[2] Note by the Fessor: My neighbor’s name was Tuck, and I meant no disrespect by calling him Friar Tuck.
I don’t think the Tuck family—there were three of them, just as there were three in our house—cared very much for me, though they used to say I was a queer little bird. I didn’t hop around there very much. I generally stayed with Fessor. I felt safer in his hand than anywhere else.
“I used to roost on it a great deal.”
One day when Fessor and Edith and I were out on the lawn, Edith said: “Why don’t you get a bough for Scraggles to roost on?” I don’t know what Fessor replied, but that afternoon Edith brought a bough with quite a number of branches on it, and put it down in the den for me. I used to roost on it a great deal after that, though there were times when I didn’t feel very well that I got more comfort out of a pair of Fessor’s shoes. But that is another story.
As a rule, Fessor was at work at his desk long, dark hours before I was ready to get up in the morning. I would hear him come quietly into the den, so as not to wake Mamma and Edith, and then the clock would strike twice, or three times, and I soon learned that that meant it was a long time before I had to get up. But some mornings he would be quite late, and once or twice he went down to the office (as he called it when he went away to be gone all day) and never saw me at all until night. Well, I didn’t like that at all, so one morning when he was not at the desk when I came from my hiding-place, I went out into the hall in search of him. Not far from the den door I found another doorway, and I went through it into the room. It turned out to be Fessor’s bedroom. He was in bed and fast asleep. That is, I think he must have been asleep by the noise he made, for he slept out loud worse than a humming bee I had once heard. I gave a loud, quick chirp. He didn’t answer, so I called several times, making my voice louder and louder at each call; until at last, with a stretch and a yawn, he threw his arm out of the bed and opened his hand for me to jump in. When he lifted me up on the bed he wanted to know what I meant, such a raggedy, scraggedy little wretch, by coming and waking him up. I didn’t tell him, but I just climbed up over his chest onto his chin and began to peck at his white teeth, and when he tried to catch me I ran and hid in his neck behind his whiskers. Then he bent his head over and held me so lovingly tight, that I was sorry when he let me go. I pecked his neck and he squeezed me between his cheek and his shoulder, and did it several times.
When I jumped onto his chin again I thought I would pinch his lip, so I took tight hold. My, how he did jump! And then when I pinched again, he tried to scare me all into little pieces. What do you think he did? He opened his mouth and filled himself full of air, and then blew me just as hard as he could. I was scared for a moment, but when I saw his dancing, merry, sparkling eyes I knew it was all fun, and I went for his lips again. But he dodged his head so that I couldn’t get at them. He said I pinched too hard, but I don’t believe that, do you? For how could such a tiny little bird hurt so big a man?
Then we had a new game. He stretched out on his back, raised up his knees, and took me and perched me right on top of them. He said I was on a high mountain with a valley behind, and a valley before, and a canyon on each side of me. And then he made an earthquake come. He moved his knees up and down quickly and made me jump. You know I couldn’t fly, but I jumped real hard, and I came rolling and tumbling down the mountain side into Paradise Valley, which was the name he gave to the valley in front. The next time he did it I tumbled off backwards, and that was the Valley of Despair, for he couldn’t reach me, he said, and I had to crawl out myself. What fun it was!
One day when we were playing this game I rolled right off from his knees, off the bed, onto the floor; and I went with such a bump! Then he said I had fallen into the Grand Canyon, and he called out to the Indians to come and catch me and bring me back to him. Of course it was all fun, for he threw his arm out of the bed, snapped his fingers, and gave me his hand, and I was soon nestling snug and warm against his chin and neck. That was such a nice place to be! I used to love to go and catch him in bed, for then I could peck his nose, and ears, and lips, and the white hairs in his beard, and whenever I did that he always snuggled me up close to him and called me his dear, darling little Scraggles.
From all this you can see how dear friends we had already become. So much so, that I was always very lonesome when Fessor had to go away; and several times after he had left the den, and the door downstairs had shut to, I would go out into the hall and call for him, and see if I could find him anywhere. Mamma and Edith were down in the kitchen, so they never heard me; but one day Fessor found out that I was in the habit of looking for him, for he went to the bath-room at the end of the great, long hall in order to refill my saucer with clean water. I had been there once or twice all alone, so I followed him. I had to hop and skip and flutter along pretty quickly, for he was such a big man and had such long legs. He didn’t dream I was so close to him, and when I gave a little chirp as I stood there by his feet, he jumped up and pretty nearly trod on me. “What!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? You little, darling rascal!” And then he stooped down and gave me a hand to pick me up and love me.
Ever after that I followed him every chance I got, and he seemed to like it. Even when we went out of doors he let me walk after him. I call it walk, but you know it was not a walk exactly like men and women walk. I had to hop and flutter my wings, and I really don’t know just what word you would use to describe how I travelled along. Fessor said I neither walked, ran, hopped, skipped, jumped, nor flew, and yet my movement was a mixture of all of these. I guess he knows, too; for I heard Uncle Herbert say he was a very learned man, and knew a great deal about many things.
Oh! I haven’t told you yet about Uncle Herbert’s visit. I will tell you that pretty soon.
People used to see us when we were out walking together, and some of them laughed, and others smiled in a queer kind of way with tears in their eyes. But nobody tried to hurt me, for Fessor was there, and he was so big that I knew I was safe every moment when I was with him. How I did enjoy those walks! We went out nearly every day, and he picked out the places where the sun shone, for he said the warm sunshine was good for birdies as well as for men and women.
One day Mamma came up-stairs to the den and said her brother Herbert was coming. Fessor and Edith were both glad, and as Edith called him Uncle Herbert, I always thought of him in the same way. We were all quite excited when he came. Such huggings and kissings and shaking of hands. I could see it from the top of the stairs, and hear what was going on. By and by Edith said to Fessor that he must show Scraggles to Uncle Herbert. So Fessor brought me down in his hand. I don’t think Uncle Herbert cared much for me at first, for he said I was the wretchedest-looking little bald-bellied bird he had ever seen in his life. That made me feel quite bad.
But the next day when they were at dinner Edith lifted me onto the table—a thing that was very seldom allowed, for Mamma didn’t think it was proper for me to run around on the dining-table, either at meal or any other time—and began to play with me. We had lots of fun, and then she lifted me up and wanted to make me perch on the edge of a drinking-glass partially full of water. She did it so quickly that I didn’t have time to get firm hold, and the glass was slippery, too, and what do you think happened? I fell right into that glass, and was half scared to death when my feet touched the cold water. With a quick “cheep” I made a desperate spring, and almost as soon as I was in I was out again. How Edith and Uncle Herbert laughed! Then he said I was a cute little bird.
Well, that night Uncle Herbert and Fessor and Edith and Mamma all went into the room where the piano was, and what a time they had! They sang all together while Fessor played, and then Uncle Herbert sat down and sang some funny songs about darkies and coons and “The Year of Jubilo.” It was too funny for anything. I didn’t know how to laugh as Mamma did, but it did me lots of good to see her. She laughed and laughed until she cried. And I danced and danced to see her so happy, that I grew quite excited and didn’t want to go to bed at all that night. But Fessor made me go. He took me and put me on the bough which I used for my perch, and when I jumped off and began to cheep and call he came in and put me back again; until at last I grew sleepy and dropped off to sleep. But I was very tired next morning. I guess I had laughed and danced too much, and stayed up too late the night before, which is not good for people as well as little birds.
Soon after Uncle Herbert’s visit I was taken quite ill. You see I never was very strong, and every little thing, such as a change in the weather, affected me. Yet when I think about it, it was almost worth while to be sick to feel the tender love Fessor gave me at that time. As soon as he found I couldn’t eat, he went and bought some stuff in a bottle called “bird-food,” and placed it in a saucer on the floor for me. But somehow I could not make up my mind to eat any of it until he came and carried me to the saucer, and there, holding me in his hand, he mixed up some of the food with water and fed it to me. He was so anxious that I should eat that I couldn’t refuse him.
“I couldn’t bear to be anywhere else than right in his hand.”
When he went to write at the desk I did so want to be with him! I couldn’t bear to be anywhere else than right in his hand. Here is a little piece I found on the desk one day which tells just how he used to care for me:
“She is now asleep in my left hand, though it is early afternoon. Crawling in between my fingers, she comfortably arranged herself, perched on one of my bent fingers, (the others covering her), and then, putting her head under her right wing, she quietly dropped off to sleep. Many nights when I am in the study at her bedtime, she has refused to perch on the branches of the bough. She comes to my feet and pleads to be lifted up. As I put down my hand she jumps into it, and as I lift her up and place her in my left hand she nestles down into it as if it were a nest, curves her head under her wing, and goes to sleep. If my fingers are not comfortable to her, she picks at them—sometimes very vigorously—until I put them as she desires.
“The other evening I determined I would not let her go to sleep in my hand, so I made her a cosy nest in the drawer immediately under my right arm. I coaxed her into this by putting two of my fingers into it, upon which she immediately squatted. But something was lacking in the new roosting place or nest. Two fingers were not enough, and for nearly half an hour my daughter and I watched her as she pecked at my fingers and thumb above, seeking to pull them down under her so that she would have a ‘full hand’ to nest on. At length she decided to take the two fingers, so long as with finger and thumb I rubbed her head. Soon her little head swung under her wing, and as soon as she was asleep I withdrew the two under fingers. But this awakened her, and I had to stroke her more before she settled down again. Then, as I wrapped the cloth around and over her, she awakened enough to peep out and learn from me that she was all right, when we left her for the night. She evidently remained contented until morning.”
I also found another little scrap on Fessor’s desk which tells better than I can about how I acted when I was ill. Here it is:
“During the last week she has shown a desire for closeness to me, for petting, handling, caressing, that I never saw in anything alive before. It is pathetic in the extreme. Every moment almost she desires to be near me. There is no seeking concealment, or privacy, or darkness. If I will not take her up in my hand, she nestles on my foot, and for several days I have kept my shoes off to give her the pleasure of feeling the warmth of my foot when I could not spare the time to ‘fuss’ with her on the desk. If I am away, I invariably find her on my return, if she is not eating, roosting on the edge of a pair of extra shoes of mine that always stand in the study.
“When she nestles beside my hand and folds her head under her wing, she loves to have me take the upper part of her head between my finger and thumb and gently rub and caress it, and she makes no effort to remove it, but goes on apparently sleeping as before.”
I wanted to hear his voice and feel the warmth of his hands and those delicious little hugs he gave me when he squeezed me just enough to tell me how much he loved me. And he seemed to understand it all so well,—just how sick a little bird felt. When he took me out of doors he kept me from the cold with his large, loving hands, and yet let the sun shine on me. Twice he made me walk after him, to give me a little healthful exercise; but he would not let me go too far lest I should get too tired.
But I did not get well; and I did so want to be well and strong. I was as happy with my human friends as I could be, and I wanted to live with them a long time. When I heard them say I was a very sick bird it used to put a great fear in my heart that I was going to die, and then I would snuggle up close to Fessor’s hand that he might know I wanted to live.
Here Scraggles’ story as written by herself comes to an end. The Fessor now tells the pathetic remainder of the interesting tale.
It was Thursday, August 3, 1905. We (that is, Scraggles and I) had had a good day together. We went out and I dug worms for her, and she seemed happy and improving in health and appearance. During the day she followed me out to the bath-room and all around several times, and when I went to lie down and read she came and insisted upon my holding her, or allowing her to sit on my hand. When I moved to turn the page she jumped upon my sleeve and hopped up to my shoulder and neck, where she stayed for half an hour or more. This was a new trick, learned only a few days before, and several times she hopped up from my desk, when I put her off the paper as I wrote, and perched quite contentedly on my shoulder or squatted on the back of my neck.
Several times during the day she had begged to be taken up and had fussed around my pencils, and once or twice had fought my pen as I wrote. Placing her on my lap, she snuggled down there contentedly until some movement disturbed her. Once, and the only time I knew her to do it, she tried to fly up from my lap to the desk. When she failed she looked up with such a queer expression that I could not help putting down my hand for her, into which she immediately hopped.
We had had a good two hours together after lunch, when I put her down, and soon she was hopping about the room. After feeding herself she came and perched in her usual place on my foot, but I must have forgotten her for a moment. My brain was much occupied with an important chapter of my book, and jumping up hastily I stepped to the book-case to the left of my desk to consult some volume, and almost as soon as I did so looked around to see where Scraggles was. I looked towards her sand bath and the food saucers, then to her little tree, but she was not to be seen. Then, as I often did, I tilted back my chair to see if she was at my feet, and to my intense distress I saw her there dead, on the bear skin I used as a rug.
There are some griefs that seem puerile. I suppose mine will over this poor, scraggedy, helpless little bird, yet I felt at that moment as I have felt often since, that there are many men I could far better spare than her,—many men with whom two months’ daily association would teach me less than did this little, raggedy, ailing song-sparrow. Her cheerfulness, her courage, her dauntlessness, her self-reliance, her perfect trust and confidence, her evident affection, were all lessons to remain in memory. After she had once given her trust, it never failed. I could handle my books, moving them to and fro over her, placing them anywhere near her, and there was not the slightest evidence of fear; and if anything did alarm her and she could get into my hand and feel its firmness around her, all tremors ceased. With her tiny head protruding from the clenched hand, her bright eyes looking now this way, now that, she watched intently, but without fear, confident in the protecting power of her big friend. And I felt the trust, the confidence reposed in me, the affection, and it drew from me a response totally at variance with the size of the tiny creature.
We buried her where she and I had gone daily, I to dig, she to eat whatever I found that she liked. My daughter lined the little grave appropriately with the beautiful white blossoms known as bird-cages,—lace-like, delicate, and exquisite,—and as we crumbled the earth over her tiny feathered little body, need I be ashamed to confess that tears fell, even as they do now as I write?
The book I was writing when Scraggles came to me was “In and Out of the Old Missions of California.” These interesting buildings were founded by Saint Francis of Assisi, whose love for the birds and lower animals has already become almost a proverb. It was just as I was finishing one of the last chapters of the book that Scraggles’ life went out. Was it not singular that, while dealing with a subject so intimately associated with this great lover of birds, one of these tiny, helpless, feathered sisters should claim my protecting love? There are those who will see in this more than the mere outward facts,—and I shall not be concerned or disturbed if they do.
The writing of the book was so bound up with the short life of Scraggles that, like an inspiration, I felt I must dedicate it to her. In two minutes after the thought came into my mind I had penned the following dedication, which was published and now appears in my book exactly as I wrote it:
TO SCRAGGLES
MY PET SPARROW AND COMPANION
Saint Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order, without whom there would probably have been no missions in California, regarded the birds as his “little brothers and sisters.” Just as I began the actual writing of this book I picked up in the streets a tiny song sparrow, wounded, unable to fly, and that undoubtedly had been thrust out of its nest. In a short time we became close friends and inseparable companions. Hour after hour she sat on my foot, or, better still, perched, with head under her wing, on my left hand, while I wrote with the other. Nothing I did, such as the movement of books, turning of leaves, etc., made her afraid. When I left the room she hopped and fluttered along after me. She died just as the book was receiving its finishing pages. On account of her ragged and unkempt appearance I called her Scraggles; and to her, a tiny morsel of animation, but who had a keen appreciation and reciprocation of a large affection, I dedicate this book.
When I read this to some of my friends they were moved to tears and wanted to know more about Scraggles. As I told the story, others desired to hear it. Then in a lecture on “The Radiant Life” I told it again, and thousands were touched to tears by the simple narrative of the sweet little bird’s beautiful and trustful life.
Fortunately, my familiarity with the camera had made me desire to make some photographs of Scraggles some three weeks before her death. My daughter and I made several, and then a friend came and made two or three others, so that now we feel really blessed in possessing these counterfeit presentments of the little creature.
When our friends saw these photographs they desired copies of them; and when, after the publication of “In and Out of the Old Missions,” strangers began to write both to my publishers and myself for “further particulars about Scraggles,” I felt that I ought to give to others some of the joy and delight and benefit I and mine had in our intercourse with her.
Dear little Scraggles! I little thought when I first saw you struggling to get away from me, as if afraid I might devour you, that we should so soon become such inseparable friends. It was a sudden impulse that led me to pick you up and take you home, and though the loving hearts there welcomed you, they realized better than I did the trouble you would be. But somehow that did not deter us from making you one of us, and you soon recognized the relationship. Our association was short, as men reckon time, but time really has very little to do with life.
So in the short three months you were with me we lived your lifetime together; and though my life is stretching out into further time, and your body is buried, you, dear little Scraggles, still live on with me. I don’t know, and I care less, what the psychologists say about birds having souls, and I am equally indifferent as to what the theologians say of there being a heaven for birds, or birds entering the heaven of human beings. This I do know, that in my own soul, far more real than the demonstrable propositions of life, such as that two and two make four, is the certain assurance that my soul and Scraggles’ will meet when my body and soul are severed.
So sleep, content and serene, dear little Scraggles, in your tiny and flower-embowered resting-place. You know full well in your tiny, but love-filled heart that just so soon as I have met all the human loved ones in the soul-life, I shall seek for you, and seek until I find, for I shall want you even in heaven. My heaven will be incomplete without you. I believe absolutely with Browning, that
So in the life of the future, with understanding and love made sweeter by clearer knowledge, we shall love on; for of all great things that abide forever “the greatest is love.”
Books by George Wharton James
In and Out of the Old Missions of California
An Historical and Pictorial Account of the Francescan Missions. With one hundred forty-two illustrations, including full-page plates, from photographs. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00 net.
The present volume stands as the authority on the old missions of California. Indispensable as a guide-book, and is filled with most valuable material.—San Francisco Argonaut. The author has devoted careful study to the matter of architecture, and to the furniture and decorations of the historic and ancient structures; but, in addition to this, the work is made interesting by the relative matters that have a more human interest.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
The Wonders of the Colorado Desert
(Southern California)
With more than three hundred pen and ink sketches from life by Carl Eytel. 8vo. Cloth. $4.00 net.
Mr. James has given the first adequate description of one of the most fascinating regions of this country. The wonderful rivers, lofty mountains, deep canyons, varied life and history of the Colorado Desert in Southern California are vividly set forth, together with an account of a recent hazardous journey made down the overflow of the Colorado River to the mysterious Salton Sea. The pen and ink sketches by the artist are an important feature of this book.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers
254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
Other Books by George Wharton James
In and Around the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in Arizona
Illustrated with twenty-three full-page plates and seventy-seven pictures in the text. 8vo. Cloth. Price, $2.50
The volume, crowded with pictures of the marvels and beauties of the Canyon, is of absorbing interest. Dramatic narratives of hairbreadth escapes and thrilling adventures, stories of Indians, their legends and customs, and Mr. James’s own perilous experiences, give a wonderful personal interest in these pages of graphic description of the most stupendous natural wonder on the American Continent.—Philadelphia Public Ledger.
The Indians of the Painted Desert Region
With sixteen full-page pictures and fifty half-page illustrations from photographs. Crown 8vo. Decorated cloth. $2.00 net
“Interesting as a fairy tale and valuable for its accuracy as well” (Literary News), and “a distinct and extremely interesting contribution to topographical and ethnological knowledge” (Buffalo Commercial), is this book by Professor James, in which he vividly describes the Navaho, Hopi, Wallapai, and Havasupai Indians of the Southwest. “The writer has made an intimate personal acquaintance with his subject and has grounded himself in the researches of others,” says the New York Tribune.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers
254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON