Truly, my key to this mystery had been left long in the lock, upside down, while I had been going in and out by the side door.

No, you must go into the fields and woods, go deep and far and frequently, with eyes and ears and all your souls alert!

NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

CHAPTER I

TO THE TEACHER

Put the question to your scholars individually: Who is your messenger of spring? Make the reading of this book not an end in itself, but only a means toward getting the pupils out of doors. Never let the reading stop with the end of the chapter, any more than you would let your garden stop with the buying of the seeds. And how eager and restless a healthy child is for the fields and woods with the coming of spring! Do not let your opportunity slip. Go with them after reading this chapter (re-reading if you can the first chapter in “The Fall of the Year”) out to some meadow stream where they can see the fallen stalks and brown matted growths of the autumn through which the new spring shoots are pushing, green with vigor and promise. The seal of winter has been broken; the pledge of autumn has been kept; the life of a new summer has started up from the grave of the summer past. Here by the stream under your feet is the whole cycle of the seasons—the dead stalks, the empty seed-vessels, the starting life.

Let the children watch for the returning birds and report to you; have them bring in the opening flowers, giving them credit (on the blackboard) for each new flower found; go with them (so that they will not bring the eggs to you) to see the new nests discovered, teaching them by every possible means the folly and cruelty of robbing birds’ nests, of taking life; while at the same time you show them the beauty of life, its sacredness, and manifold interests.

FOR THE PUPIL

Page 1

Have you ever seen a “spring peeper” peeping? You will hear, these spring nights, many distinct notes in the marshes, and when you have seen all of the lowly musicians you will be a fairly accomplished naturalist. Let the discovery of “Who’s Who among the Frogs” this spring be one of your first outdoor studies. The picture shows you Pickering’s hyla, blowing his bagpipe. Arbutus: trailing arbutus (Epigæa repens), sometimes called ground-laurel, and mayflower, fishflower (in New Jersey).

hepatica: liver-leaf (Hepatica triloba).

Spice-bush: wild allspice, fever-bush, Benjamin-bush (Benzoin æstivale).

Wood-pussy: the skunk, who comes out of his winter den very early in spring, and whose scent is one of the characteristic odors of a New England spring.

Page 2

All white and still: The whole poem will be found on the last page of “Winter,” the second book in this series.

trillium: the wake-robin. Read Mr. Burroughs’s book “Wake-Robin,”—the first of his outdoor books.

Page 4

phœbe: See the chapter called “The Palace in the Pig-Pen.”

bloodroot: Sanguinaria canadensis. See the picture on this page. So named because of the red-orange juice in the root-stalks, used by the Indians as a stain.

marsh-marigolds: The more common but incorrect name is “cowslip.” The marsh-marigold is Caltha palustris and belongs with the buttercup and wind-flower to the Crowfoot Family. The cowslip, a species of primrose, is a European plant and belongs to the Primrose Family.

Page 5

woolly-bear: caterpillar of the isabella tiger moth, the common caterpillar, brown in the middle with black ends, whose hairs look as if they had been clipped, so even are they.

mourning-cloak: See picture, page 77 of “Winter,” the second book of this series. The antiopa butterfly.

juncos: the common slate-colored “snowbirds.”

witch-hazel: See picture, page 28 of “The Fall of the Year”; read description of it on pages 31-33 of the same volume.

bluets: or “innocence” (Houstonia cœrulea).

Page 6

the Delaware: the Delaware River, up which they come in order to lay their eggs. As they come up they are caught in nets and their eggs or “roe” salted and made into caviar.

Cohansey Creek: a small river in New Jersey.

Lupton’s Meadows: local name of meadows along Cohansey Creek.

CHAPTER II

TO THE TEACHER

Read Kipling’s story in “The Second Jungle Book” called “The Spring Running.” Both Jungle Books ought to be in your school library. Spring is felt on the ocean as well as over the land; life is all of one piece; the thrill we feel at the touch of spring is felt after his manner and degree by bird and beast and by the fish of the sea. Go back to the last paragraph of chapter I for the thought. Here I have expanded that thought of the tides of life rising. See the picture of the herring on their deep sea run on page 345 of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.” Let the chapter suggest to the pupils the mysterious powers of the minds of the lower animals.

FOR THE PUPIL

Page 7

Mowgli: Do you know Mowgli of “The Jungle Book”?

Chaucer: the “Father of English Poetry.” This is one of the opening lines of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

Page 8

migrating birds: See “The Great Tidal Waves of Bird Life” by D. Lange, in the “Atlantic Monthly” for August, 1909.

Page 9

The cold-blooded: said of those animals lower than the mammals and birds, that have not four-chambered hearts and the complete double blood-circulation.

Weymouth Back River: of Weymouth, Massachusetts.

Page 10

catfish: or horn-pout or bull-pout, see picture, page 12.

Page 11

stickleback: The little male stickleback builds a nest, drives the female into it to lay her eggs, then takes charge of the eggs until the fry hatch out and go off for themselves.

CHAPTER III

TO THE TEACHER

You will try to get three suggestions out of this chapter for your pupils: First, that an old tree with holes may prove to be the most fruitful and interesting tree in the neighborhood, that is to say, nothing out of doors is so far fallen to pieces, dead, and worthless as to be passed by in our nature study. (Read to them “Second Crops” in the author’s “A Watcher in the Woods.”) Secondly: the humble tree-toad is well worth the most careful watching, for no one yet has told us all of his life-story. Thirdly: one of the benefits of this simple, sincere love of the out-of-doors will come to us as rest, both in mind and body, as contentment, too, and clearer understanding of what things are worth while.

FOR THE PUPIL

Page 14

burlap petticoat: a strip of burlap about six inches wide tied with a string and folded over about the trunks of the trees under which the night-feeding gypsy moth caterpillars hide by day. The burlaps are lifted and the worms killed.

a peddler’s stall: In the days of the author’s boyhood peddlers sold almost everything that the country people could want.

Page 16

grim-beaked baron: the little owl of the tree.

keep: an older name for castle; sometimes for the dungeon.

Page 20

for him to call the summer rain: alluding to his evening and his cloudy-day call as a sign of coming rain.

Page 22

castings: the disgorged lumps of hair and bones of the small animals eaten by the owls.

Page 24

Altair and Arcturus: prominent stars in the northern hemisphere.

CHAPTER IV

TO THE TEACHER

See the suggestions for the corresponding chapter in “The Fall of the Year,” the first volume in this series. Lest you may not have that book at hand, let me repeat here the gist of what I said there: that you make this chapter the purpose of one or more field excursions with the class—in order to see with your own eyes the characteristic sights of spring as recorded here; secondly, that you use this, and chapters VI and X, as school tests of the pupil’s knowledge and observation of his own fields and woods; and thirdly, let the items mentioned here be used as possible subjects for the pupil’s further study as themes for compositions, or independent investigations out of school hours. The finest fruit the teacher can show is a school full of children personally interested in things. And what better things than live things out of doors?

CHAPTER V

TO THE TEACHER

I might have used a star, or the sun, or the sea to teach the lesson involved here, instead of the crow and his three broken feathers. But these three feathers will do for your pupils as the falling apple did for Sir Isaac Newton. The point of the chapter is: that the feathers like the stars must round out their courses; that this universe is a universe of law, of order, and of reason, even to the wing feathers of a crow. Try to show your pupils the beauty and wonder of order and law (not easy to do) as well as the beauty and wonder of shapes and colors and sounds, etc.

FOR THE PUPIL

Page 34

primaries, secondaries, tertials: Turn to your dictionary under “Bird” (or at the front of some good bird book) and study out just which feathers of the wing these named here are.

Page 35

half-moulted hen: Pick her up and notice the regular and systematic arrangement of the young feathers. Or take a plucked hen and draw roughly the pin-feather scheme as you find it on her body.

Page 37

reed-birds: The bobolink is also called “rice-bird” from its habit of feeding in the rice-fields of the South on its fall migration.

CHAPTER VI

FOR THE PUPIL

Do not stop doing or seeing or hearing when you have done, seen, and heard the few things suggested in this chapter and in chapters IV and X; for these are only suggestions, and merely intended to give you a start, as if your friend had said to you upon your visiting a new city, “Now, don’t fail to see the Common and the old State House, etc.; and don’t fail to go down to T Wharf, etc.,”—knowing that all the time you would be doing and seeing and hearing a thousand interesting things.

CHAPTER VII

TO THE TEACHER

I called this chapter when I first wrote it “The Friendship of Nature”—a much used title, but entirely suggestive of the thought and the lesson in the story here. This was first written about six years ago, and to-day, May 12, 1912, that pair of phœbes, or another pair, have their nest out under the pig-pen roof as they have had every year since I have known the pen. Repeat and expand the thought as I have put it into the mouth of Nature in the first paragraph—“We will share them [the acres] together.” Instill into your pupils’ minds the large meaning of obedience to Nature’s laws and love for her and all her own. Show them also how ready Nature is (and all the birds and animals and flowers) to be friendly; and how even a city dooryard may hold enough live wild things for a small zoo. This chapter might well be made use of by the city teacher to stir her pupils to see what interesting live things their city or neighborhood has, although the woods and open fields are miles away.

FOR THE PUPIL

Page 48

a hornet’s nest: the white-faced hornet, that builds the great cone-shaped paper nests.

swifts thunder in the chimney: See chapter VII (and notes) in “Winter.” For the “thunder” see section IX in chapter X of this book.

Page 49

cabbage butterfly: a pest; a small whitish butterfly with a few small black spots. Its grubs eat cabbage.

Page 54

the crested flycatcher: is the largest of the family; builds in holes; distinguished by its use of cast-off snake-skins in its nests.

kingbird: Everybody knows him, for it is usually he who chases the marauding crows; he builds, out in the apple tree if he can, a big, bulky nest with strings a-flying from it: also called “bee-martin,” a most useful bird.

wood pewee: builds on the limbs of forest trees a most beautiful nest, much like a hummingbird’s, only larger. Pewee’s soft, pensive call of “pe-e-e-wee” in the deep, quiet, dark-shrouded summer woods is one of the sweetest of bird notes.

chebec: a little smaller than a sparrow; builds a beautiful nest in orchard trees and says “chebec, chebec, chebec.”

Page 58

One had died: After phœbe brings off her first brood sprinkle a little, tobacco-dust or lice-powder, such as you use in the hen-yard, into the nest to kill the vermin. Otherwise the second and third broods may be eaten alive by lice or mites.

CHAPTER VIII

TO THE TEACHER

In “Winter” I put a chapter called “The Missing Tooth,” showing the dark and bitter side of the life of the wild things; here I have taken that thought as most people think of it (see Burroughs’s essay, “A Life of Fear” in “Riverby”) and in the light of typical examples tried to show that wild life is not fear, but peace and joy. The kernel of the chapter is found in the words: “The level of wild life, the soul of all nature, is a great serenity.” Let the pupils watch and report instances of fear (easy to see) and in the same animals instances of peace and joy.

FOR THE PUPIL

Page 60

gray harrier: so named because of his habit of flying low and “harrying,” that is, hunting, catching small prey on or near the ground. “Harry” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for army.

Page 61

“He looketh as it were a grym leoun”: from Chaucer’s description of the Cock in the story of the Cock and the Fox.

Page 62

terrible pike: closely related to the pickerel.

kingfisher: builds in holes in sand-banks near water. Its peculiar rattle sounds like the small boys’ “clapper.”

Page 63

“The present only toucheth thee!”: Burns’s poem “To a Mouse.”

Page 64

“The fair music that all creatures made”: from Milton’s poem “To a Solemn Music,” “solemn” meaning “orchestral” music.

Page 65

then doubling once more: This is all figurative language. I am thinking of myself as the fox. The dogs have run themselves to death on my trail, and I am turning back, “doubling,” to have a look at them and to rejoice over their defeat.

Page 71

pine marten: The marten is so rare in this neighborhood that I am inclined to think the creature was the large weasel.

Page 73

the heavy bar across their foreheads: a very unusual way of yoking oxen in the United States. The only team I ever saw here so yoked.

Page 74

San Francisco: alluding to the earthquake and fire which nearly wiped out the city in 1906.

CHAPTER IX

FOR THE PUPIL

The picture of the young buzzard is as true as a photograph; the bumped-up drawing of the old bird looks precisely as she did atop her dead tree, watching my approach. This vulture rarely soars into New England skies; down South, especially along the coast, the smaller black vulture (Catharista urubu) is found very tame and in great abundance; while in the far Southwest lives the great condor.

Page 80

tulip poplar: tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).

“For it had bene an auncient tree”: from Edmund Spenser’s “Shepherd’s Calendar.”

Page 85

a dozen kinds of cramps: Perhaps you will say I didn’t find much in finding the buzzard’s nest, and got mostly cramps! Yes, but I also got the buzzard’s nest—a thing that I had wanted to see for many years. It was worth seeing, however, for its own sake. Even a buzzard is interesting. See the account of him in “Wild Life Near Home,” the chapter called “A Buzzard’s Banquet.”