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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 46905 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 46905-h.htm or 46905-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46905/46905-h/46905-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46905/46905-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      https://archive.org/details/kentuckywarb00allerich
+
+
+
+
+
+THE KENTUCKY WARBLER
+
+
+[Illustration: "THERE HE WAS--THE KENTUCKY WARBLER!"]
+
+
+THE KENTUCKY WARBLER
+
+by
+
+JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+[Illustration: logo]
+
+
+        _When the population of this immense Western
+      Republic will have diffused itself over every acre of
+      ground fit for the comfortable habitation of man,
+      ... then not a warbler shall flit through our
+      thickets, but its name, its notes, its habits will be
+      familiar to all--repeated in their sayings and
+      celebrated in their village songs._
+                                      --ALEXANDER WILSON
+
+With a Frontispiece in Colour
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City    New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1918
+
+Copyright, 1918, by
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved, Including That of
+Translation into Foreign Languages,
+Including the Scandinavian
+
+
+
+
+                                TO
+                        THE YOUNG KENTUCKY
+                           FOREST-LOVER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                            PAGE
+
+    CHAPTER I
+        HOME                   3
+
+    CHAPTER II
+        SCHOOL                45
+
+    CHAPTER III
+        FOREST               100
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+        BIRD                 161
+
+    CHAPTER V
+        ROAD                 175
+
+
+
+
+                            THE KENTUCKY
+
+                               WARBLER
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter I--title decoration]
+
+
+I
+
+THE HOME
+
+
+Webster, along with thousands of other lusty forward-looking Kentucky
+children, went to the crowded public schools.
+
+There every morning against his will but with the connivance of his
+parents he was made a prisoner, as it seemed to him, and for long hours
+held as such while many things disagreeable or unnecessary, some by
+one teacher and some by another, were forced into his head. Soon after
+they were forced in most of the things disappeared from the head. What
+became of them nobody knew: Webster didn't know and he didn't care.
+During the forcing-in process month by month and year by year he now
+and then picked up a pleasant idea for himself, some wonderful idea
+about great things on ahead in life or about the tempting world just
+outside school. He picked up such ideas with ease and eagerness and
+held on to them.
+
+He lived in a small white-frame cottage which was rather new but
+already looked rather old. It stood in a small green yard, which was
+naturally very old but still looked young. The still-young yard and the
+already-ageing cottage were to be found--should anybody have tried to
+find them--on the rim of the city. If the architectural plan of the
+city had been mapped out as an open-air theatre, the cottage would have
+been a rear seat in the very last row at the very lowest price. The
+block was made up of such cottages--rear seats. They faced the city but
+couldn't see the city, couldn't see anything worth seeing, and might as
+well have looked in some other direction or not looked at all.
+
+If Webster stepped out of the front door, he was within five yards of
+the outmost thoroughfare--native dirt-road for milk wagons, butchers'
+wagons, coal carts, and fruit-and-berry wagons. Webster's father
+kept an especial eye on the coal carts: they weighed heavily on his
+salary. Webster's mother kept her eye on the fruit-and-berry wagons:
+they tantalised her passion for preserves. Everybody kept uneasy eyes
+on milk and butchers' and vegetable wagons, which brought expensive
+satisfaction to appetites for three meals a day. The edges of the
+thoroughfare were paths for the cottagers, all of whom walked and
+were glad and grateful even to be able to walk. The visitors of the
+cottagers walked. Everybody walked but the drivers. The French would
+have called the street The Avenue of Soles.
+
+One wet winter morning as Webster, walking beside his father, lifted
+his feet out of the mud and felt sorry about their shoes, he complained
+because there was no pavement.
+
+"My son," replied his father, whose remarks on any subject appeared
+to come out of a clear sky, so unclouded were they by uncertainty,
+"my son, your father's salary is not a paved-sidewalk salary. The mud
+on your shoes is in an inverse ratio to the funds in his pockets. I
+believe you have learned in your arithmetic at school by this time what
+ratio is."
+
+One dry summer morning as Webster walked beside his father, a butcher's
+wagon whirled past and covered them quickly with dust. He considered
+this injury to their best clothes and complained because there was no
+watering-cart.
+
+"My son," replied his father out of his daily clear sky, "my salary is
+not a watering-cart salary. The presence of the earth's dust in your
+eyes exactly equals the lack of gold-dust in your father's earthly
+account. I believe by this time you have studied equations."
+
+But if Webster had stepped out of the back door of the cottage and
+passed under the clothes-line which was held up at its middle point
+by a forked pole, if he had crossed their very small vegetable garden
+and then had crossed a wide deep cow-lot where some rich man of the
+city pastured his fat milk cows, he would have been on the edge of the
+country. It was possible for one standing on the rear porch to see all
+summer thick, softly waving woods.
+
+Within the past two or three years, as summer had come again and the
+world turned green, a change had taken place in Webster, a growth. More
+and more he began to look from the porch or windows at those distant
+massed trees. Something from them seemed to cross over to him, an
+influence powerful and compelling; it drew him out of the house back
+with it into the mystery of the forest and he never returned.
+
+In truth, almost as soon as he could go anywhere he had started toward
+the forest without asking permission. They had overtaken him then
+and dragged him back. When he was old enough to understand, they had
+explained: he was too young, he would get lost, the bull would hook him.
+
+"But why?" Webster had asked, complaining of this new injustice in the
+world. He was perpetually being surprised that so many things in the
+world were bent on getting one into trouble; all around him things
+seemed to be waiting to make trouble. "Why should the bull hook _me_?
+_I've_ done nothing to _the bull_."
+
+They were about finishing breakfast. He was eating in his slow ruminant
+way--he ate enormously but never hungrily. His father, whose custom it
+was to divide the last half of his breakfast with the first half of his
+newspaper, lowered the paper and looked over the top.
+
+"My son," he said, "the bull has horns. Every living creature is bound
+to use everything it has. Use what you have or lose what you have--that
+is the terrible law in this world. Therefore the bull is obliged to
+hook what he can to keep his horns going. If you give him the chance,
+he will practise them on you. Otherwise his great-great-grandson might
+not have any horns when he really needed them. Do you understand?"
+
+"No," said Webster.
+
+"I'll explain again when you are mature enough to comprehend," said his
+father, returning to his paper.
+
+Webster returned to the subject.
+
+"If I ever have any money in my pocket, you always tell me not to spend
+it: now you say I ought to use whatever I have."
+
+His father quickly lowered his paper and raised his voice:
+
+"I have never said that you must use everything all at once, my son.
+You must learn to use it at the right time."
+
+"When _is_ the right time to use a thing?" asked Webster, eating
+quietly on.
+
+"I'll answer that question when it is necessary," his father replied
+grumblingly from behind his paper, putting an end to the disturbance.
+
+A few weeks prior to this breakfast-scene Webster one day at recess had
+laid bare a trouble in himself, confiding it to one of his intimate
+school-mates. He did so with a tone of uncertainty, for he was not sure
+but he was not being disloyal.
+
+"Can _your_ father answer all the questions _you_ ask _him_?"
+
+"Not half of them!" exclaimed the comrade with splendid candour--"Not
+half!"
+
+"My father answers very few _I_ ask _him_," interposed a fragile little
+white-faced fellow who had strolled up in time to catch the drift of
+the confidential talk. He did not appear strong enough even to put a
+question: he nursed a ragged ball, had lost a front tooth, and gave off
+the general skim-milk look which some children carry about with them.
+
+Webster, without inquiring further, began to feel a new respect for
+himself as not being worse off than other boys as to fathers; also a
+new respect for his father as not being worse than his class: fathers
+were deficient!
+
+Remembering this discovery at school--one of the big pleasant ideas
+he picked up outside lessons--he did not on the morning in question
+press his father more closely as to using horns when you have them and
+not using money when you have it. In fact, he was already beginning
+to shield his father and had quite ceased to interrogate him in
+company, lest he expose some ignorance. He therefore credited this
+incident where it belonged: as a part of his growing knowledge that
+he couldn't look to his father for any great help on things that
+puzzled him--fathers, as had been said, being deficient, though always
+contriving to look so proficient that from merely surveying them you
+would never suspect the truth.
+
+Webster's father was a minor bookkeeper in one of the city's minor
+banks. Like his bankbooks, he was always perfectly balanced, perfectly
+behaved; and he was also perfectly bald. Even his baldness might have
+been credited to him as one of the triumphs of exact calculation:
+the baldness of one side being exactly equal to the baldness of the
+other: hardly a hair on either exposure stood out as an unaccounted-for
+remainder.
+
+Webster thought of his father as having worked at nothing but
+arithmetic for nearly forty years. Sometimes it became a kind of
+disgust to him to remember this: as was his custom when displeased at
+anything he grew contemptuous. In one of his contemptuous moments he
+one day asked:
+
+"How many times have you made the figure 2?"
+
+"Three quadrillion times, my son," replied his father with perfect
+accuracy and a spirit of hourly freshness. His father went on:
+
+"The same number of times for all of them. When you're in the
+thousands, you may think one or the other figure is ahead, but when you
+get well on into the millions, there isn't any difference: they are
+neck and neck."
+
+This subject of arithmetic was the sorest that father and son could
+have broached: perhaps that was the reason why neither could get away
+from it. The family lived on arithmetic or off it--had married on it,
+were born unto it, were fed by it, housed and heated by it, ventilated
+and cooled by it. Webster's father's knowledge of arithmetic had
+marched at the head of the family as they made their way through time
+and trouble like music. It had been a lifelong bugle-blast of correct
+numerals.
+
+Hence the terrible disappointment: after Webster had been at school
+long enough for grading to begin to come home as to what faculties
+he possessed and the progress he made, his parents discovered to
+their terror and shame that he was good in nothing and least good in
+arithmetic. It was like a child's turning against his own bread and
+butter and shirt and shoes. To his father it meant a clear family
+breakdown. The moment had come to him which, in unlike ways, comes to
+many a father when he feels obliged to say: "This is no son of mine."
+
+In reality, Webster's father had had somewhat that feeling from the
+first. When summoned and permitted, he had tipped into the room on the
+day of Webster's birth and taken a father's anxious defensive look. He
+had turned off with a gesture of repudiation but of the deepest respect:
+
+"No such head and countenance ever descended to him from me! We must
+be square with him from the start! I place to his credit the name of
+Daniel Webster. His mother, instead of admiring her husband, had been
+gazing too fondly at the steel engraving of the statesman over the
+mantelpiece in the parlour."
+
+When Webster was several years old, one day during a meal--nobody knew
+just what brought forth the question--he asked:
+
+"Why was I named Webster?"
+
+His father answered:
+
+"Because you looked like him."
+
+Webster got up quietly and went into the parlour and quietly returned
+to his seat at table:
+
+"No, I don't look like him," he said.
+
+"You looked like him the day you were born, my son. Any resemblance to
+Daniel Webster is apt to become less and less. Finally, you don't look
+like him any more. In the United States Senate nowadays, for instance,
+there isn't a trace of resemblance left anywhere. Senators at present
+look more like me and you know what that means: it means that nobody
+need feel obliged to think of Daniel Webster!"
+
+That birthday jest--that he was not quite entitled to the nativity
+of his own son, an uneasiness perhaps inherited by fathers from the
+rudimentary marriages of primitive society--was but a jest then.
+It gradually took on serious meaning as his son grew further away
+from him with each year of growth. The bad passing of the arithmetic
+milestone had brought the worst distinct shock. Still, even that left
+Webster's father perfectly balanced, perfectly behaved: he remained
+proud of his unlike offspring, fed and clothed him, and was fond of him.
+
+There is a bare possibility also that in Webster he saw the only chance
+to risk part of his salary in secret speculation. Nearly everybody
+in the town gambled on something. The bank did not favour the idea
+that its employees should enjoy any such monetary pastime. But even a
+bank cannot prevent a father from betting on his own son if he keeps
+the indiscretion to himself. Thus it is barely possible that, in the
+language of the country, Webster's father took chances on Webster as a
+winning colt on some unknown track, if he should ever take a notion to
+run! Why not bet, if it cost the same as not to bet: at least you had
+the excitement?
+
+Webster on his part grew more and more into the belief that his father
+not only could not answer his questions but--what was of far greater
+consequence--did not open up before him any path in life. His first
+natural and warm desire had been to imitate his father, to follow in
+his footsteps: slowly he discovered that his father did not have any
+footsteps, he made no path. His affection still encircled his father
+like a pair of arms; his eyes had completely abandoned him as a
+sign-post on life's road.
+
+Mothers often open up roads for their sons or point them out, but
+Webster could not look to his mother for one unless he had wished to
+take a short road to an uneventful past. The kind of a mother she was
+resulted from the kind of a wife she was. She had taken her husband's
+arm at marriage to keep step at his side through life. Had he moved
+forward, she would have moved forward. Since he did not advance, but in
+his life-work represented a kind of perpetual motion without progress,
+she stayed by him and busied herself with multifarious daily little
+motions of her own. Her roadless life had one main path of memory. That
+led her backward to a large orchard and garden and yard out in the
+country, filled with fruit trees and berry-bearing bushes and vines.
+She, now a middle-aged wife and mother, was a sentimental calendar
+of far-away things "just ripe." The procession of fruit-and-berry
+wagons past the cottage from May to October had upon her the effect
+of an acute exacerbation of this chronic lament. The street cry of a
+vendor, no matter how urgent her duty anywhere in the cottage at the
+moment, brought her to a front window or to the front porch or even
+swept her out to the front gate, to gratify her eyes with memories and
+pay her respects to the impossible. She inquired the cost of so much
+and bought so little that the drivers, who are keen and unfavourable
+judges of human nature, when they met at cross streets and compared
+notes--the disappointed, exasperated drivers named her _Mrs. Price_:
+though one insisted upon calling her _Lady Not-Today_. Whenever at the
+bottom of her pocketbook she found spare change for a box of brilliant,
+transparent red cherries, she bore it into the cottage as rapaciously
+as some miser of jewels might have carried off a casket of rubies. Thus
+you could almost have said that Webster had been born of arithmetic and
+preserves. Still, his life with his father and mother was wholesome and
+affectionate and peaceful--an existence bounded by the horizon of the
+day.
+
+His boyhood certainly had no wide field of vision, no distant horizon,
+as regards his sleeping quarters. In building the cottage a bathroom
+on the first floor had been added to one side of it as a last luxurious
+afterthought. If you stood before the cottage and looked it squarely
+in the face, the bathroom protruded on one side like a badly swollen
+jaw. The building-plan when worked out, had involved expense beyond
+the calculation, as usually happens, and this had threatened the
+Salary: the extra bath, therefore, remained unrealised. Webster
+always asked at least one question about everything new and untried,
+and when old enough to be put there to sleep, he had looked around
+the cramped enclosure and inquired why it had been built. Thus he
+learned that in the family he had now taken the place of the Bath That
+Failed. It caused him a queer feeling as to his general repute in the
+neighbourhood that the very sight of him might bring to any observer's
+mind thoughts of a missing tub.
+
+His window opened upon a few feet of yard. Just over the fence was the
+kitchen window of the cottage next in the row. When that window was
+open, Webster had to see the kitchen table and the preparation for
+meals. He violently disliked the sight of the preparations. If the
+window was closed, tidings as to what was going on reached him through
+another sense; his bedroom-bathroom became as a whispering gallery
+of cooking odours. But their own kitchen was just across a narrow
+hall, and fragrances from it occasionally mingled with those from the
+kitchen over the fence. Made hungry by nasal intelligence of something
+appetising, Webster would sometimes hurriedly dress and follow his
+pointer into the breakfast room, only to find that he was on a false
+trail: what he had expected to get his share of was being consumed by
+the family next door. He no longer had confidence, so to speak, in his
+own nose--not as a leading authority on meals to be eaten by him.
+
+One beautiful use his window had, one glorious use, one enchantment.
+In the depth of winter sometimes of mornings when he got out of bed
+and went to open the shutter, on the window panes would be a forest
+of glittering trees. The first time he beheld such a forest, he stood
+before it spell-bound: wondering whether there were silvery birds
+singing far off amid the silvery boughs and what wild frost-creatures
+crouched in the tall stiff frost-grass. From the ice-forests on his
+window panes his thoughts always returned to the green summer forest on
+the distant horizon.
+
+The pest of his existence at home was Elinor--a year younger but much
+older in her ways: to Webster she was as old as Mischief, as old as
+Evil. For Elinor had early fastened herself upon his existence as a
+tease. She laughed at him, ridiculed his remarks, especially when he
+thought them wise, dragged down everything in him. As they sat at table
+and he launched out upon any subject with his father--quite in the
+manner of one gentleman indulging his intellect with another gentleman
+over their rich viands--Elinor went away up into a little gallery of
+her own and tried to boo him off the stage. His father and mother did
+not at times conceal their amusement at Elinor's boo's. He sometimes
+broke out savagely at her, which only made her worse. His mother, who
+was not without gentle firmness and a saving measure of good sense, one
+day disapproved of his temper and remarked advisedly to him, Elinor
+having fled after a victory over him:
+
+"Elinor teases you because she sees that it annoys you. She ought to
+keep on teasing you till you stop being annoyed. When she sees that she
+can't tease you, she'll stop trying."
+
+That was all very well: but one day he teased Elinor. She puckered up
+and began to cry and his mother said quickly:
+
+"Don't do that, Webster."
+
+Then besides: a few years before he had one day overheard his mother
+persuading his father that Elinor must not be sent to the public school.
+
+"I want her to go to a private school. She has such a difficult
+disposition, it will require delicate attention. The teachers haven't
+time to give her that patient attention in the public schools."
+
+"My dear," Elinor's father had replied, shaking his head, "your
+husband's salary is not a private-school salary. It also has a
+difficult disposition, it also requires the most careful watching!"
+
+"The cost will be more but she must go. Some extra expense will be
+unavoidable even for her clothing but I'll take that out of _my_
+clothes."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind! If Elinor has a difficult
+disposition, she gets it from Elinor's father; for _he_ had one once,
+thank God! He had it until he went into the bank. But a bank takes
+every kind of disposition out of you, good or bad. After you've been
+in a bank so many years, you haven't any more disposition. Only the
+president of a bank enjoys the right to have a disposition. All the
+rest of us are mere habits--certain habits on uncertain salaries. Let
+Elinor go to her select school and I'll go a little more ragged. The
+outside world thinks it a bank joke when they look through the windows
+and see bank clerks at work in ragged coats: instead they know better.
+Let Elinor go and let the damages fall on her father. He will be glad
+to take the extra cost off his own back as a tribute to his unbanked
+boyhood. I hope you noticed my pun--my dooble intender."
+
+Thus Elinor was sent to the most select private school of the city.
+Webster weighed the matter on the scales of boyish justice. If you had
+a bad disposition, you were rewarded by being better dressed and being
+sent to the best school; if you had a good disposition, you dressed
+plainly and went to the public school. What ought he to do about his
+own disposition? Why not turn it into a bad one? It was among Webster's
+bewilderments that he was so poorly off as not to be able to muster a
+troublesome enough disposition to be sent to one of the city's select
+private schools for boys: he should very much have liked to go!
+
+"I go to a private school because I am _nice_," Elinor had boasted to
+him one morning. She was sitting on the front steps as he came out on
+his way to school, and she looked very dainty and very charming--a
+dark, wiry, fiery, restless little creature, and at the moment a bit of
+brilliant decoration. "And I get nice marks," she added pointedly.
+
+He paused to make a quietly contemptuous reply.
+
+"Of course you get nice marks: that's what private schools are for--to
+give everybody nice marks. If you went to the public school, you'd get
+what you deserved."
+
+"Then you seem to deserve very little," said Elinor, smoothing a lock
+of her black hair over one ear.
+
+His rage burst out at her deadly thrust:
+
+"You go to a private school because you are a little devil," he said.
+
+"Why don't you be a little devil too?" inquired Elinor, her bright eyes
+mocking him. "Can't you be a little devil too?"
+
+He jerked the strap tighter around his battered books:
+
+"If you were in the public schools, they wouldn't put up with you.
+They'd send you home or they'd break you in."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Elinor, with an encouraging smile, "they seem
+to get along with you very well."
+
+Webster knew that Elinor's teasing, ridiculing eyes followed him as he
+walked away. They became part of the things that cheapened him in his
+life. When he had passed through the front gate, he started off in a
+direction which was not the direction to school.
+
+Elinor sang out shrilly:
+
+"I know where you are going. But it's of no use. Jenny's sweetheart
+goes to a private school and he stands well in his classes."
+
+He walked on, but turned his face toward her:
+
+"It's none of _your_ meddlesome business, you little black scorpion,"
+he said quietly.
+
+With an upward bound of his nature he thought of Jenny, a very
+different sort of girl.
+
+Jenny lived in the largest cottage of the block, at the better of the
+two corners. The families visited intimately. Jenny's father was a coal
+merchant and Webster's father bought his coal of Jenny's father. A
+grocer lived in the middle of the block: he bought supplies from that
+grocer. "If you can," he said, "deal with your neighbours. It will
+make them more careful: they won't dare ...!" On the contrary, Jenny's
+father did not deposit his cheques in Webster's father's bank. "Don't
+do your business with a neighbour," he said. "Neighbours pry."
+
+Jenny represented in Webster's life the masculine awakening of his
+nature toward womankind. In the white light of that general dawn, she
+stood revealed but not recognised. A little thing had happened, the
+summer previous, which was of common interest to them. In a corner of
+Jenny's yard grew a locust tree, not a full forest-sized locust tree
+but still quite a respectable locust tree for its place and advantages.
+All around the trunk and up the trunk clambered the trumpet-vine.
+Several yards from the earth some of the branches bent over and spread
+out as a roof for a little arbour--Jenny's summer play-house.
+
+One dewy morning Jenny had first noticed a humming-bird hovering about
+the blossoms. She did not know that it was the ruby-throat, seeking
+the trumpet-vine where Audubon painted him. She only knew that she was
+excited and delighted. She told Webster.
+
+"If he comes back, run and tell me, will you, Jenny?" he pleaded, with
+some strange new joy in him. Several times she had run and summoned
+him; and the two children, unconsciously drawing nearer to each other,
+and hand in hand watched the ruby-throat hovering about the adopted
+flower of the State.
+
+The distant green forest and the locust tree with the trumpet-vine and
+the humming-bird--these, though distant from one another, became in
+Webster's mind part of something deep and powerful in his life, toward
+which he was moving.
+
+If no road opened before him at home, none opened at school. He would
+gladly have quit any day. He tried to make lessons appear worse than
+they were in order to justify himself in his philosophy of contempt
+and rejection.
+
+When any two old ladies met on the street, he argued, they did not
+begin to parse as fast as possible at each other. Old gentlemen of the
+city did not walk up and down with books glued to their noses, trying
+to memorise things they would rather forget. When people went to the
+library for delightful books to read, nobody took home arithmetics and
+geographies. There wasn't a grown person in the city who cared what
+bounded Indiana on the north or if all the creeks in Maine emptied into
+the mouths of school teachers. In church, when the minister climbed to
+the pulpit, the congregation didn't begin to examine him in history.
+They didn't even examine him in the Bible; he couldn't have stood the
+examination if they had. In the court-room, at the fair, at the races,
+at the theatre, when you were born, when you were playing, when you had
+a sweetheart, when you married, when you were a father, when you were
+sick, when you were in any way happy or unhappy, when you were dying,
+when you were dead and buried and forgotten, nobody called for school
+books.
+
+Webster, nevertheless, both at home and at school made his impression.
+No one could have defined the nature of the impression but every one
+knew he made it. If he failed at his lessons, his teachers were not
+angry; they looked mortified and said as little as possible and all
+the while pushed him along by hook or crook, until at last they had
+smuggled him into high school--the final heaven of the whole torment.
+
+The impression upon his school fellows was likewise strongly in his
+favour. Toward the close of each session there was intense struggle and
+strain for the highest mark in class and the next highest and the next.
+When the nerve-racking race was over and everybody had time to look
+around and inquire for Webster, they could see him cantering quietly
+down the home stretch, unmindful of the good-natured jeers that greeted
+his arrival: he had gone over the course, he had not run. As soon as
+they were out of doors in a game, Webster stepped to the front. Those
+who had just outstripped him now followed him.
+
+Roadless parents--a child looking for its road in life! That is
+Nature's plan to stop imitation, to block the roads of parents to
+their children, and force these into new paths for the development
+of the individual and of the race. And in what other country is that
+spectacle so common as in our American democracy, where progress is
+so swift and the future so vast and untrod and untried that nearly
+every generation in thousands of cottages represents a revolt and a
+revolution of children against their parents, their work and their
+ways? But Webster's father and mother were not philosophers as to how
+Nature works out her plan through our American democracy: they merely
+had their parental apprehensions and confidentially discussed these.
+What would Webster be, would he ever be anything? He would finish at
+high school this year and it was time to decide.
+
+A son of the grocer in the block had made an unexpected upward stride
+in life and surprised all the cottagers. Webster's father and mother
+took care to bring this meritorious example to their son's attention.
+
+"What are _you_ going to be, Webster?" his mother asked one morning at
+breakfast, looking understandingly at Webster's father.
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to be," Webster had replied unconcernedly.
+"I know I'm not going to be what _he_ is!"
+
+"It would never do to try to force him," his father said later. "Not
+_him_. Besides, think of a couple of American parents undertaking to
+force their children to do anything--_any_ children! We'll have to wait
+a while longer. If he's never to be anything, of course forcing could
+never make him into something. It would certainly bring on a family
+disturbance and the family disturbance would be sure to get on my
+nerves at the bank and I might make mistakes in my figures."
+
+Then in the April of that year, about the time the woods were turning
+green and he began to look toward them with the old longing now grown
+stronger, a great thing happened to Webster.
+
+[Illustration: chapter I--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter II--title decoration]
+
+
+II
+
+THE SCHOOL
+
+
+One clear morning of that budding month of April, a professor from one
+of the two institutions of learning in the city stood before the pupils
+of the high school.
+
+He was there to fulfill his part of an experimental plan which, through
+the courtesy of all concerned, had been started upon its course at
+the opening of the session the previous autumn: that members of the
+two faculties should be asked to be good enough to come--some one of
+them once each month--and address the school on some pleasant field or
+by-field of university work, where learning at last meets life. That
+is, each professor was requested to appear before the ravenous pupils
+of the high school with a basket of ripe fruit from his promised land
+of knowledge and to distribute these as samples from an orchard which
+each pupil, if he but chose, could some day own for himself. Or if he
+could not quite bring anything so luscious and graspable as fruit, he
+might at least stand in their full view on the boundary of his kingdom
+and mark out, across that dubious Common which lies between high school
+and college, a path that would lead a boy straight to some one of the
+world's great highways of knowledge.
+
+Eight professors had courteously responded to this invitation and had
+disclosed eight splendid roadways of the world's study. The Latin
+professor had opened up his colossal Roman-built highway with its
+pictures of the ages when all the world's thoroughfares led to Rome.
+The professor of Greek had disclosed the longer path which leads back
+to Hellas with its frieze of youth in eternal snow. The professor of
+Astronomy had taken his band of listeners forth into the immensities
+of roadless space and had all but lost them and the poor little earth
+itself in the coming and going of myriads of entangled stars. Eight
+professors had come, eight professors had gone, it was now April, a
+professor of Geology, as next to the last lecturer, stood before them.
+
+Interest in the lectures had steadily mounted from the first and
+was now at highest pitch. He faced an audience eager, intelligent,
+respectful and grateful. On their part they consented that the man
+before them embodied what he had come to teach--the blending of life
+and learning. Plainly the study of the earth's rocks had not hardened
+him, acquaintance with fossils had not left him a human fossil. And he
+hid the number of his years within the sap of living sympathies as a
+tree hides the notation of its years within the bark.
+
+Letting his eyes wander over them silently for a moment, he began
+without waste of a word--a straightforward and powerful personality.
+
+"I am going to speak to you boys about a boy who never reached high
+school. I want you to watch how that boy's life, first seen in the
+distance through mist and snow and storm as a faint glimmering spark,
+rudely blown upon by the winds of misfortune, endangered and all but
+ready to go out--I want you to watch how that endangered spark of a
+boy's life slowly begins to brighten in the distance, to grow stronger,
+and finally to draw nearer and nearer until at last it shines as a
+great light about you here in this very place. Watch, I say, how a
+troubled ray, low on life's horizon, at last becomes a star in the
+world of men, high fixed and resplendent--to be seen by human eyes as
+long as there shall be human eyes to see anything."
+
+He saw that he had caught their attention. Their sympathy reacted upon
+him.
+
+"Before I speak of the boy I wish to speak of a book. I hope all of you
+have read one of the very beautiful stories of English literature by
+George Eliot called _Silas Marner_. If you have, none of you will ever
+forget that Silas Marner belonged to a class of pallid, undersized men
+who, a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, under pressure upon
+the centres of population in England and through competition of trade,
+were driven out of the towns into the country. There, as strangers,
+as alien-looking remnants of a discredited race, there in districts
+far away among the lanes or in the deep bosom of the hills, perhaps
+an hour's ride from any turnpike or beyond the faint sound of the
+coach-horn, they spent their lives as obscure weavers and peddlers.
+
+"You will never forget George Eliot's vivid, powerful, touching picture
+of Silas Marner at work in a little stone cottage near a deserted
+stone pit, amid the nut-bearing hedgerows of the village of Raveloe.
+When the schoolboys of the village came to the hedges in autumn to
+gather nuts or in spring to look for bird-nests--you boys still do
+that, I hope--when they came and heard the uncanny sound of the loom,
+so unlike that of the familiar flail on threshing floors, they would
+crowd around the windows and peep in at the weaver in his treadmill
+attitude, weaving like a solitary spider month after month and year
+after year his endless web. Silas Marner, pausing in his work to
+adjust some trouble in his thread and discovering them and annoyed by
+the intrusion, would descend from the loom and come to his door and
+gaze out at them with his strange, blurred, protuberant eyes; for he
+was so near-sighted that he could see distinctly only objects close to
+him, such as his thread, his shuttle, his loom.
+
+"If for a few days the sound of the loom stopped, it was because the
+weaver, with his pack on his feeble shoulders, was away on journeys
+through fields and lanes to deliver his linen to those who had ordered
+it or who might haply buy.
+
+"The village of Raveloe, as you remember, lay on the rich, central
+plain of Merry England, with wooded hollows and well-walled orchards
+and ornamental weathercocks and church spires rising peacefully
+above green tree-tops. But Silas Marner saw nothing of the Merry
+England through which he peddled his cloth. He walked through it all
+with the outdoor loneliness of those who cannot see. His mother had
+bequeathed him knowledge of a few herbs; and these were the only thing
+in nature that he had ever gropingly looked for along hedgerows and
+lanesides--foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot.
+
+"Now, if you have read the story, you have a far more living, touching
+picture of the life of a weaver in those distant times that I could
+possibly paint. The genius of George Eliot painted it supremely and I
+point to her masterpiece rather than to any faint semblance I could
+draw. What I want you to do is to get deeply into your minds what the
+life of a weaver in those days meant: a little further on you will
+understand why.
+
+"Next I want you to think of Silas Marner as an all too common figure
+of the present time. He is a type of those of us who go through our
+lives all but blind to the surpassingly beautiful life of the planet
+on which it is our strange and glorious destiny to spend our human
+days. He is a type of those of us who, in town or city, see only
+the implements of our trade or business ever close to our eyes--our
+shuttle, our thread, our loom, of whatever kind these may be. When we
+go out into the world of nature, he is also a type of those of us, who
+recognise only the few things we need--our coltsfoot, our foxglove, our
+dandelion, of whatever kind these may be. In the midst of woods and
+fields we gaze blankly around us with vision blurred by ignorance--not
+born blind but remaining as blind because we do not care or have not
+learned to open and to train our eyes. We have the outdoor loneliness
+of Silas Marner."
+
+He waited a few moments to allow his words to make their impression,
+and long accustomed to the countenance of listeners, he felt sure
+that they were following him in the road he pursued: then he led them
+forward:
+
+"Now, about the period that George Eliot paints the life of her poor
+English weaver there lived, not in Merry England but in Bonnie
+Scotland--and to be bonnie is not to be merry--there lived in the
+little town of Paisley, in the west of Scotland, a man by the name of
+Alexander Wilson, a poor illiterate distiller. He had a son--the boy I
+am to tell you about.
+
+"The poor illiterate distiller and father desired to give his son
+his name but not to assign him his place in life, not his own road;
+he named him Alexander and he wished him to be not a distiller but
+a physician. The boy's mother was a native of an island of the
+Hebrides--your geographies will have to tell you where the Hebrides
+are, for doubtless you have all forgotten! The inhabitants of those
+wild, bleak, storm-swept islands thought much of danger and death
+and therefore often of God. Perhaps the natives of small islands are,
+as a rule, either very superstitious or very religious. His mother
+desired him to be a minister. You may not know that the Scotch people
+are, perhaps, peculiarly addicted to being either doctors of the
+body or doctors of the soul. The entire Scottish race would appear
+to be desirous of being physicians to something or to somebody--not
+submitting easily, however, to be doctored!
+
+"Thus the boy's father and mother opened before him the two main
+honoured roads of Scottish life and bade him choose. He chose neither,
+for he was self-willed and wavering, and did not know his own mind or
+his own wish. He did know that he would not take the roads his parents
+pointed out; as to them he was a roadless boy.
+
+"His mother died when he was quite young, a stepmother stepped into a
+stepmother's place, and she quickly decided with Scotch thrift. A third
+Scottish road should be opened to the boy and into that he should be
+pushed and made to go: he must be put to trade. Accordingly, when he
+was about eleven years old, he was taken from school and bound as an
+apprentice to a weaver: we lament child labour now: it is an old lament.
+
+"The boy hated weaving as, perhaps, he never hated anything else in
+his life and in time he hated much and he hated many things. He seems
+soon to have become known as the lazy weaver. Years afterward he put
+into bitter words a description of the weaver: 'A weaver is a poor,
+emaciated, helpless being, shivering over rotten yarn and groaning over
+his empty flour barrel.' Elsewhere he called the weaver a scarecrow in
+rags. He wrote a poem entitled _Groans from the Loom_.
+
+"Five interminable years of those groans and all his eager, wild,
+headstrong, liberty-loving boyhood was ended: gone from him as he sat
+like a boy-spider with a thread passing endlessly into a web. During
+these interminable years, whenever he lifted his eyes from his loom
+and looked ahead, he could see nothing but penury and dependence and
+loneliness--his loom to the end of his life.
+
+"Five years of this imprisonment and then he was eighteen and his own
+master; and the first thing he did was to descend from the loom, take a
+pack of cloth upon his shoulders and go wandering away from the hills
+and valleys and lakes of Scotland--free at last like a young deer in
+the heather. He said of himself that from that hour when his eyes had
+first opened on the light of grey Scotch mountains, the world of nature
+had called him. He did not yet know what the forest and the life of the
+forest meant or would ever mean; he only knew that there he was happy
+and at home.
+
+"Thus, like Silas Marner, he became a poor weaver and peddler but not
+with Silas Marner's eyes. Seldom in any human head has the mechanism of
+vision been driven by a mind with such power and eagerness to observe.
+And he had the special memory of the eye. There are those of us who
+have the special memory of the ear or of taste or of touch. He had the
+long, faithful recollection of things seen. With this pair of eyes
+during the next several years he traversed on foot three-fourths of
+Scotland. Remember, you boys of the rolling bluegrass plateau, what the
+scenery of Scotland is! Think what it meant to traverse three-fourths
+of that country, you who consider it a hardship to walk five level
+miles, a misfortune to be obliged to walk ten, the adventure of a
+lifetime to walk twenty.
+
+"But though he followed one after another well nigh all the roads of
+Scotland, he could find in all Scotland no road of life for him. It
+is true that certain misleading paths beckoned to him, as is apt
+to be true in every life. Thus he had conceived a great desire to
+weave poetry instead of cloth, to weave music instead of listening to
+the noise of the loom: he had his flute and his violin. But what he
+accomplished with poetry and flute and violin were obstacles to his
+necessary work and rendered this harder. The time he gave to them made
+his work less: the less his work, the less his living; the less his
+living, the more his troubles and hardships.
+
+"Once he started out both to peddle his wares and to solicit orders for
+a little book of his poems he wished to publish. To help both pack and
+poetry he wrote a handbill in verse. Some of the lines ran thus:
+
+    "'Here's handkerchiefs charming, book muslins like ermine,
+      Brocaded, striped, corded, or checked.
+    Sweet Venus, they say, on Cupid's birthday
+      In British-made muslin was decked.
+
+    "'Now, ye Fair, if you choose any piece to peruse,
+      With pleasure I'll instantly show it.
+    If the peddler should fail to be favoured with sale,
+      Then I hope you'll encourage the poet.'
+
+"The result seems to have been but small sale for British-made muslins
+and no sale at all for Wilson-made poems.
+
+"Robert Burns was just then the idolised poet of Scotland, a new
+sun shining with vital splendour into all Scottish hearts. Friends
+of the young weaver and apparently the young weaver himself thought
+there was room in Scotland for another Burns. Some of his poems were
+published anonymously and the authorship was attributed to Burns. That
+was bad for him, it made bad worse. Wilson greatly desired to know
+the rustic poet-king of Scotland. The two poets met in Edinburgh and
+were to become friends. Then Burns published _Tam O'Shanter_. As young
+Kentuckians, of course, you love horses and cannot be indifferent even
+to poems on the tails of horses. Therefore, you must already know the
+world's most famous poem concerning a horse-tail--_Tam O'Shanter_.
+The Paisley weaver by this time had such conceit of himself as a poet
+that he wrote Burns a caustic letter, telling him the kind of poem
+_Tam O'Shanter_ should and should not be. Burns replied, closing the
+correspondence, ending the brief friendship and leaving the weaver to
+go back to his loom. It was a terrible rebuff, and left its mark on an
+already discouraged man.
+
+"Next Wilson wrote an anonymous poem, so violently attacking a wealthy
+manufacturer on behalf of his poor brother weavers, that the enraged
+merchant demanded the name of the writer and had him put in prison and
+compelled him to stand in the public cross of Paisley and burn his poem.
+
+"Darker, bitterer days followed. He shrank away to a little village
+even more obscure than his birthplace. There, lifting his eyes, again
+he looked all over Scotland: he saw the wrongs and sufferings of the
+poor, the luxury and oppression of the rich: he blamed the British
+government for evils inherent in human nature and for the imperfections
+of all human society: turned against his native country and at heart
+found himself without a fatherland.
+
+"Then that glorious vision which has opened before so many men in their
+despair, disclosed itself: his eyes turned to America. You should never
+forget that from the first your country has been the refuge and the
+hope for the oppressed, the unfortunate, the discouraged of the whole
+world. In America he thought all roads were open, new roads were being
+made for human lives; that should become his country. One autumn he
+saw in a newspaper an advertisement that an American merchantman would
+sail from Belfast the following spring and he turned to weaving and
+wove as never before to earn his passage money. At this time he lived
+on one shilling a week! And it seems that just now he undertook to make
+up his lack of knowledge of arithmetic. Some of you boys will doubtless
+greatly rejoice to hear that he was deficient in arithmetic! When
+spring came, with the earnings of his loom he walked across Scotland
+to the nearest port. When he reached Belfast every berth on the vessel
+had been taken: he asked to be allowed to sleep on the deck and was
+accepted as a passenger.
+
+"He had now left Scotland to escape the loom--never to see Scotland
+again.
+
+"And you see, he is beginning to come nearer.
+
+"The vessel was called The Swift and it took The Swift two months
+to make the passage. The port was to be Philadelphia but he seems
+to have been so impatient to set foot on the soil of the New World
+that he left the ship at New Castle, Delaware. He had borrowed from a
+fellow-passenger sufficient money to pay his expenses while walking to
+Philadelphia thirty-four miles away; and with this in his pocket and
+his fowling-piece on his shoulder he disappeared in the July forests of
+New Jersey. The first thing he did was to kill a red-headed wood-pecker
+which he declared to be the most beautiful bird he had ever seen.
+
+"I do not find any word of his that he had ever killed a bird in
+Scotland during all his years of wandering. Now the first event that
+befell him in the New World was to go straight to the American woods
+and kill what he declared to be the most beautiful bird he had ever
+seen. This might naturally have been to him a sign of his life-road.
+But he still stood blinded in his path, with not a plan, not an idea,
+of what he should be or could be: he had not yet read the handwriting
+on the wall within himself.
+
+"His first years in the New World were more disastrous than any in
+Scotland, for always now he had the loneliness and dejection of a man
+who has rejected his own country and does not know that any other
+country will accept him. A fellow Scot, in Philadelphia, tried him at
+copper-plate printing. He quickly dropped this and went back to the
+old dreadful work of weaving--he became an American weaver and went
+wandering through the forests of New Jersey as a peddler: at least
+peddling left him free to roam the forests. Next he tried teaching
+but he himself had been taken from school at the age of eleven and
+must prepare himself as one of his own beginners. He did not like this
+teaching experiment in New Jersey and migrated to Virginia. Virginia
+did not please him and he remigrated to Pennsylvania. There he tried
+one school after another in various places and finally settled on the
+outskirts of Philadelphia: here was his last school, for here was the
+turning point of his life.
+
+"I wish I had time to describe for you the school-house with its
+surroundings, for the place is to us now a picture in the early
+American life of a great man--all such historic pictures are
+invaluable. Catch one glimpse of it: a neat stone school-house on a
+sloping green; with grey old white oaks growing around and rows of
+stripling poplars and scattered cedar trees. A road ran near and not
+far away was a little yellow-faced cottage where he lived. The yard was
+walled off from the road and there were seats within and rosebushes and
+plum trees and hop-vines. On one side hung a signboard waving before a
+little roadside inn; on the other a blacksmith shop with its hammering.
+Not far off stood the edge of the great forest 'resounding with the
+songs of warblers.' In the depths of it was a favourite spot--a secret
+retreat for him in Nature.
+
+"There then you see him: no longer a youth but still young; every road
+he had tried closed to him in America as in Scotland: not a doctor, not
+a minister, not a good poet, not a good flutist, not a good violinist,
+not a copper-plate engraver, not a willing weaver, not a willing
+peddler, not a willing school-teacher--none of these. No idea yet in
+him that he could ever be anything. A homeless self-exile, playing
+at lonely twilights on flute and violin the loved airs of rejected
+Scotland.
+
+"Now it happened that near his school was a botanical garden owned by
+an American naturalist. The American, seeing the stranger cast down by
+his aimless life, offered him his portfolio of drawings and suggested
+that he try to draw a landscape, draw the human figure. The Scotch
+weaver, the American school-teacher, tried and disastrously failed. As
+a final chance the American suggested that he try to draw a bird. He
+did try: he drew a bird. He drew again. He drew again and again. He
+kept on drawing. Nothing could keep him from drawing. And there at last
+the miracle of power and genius, so long restless in him and driving
+him aimlessly from one wrong thing to another wrong thing, disclosed
+itself as dwelling within his eyes and hands. His drawings were so true
+to life, that there could be no doubt: the road lay straight before him
+and ran clear through coming time toward eternal fame.
+
+"All the experience which he had been unconsciously storing as a
+peddler in Scotland now came back to him as guiding knowledge. The
+marvelous memory of his eye furnished its discipline: from early
+boyhood through sheer love he had unconsciously been studying birds in
+nature, and thus during all these wretched years had been laying up as
+a youth the foundation of his life-work as a man.
+
+"Genius builds with lavish magnificence and inconceivable swiftness;
+and hardly had he succeeded with his first drawings before he had
+wrought out a monumental plan: to turn himself free as soon as possible
+into the vast, untravelled forest of the North American continent and
+draw and paint its birds. Other men, he said, would have to found the
+cities of the New World and open up its country. His study was to be
+the lineaments of the owl and the plumage of the lark: he had cast in
+his lot with Nature's green magnificence untouched by man."
+
+The lecturer paused, as a traveller instinctively stops to look
+around him at a pleasant turn of his road. It had, in truth, been a
+hard, crooked human road along which he had been leading his young
+listeners--a career choked at every step by inward and outward
+pressures. He had not failed to notice the change in every countenance,
+the brightening of every eye, as soon as his audience discovered that
+they were listening to a story, not of mere weaknesses and failures,
+but of the misfortunes and mistakes of a man, who at last stood out as
+truly great. This hapless weaver, this aimless wanderer through the
+forests of two worlds, after all had success in him, strength in him,
+genius in him, fame in him! He was a hero. Henceforth they were alive
+with curiosity for the rest of the story which would bring the distant
+hero to Kentucky, to their Lexington.
+
+The lecturer realised all this. But he had for some time been even
+more acutely aware that something wholly personal and extraordinary
+was taking place: one of the pupils of the high school was listening
+with an attention so absorbed and noticeable as to set him apart from
+all the rest. Just at what point this intense attention had been so
+aroused, had not been observed; but when once observed, there was no
+forgetting it: it filled the room, the other listeners were merely
+grouped around it as accessories and helped to make its breathless
+picture.
+
+The particularly interested pupil sat rather far back in the
+school-room, near a window--as though from a vain wish to jump out and
+be free. The morning light thus fell across his face: it was possible
+to watch its expression, its responsive change of light at each turn
+of the story. He seemed to hold some kind of leadership in the school:
+other pupils occasionally turned their faces to glance at him, to keep
+in touch with him: he did not return their glances--being their leader;
+or he had forgotten them for the story he was hearing.
+
+The lecturer became convinced that what had more than once happened to
+him before as a teacher was happening again: before him a young life
+was unexpectedly being solved--to its own wonderment and liberation, to
+its amazement and joy.
+
+That perpetual miracle in nature--the contexture of the
+generations--the living taking the meaning of their lives from the
+dead! You stand beside some all but forgotten mound of human ashes;
+before you are arrayed a band of youths, unconsciously holding in their
+hands the unlighted torches of the future. You utter some word about
+the cold ashes and silently one of them walks forward to the ashes,
+lights his torch and goes his radiant way.
+
+Thus the Geologist felt a graver responsibility resting on him--placed
+there by one of them, more than by all of them: the words he was
+speaking might or might not give final direction to a whole career. He
+went on with his heroic narrative more glowingly, more guardedly:
+
+"For a while he must keep on teaching in order to live: he taught all
+day, often after night, barely had time to swallow his meals, at the
+end of one term tells us he had as large a sum as fifteen dollars.
+Often he coloured his first drawings by candle light, drew and painted
+birds without knowing what they were. Drawing and painting by candle
+light!--but now he had within himself the risen sun of a splendid
+enthusiasm. That sun kindled his schoolboys. They found out what he
+wanted and helped. One boy brought him a large basketful of crows.
+Another caught a mouse in school and contributed that--the incident
+is worth quoting by showing that the boy preferred a mouse to a
+school-book.
+
+"Take one instance of the energy with which he was now working and
+worked for the rest of his life: he wished to see Niagara Falls, and
+to lose no time while doing it he started out one autumn through the
+forest to walk to the Falls and back, a short trip for him of over
+twelve hundred miles. He reached home 'mid the deep snows of winter
+with no soles to his boots. What of that? On his way back he had shot
+two strange birds in the valley of the Hudson! For ten days--ten days,
+mind you!--he worked on a drawing of these and sent it with a letter
+to Thomas Jefferson. You may as yet have thought of Jefferson only as
+one of America's earliest statesmen: begin now to think of him as one
+of the first American naturalists. And if you wish to read a courteous
+letter from an American President to a young stranger, go back to
+Jefferson's letter to the Scotch weaver who sent him the drawing of a
+jaybird.
+
+"Pass rapidly over the next few years. He has made one trip from
+Maine down the Atlantic Seaboard to the South. He has returned and is
+starting out again to cover the vast interior basin of the Mississippi
+Valley: he is to begin at Pittsburgh and end at New Orleans.
+
+"Now again you see that he is coming nearer--nearer to you here.
+
+"Look then at this bold, splendid picture of him outlined against the
+background of early American life. All such pictures are part of our
+richest heritage.
+
+"The scene is Pittsburgh. He has ransacked the winter woods for new
+species, he has found only sparrows and snow-birds. That was the year
+1810; this is the year 1916--over a hundred years later in the history
+of our country. Gaze then upon this wild scene of the olden time, all
+such pictures are good for young eyes: it is the twenty-fourth of
+February: the river, swollen with the spring flood, is full of white
+masses of moving ice. A frail skiff puts off from shore and goes
+winding its way until it is lost to sight among the noble hills.
+
+"They warned him of his danger, urged him to take a rower, urged him not
+to go at all. Those who risked the passage of the river floated down on
+barges called Kentucky arks or in canoes hollowed each out of a single
+tree, usually the tulip tree, which you know is very common in our
+Kentucky woods. But to mention danger was to make him go to meet it. He
+would have no rower, had no money to hire one, had he wished one. He
+tells us what he had on board: in one end of the boat some biscuit and
+cheese, a bottle of cordial given him by a gentleman in Pittsburgh, his
+gun and trunk and overcoat; at the other end himself and his oars and
+a tin with which to bail out the skiff, if necessary, to keep it from
+sinking and also to use as his drinking-cup to dip from the river.
+
+"That February day--the swollen, rushing river, the masses of white
+ice--the solitary young boatman borne away to a new world on his great
+work: his heart expanding with excitement and joy as he headed toward
+the unexplored wilderness of the Mississippi Valley.
+
+"Wondrous experiences were his: from the densely wooded shores there
+would reach him as he drifted down, the whistle of the red bird--those
+first spring notes so familiar and so welcome to us on mild days toward
+the last of February. Away off in dim forest valleys, between bold
+headlands, he saw the rising smoke of sugar camps. At other openings
+on the landscape, grotesque log cabins looked like dog-houses under
+impending mighty mountains. His rapidly steered skiff passed flotillas
+of Kentucky arks heavily making their way southward, transporting men
+and women and children--the moving pioneers of the young nation: the
+first river merchant-marine of the new world: carrying horses and
+plows to clearings yet to be made for homesteads in the wilderness;
+transporting mill-stones for mills not yet built on any wilderness
+stream; bearing merchandise for the pioneers who in this way got their
+clothing until they could grow flax and weave to clothe themselves.
+Thus in the Alps of the Alleghenies he came upon the river peddlers of
+America as years before amid the Alps of Scotland he had come upon the
+foot peddlers of his own land. On the river were floating caravans of
+men selling shawls and muslins. He boarded a number of these barges; as
+they approached a settlement, they blew a trumpet or a lonely horn on
+the great river stillness.
+
+"The first night he drew in to shore some fifty miles down at a
+riverside hovel and tried to sleep on the only bed offered him--some
+corn-stalks. Unable to sleep, he got up before day and pushed out again
+into the river, listening to the hooting of the big-horned owl echoing
+away among the dawn-dark mountains, or to the strangely familiar
+crowing of cocks as they awoke the hen roosts about the first American
+settlements in the West.
+
+"He records what to us now sounds incredible, that on March fifth he
+saw a flock of parrokeets. Think of parrokeets on the Ohio River in
+March! Of nights it turned freezing cold and he drew liberally on his
+bottle of cordial for warmth. Once he encountered a storm of wind and
+hail and snow and rain, during which the river foamed and rolled like
+the sea and he had to make good use of his tin to keep the skiff bailed
+out till he could put in to shore. The call of wild turkeys enticed him
+now toward the shore of Indiana, now toward the shore of Kentucky, but
+before he reached either they had disappeared. His first night on the
+Kentucky shore he spent in the cabin of a squatter and heard him tell
+tales of bear-treeing and wildcat-hunting and wolf-baiting. All night
+wolves howled in the forests near by and kept the dogs in an uproar;
+the region swarmed with wolves and wildcats 'black and brown.'
+
+"On and on, until at last the skiff reached the rapids of the Ohio
+at Louisville and he stepped ashore and sold his frail saviour craft
+which, at starting, he had named the Ornithologist. The Kentuckian who
+bought it as the Ornithologist accepted the droll name as that of some
+Indian chief. He soon left Louisville, having sent his baggage on by
+wagon, and plunged into the Kentucky forest on his way to Lexington.
+
+"And now, indeed, you see he is coming nearer.
+
+"It was the twenty-fourth of March when he began his first trip
+southward through the woods of Kentucky. Spring was on the way but had
+not yet passed northward. Nine-tenths of the Kentucky soil, he states,
+was then unbroken wilderness. The surface soil was deeper than now.
+The spring thaw had set in, permeating the rich loam. He describes
+his progress through it as like travelling through soft soap. The
+woods were bare as yet, though filled with pigeons and squirrels and
+wood-peckers. On everything he was using his marvellous eyes: looking
+for birds but looking at all human life, interested in the whole life
+of the forest. He mentions large corn fields and orchards of apple and
+of peach trees. Already he finds the high fences, characteristic of
+the Kentuckians. He turned aside once to visit a roosting place of the
+passenger pigeon.
+
+"It was on March twenty-ninth that, emerging from the thick forest,
+he saw before him the little Western metropolis of the pioneers, the
+city of the forefathers of many of us here today--Lexington. I wish I
+could stop to describe to you the picture as he painted it: the town
+stretching along its low valley; a stream running through the valley
+and turning several mills--water mills in Lexington a hundred years
+ago! In the market-place which you now call Cheapside he saw the
+pillory and the stocks and he noted that the stocks were so arranged as
+to be serviceable for gallows: our Kentucky forefathers arranged that
+they should be conveniently hanged, if they deserved it, as a public
+spectacle of warning.
+
+"On a country court day he saw a thousand horses hitched around the
+courthouse square and in churchyards and in graveyards. He states that
+even then Kentucky horses were the most remarkable in the world.
+
+"He makes no mention of one thing he must have seen, but was perhaps
+glad to forget--the weavers and the busy looms; for in those days
+Kentuckians were busy making good linen and good homespun, as in
+Paisley.
+
+"He slept while in Lexington--this great unknown man--in a garret
+called Salter White's, wherever that was: and he shivered with cold,
+for you know we can have chill nights in April. He says that he had
+no firewood, it being scarce, the universal forest of firewood being
+half a mile away: this was like going hungry in a loft over a full
+baker-shop.
+
+"And I must not omit one note of his on the Kentuckians themselves,
+which flashes a vivid historic light on their character. By this time
+he rightly considered that he had had adventures worth relating; but
+he declares that if he attempted to relate them to any Kentuckian, the
+Kentuckian at once interrupted him and insisted upon relating his own
+adventures as better worth while. Western civilization was of itself
+the one absorbing adventure to every man who had had his share in it.
+
+"Here I must pause to intimate that Wilson all his life carried with
+him one bird--one vigourous and vociferous bird--a crow to pick. He
+picked it savagely with Louisville. But he had begun to pick it with
+Scotland. He had picked it with Great Britain and with New Jersey
+and Virginia. In New England the feathers of the crow fairly flew. In
+truth, civilization never quite satisfied him; wild nature alone he
+found no fault with--there only was he happy and at home. He now picked
+his crow with Lexington. Afterward an indignant Kentuckian, quite in
+the good Kentucky way, attacked him and left the crow featherless--as
+regards Lexington.
+
+"On the fourteenth day of April he departed from Lexington, moving
+southward through the forest to New Orleans. Scarcely yet had the woods
+begun to turn green. He notes merely the white blossoms of the redroot
+peeping through the withered leaves, and the buds of the buckeye. With
+those sharp eyes of his he observed that wherever a hackberry tree had
+fallen, cattle had eaten the bark.
+
+"And now we begin to take leave of him: he passes from our picture. We
+catch a glimpse of him standing on the perpendicular cliffs of solid
+limestone at the Kentucky River, green with a great number of uncommon
+plants and flowers--we catch a glimpse of him standing there, watching
+bank swallows and listening to the faint music of the boat horns in the
+deep romantic valley below, where the Kentucky arks, passing on their
+way southward, turned the corners of the verduous cliffs as the musical
+gondolas turn the corners of vine-hung Venice in the waters of the
+Adriatic.
+
+"On and on southward; visiting a roosting-place of the passenger
+pigeon which was reported to him as forty miles long: he counted
+ninety nests in one beech tree. We see him emerging upon the Kentucky
+barrens which were covered with vegetation and open for the sweep of
+the eye.
+
+"Now, at last, he begins to meet the approach of spring in full tide:
+all Nature is bursting into leaf and blossom. No longer are the redbud
+and the dogwood and the sassafras conspicuous as its heralds. And now,
+overflowing the forest, advances the full-crested wave of bird-life
+up from the south, from the tropics. New and unknown species are
+everywhere before his eyes; their new melodies are in his ears; he is
+busy drawing, colouring, naming them for his work.
+
+"So he passes out of our picture: southward bound, encountering
+a cloud of parrakeets and pigeons, emerging from a cave with a
+handkerchief full of bats, swimming creeks, sleeping at night alone in
+the wilderness, his gun and pistol in his bosom. He vanishes from the
+forest scene, never from the memory of mankind.
+
+"Let me tell you that he did not live to complete his work. Death
+overtook him, not a youth but still young; for, as a Roman of the
+heroic years deeply said: 'Death always finds those young who are still
+at work for the future of the world.'
+
+"I told you I was going to speak to you of a boy's life. I asked you
+to fix your eyes upon it as a far-off human spark, barely glimmering
+through mist and fog but slowly, as the years passed, getting
+stronger, growing brighter, always drawing nearer until it shone about
+you here as a great light and then passed on, leaving an eternal glory.
+
+"I have done that.
+
+"You saw a little fellow taken from school at about the age of eleven
+and put to hard work at weaving; now you see one of the world's
+great ornithologists, who had traversed some ten thousand miles of
+comparative wilderness--an imperishable figure, doing an imperishable
+deed. I love to think of him as being in the end what he most hated to
+be in the beginning--a weaver: he wove a vast, original tapestry of the
+bird-life of the American forest.
+
+"As he passed southward from Lexington that distant April of 1810,
+encountering his first spring in the Ohio valley with its myriads of
+birds, somewhere he discovered a new and beautiful species of American
+wood warbler and gave it a local habitation and a name.
+
+"He called it the Kentucky Warbler.
+
+"And now," the lecturer said, by way of climax, "would you not like to
+see a picture of that mighty hunter who lived in the great days of the
+young American republic and crossed Kentucky in the great days of the
+pioneers? And would you not also like to see a picture of the exquisite
+and only bird that bears the name of our State--the Kentucky Warbler?"
+
+He passed over to them a portrait engraving of Alexander Wilson in the
+dress of a gentleman of his time, his fowling-piece on his forearm.
+And along with this he delivered to them a life-like, a singing
+portrait, of the warbler, painted by a great American animal painter
+and bird painter--Fuertes.
+
+[Illustration: chapter II--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter III--title decoration]
+
+
+III
+
+THE FOREST
+
+
+It was the first day of vacation.
+
+Schools, if you were not through with them, had now become empty,
+closed, silent buildings, stripped of authority to imprison and bedevil
+you and then mark you discreditably because you righteously rebelled
+against being imprisoned and bedeviled. They could safely be left to
+dust and cobwebs within and to any weeds that might lodge and sprout
+outside--the more the better. You stood on the spring edge of the
+long, free, careless summer and could look unconcernedly across at the
+distant autumn edge. Then as the woods, now in their first full green,
+were beginning to turn dry and yellow, the powerless buildings would
+again become tyrannical schools.
+
+But if you had finished high school, on this first day of vacation you
+were on the Boy's Common: schools behind you, the world of business
+around you, ahead of you ambitious college or the stately University.
+Webster had been turned loose on the Boy's Common.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The family were at breakfast. Every breakfast in the cottage was much
+the same breakfast: routine is the peace of the roadless. Existence
+there throughout the year was three hundred and sixty-five times more
+or less like itself. The earth meantime did change for the signs of
+the zodiac: the cottage changed also, but had a zodiac of its own.
+Thus, when the planet was in the sign of _Capricornus_, the cottage
+on a morning had fried perch for breakfast, as a sign that it was in
+_Pisces_; when earth was in _Gemini_, the family might have a steak
+which showed that it was in _Taurus_--or that _Taurus_ was in the
+family.
+
+There was always hot meat of one kind and hot bread of two kinds and
+hot coffee of any kind. If Webster's father upon entering the breakfast
+room had not seen a dish before him to carve or apportion, the shock
+could not have been greater, had he found lying on his folded napkin
+an enclosure from the bank notifying him that he had been discharged
+for having made the figure four instead of the figure two.
+
+He sat squarely facing the table as long as his own portion of the meat
+lasted, meantime eating rapidly and bending over to glance at his paper
+which lay flat beside his coffee cup. With the final morsel of meat he
+turned sidewise and sat cross-legged, with his paper held before his
+face as a screen--notification that he would rather not talk at the
+moment, unless they preferred.... If they showed that they did prefer,
+he still had means to discourage their preference. Now and then he
+reached around toward his plate and groped for the remaining crumbs of
+bread, or hooked his forefinger in the handle of his cup and conveyed
+it behind the paper.
+
+Webster's mother, busied with service at the tray, commenced her
+breakfast after the others. She talked to her husband until he
+interposed his newspaper. Then she unconsciously lowered her voice and
+addressed remarks to the children. Occasionally she tried to arrange
+their dissensions.
+
+A satirist of human life, studying Webster's father and mother at the
+head and foot of the table--symbol at once of their opposition and
+conjunction--a satirist, who for his own amusement turns life into
+pictures of something else, might have described their bodily and
+pictorial relation as that of a large, soft deep-dished pudding to a
+well trimmed mutton chop. Their minds he would possibly have imagined
+as two south winds moving along, side by side; whatever else they blew
+against, they could not possibly blow against each other.
+
+On this fine June morning, the first day of his vacation, Webster was
+late for breakfast. He arranged to be late. From his bathroom-bedroom
+he could hear the family with their usual morning talk, Elinor's
+shrill chatter predominating. When her chatter ceased he would know
+that she had satisfied her whimsical appetite and had slipped from
+her chair, impatient either to get to the front porch with its creaky
+rocking-chair or to dart out the gate to other little girls in the
+block; restlessly seeking some adventure elsewhere if none should pass
+before her eyes at home.
+
+He waited till she should go; there was something especial to speak
+of with his father and he did not wish this to be spoiled by Elinor's
+interference and ridicule.
+
+When she was gone he went in to breakfast.
+
+"Well, my son, how are you going to spend your first day of vacation?"
+his father inquired, helping him to his portion and not particularly
+noticing his own question.
+
+"I thought I'd go over into the woods," Webster replied.
+
+An unfavourable silence followed this announcement. That old stubborn
+controversy about the woods!...
+
+"Father," asked Webster, with his eyes on his plate, "did you ever see
+the Kentucky warbler?"
+
+Webster's father looked over the top of the wood-pulp screen. His face
+had a somewhat vacant expression. He waited. Finally he said:
+
+"My son, I believe you asked me a question: I shall have to ask you to
+repeat your question; I may be losing my hearing or I may be losing my
+mind. You asked me--?"
+
+Webster, in the same deliberate tone, repeated his question:
+
+"Did you ever see the Kentucky warbler?"
+
+Webster's father looked over his spectacles at Webster's mother as with
+the air of an appeal for guidance:
+
+"My dear, your son asks me, if I understand him, whether I have ever
+seen a Kentucky wooden war horse?"
+
+He was not above fun-making and it seemed to him that the occasion
+called for it.
+
+Webster's mother explained:
+
+"One of the professors from the University lectured to them in April
+about birds. His head has been full of birds ever since: I shouldn't
+wonder if his dreams have been full of them." She looked at Webster not
+without ineradicable tenderness and pride; she could not quite have
+explained the pride, she could have explained the tenderness.
+
+Now the truth of the matter was that since that memorable morning
+of the April talk at high school, she had been hearing from Webster
+repeatedly on that subject. He had told her of the lecture immediately
+upon reaching home; she had never seen him so wrought up. And from that
+time he had upon occasion plied her with questions: as to what she knew
+of birds when she lived in the country. She had to tell him that she
+knew very little; everybody identified the several species that preyed
+upon fruit and berries and young chickens; she named these readily
+enough. She had never heard of a bird called the Kentucky warbler. And
+she had never heard of Alexander Wilson.
+
+All this she had duly narrated to Webster's father--greatly to his
+dejection. A bank officer with a solitary son, now graduated from high
+school, going after bird-nests--that was a prospect before such a
+father! He had shaken his head in silence that more than spoke.
+
+"I told him," Webster's mother had concluded, "that the only Wilsons
+worth knowing in Kentucky were the horse-people Wilsons: of course we
+know _them_. It has been amusing to watch Elinor. Whenever Webster has
+begun about birds, if she has overheard him, she has made it convenient
+to settle somewhere near and listen. She would break in and stop his
+questions, but then there would be no more entertainment for her. She
+has been a study."
+
+Thus Webster's father was not so ill-informed as he now appeared. In
+return for the information from Webster's mother, apparently for the
+first time imparted, he looked at his son with an expression which
+plainly meant that as a speculation the latter was becoming a graver
+risk.
+
+"No, my son," he said, "I have never met your forest friend. I am
+merely a Kentucky bank warbler. One who did his warbling years ago.
+There is some _war_ left in me. I suppose there will always be _war_
+left in me, but there isn't any _war_-ble. I warbled one distant
+solitary spring to your mother. She replied beautifully in kind and
+lavishly in degree. We made a nest and had a hatching. Since then
+the male bird has been trying--not to escape the consequences of his
+song--but to meet his notes like a man. I have never stumbled upon your
+forest friend."
+
+Webster ate in silence for a few moments and then remarked, as though
+it were a matter of vital importance:
+
+"His notes are:
+
+"'_Tweedle tweedle tweedle, Tweedle tweedle tweedle_,' Wilson described
+them that way a hundred and six years ago."
+
+"I don't doubt it, my son. I am not questioning your word--nor Mr.
+Wilson's. But I don't see anything very remarkable in that: if you come
+to the bank any day, you can hear men say the same thing. They come in
+and say, 'Tweedle.' And they go out."
+
+Webster continued:
+
+"Audubon described the notes as '_Turdle turdle turdle_.'"
+
+Deeper silence at the table. Webster continued in the face of the
+silence;
+
+"A living naturalist says the notes may be:
+
+"'_Toodle toodle toodle._'"
+
+Silence at the table still more deep. Webster broke it:
+
+"Another naturalist describes the bird as saying:
+
+"'_Ter-wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter._'"
+
+The silence! Webster continued:
+
+"Another naturalist thinks the song is:
+
+"'_Che che che peery peery peery._'"
+
+Webster's father raised his eyebrows--he had no hair to raise--at
+Webster's mother: a sign that their graduate was beginning to celebrate
+his vacation.
+
+"My son," he said, "when I was a little fellow in school, one of the
+reading lessons was a poem called 'Try, Try Again.' Perhaps the bird
+is working along that line."
+
+"Thomas Jefferson followed a bird for hours in the woods," said
+Webster, with dignity: he somehow felt rebuked. "And for twenty years
+he tried to catch sight of another."
+
+"Don't let me come between you and Thomas Jefferson," said Webster's
+father, waving his hand toward his son in protest. "God forbid that I
+should come between any two such persons as Daniel Webster and Thomas
+Jefferson!"
+
+"The government at Washington," observed Webster stoutly, "is behind
+the Kentucky warbler."
+
+"Then, my son, I advise you to get behind the Government."
+
+The rusty bell at the little front door went off with a sound like
+the whirr of a frightened prairie chicken. The breakfast maid, also
+the cook, also the maid of all work, also a unit of the standardised
+population of disservice and discontent, entered and pushed a bill at
+Webster's father.
+
+"The butcher," she announced with sullen gratification, "He's waiting."
+
+As Webster's father left the table, he tapped his son affectionately
+on the head with his paper: "You follow the bird, my boy; and follow
+Thomas Jefferson, if you can. The butcher follows me."
+
+Webster's mother sat watching him. He had begun to get his lunch ready.
+He held the bottom-half of a long, slender roll, which might have
+served as a miniature model for an old-time Kentucky river-ark; and
+with his knife, grasped like an oar, he was lining the inside with some
+highly specialised yellow substance. She deplored his awkwardness and
+fought his independence.
+
+"Let me put up your lunch for you, my son!"
+
+"I'll put it up."
+
+He was not to be cheated out of that fresh sensation of pleasure which
+comes to the male, young or old, who tries to cook in camp, to fry, to
+boil, to season, or to serve things edible.
+
+Webster pulled out of his pocket a crumpled piece of brown paper and
+smoothed it out on the table cloth. It showed butcher stains.
+
+Webster's mother protested.
+
+"My son! Take a napkin! Take this clean napkin for your lunch!"
+
+"I like this paper."
+
+The idea of being in the forest and unrolling his lunch from a napkin:
+what would Wilson have thought? Elinor, being "nice," always rolled her
+lunch in a napkin.
+
+"But you will be hungry: let me get you some preserves!"
+
+"Not anything sweet." Elinor always had preserves. He rolled his lunch
+roughly and thrust it, butcher-stains and all, into his pocket. His
+mother was exasperated and distressed.
+
+"My son, your lunch will come loose in your pocket: I'll get you a
+string."
+
+"I don't want a string." Elinor tied everything. Girls tied; boys
+buttoned. The difference between men and women was strings.
+
+"But you'll get the grease on you, Webster! It will run down your
+legs!"
+
+"Very well, then, I'll have greasy legs. Why not?"
+
+She followed him out to the porch. Her character lacked capacity
+of initiative. She waited for him to be old enough to take some
+initiative; then she would stand by him.
+
+"Don't go too far," she said tenderly, "and you ought to have some of
+your friends to go with you, some of the boys from school."
+
+"They can't go today. Nobody can go today. Anybody would be in the way
+today."
+
+He said this to himself.
+
+She watched him from the porch and called: "Don't stay too late."
+
+Webster walked quickly to the main corner of the block--Jenny's
+corner. On this first morning of being through with school and of
+feeling more like a man free to do as he pleased, Jenny for that reason
+became more important--he must see her before starting. Heretofore the
+pleasure of being with Jenny had definitely depended upon what Jenny
+might do; this morning the idea was beginning to be Jenny herself.
+
+She was in her trumpet-vine arbour, the roof of which was already
+sun-dried. The shaded sides were still dew-wet. She bounded across to
+him, very exquisite in her light blue frock with broad, fresh white
+ribbons in her light-brown hair: healthy, docile, joyous, with innocent
+blue eyes and the complexion of apple blossoms.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked in a voice which implied that the day
+would be as pleasant, no matter where he went: nevertheless she had no
+thought of appearing indifferent to him.
+
+He told her.
+
+"What are you going into the woods for?" she inquired, with little
+dancing movements of her feet on the yard grass in irrepressible health
+and joy and with no especial interest in his reply.
+
+He told her.
+
+"Could _you_ go?" He very well knew she could not and merely yielded to
+an impulse to express himself: he was offering to ruin the day for her.
+
+"They wouldn't let me," said Jenny, apparently not disappointed at
+being thus kept at home.
+
+He sought to make the best of his disappointment.
+
+"Even if you could go, I am afraid you never would be quiet, Jenny."
+
+"I'm afraid I wouldn't," Jenny replied, responsive to every suggestion.
+
+He lingered, tenderly disturbed by her: the roots of the future were
+growing in him this morning. He was changing, he was changing _her_:
+there was an outreaching of his nature to draw her into the future
+alongside him.
+
+Jenny suddenly stopped dancing and came closer to the fence, having
+all at once become more conscious of Webster, standing there as he had
+never stood before, looking at her as he had never looked. Her nature
+was of yielding sweetness, clasping trust. She glanced around the
+cottage windows: the situation was very exposed. Webster glanced at the
+cottage windows: the situation did not appear in the least exposed.
+Her eyes became more round with an idea:
+
+"Are you coming back this way?"
+
+"I _will_ come back this way."
+
+Jenny danced away from the fence, laughing excitedly: "Will it be late?"
+
+"I can _make_ it late?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Webster climbed the fence of the forest under the foliage of a big
+tree of some unknown kind and descended waist-deep into the foliage
+of a weed with a leaf as big as an elephant's ear: it had a beautiful
+trumpet-shaped white and purple flower. He wished he knew what it was:
+on the very edge of the forest, at his very first step, he had sunk
+waist-deep into ignorance. Then he waded through the rank nightshade
+and stepped out upon the grass of the woods--the green carpet of thick
+turf, Kentucky bluegrass.
+
+At last he was there under those softly waving trees which summer after
+summer he had watched from the porch and windows: long they had called
+to him and now he had answered their call.
+
+But the disappointment! As he had looked at the forest across the
+distance, the tree-tops had made an unbroken billowy line of green
+along the blue horizon, continuous like the waves of the sea as he
+imagined the sea. Somewhere under that forest roof he had taken it
+for granted that there would be thick undergrowth, wild spots for shy
+singing nesting birds. The disappointment! The trees stood ten or
+twenty or thirty feet apart. The longest boughs barely touched each
+other, their lowest sometimes hung forty or fifty feet in the air. He
+did not see a tree whose branches he could reach with his upstretched
+arm. The sun shone everywhere under them every bright day and the grass
+grew thick up to their trunks.
+
+Another disappointment! The wood was small. He walked to the middle of
+it and from there could see to its edge on each of its four sides. On
+one side was a field of yellow grain--what the grain was he did not
+know--ignorance again. On the side opposite this was a field of green
+grain--what he did not know. Straight ahead of him as he looked through
+the trees, he could see an open paddock on which the sunlight fell in
+a blazing sheen; it turned to silver the white flanks of some calves
+and made soft gold of the coats of grazing thoroughbreds. Beyond the
+paddock he could see stables and sheds and beyond these a farmhouse: he
+could faintly hear the cackle of barnyard poultry.
+
+He stood in bluegrass pasture--once Kentucky wilderness. It was like an
+exquisite natural park. As he had skirmished toward the country along
+turnpikes with school-mates or other friends during his life, often his
+eyes had been drawn toward these world-famous bluegrass pastures. Now
+he was in one; and it was here that he had come to look for the warbler
+which haunts the secret forest solitudes!
+
+He sat down under a big tree with a feeling of how foolish he had
+been. This was again followed by an overwhelming sense of his
+ignorance.
+
+He did not know the kind of tree he sat under nor of any other that
+stood far or near. These were such as sugar maple and red oak and
+white oak and black ash and white ash and black walnut and white
+walnut--rarely white walnut--and hickory and locust and elm and a few
+haws: he did recognise a locust tree but then a locust tree grew in
+Jenny's yard! All around him weeds and wild flowers and other grasses
+sprang up out of the bluegrass: he did not know them.
+
+There was one tree he curiously looked around for, positive that he
+should not be blind to it if fortunate enough to set his eyes on
+one--the coffee tree. That is, he felt sure he'd recognise it if it
+yielded coffee ready to drink, of which never in his life had they
+given him enough. Not once throughout his long troubled experience as
+to being fed had he been allowed as much coffee as he craved. Once,
+when younger, he had heard some one say that the only tree in all the
+American forest that bore the name of Kentucky was the Kentucky coffee
+tree; and he had instantly conceived a desire to pay a visit in secret
+to that corner of the woods. To take his cup and a few lumps of sugar
+and sit under the boughs and catch the coffee as it dripped down.... No
+one to hold him back ... as much as he wanted at last ...! The Kentucky
+coffee tree--his favourite in Nature!
+
+He said to himself, looking all round him, that he had the outdoor
+loneliness and blindness of Silas Marner this wonderful morning.
+
+Propped against the tree he sat still a while, thinking of the long day
+before him and of how he should spend it in this thin empty pasture,
+abandoned by the wild creatures. But as he deliberated, suddenly and
+then more and more he awoke to things going on around him.
+
+A few feet away and on a level with his eyes a little fellow descended
+from high over-head. A little green gymnast trying to reach the ground
+by means of his own rope which he manufactured out of his body as he
+came down. How could he do it? How had he learned the very first time
+to make the rope strong enough to bear his weight instead of its
+giving way and letting him drop? Something seized one of Webster's
+ankles with a pair of small jaws like pincers and reminded him that his
+foot was in the way: it had better move on. A black ant suddenly rushed
+angrily over his knee. A cricket leaped in the grass. One autumn one
+of them had started its song behind the wainscoting, Elinor had pushed
+her toe against the woodwork and silenced it. A few feet away a bunch
+of white clover blossomed: a honey bee was searching it. Webster found
+on the back of one of his hands, which was pressed against the grass, a
+tiny crimson coach--a mere dot of a crimson coach being moved along he
+could not see how. The colour was most gorgeous and the material of the
+finest velvet. He let it go on its way across his hand withersoever it
+might be journeying. Directly opposite his eyes, some forty feet from
+the ground, was a round hole in a rotten tree-trunk. Webster wondered
+whether a bird ever pecked a square hole in anything. Suddenly from
+behind him a red-headed bird flew to the dead tree-trunk and alighted
+near the hole: he recognised the wood-pecker. And he remembered that
+this was the first bird Wilson had killed that first day he entered the
+American forest: he was glad that it was the first _he_ encountered!
+No sooner had the wood-pecker alighted than the head of another bird
+appeared at the hole and the wood-pecker took to his heels--to his
+wings. Webster wished he had known what this other bird was: it had
+a black band across its chest and wore a speckled jacket and a dull
+reddish cap on the back of its head. A disturbance reached him from
+a nearby treetop, a wailing voice, a gulping sound, as if something
+up there were sick and full of suffering and were trying to take its
+medicine. He watched the spot and presently a crow flew out of the
+thick leaves: the crow's family seemed not in good health. A ground
+squirrel jumped to the end of a rotting log some yards away but at
+sight of him shrieked and darted in again. The whole pasture was alive.
+
+Webster had all this time become conscious that another sound had been
+reaching his ear at regular intervals from the high branches of the
+trees, first in one place and then in another. His eyes had followed
+the voice but he could see no bird. The sound was like this:
+
+_Se--u--re?_
+
+That was the first half of the song--a question. A few moments later
+the other half followed, perhaps from another tree--the answer:
+
+_Se--u--u._
+
+Here was a mystery: what was the bird? Could it be the bluebird!--his
+ignorance again, the comicality of his ignorance! Webster had never
+seen or heard a bluebird. He recalled what the professor had told
+them--that Alexander Wilson had written the first poem on the American
+bluebird, perhaps still the best poem; and he had given them the poem
+to memorise if they liked, saying that they might not think it good
+poetry, but at least it was the poetry of a man who thought he could
+criticise Robert Burns! Webster had memorised the verses and as he now
+searched the forest boughs for this invisible bluebird, he repeated to
+himself some of Wilson's lines:
+
+    "When all the gay scenes of summer are o'er
+    And autumn slow enters so silent and sallow
+    And millions of warblers that charmed us before
+    Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow;
+    The bluebird, forsaken, but true to his home
+    Still lingers and looks for a milder tomorrow
+    Till forced by the horrors of winter to roam,
+    He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow."
+
+Again that long fine strain cast far out upon the air like a silken
+reel:
+
+_Se--u--re? Se--u--u._
+
+Or could it be a woodcock?
+
+He got up by and bye and walked toward the field of yellow grain on one
+side of the pasture. Before he was halfway he stopped, arrested by a
+wonderful sound: from the top rail of the fence before him, separating
+the pasture from the grain, came a loud ringing whistle. It was
+Bobwhite! Boys at school sometimes whistled "bobwhite." He knew this
+bird because he had seen him hanging amid snow and ice and holly boughs
+outside meat shops about Christmas time. Here now was the summer song:
+in it the green of the woods, the gold of the grain, the far brave
+clearness of the June sky.
+
+He tipped forward, not because his feet made any noise. Once again,
+nearer, that marvellous music rang past him, echoing on into the woods.
+Then it ceased; and as Webster approached the field fence what he saw
+was a rabbit watching him over the grass tops until with long soft
+leaps it escaped through the fence to the safety of the field.
+
+For a while he remained leaning on this fence and looking out across
+the coming harvest. Twenty yards away a clump of alders was in bloom:
+some bird was singing out there joyously. It made a _che che che_
+sound, also; but its colour was brown.
+
+The idea occurred to Webster that he would recross the pasture to the
+field on the other side and go on to the turnpike: one ran there, for
+he heard vehicles passing. He would make inquiry about some piece of
+forest further from the city. He remembered again what the professor
+told them:
+
+"Some of you this summer during your vacation may go out to some
+nearby strip of woods--what little is left of the old forest--in quest
+of the warbler. Seek the wildest spots you can find. The Kentucky
+bluegrass landscape is thin and tame now, but there are places of thick
+undergrowth where the bird still spends his Kentucky summer. Shall I
+give you my own experience as to where I found him when a boy half a
+century ago? On my father's farm there was a woodland pasture. The
+land dipped there into a marshy hollow. In this hollow was a stock
+pond. Around the edges of the pond grew young cane. It was always low
+because the cattle browsed it. The highest stalks were scarcely five
+feet. On the edge of the canebrake a thicket of papaw and blackberry
+vines added rankness and forest secrecy. It was here I discovered him.
+The pale green and yellow of his plumage blent with the pale green and
+yellow of the leaves and stalks. But it was many years before I knew
+that the bird I had found was the Kentucky warbler. If I had only known
+it when I was a boy!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Webster reached the turnpike and looked up and down, no one was in
+sight. He sat on the fence and waited. By and bye, coming in from the
+country, a spring wagon appeared. Curious projections stuck out from
+the top and sides of boxes in the wagon. When it drew nearer Webster
+saw poultry being taken to market. He looked at the driver but let him
+pass unaccosted: there would be little use in applying for information
+about warblers at headquarters for broilers.
+
+Next from the direction of the city he saw coming a splendid open
+carriage drawn by a splendid horse and driven by a very pompous
+coloured coachman in livery. An aristocratic old lady sat in the
+carriage, shielding her face from the dazzling sunlight with a rich
+parasol. She leaned out and looked curiously at Webster.
+
+"Suydam," she called out to her coachman with a voice that had the
+faded sweetness of faded rose leaves, "did you notice that remarkable
+boy? He looked as though he would have liked to drive with me out into
+the country. I wish I had invited him to do so."
+
+A milk cart followed with a great noise of tin cans. With milk carts
+Webster felt somewhat at home: it was often his business to receive
+the family milk. As the cart was passing, he motioned for the milkman
+to stop. Perhaps all milkmen stop at any sign: there may be an order:
+Webster called out with a good deal of hesitation:
+
+"Do you know of a woods further out full of bushes and thickets?"
+
+The milkman gave a little flap of the rein to his horse:
+
+"What's the matter with _you_?" he said with patient forbearance:
+
+Finally Webster saw creeping down the turnpike toward him an empty
+wagon-bed drawn by a yoke of oxen. A good-natured young negro man sat
+sideways on the wagon-tongue, smoking. Webster halted him by a gesture
+and a voice of command:
+
+"Do you know of a bushy woods further out?"
+
+Any negro enjoys being questioned because he enjoys not answering
+questions. Most of all he enjoys any puzzling exercise of his mother
+wit.
+
+"A bushy woods?"
+
+"Yes, a bushy woods."
+
+"What do you want with a bushy woods?"
+
+"I want to find where there is one."
+
+The negro hesitated: "there's a bushy woods about four miles out."
+
+"Is it on the pike?"
+
+"On the pike! Did you ever see a bushy woods on the pike? It's _beside_
+the pike."
+
+"Right side or left side?"
+
+"Depends which way you're going. Right side if you are going out, left
+side if you're coming in."
+
+"You say it's four miles out?"
+
+"You pass the three mile post and then you go a little further."
+
+"Are there any birds in it?"
+
+"Birds? There's owls in it. There's coons in it."
+
+"Do you know a young canebrake when you see one?"
+
+"I know an old hempbrake when I see one."
+
+Webster enjoyed his new authority in holding up his negro and
+questioning him about a forest. And it seemed to him that the moment
+had come when it was right to use money if you had it, horns or no
+horns. He pulled out a dime. The negro, too surprised to speak,
+came across and received it. He declined to express thanks but felt
+disposed to show that he had earned the money by repeating a piece of
+information:
+
+"It's four miles out."
+
+"Is there much of it?"
+
+"Much of it? Much as you want."
+
+"Do you live in it?"
+
+"No, I don't live in it: I live in a house."
+
+He had retaken his seat on the wagon-tongue.
+
+"What kind of pipe stem is that you are using?"
+
+"What kind? It's a cane pipe stem."
+
+"Where did you get the cane?"
+
+"Where did I get it? I got it in the woods."
+
+"Then there _is_ young cane growing in the woods?"
+
+"Who said there wasn't?"
+
+Webster, beginning this morning to use his eyes, took notice of
+something which greatly interested him as the wagon moved slowly off
+down the pike: strands of hemp clung to it here and there like a dry
+hanging moss. The geologist had told them that his own boyhood lay
+far back in the era of great Kentucky hemp-raising. Much of the hemp
+was broken in March, the month of high winds. As the hemp-breakers
+busily shook out their handfuls while separating the fibre from the
+shard, strands were carried away on the roaring gales, lodging against
+stubble and stumps and fences of the fields or blown further on into
+the pastures. Later when it was baled and hauled in, other filaments
+were caught on the rafters and shingles of hemp-houses and barns. Thus
+when in April the northward migration of birds reached Kentucky, this
+material was everywhere ready and plentiful, and the Baltimore orioles
+on the bluegrass plateau built their long hanging nests of Kentucky
+hemp.
+
+Webster, sitting on the fence and thinking of this, meantime laid his
+plans for the larger adventure of the following day: the clue he sought
+had unexpectedly been found: he would go out to the place where young
+cane grew: there he might have a real chance at the warbler.
+
+This being settled to his satisfaction, he hurried impatiently back to
+his woodland pasture. It had seemed empty of living creatures when he
+entered it; soon it had revealed itself as a whole teeming world. The
+mere green carpet of the woods was one vast birthplace and nursery,
+concert hall, playground, battlefield, slaughter-pen, cemetery.
+
+"But my ignorance!" he complained. "I have good strong eyes, but all
+these years they have been required to look at dead maps, dead books,
+dead pencils and figures, dead everything: not once in all that time
+have they been trained upon the study of a living object."
+
+His ears were as ignorant as his eyes: he had not been educated to hear
+and to know what he heard. Innumerable strange sounds high and low beat
+incessantly on them--wave upon wave of louder and fainter melodies,
+the summer music of the intent and earnest earth. And everywhere what
+fragrances! The tonic woody smells! Each deep breath he drew laved
+his lungs with sun-clean, leaf-sweet atmosphere. Hour after hour of
+this until his whole body and being--sight, smell, hearing, mind and
+spirit--became steeped in the forest joyousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now it was alone in the June woods that long bright afternoon that
+Webster took final account of the last wonderful things the geologist
+had told them that memorable morning. He pondered those sayings as best
+he could, made out of them what he could:
+
+"_I am not afraid to trust you, the young, with big ideas which will
+lift your minds as on strong wings and carry them swiftly and far
+through time and space. If you are taught to look for great things
+early in life, you will early learn how to find great things; and the
+things you love to find will be the things you will desire and try to
+do. I wish not to give you a single trivial, mean weak thought._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_The Kentucky warbler for over a hundred years has worn the name of
+the State and has carried it all over the world--leading the students
+of bird life to form some image of a far country and to fix their
+thoughts at least for some brief moment on this same beautiful spot
+of the world's surface. As long as he remains in the forests of the
+earth, he will keep the name of Kentucky alive though all else it once
+meant shall have perished and been forgotten. He is thus, as nearly as
+anything in Nature can be, its winged worldwide emblem, ever young as
+each spring is young, as the green of the woods is young._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Study the warbler while you may: how long he will inhabit the
+Kentucky forest no one can tell. As civilisation advances upon the
+forest, the wild species retreat; when the forest falls, the wild
+species are gone. Every human generation during these centuries has a
+last look at many things in Nature. No one will ever see them again:
+Nature can never find what she has once lost: if it is gone, it is
+gone forever. What Wilson records he saw of bird life in Kentucky a
+hundred years ago reads to us now as fables of the marvellous, of the
+incredible. Were he the sole witness, some of us might think him to be
+a lying witness. Let me tell you that I in my boyhood--half a century
+later than Wilson's visit to Kentucky--beheld things that you will
+hardly believe. The vast oak forest of Kentucky was what attracted
+the passenger pigeon. In the autumn when acorns were ripe but not
+yet fallen, the pigeons filled the trees at times and places, eating
+them from the cups. Walking quietly some sunny afternoon through the
+bluegrass pastures, you might approach an oak and see nothing but the
+tree itself, thick boughs with the afternoon sunlight sparkling on the
+leaves along one side. As you drew nearer, all at once, as if some
+violent explosion had taken place within the tree, a blue smoke-like
+cloud burst out all around the treetop--the simultaneous explosive
+flight of the frightened pigeons. Or all night long there might be
+wind and rain and the swishing of boughs and the tapping of loosened
+leaves against the window panes; and when you stepped out of doors
+next morning, it had suddenly become clear and cold. Walking out into
+the open and looking up at the clear sky you might see this: an arch
+of pigeons breast by breast, wing-tip to wing-tip, high up in the air
+as the wild geese fly, slowly moving southward. You could not see the
+end of the arch on one horizon or the other: the whole firmament was
+spanned by that mighty arch of pigeons flying south from the sudden
+cold. Not all the forces in Nature can ever restore that morning sunlit
+arch of pigeons flying south. The distant time may come, or a nearer,
+when the Kentucky warbler will have vanished like the wild pigeon:
+then any story of him will be as one of the ancient fables of bird
+life._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_The rocks of the earth are the one flooring on which every thing
+develops its story, then either disappears upon the stillness of the
+earth's atmosphere or sinks toward the silence of its rocks. Of the
+myriad forms of life on the earth the bird has always been the one
+thing nearest to what we call the higher life of the human species._
+
+"_It is the form and flight of the bird alone that has given man at
+last the mastery of the atmosphere. Without the bird as a living model
+we have not the slightest reason to believe that he could have ever
+learned the mechanism of flight. Now it is the flight of the bird,
+studied under the American sky, that has given the_ nations the war
+engine that will perhaps rule the destiny of the human race henceforth.
+_The form of the bird will fly before our autumn-brown American armies
+as they cross the sea--leading them as the symbol of their victory.
+When they lie along the trenches of France as thick as fallen brown
+autumn leaves in woodland hollows, it will be the flight of bird-like
+emblems of destruction that will guide them like hurricane-rushing
+leaves as they sweep toward their evil enemy._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Through all ages the flight of the bird alone has been the
+interpreter of the human spirit. The living, standing on the earth and
+seeing the souls of their dead pass beyond their knowledge, have fixed
+upon the bird as the symbol of their faith. When you are old enough,
+if not already, to know your Shakespeare, you will find in one line of
+one of his plays the whole vast human farewell of the living to the
+dead: they are the words of Horatio to Hamlet, his dying prince: 'the
+flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.'_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_As far as we geologists know, this is the morning of the planet. Not
+its dawn but somewhere near its sunrise. The bird music we hear in
+these human ages are morning songs. Back of that morning stretches the
+earth's long dawn; and the rocks tell us that thrushes were singing
+in the green forests of the earth millions of years before man had
+been moulded of the dust and had awakened and begun to listen to them.
+Thus bird music which seems to us so fresh is the oldest music of the
+earth--millions of years older than man's. And yet all this is still
+but a morning song. The earth is young, the birds are young, man is
+young--all young together at the morning of the earth's geologic day.
+What the evening will be we do not know. It is possible that the birds
+will be singing their evening song to the earth and man already have
+vanished millions of years before._"
+
+"_Many questions vex us: all others lead to one: when man vanishes,
+does he pass into the stillness of the earth's atmosphere and sink
+toward the stillness of its rocks like every other species? He answers
+with his faith: that his spirit is here he knows not why, but takes
+flight from it he knows not how or whither. Only, faith discloses to
+him one picture: the snowy pinion folded and at rest in the Final
+Places._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That long sunny afternoon in the June woods! The shadows of the trees
+slowly lengthened eastward. The sun sank below the forest boughs and
+shot its long lances against the tree trunks. It made a straight path
+of gold, deeper gold, across the yellow grain. The sounds of life died
+away, the atmosphere grew sweeter with the odours of leaves and grasses
+and blossoms.
+
+Webster recrossed the woods as he had entered it, waded through the
+nightshade and climbed the fence under the dark tree.
+
+It was twilight when he entered the City.
+
+As he passed her yard, Jenny bounded across to him joyous, innocent,
+tender, in a white frock with fresh blue ribbons in her brown hair.
+
+"Did you find him?" she asked, her happiness not depending on his
+answer.
+
+"It was not the right place. Tomorrow I am going out further into the
+country to a better place."
+
+"The humming-bird has been here," Jenny announced with an air of saying
+that she had been more successful as a naturalist.
+
+He made no reply: as the veteran observer of a day, he had somewhat
+outgrown the trumpet-vine arbour and the ruby-throat.
+
+He lingered close to the fence. Jenny lingered. He moved off,
+disappointed but devoid of speech.
+
+"Come back!" Jenny whispered, with reproach and vexation.
+
+It was the first invitation. It was the first acceptance of an
+invitation. There would have been a second acceptance but the
+invitation was not there to accept.
+
+When Webster turned in at his home gate, everything was just as he
+had foreseen: his father sat on one side of the porch, smoking the
+one daily cigar; his mother faced him from the opposite side, slowly
+rocking. Elinor crouched on the top step between them: he would have to
+walk around her or over her.
+
+His father laughed heartily as he sauntered up.
+
+"Well, my son, where is your game bag? What have you brought us for
+breakfast?"
+
+Webster looked crestfallen: he returned empty-handed but not
+empty-minded: he had had a great rich day; they thought it an idle
+wasted one.
+
+"Some of the boys have been here for you," said his mother. "They left
+word you must be certain to meet them, in the morning for the game.
+Freshen yourself up and I'll give you your supper."
+
+Elinor said nothing--a bad sign with her. She sat with her sharp little
+chin resting on her palms and with her eyes on him with calculating
+secrecy. He stepped around her.
+
+His room had never seemed so cramped after those hours in the woods
+under the open sky. The whole cottage seemed so unnatural, everything
+in the City so unnatural, after that day in the forest.
+
+At supper he had not much to say; his mother talked to him:
+
+"I put my berries away to eat with you for company." They ate their
+berries together.
+
+He felt tired and said he would go to bed. His room was darkened when
+he returned to it; he felt sure he had left his lamp burning; someone
+had been in it. He lighted his lamp again.
+
+As he started toward his window to close the shutters, his eye caught
+sight of an object hanging from the window sash. A paper was pinned
+around it. The handwriting was Elinor's. It was a bluejay, brought
+down by a lucky stone from some cottager's hand. Webster read Elinor's
+message for him:
+
+    "Your favourite Kentucky Warbler,
+
+           From your old friend,
+                   Thomas Jefferson."
+
+He sat on the side of his bed. The sights and sounds and fragrances of
+the pasture were all through him; the sunlight warmed his blood still,
+the young blood of perfect health.
+
+He turned in for the night and sleep drew him away at once from
+reality. And some time during the night he awoke out of his sleep to
+the reality of a great dream.
+
+[Illustration: chapter III--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter IV--title decoration]
+
+
+IV
+
+THE BIRD
+
+
+It was in the depths of a wonderful forest, green with summer and hoary
+with age. He was sitting on the ground in a small open space. No path
+led to this or away from it, but all around him grew grasses and plants
+which would be natural coverts for wild creatures. No human tread had
+ever crushed those plants.
+
+The soft vivid light resting on the woods was not morning-light nor
+evening-light: it was clear light without the hours. Yet the time must
+have been near noonday; for as Webster looked straight up toward the
+unseen sky, barred from his eyes by the forest roof of leaves, slender
+beams of sunlight filtered perpendicularly down, growing mistier as
+they descended until they could be traced no longer even as luminous
+vapour; no palest radiance from them reached the grass.
+
+He could not see far in any direction. At the edge of the open
+space where he sat, fallen rotten trees lay amid the standing live
+ones--parents, grandparents, great-grandparents of the rising forest,
+passing back into the soil of the planet toward the rocks.
+
+Strange as was the spot, stranger was Webster to himself and did
+not know what had changed him. It seemed that for the first time
+in his life his eyes were fully opened; never had he seen with such
+vision; and his feeling was so deep, so intense. The whole scene was
+enchantment. It was more than reality. _He_ was more than reality.
+The singing of birds far away--it was so crystal sweet, yet he could
+see none. A few yards from him a rivulet made its way from somewhere
+to somewhere. He could trace its course by the growth of plants which
+crowded its banks and covered it with their leaves.
+
+Expectancy weighed heavily on him. He was there for a purpose but could
+not say what the purpose was.
+
+All at once as his eyes were fixed on the low, green thicket opposite
+him, he saw that it was shaken; something was on its way to him. He
+watched the top of the thicket being parted to the right and to the
+left. With a great leaping of his heart he waited, motionless where
+he sat on the grass. What creature could be coming? Then he saw just
+within the edge of the thicket a curious piece of head-gear--he had no
+knowledge of any such hat. Then he saw a gun barrel. Then the hand and
+forearm of a man was thrust forward and it pushed the underbrush aside;
+and then there stepped forth into the open the figure of a hunter,
+lean, vigorous, tall, athletic. The hunter stepped out with a bold
+stride or two and stopped and glanced eagerly around with an air of
+one in a search; he discovered Webster and with a look of relief stood
+still and smiled.
+
+There could be no mistake. Webster held imprinted on memory from a
+picture those features, those all-seeing eyes; it was Wilson--weaver
+lad of Paisley, wandering peddler youth of the grey Scotch mountains,
+violinist, flutist, the poet who had burned his poem standing in the
+public cross, the exile, the school teacher for whom the boy caught the
+mouse, the failure who sent the drawing to Thomas Jefferson, the bold
+figure in the skiff drifting down the Ohio--the naturalist plunging
+into the Kentucky wilderness and walking to Lexington and shivering in
+White's garret--the great American ornithologist, the immortal man.
+
+There he stood: how could it be? It was reality yet more than reality.
+
+The hunter walked straight toward him with the light of recognition in
+his eyes. He came and stood before Webster and looked down at him with
+a smile:
+
+"Have you found him, Webster?"
+
+Webster strangely heard his own voice:
+
+"I have not found him."
+
+"You have looked long?"
+
+"I have looked everywhere and I cannot find him."
+
+The hunter sat down and laid on the grass beside him his fowling piece,
+his game bag holding new species of birds, and his portfolio of fresh
+drawings. Then he turned upon Webster a searching look as if to draw
+the inmost truth out of him and asked:
+
+"Why do you look for the Kentucky Warbler?"
+
+Webster hesitated long:
+
+"I do not know," he faltered.
+
+"Something in you makes you seek him, but you do not know what that
+something is?"
+
+"No, I do not know what it is: I know I wish to find him."
+
+"Not him alone but many other things?"
+
+"Yes, many other things."
+
+"The whole wild life of the forest?"
+
+"Yes, all the wild things in the forest--and the wild forest itself."
+
+"You wish to know about these things--you wish to know them?"
+
+"I wish to know them."
+
+The hunter searched Webster's countenance more keenly, more severely:
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+There was silence. The forest was becoming more wonderful. The singing
+of the unseen birds more silvery sweet. It was beyond all reality.
+Webster answered:
+
+"I am sure."
+
+The hunter hurled questions now with no pity:
+
+"Would you be afraid to stay here all night alone?"
+
+"I would not."
+
+"If, during the night, a storm should pass over the forest with thunder
+deafening you and lightning flashing close to your eyes and trees
+falling everywhere, you would fear for your life and that would be
+natural and wise; but would you come again?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"If it were winter and the forest were bowed deep with ice and snow
+and you were alone in it, having lost your way, would you cry enough?
+Would you hunt for a fireside and never return?"
+
+"I would not."
+
+"You can stand cold and hunger and danger and fatigue; can you be
+patient and can you be persevering?"
+
+"I can."
+
+"Look long and not find what you look for and still not give up?"
+
+"I can."
+
+There was silence for a little while: the mood of the hunter seemed to
+soften:
+
+"Do you know where you are, Webster?"
+
+"I do not know where I am."
+
+"You did not know then, that this is the wilderness of your
+forefathers--the Kentucky pioneers. You have wandered back to it."
+
+"I did not know."
+
+"Have you read their great story?"
+
+"Not much of it."
+
+"Are you beginning to realise what it means to be sprung from such men
+and women?"
+
+"I cannot say."
+
+"But you want to do great things?"
+
+"If I loved them."
+
+The hunter stood up and gathered his belongings together. His questions
+had become more kind as though he were satisfied. He struck Webster on
+his shoulder.
+
+"_Come_," he said, as with high trust, "_I will show you the Kentucky
+warbler._"
+
+He looked around and his eyes fell upon the forest brook. He walked
+over to it, to discover in what direction it ran and beckoned.
+
+"We'll follow this stream up: the spring may not be far away." He
+glanced at the tree-tops: "It is nearly noon: the bird will come to the
+spring to drink and to bathe."
+
+Webster followed the hunter as he threaded his way through the forest
+toward the source of the brook.
+
+Not many yards off his guide turned:
+
+"There is the spring," he said, pointing to a green bank out of which
+bubbled the cool current.
+
+"Let us sit here. Make no movement and make no noise."
+
+How tense the stillness! They waited and listened. Finally the hunter
+spoke in an undertone:
+
+"Did you hear that?"
+
+Away off in the forest Webster heard the song of a bird. Presently
+it came nearer. Now it was nearer still. It sounded at last within
+the thicket just above the spring, clear, sweet, bold, emphatic notes
+distinctly repeated at short intervals. And then--
+
+_There he was--the Kentucky Warbler!_
+
+Webster could see every mark of identification. The bird had come
+out of the dense growth and showed himself on the bough of a sapling
+about twenty feet from the earth, in his grace and shapeliness and
+manly character. With a swift, gliding flight downward he lighted on
+a sweeping limb of a tree still nearer, within a few inches of the
+ground. Then he dropped to the ground and moved about, turning over
+dead leaves. He was only several yards away and Webster could plainly
+trace the yellow line over his eye, the blackish crown and black sides
+of the throat, the underparts all of solid yellowish gold, the upper
+parts of olive green. An instant later the bird was on the wing again,
+hither, thither, up and down, continually in motion. No white in the
+wings, none in the tail feathers. Once he stopped and poured out his
+loud, musical song--unlike any other warbler's. A moment later he was
+on the ground again, with a manner of self-possession, dignity--as on
+his namesake soil, Kentucky.
+
+Webster had sat bent over toward him, forgetful of everything else. At
+last drawing a deep breath, he looked around gratefully, remembering
+his guide.
+
+No one was near him. Webster saw the hunter on the edge of the thicket
+yards away; he stood looking back, his figure dim, fading. Webster,
+forgetful of the bird, cried out with quick pain:
+
+"Are you going away? Am I never to see you again?"
+
+The voice that reached him seemed scarcely a voice; it was more like an
+echo, close to his ear, of a voice lost forever:
+
+"_If you ever wish to see me, enter the forest of your own heart._"
+
+[Illustration: chapter IV--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter V--title decoration]
+
+
+V
+
+THE ROAD
+
+
+Webster sprang to his feet in the depths of the strange summer-dark
+forest: that is to say, he awoke with a violent start and found himself
+sitting on his bed with his feet hanging over one side.
+
+It was late to be getting up. The sun already soared above the roof of
+the cottage opposite his window and the light slanted in full blaze
+against his shutters. Shafts penetrated some weather-loosened slats and
+fell on his head and shoulders and on the wall behind him. Breakfast
+must be nearly ready. Fresh cooking odours--coffee odour, meat odour,
+bread odour--filled the little bathroom-bedroom. Feet were hurrying,
+scurrying, in the kitchen. Quieter footsteps approached his door along
+the narrow hall outside and there came a tap:
+
+"Breakfast, Webster!"
+
+It was his mother's voice, indulgent, peaceful, sweet. He suddenly
+thought that never before had he fully realised how sweet it was, had
+always been, notwithstanding he disappointed her.
+
+He got up and went across to open his shutters and had taken hold of
+the catch, when he was arrested in his movement. At night he tilted
+the shutters, so that the morning sun might not enter crevices and
+shine in his face and awaken him. Now looking down through the slats,
+he discovered something going on in the yard beneath his window.
+Elinor had come tipping around the corner of the cottage. She held one
+dark little witch-like finger unconsciously pressed against her tense
+lips. Her dark eyes were brimming with a secret, mischievous purpose.
+A ribbon which looked like a huge, crumpled purple morning-glory was
+knotted into the peak of her ravenish hair. Her fresh little gown,
+too, suggested the colours of the purple morning-glory and her whole
+presence, with a freshness as of dew-drops formed amid moonbeams at
+midnight, somehow symbolised that flower which surprises us at dawn as
+having matured its unfolding in the dark: half sinister, half innocent.
+
+With cautious, delicate steps, which could not possibly have made any
+noise in the grass, she approached the window and stopped and lifted
+the notched pole which was used to hold up the clothes-line in the
+back yard. Setting the pole on end and planting herself beside it, she
+pushed it with all her slight but concentrated strength against the
+window shutters. It struck violently and fell over to the grass in one
+direction as Elinor, with the silence of a light wind, fled in the
+other.
+
+Webster stood looking down at it all: he understood now: that was the
+crashing sound which had awakened him.
+
+It had been Elinor who had ended his dream.
+
+But his dream was not ended. It would never end. It was in him to stay
+and it was doing its work. The feeling which had surprised him as to
+the sweetness of his mother's voice but marked the deeper awakening
+that had taken place in his sleep, an unfolding, his natural growth. It
+was this growth that now animated him as he smiled at Elinor's flying
+figure. Her prank had not irritated him: no intrigue of hers would
+ever annoy him again. Instead, the idea struck him that Elinor must
+be thinking of him a great deal, if so much of her life--incessantly
+active as it was with the other children of the cottages--were
+devoted to plans to worry him. She must often have him in mind quite
+to herself, he reflected; and this fresh picture of Elinor's secret
+brooding about him somehow for the first time touched him tenderly and
+finely.
+
+He turned back from the window shutters without opening them and sat
+on the edge of his bed. He could not shake off his dream. How could it
+possibly be true that there was no such forest as he had wandered into
+in his dream--that Kentucky wilderness of the old heroic days? Could
+anything destroy in him the certainty that with wildly beating heart he
+had seen the living colours and heard the actual notes and watched the
+characteristic movements of the warbler? Then, though these things were
+not real, still they were true and would remain true always.
+
+Thus, often and to many of us, between closing the curtains of the
+eyes upon the outer world at night and drawing them wide in the
+morning, within that closed theatre a stage has been erected and we
+have stepped forth and spoken some solitary part or played a rôle in a
+drama that leaves us changed for the rest of our days. Yesterday an old
+self, today a new self. We have been shifted completely away from our
+last foot-prints and our steps move off in another direction, taking a
+truer course.
+
+Beyond all else a high, solemn sense subdued Webster with the thought,
+that in his sleep he had come near as to unearthly things. The
+long-dead hunter, who had appeared to him, spoke as though he lived
+elsewhere than on the earth and lived more nobly; his accents, the
+majesty of his countenance, were moulded as by higher wisdom and
+goodness. Webster was overwhelmed with the feeling that he had been
+brought near the mystery of life and death and as from an immortal
+spirit had received his consecration to the forest.
+
+... He got down on his knees at his bedside, after a while, though
+little used to prayer....
+
+When he walked into the breakfast-room with a fresh step and freshened
+countenance, probably all were not slow to notice the change. Families
+whose lives run along the groove of familiar routine quickly observe
+the slightest departure from the customary, whether in voice or
+behaviour, of any member. There was response soon after his entrance
+to something in him obviously unusual.
+
+"My son," said his father, who had laid down his paper to help him to
+the slice which had been put aside, "the woods must agree with you";
+and he even scraped the dish for a little extra gravy. Ordinarily, when
+deeply interested in his paper or occasionally when conscious of some
+disappointment as to his son, he forgot, or was indifferent about, the
+gravy.
+
+"They do agree with me!" Webster replied, laughing and in fresh tones.
+He held out his plate hungrily for his slice and he waited for all the
+gravy that might be coming to him.
+
+"One of the boys has already been here this morning," said his mother,
+handing him his cup. "They want you to be sure to meet them this
+afternoon, not to fail. You must have been dead asleep, for I called
+you at three different times."
+
+"Did you knock three times?"
+
+Webster asked his question with a sinking of the heart; what if his
+mother's first knock had awakened him? He might never have finished his
+dream, might never have dreamed at all. How different the morning might
+have been, how different the world--if his mother had awakened him
+before his dream!
+
+He received his cup from her and smiled at her:
+
+"I was dreaming," he said, and he smiled also at the safety of his
+vision.
+
+Elinor, sitting opposite him, had said nothing. She had finished her
+breakfast before he had come in and plainly lingered till he should
+enter. Since his entrance she had sat restless in her chair, toying
+with her fork or her napkin, and humming significantly to herself. She
+had this habit. "You must not sing at the table, Elinor," her mother
+had once said. "I am _not_ singing," Elinor had replied, "I am humming
+to myself, and _no_ one is supposed to listen." Meantime this morning,
+her quickly shifting eyes would sweep his face questioningly; she must
+have been waiting for some sign as to what had been the effect of the
+Thomas Jefferson bluejay the night before and of the repeated attack on
+his window shutters.
+
+Often when out of humour with her he had declined to notice her at
+table; now once, when he caught her searching glance, he smiled.
+Dubiously, half with disbelief and half with amazement, she looked
+steadily back at him for an instant; then she slipped confusedly from
+her seat and was gone. Webster laughed within himself: "what will she
+be up to next?" he thought.
+
+It was quiet now at the table: his father had gone back to his paper,
+his mother was eating the last of her breakfast fruit, and perhaps,
+thinking that out in the country things were getting ripe. After an
+interval Webster broke the silence: he was white with emotion.
+
+"Father," he said quietly, "I have decided what I'd like to do."
+
+Webster's father dropped his paper: Webster's mother's eyes were on
+him. The years had waited for this moment, the future depended upon it.
+
+"If you and mother do not need me for anything else just yet, I'd
+like to work my way through the University. But if there's something
+different you'd rather I'd do, or if you both want me in any other way,
+I am here."
+
+"My son," exclaimed his father, rudely with the back of his hand
+brushing away a tear that rolled down his cheek--a tear perhaps started
+by something in his son's words that brought back his own hard boyhood,
+"your father is here to work for you as long as he is alive and able.
+Your mother and I are glad--!" but he, got no further: his eyes had
+filled and his voice choked him.
+
+Webster's mother stood beside him, her hand on his head, her
+handkerchief pressed to her eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he had made his preparations for the glad day's adventure and
+stepped out on the front porch, his father had gone to the bank, his
+mother was in the kitchen. Elinor was sitting on the top step. Her
+back was turned. Her sharp little elbows rested on her knees and her
+face was propped in her palms. Her figure again suggested a crumpled,
+purple morning-glory--fragile, not threatened by any human violence but
+imperilled by nature.
+
+She did not look around as he stepped out or move as he passed down.
+He felt a new wish to say something pleasant but could not quite so
+conquer himself. As he laid his hand on the yard gate, he was stopped
+by these words, reaching his ears from the porch:
+
+"Take me with you!"
+
+He could not believe his ears. Could this be Elinor, his tease, his
+torment? This wounded appeal, timid pleading--could it proceed from
+Elinor? He was thrown off his balance and too surprised to act. The
+words were repeated more beseechingly, wistfully:
+
+"Take me with you, will you, Webster?"
+
+For now that she had given herself away to him, he might as well see
+everything: that at last she was openly begging that she be admitted to
+a share in his plans and pleasures, that he no longer disdain to play
+with her.
+
+He spoke with rough embarrassment over his shoulder:
+
+"You can't go today. Nobody can go today. I'm going miles out into the
+country to the woods."
+
+"But some day will you take me over into the woods yonder?"
+
+After a while he turned toward her:
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"Thank you very much. Thank you very much, indeed, Webster!"
+
+The tide of feeling began to rush toward her:
+
+"There are some wild violets over there, Elinor, wild blue violets and
+wild white violets--thick beds of them in the shade."
+
+"Oh, how lovely!" She clasped her hands and knotted them tensely under
+her chin and kept her eyes fixed more hopefully on him.
+
+"There is a flock of the funniest little fairies dancing under one of
+the big forest trees, each carrying the queerest little green parasol."
+
+"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!"
+
+"And I found one little cedar tree. If they'll let us, I'll dig it up
+and bring it home and plant it in the front yard. It will be your own
+cedar tree, Elinor."
+
+"Oh, Webster! Could anything be more lovely of you?"
+
+"You and I and Jenny will go some day soon--"
+
+"No, no, no!" cried Elinor, stamping her feet fiercely and wringing her
+hands. "I don't want Jenny to go! I won't have Jenny! Just you and I!
+Not Jenny! Just you and I!"
+
+"Then just you and I," he said, smiling at her and moving away.
+
+"_Wait!_"
+
+She darted down the steps and ran to him and drew his face over and
+laid her cheek against his cheek, clinging to him.
+
+He struggled to get away, laughing with his new happiness: tears welled
+out of her eyes with hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Webster had taken to the turnpike.
+
+The morning was cool, the blue of the sky vast, tender, noble. Rain
+during the night had left the atmosphere fresh and clear and the pike
+dustless. Little knobs of the bluish limestone jutted out. The greyish
+grass and weeds on each side had been washed till they looked green
+again.
+
+The pike climbed a hill and from this hilltop he turned and looked
+back. He could see the packed outskirts of the city and away over in
+the heart of it church spires rising here and there. The heart of it
+had once been the green valley through which a stream of the wilderness
+ran: there Wilson had seen the water mills and the gallows for hanging
+Kentuckians and the thousand hitched horses and folks sitting on the
+public square selling cakes of maple sugar and split squirrels.
+
+Soon he passed the pasture where he had spent yesterday. That had done
+well enough as a beginning: today he would go further. He remembered
+many things he had seen in the park-like bluegrass woods. Sweet to his
+ear sounded the call of bobwhite from the yellow grain. He wondered
+whether the ailing young crows in the tree-tops had at last taken all
+their medicine. The curious bird which had watched him out of a hole in
+the tree-trunk--the chap with the black band across his chest and the
+speckled jacket and the red cap on the back of his head, was he still
+on the lookout? What had become of the gorgeous little velvet coach
+that had travelled across the back of his hand on its unknown road?
+And that mystery of the high leaves--that wandering disembodied voice:
+_Se-u-re? Se-u-u._ Did it still haunt the waving boughs?
+
+But miles on ahead in the country, undergrowth, shade, secrecy for wild
+creatures--his heart leaped forward to these and his feet hastened.
+
+This day with both eyes open, not shut in sleep, he might find the
+warbler.
+
+Whole-heartedly, with a boy's eagerness, Webster suddenly took off his
+hat and ran down the middle of the gleaming white turnpike toward the
+green forest--toward all, whether much or little, that he was ever to
+be.
+
+[Illustration: chapter V--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: logo--Country Life Press]
+
+                        THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
+                           GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 46905 ***
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+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 46905 ***</div>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Kentucky Warbler, by James Lane Allen</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      <a href="https://archive.org/details/kentuckywarb00allerich">
+      https://archive.org/details/kentuckywarb00allerich</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h1>THE KENTUCKY<br />
+WARBLER</h1>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_004.jpg" width="475" height="700" alt="Frontispiece" title="" />
+  <p class="center font11">
+    &quot;<span class="smcap">There He was&mdash;The Kentucky Warbler!</span>&quot;</p>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="p3 center font24 pmb1">
+THE KENTUCKY<br />
+WARBLER</p>
+
+<p class="p3 center">BY</p>
+<p class="center font15 pmb1">JAMES LANE ALLEN</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 110px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_005.jpg" width="110" height="115" alt="decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb1" />
+
+<div class="block2">
+<p class="p3 font09"><i>When the population of this immense Western<br />
+Republic will have diffused itself over every acre of<br />
+ground fit for the comfortable habitation of man,<br />
+... then not a warbler shall flit through our<br />
+thickets, but its name, its notes, its habits will be<br />
+familiar to all&mdash;repeated in their sayings and<br />
+celebrated in their village songs.</i></p>
+
+<p class="i10 font09 pmb2"><span class="smcap">&mdash;Alexander Wilson</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center font10 pmb3">WITH A<br />
+FRONTISPIECE IN COLOUR</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font12 pmb3">GARDEN&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CITY NEW YORK<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1918</p>
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="p3 center font09 pmb3">
+COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF<br />
+TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,<br />
+INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="p3 center font13 pmb3">
+TO<br />
+THE YOUNG KENTUCKY<br />
+FOREST-LOVER
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+
+<div class="block3">
+<table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" class="tdl" summary="Table of contents">
+  <colgroup> <col width="50%" /> <col width="10%" /> </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" align="right"><span class="font07">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter I<br />
+    Home</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter II<br />
+    School</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter III<br />
+    Forest</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter IV<br />
+    Bird</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter V<br />
+    Road</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="p2 center font18 pmb3">
+THE KENTUCKY<br />
+
+WARBLER</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_013.jpg" width="550" height="208" alt="chapter I, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h2><a id="chap_I">I</a><br /><br />
+
+THE HOME</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_013__initial.jpg" width="100" height="99" alt="W initial" title="" />
+</span>
+ebster, along with thousands
+of other lusty forward-looking
+Kentucky
+children, went to the
+crowded public schools.</p>
+
+<p>There every morning against his will
+but with the connivance of his parents
+he was made a prisoner, as it seemed
+to him, and for long hours held as such
+while many things disagreeable or unnecessary,
+some by one teacher and
+some by another, were forced into his
+head. Soon after they were forced in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+most of the things disappeared from
+the head. What became of them nobody
+knew: Webster didn't know and
+he didn't care. During the forcing-in
+process month by month and year by
+year he now and then picked up a
+pleasant idea for himself, some wonderful
+idea about great things on ahead in
+life or about the tempting world just
+outside school. He picked up such
+ideas with ease and eagerness and held
+on to them.</p>
+
+<p>He lived in a small white-frame cottage
+which was rather new but already
+looked rather old. It stood in a small
+green yard, which was naturally very
+old but still looked young. The still-young
+yard and the already-ageing
+cottage were to be found&mdash;should anybody
+have tried to find them&mdash;on the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+rim of the city. If the architectural
+plan of the city had been mapped out
+as an open-air theatre, the cottage
+would have been a rear seat in the very
+last row at the very lowest price. The
+block was made up of such cottages&mdash;rear
+seats. They faced the city but
+couldn't see the city, couldn't see anything
+worth seeing, and might as well
+have looked in some other direction or
+not looked at all.</p>
+
+<p>If Webster stepped out of the front
+door, he was within five yards of the
+outmost thoroughfare&mdash;native dirt-road
+for milk wagons, butchers' wagons,
+coal carts, and fruit-and-berry
+wagons. Webster's father kept an
+especial eye on the coal carts: they
+weighed heavily on his salary. Webster's
+mother kept her eye on the fruit-and-berry
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+wagons: they tantalised her
+passion for preserves. Everybody
+kept uneasy eyes on milk and butchers'
+and vegetable wagons, which brought
+expensive satisfaction to appetites for
+three meals a day. The edges of the
+thoroughfare were paths for the cottagers,
+all of whom walked and were
+glad and grateful even to be able to
+walk. The visitors of the cottagers
+walked. Everybody walked but the
+drivers. The French would have called
+the street The Avenue of Soles.</p>
+
+<p>One wet winter morning as Webster,
+walking beside his father, lifted his
+feet out of the mud and felt sorry about
+their shoes, he complained because
+there was no pavement.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," replied his father, whose
+remarks on any subject appeared to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+come out of a clear sky, so unclouded
+were they by uncertainty, "my son,
+your father's salary is not a paved-sidewalk
+salary. The mud on your
+shoes is in an inverse ratio to the funds
+in his pockets. I believe you have
+learned in your arithmetic at school by
+this time what ratio is."</p>
+
+<p>One dry summer morning as Webster
+walked beside his father, a butcher's
+wagon whirled past and covered
+them quickly with dust. He considered
+this injury to their best clothes
+and complained because there was no
+watering-cart.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," replied his father out of
+his daily clear sky, "my salary is not a
+watering-cart salary. The presence of
+the earth's dust in your eyes exactly
+equals the lack of gold-dust in your
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+father's earthly account. I believe by
+this time you have studied equations."</p>
+
+<p>But if Webster had stepped out of the
+back door of the cottage and passed
+under the clothes-line which was held
+up at its middle point by a forked pole,
+if he had crossed their very small vegetable
+garden and then had crossed a wide
+deep cow-lot where some rich man of
+the city pastured his fat milk cows, he
+would have been on the edge of the
+country. It was possible for one standing
+on the rear porch to see all summer
+thick, softly waving woods.</p>
+
+<p>Within the past two or three years,
+as summer had come again and the
+world turned green, a change had taken
+place in Webster, a growth. More and
+more he began to look from the porch
+or windows at those distant massed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+trees. Something from them seemed
+to cross over to him, an influence powerful
+and compelling; it drew him out
+of the house back with it into the mystery
+of the forest and he never returned.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, almost as soon as he could
+go anywhere he had started toward the
+forest without asking permission. They
+had overtaken him then and dragged
+him back. When he was old enough
+to understand, they had explained:
+he was too young, he would get lost,
+the bull would hook him.</p>
+
+<p>"But why?" Webster had asked,
+complaining of this new injustice in
+the world. He was perpetually being
+surprised that so many things in the
+world were bent on getting one into
+trouble; all around him things seemed
+to be waiting to make trouble. "Why
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+should the bull hook <i>me</i>? <i>I've</i> done
+nothing to <i>the bull</i>."</p>
+
+<p>They were about finishing breakfast.
+He was eating in his slow ruminant
+way&mdash;he ate enormously but never
+hungrily. His father, whose custom it
+was to divide the last half of his breakfast
+with the first half of his newspaper,
+lowered the paper and looked
+over the top.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," he said, "the bull has
+horns. Every living creature is bound
+to use everything it has. Use what
+you have or lose what you have&mdash;that
+is the terrible law in this world. Therefore
+the bull is obliged to hook what
+he can to keep his horns going. If you
+give him the chance, he will practise
+them on you. Otherwise his great-great-grandson
+might not have any
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+horns when he really needed them.
+Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Webster.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll explain again when you are
+mature enough to comprehend," said
+his father, returning to his paper.</p>
+
+<p>Webster returned to the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"If I ever have any money in my
+pocket, you always tell me not to spend
+it: now you say I ought to use whatever
+I have."</p>
+
+<p>His father quickly lowered his paper
+and raised his voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I have never said that you must
+use everything all at once, my son.
+You must learn to use it at the right
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"When <i>is</i> the right time to use a
+thing?" asked Webster, eating quietly
+on.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll answer that question when it
+is necessary," his father replied grumblingly
+from behind his paper, putting
+an end to the disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks prior to this breakfast-scene
+Webster one day at recess had
+laid bare a trouble in himself, confiding
+it to one of his intimate school-mates.
+He did so with a tone of uncertainty,
+for he was not sure but he was not
+being disloyal.</p>
+
+<p>"Can <i>your</i> father answer all the
+questions <i>you</i> ask <i>him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not half of them!" exclaimed the
+comrade with splendid candour&mdash;"Not
+half!"</p>
+
+<p>"My father answers very few <i>I</i> ask
+<i>him</i>," interposed a fragile little white-faced
+fellow who had strolled up in
+time to catch the drift of the confidential
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+talk. He did not appear strong
+enough even to put a question: he
+nursed a ragged ball, had lost a front
+tooth, and gave off the general skim-milk
+look which some children carry
+about with them.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, without inquiring further,
+began to feel a new respect for himself
+as not being worse off than other boys
+as to fathers; also a new respect for
+his father as not being worse than his
+class: fathers were deficient!</p>
+
+<p>Remembering this discovery at
+school&mdash;one of the big pleasant ideas
+he picked up outside lessons&mdash;he did
+not on the morning in question press
+his father more closely as to using horns
+when you have them and not using
+money when you have it. In fact, he
+was already beginning to shield his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+father and had quite ceased to interrogate
+him in company, lest he expose
+some ignorance. He therefore credited
+this incident where it belonged: as a
+part of his growing knowledge that he
+couldn't look to his father for any great
+help on things that puzzled him&mdash;fathers,
+as had been said, being deficient,
+though always contriving to look
+so proficient that from merely surveying
+them you would never suspect the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father was a minor bookkeeper
+in one of the city's minor banks.
+Like his bankbooks, he was always
+perfectly balanced, perfectly behaved;
+and he was also perfectly bald. Even
+his baldness might have been credited
+to him as one of the triumphs of exact
+calculation: the baldness of one side
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+being exactly equal to the baldness of
+the other: hardly a hair on either exposure
+stood out as an unaccounted-for
+remainder.</p>
+
+<p>Webster thought of his father as
+having worked at nothing but arithmetic
+for nearly forty years. Sometimes
+it became a kind of disgust to
+him to remember this: as was his
+custom when displeased at anything
+he grew contemptuous. In one of his
+contemptuous moments he one day
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"How many times have you made
+the figure 2?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three quadrillion times, my son,"
+replied his father with perfect accuracy
+and a spirit of hourly freshness. His
+father went on:</p>
+
+<p>"The same number of times for all
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+of them. When you're in the thousands,
+you may think one or the other
+figure is ahead, but when you get
+well on into the millions, there isn't
+any difference: they are neck and
+neck."</p>
+
+<p>This subject of arithmetic was the
+sorest that father and son could have
+broached: perhaps that was the reason
+why neither could get away from it.
+The family lived on arithmetic or off
+it&mdash;had married on it, were born unto
+it, were fed by it, housed and heated
+by it, ventilated and cooled by it.
+Webster's father's knowledge of arithmetic
+had marched at the head of the
+family as they made their way through
+time and trouble like music. It had
+been a lifelong bugle-blast of correct
+numerals.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hence the terrible disappointment:
+after Webster had been at school long
+enough for grading to begin to come
+home as to what faculties he possessed
+and the progress he made, his parents
+discovered to their terror and shame
+that he was good in nothing and least
+good in arithmetic. It was like a
+child's turning against his own bread
+and butter and shirt and shoes. To his
+father it meant a clear family breakdown.
+The moment had come to him
+which, in unlike ways, comes to many
+a father when he feels obliged to say:
+"This is no son of mine."</p>
+
+<p>In reality, Webster's father had
+had somewhat that feeling from the
+first. When summoned and permitted,
+he had tipped into the room on the day
+of Webster's birth and taken a father's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+anxious defensive look. He had turned
+off with a gesture of repudiation but of
+the deepest respect:</p>
+
+<p>"No such head and countenance ever
+descended to him from me! We must
+be square with him from the start! I
+place to his credit the name of Daniel
+Webster. His mother, instead of admiring
+her husband, had been gazing
+too fondly at the steel engraving of the
+statesman over the mantelpiece in the
+parlour."</p>
+
+<p>When Webster was several years old,
+one day during a meal&mdash;nobody knew
+just what brought forth the question&mdash;he
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Why was I named Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>His father answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Because you looked like him."</p>
+
+<p>Webster got up quietly and went
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+into the parlour and quietly returned
+to his seat at table:</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't look like him," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You looked like him the day you
+were born, my son. Any resemblance
+to Daniel Webster is apt to become less
+and less. Finally, you don't look like
+him any more. In the United States
+Senate nowadays, for instance, there
+isn't a trace of resemblance left anywhere.
+Senators at present look more
+like me and you know what that means:
+it means that nobody need feel obliged
+to think of Daniel Webster!"</p>
+
+<p>That birthday jest&mdash;that he was
+not quite entitled to the nativity of
+his own son, an uneasiness perhaps inherited
+by fathers from the rudimentary
+marriages of primitive society&mdash;was
+but a jest then. It gradually took
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+on serious meaning as his son grew
+further away from him with each
+year of growth. The bad passing
+of the arithmetic milestone had
+brought the worst distinct shock.
+Still, even that left Webster's father
+perfectly balanced, perfectly behaved:
+he remained proud of his unlike offspring,
+fed and clothed him, and was
+fond of him.</p>
+
+<p>There is a bare possibility also that
+in Webster he saw the only chance to
+risk part of his salary in secret speculation.
+Nearly everybody in the town
+gambled on something. The bank did
+not favour the idea that its employees
+should enjoy any such monetary
+pastime. But even a bank cannot
+prevent a father from betting on his
+own son if he keeps the indiscretion
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+to himself. Thus it is barely possible
+that, in the language of the country,
+Webster's father took chances on Webster
+as a winning colt on some unknown
+track, if he should ever take a notion
+to run! Why not bet, if it cost the
+same as not to bet: at least you had
+the excitement?</p>
+
+<p>Webster on his part grew more and
+more into the belief that his father not
+only could not answer his questions
+but&mdash;what was of far greater consequence&mdash;did
+not open up before him
+any path in life. His first natural and
+warm desire had been to imitate his
+father, to follow in his footsteps: slowly
+he discovered that his father did not
+have any footsteps, he made no path.
+His affection still encircled his father
+like a pair of arms; his eyes had completely
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+abandoned him as a sign-post
+on life's road.</p>
+
+<p>Mothers often open up roads for
+their sons or point them out, but Webster
+could not look to his mother for
+one unless he had wished to take a
+short road to an uneventful past. The
+kind of a mother she was resulted from
+the kind of a wife she was. She had
+taken her husband's arm at marriage
+to keep step at his side through life.
+Had he moved forward, she would have
+moved forward. Since he did not advance,
+but in his life-work represented
+a kind of perpetual motion without
+progress, she stayed by him and busied
+herself with multifarious daily little
+motions of her own. Her roadless life
+had one main path of memory. That
+led her backward to a large orchard and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+garden and yard out in the country,
+filled with fruit trees and berry-bearing
+bushes and vines. She, now a middle-aged
+wife and mother, was a sentimental
+calendar of far-away things "just
+ripe." The procession of fruit-and-berry
+wagons past the cottage from
+May to October had upon her the
+effect of an acute exacerbation of this
+chronic lament. The street cry of a
+vendor, no matter how urgent her duty
+anywhere in the cottage at the moment,
+brought her to a front window
+or to the front porch or even swept her
+out to the front gate, to gratify her
+eyes with memories and pay her respects
+to the impossible. She inquired
+the cost of so much and bought so little
+that the drivers, who are keen and unfavourable
+judges of human nature,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+when they met at cross streets and
+compared notes&mdash;the disappointed, exasperated
+drivers named her <i>Mrs. Price</i>:
+though one insisted upon calling her
+<i>Lady Not-Today</i>. Whenever at the bottom
+of her pocketbook she found spare
+change for a box of brilliant, transparent
+red cherries, she bore it into the
+cottage as rapaciously as some miser
+of jewels might have carried off a casket
+of rubies. Thus you could almost
+have said that Webster had been born
+of arithmetic and preserves. Still, his
+life with his father and mother was
+wholesome and affectionate and peaceful&mdash;an
+existence bounded by the horizon
+of the day.</p>
+
+<p>His boyhood certainly had no wide
+field of vision, no distant horizon, as regards
+his sleeping quarters. In building
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+the cottage a bathroom on the first
+floor had been added to one side of it
+as a last luxurious afterthought. If
+you stood before the cottage and looked
+it squarely in the face, the bathroom
+protruded on one side like a badly
+swollen jaw. The building-plan when
+worked out, had involved expense beyond
+the calculation, as usually happens,
+and this had threatened the Salary:
+the extra bath, therefore, remained
+unrealised. Webster always asked at
+least one question about everything
+new and untried, and when old enough
+to be put there to sleep, he had looked
+around the cramped enclosure and inquired
+why it had been built. Thus
+he learned that in the family he had
+now taken the place of the Bath That
+Failed. It caused him a queer feeling
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+as to his general repute in the neighbourhood
+that the very sight of him
+might bring to any observer's mind
+thoughts of a missing tub.</p>
+
+<p>His window opened upon a few feet
+of yard. Just over the fence was the
+kitchen window of the cottage next in
+the row. When that window was open,
+Webster had to see the kitchen table
+and the preparation for meals. He
+violently disliked the sight of the preparations.
+If the window was closed,
+tidings as to what was going on reached
+him through another sense; his bedroom-bathroom
+became as a whispering
+gallery of cooking odours. But
+their own kitchen was just across a
+narrow hall, and fragrances from it
+occasionally mingled with those from
+the kitchen over the fence. Made
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+hungry by nasal intelligence of something
+appetising, Webster would sometimes
+hurriedly dress and follow his
+pointer into the breakfast room, only
+to find that he was on a false trail:
+what he had expected to get his share
+of was being consumed by the family
+next door. He no longer had confidence,
+so to speak, in his own nose&mdash;not
+as a leading authority on meals to
+be eaten by him.</p>
+
+<p>One beautiful use his window had,
+one glorious use, one enchantment. In
+the depth of winter sometimes of mornings
+when he got out of bed and went
+to open the shutter, on the window
+panes would be a forest of glittering
+trees. The first time he beheld such a
+forest, he stood before it spell-bound:
+wondering whether there were silvery
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+birds singing far off amid the silvery
+boughs and what wild frost-creatures
+crouched in the tall stiff frost-grass.
+From the ice-forests on his window
+panes his thoughts always returned to
+the green summer forest on the distant
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>The pest of his existence at home was
+Elinor&mdash;a year younger but much older
+in her ways: to Webster she was as old
+as Mischief, as old as Evil. For Elinor
+had early fastened herself upon his existence
+as a tease. She laughed at
+him, ridiculed his remarks, especially
+when he thought them wise, dragged
+down everything in him. As they sat
+at table and he launched out upon any
+subject with his father&mdash;quite in the
+manner of one gentleman indulging his
+intellect with another gentleman over
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+their rich viands&mdash;Elinor went away up
+into a little gallery of her own and
+tried to boo him off the stage. His
+father and mother did not at times conceal
+their amusement at Elinor's boo's.
+He sometimes broke out savagely at
+her, which only made her worse. His
+mother, who was not without gentle
+firmness and a saving measure of good
+sense, one day disapproved of his temper
+and remarked advisedly to him,
+Elinor having fled after a victory over
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"Elinor teases you because she sees
+that it annoys you. She ought to
+keep on teasing you till you stop being
+annoyed. When she sees that she
+can't tease you, she'll stop trying."</p>
+
+<p>That was all very well: but one day
+he teased Elinor. She puckered up and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+began to cry and his mother said
+quickly:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't do that, Webster."</p>
+
+<p>Then besides: a few years before he
+had one day overheard his mother persuading
+his father that Elinor must
+not be sent to the public school.</p>
+
+<p>"I want her to go to a private school.
+She has such a difficult disposition, it
+will require delicate attention. The
+teachers haven't time to give her that
+patient attention in the public schools."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," Elinor's father had replied,
+shaking his head, "your husband's
+salary is not a private-school
+salary. It also has a difficult disposition,
+it also requires the most careful
+watching!"</p>
+
+<p>"The cost will be more but she must
+go. Some extra expense will be unavoidable
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+even for her clothing but
+I'll take that out of <i>my</i> clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"You will do nothing of the kind! If
+Elinor has a difficult disposition, she
+gets it from Elinor's father; for <i>he</i> had
+one once, thank God! He had it until
+he went into the bank. But a bank
+takes every kind of disposition out of
+you, good or bad. After you've been
+in a bank so many years, you haven't
+any more disposition. Only the president
+of a bank enjoys the right to have
+a disposition. All the rest of us are
+mere habits&mdash;certain habits on uncertain
+salaries. Let Elinor go to her
+select school and I'll go a little more
+ragged. The outside world thinks it a
+bank joke when they look through the
+windows and see bank clerks at work
+in ragged coats: instead they know better.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+Let Elinor go and let the damages
+fall on her father. He will be glad to
+take the extra cost off his own back as
+a tribute to his unbanked boyhood. I
+hope you noticed my pun&mdash;my dooble
+intender."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Elinor was sent to the most
+select private school of the city. Webster
+weighed the matter on the scales
+of boyish justice. If you had a bad
+disposition, you were rewarded by being
+better dressed and being sent to the
+best school; if you had a good disposition,
+you dressed plainly and went to
+the public school. What ought he to do
+about his own disposition? Why not
+turn it into a bad one? It was among
+Webster's bewilderments that he was
+so poorly off as not to be able to muster
+a troublesome enough disposition to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+be sent to one of the city's select
+private schools for boys: he should
+very much have liked to go!</p>
+
+<p>"I go to a private school because I
+am <i>nice</i>," Elinor had boasted to him
+one morning. She was sitting on the
+front steps as he came out on his way
+to school, and she looked very dainty
+and very charming&mdash;a dark, wiry, fiery,
+restless little creature, and at the moment
+a bit of brilliant decoration. "And
+I get nice marks," she added pointedly.</p>
+
+<p>He paused to make a quietly contemptuous
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you get nice marks: that's
+what private schools are for&mdash;to give
+everybody nice marks. If you went to
+the public school, you'd get what you
+deserved."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you seem to deserve very
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+little," said Elinor, smoothing a lock
+of her black hair over one ear.</p>
+
+<p>His rage burst out at her deadly
+thrust:</p>
+
+<p>"You go to a private school because
+you are a little devil," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you be a little devil
+too?" inquired Elinor, her bright eyes
+mocking him. "Can't you be a little
+devil too?"</p>
+
+<p>He jerked the strap tighter around
+his battered books:</p>
+
+<p>"If you were in the public schools,
+they wouldn't put up with you. They'd
+send you home or they'd break you
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know," said Elinor,
+with an encouraging smile, "they seem
+to get along with you very well."</p>
+
+<p>Webster knew that Elinor's teasing,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+ridiculing eyes followed him as he
+walked away. They became part of
+the things that cheapened him in his
+life. When he had passed through the
+front gate, he started off in a direction
+which was not the direction to school.</p>
+
+<p>Elinor sang out shrilly:</p>
+
+<p>"I know where you are going. But
+it's of no use. Jenny's sweetheart goes
+to a private school and he stands well
+in his classes."</p>
+
+<p>He walked on, but turned his face
+toward her:</p>
+
+<p>"It's none of <i>your</i> meddlesome business,
+you little black scorpion," he said
+quietly.</p>
+
+<p>With an upward bound of his nature
+he thought of Jenny, a very different
+sort of girl.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny lived in the largest cottage of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+the block, at the better of the two corners.
+The families visited intimately.
+Jenny's father was a coal merchant and
+Webster's father bought his coal of
+Jenny's father. A grocer lived in the
+middle of the block: he bought supplies
+from that grocer. "If you can," he
+said, "deal with your neighbours. It
+will make them more careful: they
+won't dare ...!" On the contrary,
+Jenny's father did not deposit his
+cheques in Webster's father's bank.
+"Don't do your business with a neighbour,"
+he said. "Neighbours pry."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny represented in Webster's life
+the masculine awakening of his nature
+toward womankind. In the white light
+of that general dawn, she stood revealed
+but not recognised. A little
+thing had happened, the summer previous,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+which was of common interest
+to them. In a corner of Jenny's yard
+grew a locust tree, not a full forest-sized
+locust tree but still quite a respectable
+locust tree for its place and
+advantages. All around the trunk and
+up the trunk clambered the trumpet-vine.
+Several yards from the earth
+some of the branches bent over and
+spread out as a roof for a little arbour&mdash;Jenny's
+summer play-house.</p>
+
+<p>One dewy morning Jenny had first
+noticed a humming-bird hovering about
+the blossoms. She did not know that
+it was the ruby-throat, seeking the
+trumpet-vine where Audubon painted
+him. She only knew that she was excited
+and delighted. She told Webster.</p>
+
+<p>"If he comes back, run and tell me,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+will you, Jenny?" he pleaded, with
+some strange new joy in him. Several
+times she had run and summoned him;
+and the two children, unconsciously
+drawing nearer to each other, and hand
+in hand watched the ruby-throat hovering
+about the adopted flower of the
+State.</p>
+
+<p>The distant green forest and the
+locust tree with the trumpet-vine and
+the humming-bird&mdash;these, though distant
+from one another, became in
+Webster's mind part of something
+deep and powerful in his life, toward
+which he was moving.</p>
+
+<p>If no road opened before him at
+home, none opened at school. He
+would gladly have quit any day. He
+tried to make lessons appear worse
+than they were in order to justify himself
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+in his philosophy of contempt and
+rejection.</p>
+
+<p>When any two old ladies met on the
+street, he argued, they did not begin
+to parse as fast as possible at each other.
+Old gentlemen of the city did not walk
+up and down with books glued to their
+noses, trying to memorise things they
+would rather forget. When people
+went to the library for delightful books
+to read, nobody took home arithmetics
+and geographies. There wasn't a
+grown person in the city who cared
+what bounded Indiana on the north
+or if all the creeks in Maine emptied
+into the mouths of school teachers. In
+church, when the minister climbed to
+the pulpit, the congregation didn't begin
+to examine him in history. They
+didn't even examine him in the Bible;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+he couldn't have stood the examination
+if they had. In the court-room,
+at the fair, at the races, at the theatre,
+when you were born, when you were
+playing, when you had a sweetheart,
+when you married, when you were a
+father, when you were sick, when you
+were in any way happy or unhappy,
+when you were dying, when you were
+dead and buried and forgotten, nobody
+called for school books.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, nevertheless, both at home
+and at school made his impression. No
+one could have defined the nature of
+the impression but every one knew he
+made it. If he failed at his lessons, his
+teachers were not angry; they looked
+mortified and said as little as possible
+and all the while pushed him along by
+hook or crook, until at last they had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+smuggled him into high school&mdash;the
+final heaven of the whole torment.</p>
+
+<p>The impression upon his school fellows
+was likewise strongly in his favour.
+Toward the close of each session there
+was intense struggle and strain for the
+highest mark in class and the next
+highest and the next. When the nerve-racking
+race was over and everybody
+had time to look around and inquire
+for Webster, they could see him cantering
+quietly down the home stretch,
+unmindful of the good-natured jeers
+that greeted his arrival: he had gone
+over the course, he had not run. As
+soon as they were out of doors in a
+game, Webster stepped to the front.
+Those who had just outstripped him
+now followed him.</p>
+
+<p>Roadless parents&mdash;a child looking
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+for its road in life! That is Nature's
+plan to stop imitation, to block the
+roads of parents to their children, and
+force these into new paths for the development
+of the individual and of
+the race. And in what other country
+is that spectacle so common as in our
+American democracy, where progress
+is so swift and the future so vast and
+untrod and untried that nearly every
+generation in thousands of cottages
+represents a revolt and a revolution of
+children against their parents, their
+work and their ways? But Webster's
+father and mother were not philosophers
+as to how Nature works out her
+plan through our American democracy:
+they merely had their parental
+apprehensions and confidentially discussed
+these. What would Webster
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+be, would he ever be anything? He
+would finish at high school this year
+and it was time to decide.</p>
+
+<p>A son of the grocer in the block had
+made an unexpected upward stride in
+life and surprised all the cottagers.
+Webster's father and mother took care
+to bring this meritorious example to
+their son's attention.</p>
+
+<p>"What are <i>you</i> going to be, Webster?"
+his mother asked one morning
+at breakfast, looking understandingly
+at Webster's father.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what I'm going to
+be," Webster had replied unconcernedly.
+"I know I'm not going to be
+what <i>he</i> is!"</p>
+
+<p>"It would never do to try to force
+him," his father said later. "Not <i>him</i>.
+Besides, think of a couple of American
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+parents undertaking to force their
+children to do anything&mdash;<i>any</i> children!
+We'll have to wait a while longer. If
+he's never to be anything, of course
+forcing could never make him into
+something. It would certainly bring
+on a family disturbance and the family
+disturbance would be sure to get on
+my nerves at the bank and I might
+make mistakes in my figures."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">Then in the April of that year, about
+the time the woods were turning green
+and he began to look toward them with
+the old longing now grown stronger,
+a great thing happened to Webster.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_054.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter I, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_055.jpg" width="550" height="208" alt="chapter II, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<h2>II<br />
+
+THE SCHOOL</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_055__initial.jpg" width="100" height="99" alt="O initial" title="" />
+</span>ne clear morning of that
+budding month of April, a
+professor from one of the
+two institutions of learning
+in the city stood before the pupils of
+the high school.</p>
+
+<p>He was there to fulfill his part of an
+experimental plan which, through the
+courtesy of all concerned, had been
+started upon its course at the opening
+of the session the previous autumn: that
+members of the two faculties should
+be asked to be good enough to come&mdash;some
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+one of them once each month&mdash;and
+address the school on some pleasant
+field or by-field of university work,
+where learning at last meets life. That
+is, each professor was requested to appear
+before the ravenous pupils of the
+high school with a basket of ripe fruit
+from his promised land of knowledge
+and to distribute these as samples from
+an orchard which each pupil, if he but
+chose, could some day own for himself.
+Or if he could not quite bring anything
+so luscious and graspable as fruit, he
+might at least stand in their full view
+on the boundary of his kingdom and
+mark out, across that dubious Common
+which lies between high school
+and college, a path that would lead a
+boy straight to some one of the world's
+great highways of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Eight professors had courteously responded
+to this invitation and had disclosed
+eight splendid roadways of
+the world's study. The Latin professor
+had opened up his colossal Roman-built
+highway with its pictures of the
+ages when all the world's thoroughfares
+led to Rome. The professor of Greek
+had disclosed the longer path which
+leads back to Hellas with its frieze of
+youth in eternal snow. The professor
+of Astronomy had taken his band of
+listeners forth into the immensities of
+roadless space and had all but lost
+them and the poor little earth itself in
+the coming and going of myriads of
+entangled stars. Eight professors had
+come, eight professors had gone, it was
+now April, a professor of Geology, as
+next to the last lecturer, stood before
+them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Interest in the lectures had steadily
+mounted from the first and was now at
+highest pitch. He faced an audience
+eager, intelligent, respectful and grateful.
+On their part they consented that
+the man before them embodied what
+he had come to teach&mdash;the blending of
+life and learning. Plainly the study
+of the earth's rocks had not hardened
+him, acquaintance with fossils had not
+left him a human fossil. And he hid
+the number of his years within the sap
+of living sympathies as a tree hides
+the notation of its years within the
+bark.</p>
+
+<p>Letting his eyes wander over them
+silently for a moment, he began without
+waste of a word&mdash;a straightforward
+and powerful personality.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to speak to you boys
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+about a boy who never reached high
+school. I want you to watch how that
+boy's life, first seen in the distance
+through mist and snow and storm as a
+faint glimmering spark, rudely blown
+upon by the winds of misfortune, endangered
+and all but ready to go out&mdash;I
+want you to watch how that endangered
+spark of a boy's life slowly begins
+to brighten in the distance, to
+grow stronger, and finally to draw nearer
+and nearer until at last it shines as a
+great light about you here in this very
+place. Watch, I say, how a troubled
+ray, low on life's horizon, at last becomes
+a star in the world of men, high
+fixed and resplendent&mdash;to be seen by
+human eyes as long as there shall be
+human eyes to see anything."</p>
+
+<p>He saw that he had caught their attention.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+Their sympathy reacted upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Before I speak of the boy I wish to
+speak of a book. I hope all of you have
+read one of the very beautiful stories
+of English literature by George Eliot
+called <i>Silas Marner</i>. If you have,
+none of you will ever forget that Silas
+Marner belonged to a class of pallid,
+undersized men who, a hundred or a
+hundred and fifty years ago, under
+pressure upon the centres of population
+in England and through competition
+of trade, were driven out of the
+towns into the country. There, as
+strangers, as alien-looking remnants of
+a discredited race, there in districts far
+away among the lanes or in the deep
+bosom of the hills, perhaps an hour's
+ride from any turnpike or beyond the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+faint sound of the coach-horn, they
+spent their lives as obscure weavers
+and peddlers.</p>
+
+<p>"You will never forget George Eliot's
+vivid, powerful, touching picture of
+Silas Marner at work in a little stone
+cottage near a deserted stone pit, amid
+the nut-bearing hedgerows of the
+village of Raveloe. When the schoolboys
+of the village came to the hedges
+in autumn to gather nuts or in spring
+to look for bird-nests&mdash;you boys still
+do that, I hope&mdash;when they came and
+heard the uncanny sound of the loom,
+so unlike that of the familiar flail on
+threshing floors, they would crowd
+around the windows and peep in at the
+weaver in his treadmill attitude, weaving
+like a solitary spider month after
+month and year after year his endless
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+web. Silas Marner, pausing in his
+work to adjust some trouble in his
+thread and discovering them and annoyed
+by the intrusion, would descend
+from the loom and come to his door
+and gaze out at them with his strange,
+blurred, protuberant eyes; for he was
+so near-sighted that he could see distinctly
+only objects close to him, such
+as his thread, his shuttle, his loom.</p>
+
+<p>"If for a few days the sound of the
+loom stopped, it was because the
+weaver, with his pack on his feeble
+shoulders, was away on journeys
+through fields and lanes to deliver
+his linen to those who had ordered it
+or who might haply buy.</p>
+
+<p>"The village of Raveloe, as you remember,
+lay on the rich, central plain
+of Merry England, with wooded hollows
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+and well-walled orchards and ornamental
+weathercocks and church
+spires rising peacefully above green
+tree-tops. But Silas Marner saw nothing
+of the Merry England through
+which he peddled his cloth. He walked
+through it all with the outdoor loneliness
+of those who cannot see. His
+mother had bequeathed him knowledge
+of a few herbs; and these were the only
+thing in nature that he had ever gropingly
+looked for along hedgerows and
+lanesides&mdash;foxglove and dandelion and
+coltsfoot.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if you have read the story,
+you have a far more living, touching
+picture of the life of a weaver in those
+distant times that I could possibly
+paint. The genius of George Eliot
+painted it supremely and I point to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+her masterpiece rather than to any
+faint semblance I could draw. What
+I want you to do is to get deeply into
+your minds what the life of a weaver
+in those days meant: a little further
+on you will understand why.</p>
+
+<p>"Next I want you to think of Silas
+Marner as an all too common figure
+of the present time. He is a type of
+those of us who go through our lives
+all but blind to the surpassingly beautiful
+life of the planet on which it is
+our strange and glorious destiny to
+spend our human days. He is a type
+of those of us who, in town or city, see
+only the implements of our trade or
+business ever close to our eyes&mdash;our
+shuttle, our thread, our loom, of whatever
+kind these may be. When we go
+out into the world of nature, he is also
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+a type of those of us, who recognise
+only the few things we need&mdash;our coltsfoot,
+our foxglove, our dandelion, of
+whatever kind these may be. In the
+midst of woods and fields we gaze
+blankly around us with vision blurred
+by ignorance&mdash;not born blind but remaining
+as blind because we do not
+care or have not learned to open and
+to train our eyes. We have the outdoor
+loneliness of Silas Marner."</p>
+
+<p>He waited a few moments to allow
+his words to make their impression,
+and long accustomed to the countenance
+of listeners, he felt sure that
+they were following him in the road
+he pursued: then he led them forward:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, about the period that George
+Eliot paints the life of her poor English
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+weaver there lived, not in Merry England
+but in Bonnie Scotland&mdash;and to be
+bonnie is not to be merry&mdash;there lived
+in the little town of Paisley, in the west
+of Scotland, a man by the name of
+Alexander Wilson, a poor illiterate
+distiller. He had a son&mdash;the boy I am
+to tell you about.</p>
+
+<p>"The poor illiterate distiller and
+father desired to give his son his name
+but not to assign him his place in life,
+not his own road; he named him Alexander
+and he wished him to be not a
+distiller but a physician. The boy's
+mother was a native of an island of the
+Hebrides&mdash;your geographies will have
+to tell you where the Hebrides are, for
+doubtless you have all forgotten! The
+inhabitants of those wild, bleak, storm-swept
+islands thought much of danger
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+and death and therefore often of God.
+Perhaps the natives of small islands
+are, as a rule, either very superstitious
+or very religious. His mother desired
+him to be a minister. You may not
+know that the Scotch people are, perhaps,
+peculiarly addicted to being either
+doctors of the body or doctors of the
+soul. The entire Scottish race would
+appear to be desirous of being physicians
+to something or to somebody&mdash;not
+submitting easily, however, to be
+doctored!</p>
+
+<p>"Thus the boy's father and mother
+opened before him the two main honoured
+roads of Scottish life and bade
+him choose. He chose neither, for he
+was self-willed and wavering, and did
+not know his own mind or his own wish.
+He did know that he would not take
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+the roads his parents pointed out; as to
+them he was a roadless boy.</p>
+
+<p>"His mother died when he was quite
+young, a stepmother stepped into a
+stepmother's place, and she quickly
+decided with Scotch thrift. A third
+Scottish road should be opened to the
+boy and into that he should be pushed
+and made to go: he must be put to
+trade. Accordingly, when he was about
+eleven years old, he was taken from
+school and bound as an apprentice to
+a weaver: we lament child labour now:
+it is an old lament.</p>
+
+<p>"The boy hated weaving as, perhaps,
+he never hated anything else in
+his life and in time he hated much and
+he hated many things. He seems soon
+to have become known as the lazy
+weaver. Years afterward he put into
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+bitter words a description of the weaver:
+'A weaver is a poor, emaciated,
+helpless being, shivering over rotten
+yarn and groaning over his empty flour
+barrel.' Elsewhere he called the weaver
+a scarecrow in rags. He wrote a poem
+entitled <i>Groans from the Loom</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Five interminable years of those
+groans and all his eager, wild, headstrong,
+liberty-loving boyhood was
+ended: gone from him as he sat like a
+boy-spider with a thread passing endlessly
+into a web. During these interminable
+years, whenever he lifted his
+eyes from his loom and looked ahead,
+he could see nothing but penury and
+dependence and loneliness&mdash;his loom
+to the end of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Five years of this imprisonment
+and then he was eighteen and his own
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+master; and the first thing he did was
+to descend from the loom, take a pack
+of cloth upon his shoulders and go
+wandering away from the hills and valleys
+and lakes of Scotland&mdash;free at last
+like a young deer in the heather. He
+said of himself that from that hour
+when his eyes had first opened on the
+light of grey Scotch mountains, the
+world of nature had called him. He
+did not yet know what the forest and
+the life of the forest meant or would
+ever mean; he only knew that there he
+was happy and at home.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus, like Silas Marner, he became
+a poor weaver and peddler but not with
+Silas Marner's eyes. Seldom in any
+human head has the mechanism of
+vision been driven by a mind with such
+power and eagerness to observe. And
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+he had the special memory of the eye.
+There are those of us who have the
+special memory of the ear or of taste or
+of touch. He had the long, faithful
+recollection of things seen. With this
+pair of eyes during the next several
+years he traversed on foot three-fourths
+of Scotland. Remember, you boys
+of the rolling bluegrass plateau, what
+the scenery of Scotland is! Think what
+it meant to traverse three-fourths of
+that country, you who consider it a
+hardship to walk five level miles, a
+misfortune to be obliged to walk ten,
+the adventure of a lifetime to walk
+twenty.</p>
+
+<p>"But though he followed one after
+another well nigh all the roads of
+Scotland, he could find in all Scotland
+no road of life for him. It is true that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+certain misleading paths beckoned to
+him, as is apt to be true in every life.
+Thus he had conceived a great desire
+to weave poetry instead of cloth, to
+weave music instead of listening to the
+noise of the loom: he had his flute and
+his violin. But what he accomplished
+with poetry and flute and violin were
+obstacles to his necessary work and
+rendered this harder. The time he
+gave to them made his work less: the
+less his work, the less his living; the
+less his living, the more his troubles
+and hardships.</p>
+
+<p>"Once he started out both to peddle
+his wares and to solicit orders for a
+little book of his poems he wished to
+publish. To help both pack and poetry
+he wrote a handbill in verse. Some of
+the lines ran thus:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Here's handkerchiefs charming, book muslins like ermine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brocaded, striped, corded, or checked.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet Venus, they say, on Cupid's birthday<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In British-made muslin was decked.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Now, ye Fair, if you choose any piece to peruse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With pleasure I'll instantly show it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If the peddler should fail to be favoured with sale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then I hope you'll encourage the poet.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The result seems to have been but
+small sale for British-made muslins and
+no sale at all for Wilson-made poems.</p>
+
+<p>"Robert Burns was just then the
+idolised poet of Scotland, a new sun
+shining with vital splendour into all
+Scottish hearts. Friends of the young
+weaver and apparently the young weaver
+himself thought there was room in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+Scotland for another Burns. Some of
+his poems were published anonymously
+and the authorship was attributed to
+Burns. That was bad for him, it made
+bad worse. Wilson greatly desired to
+know the rustic poet-king of Scotland.
+The two poets met in Edinburgh and
+were to become friends. Then Burns
+published <i>Tam O'Shanter</i>. As young
+Kentuckians, of course, you love horses
+and cannot be indifferent even to
+poems on the tails of horses. Therefore,
+you must already know the world's
+most famous poem concerning a horse-tail&mdash;<i>Tam
+O'Shanter</i>. The Paisley
+weaver by this time had such conceit of
+himself as a poet that he wrote Burns
+a caustic letter, telling him the kind of
+poem <i>Tam O'Shanter</i> should and should
+not be. Burns replied, closing the correspondence,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+ending the brief friendship
+and leaving the weaver to go back
+to his loom. It was a terrible rebuff,
+and left its mark on an already discouraged
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"Next Wilson wrote an anonymous
+poem, so violently attacking a wealthy
+manufacturer on behalf of his poor
+brother weavers, that the enraged merchant
+demanded the name of the
+writer and had him put in prison and
+compelled him to stand in the public
+cross of Paisley and burn his poem.</p>
+
+<p>"Darker, bitterer days followed. He
+shrank away to a little village even
+more obscure than his birthplace.
+There, lifting his eyes, again he looked
+all over Scotland: he saw the wrongs
+and sufferings of the poor, the luxury
+and oppression of the rich: he blamed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+the British government for evils inherent
+in human nature and for the
+imperfections of all human society:
+turned against his native country and
+at heart found himself without a fatherland.</p>
+
+<p>"Then that glorious vision which has
+opened before so many men in their
+despair, disclosed itself: his eyes turned
+to America. You should never forget
+that from the first your country has
+been the refuge and the hope for the
+oppressed, the unfortunate, the discouraged
+of the whole world. In
+America he thought all roads were open,
+new roads were being made for human
+lives; that should become his country.
+One autumn he saw in a newspaper an
+advertisement that an American merchantman
+would sail from Belfast the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+following spring and he turned to weaving
+and wove as never before to earn
+his passage money. At this time he
+lived on one shilling a week! And it
+seems that just now he undertook to
+make up his lack of knowledge of arithmetic.
+Some of you boys will doubtless
+greatly rejoice to hear that he was deficient
+in arithmetic! When spring came,
+with the earnings of his loom he walked
+across Scotland to the nearest port.
+When he reached Belfast every berth
+on the vessel had been taken: he asked
+to be allowed to sleep on the deck and
+was accepted as a passenger.</p>
+
+<p>"He had now left Scotland to escape
+the loom&mdash;never to see Scotland again.</p>
+
+<p>"And you see, he is beginning to
+come nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"The vessel was called The Swift and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+it took The Swift two months to make
+the passage. The port was to be Philadelphia
+but he seems to have been so
+impatient to set foot on the soil of the
+New World that he left the ship at
+New Castle, Delaware. He had borrowed
+from a fellow-passenger sufficient
+money to pay his expenses while walking
+to Philadelphia thirty-four miles
+away; and with this in his pocket and
+his fowling-piece on his shoulder he
+disappeared in the July forests of New
+Jersey. The first thing he did was to
+kill a red-headed wood-pecker which he
+declared to be the most beautiful bird
+he had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not find any word of his that
+he had ever killed a bird in Scotland
+during all his years of wandering. Now
+the first event that befell him in the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+New World was to go straight to the
+American woods and kill what he declared
+to be the most beautiful bird
+he had ever seen. This might naturally
+have been to him a sign of his life-road.
+But he still stood blinded in
+his path, with not a plan, not an idea,
+of what he should be or could be: he
+had not yet read the handwriting on
+the wall within himself.</p>
+
+<p>"His first years in the New World
+were more disastrous than any in Scotland,
+for always now he had the loneliness
+and dejection of a man who has
+rejected his own country and does not
+know that any other country will accept
+him. A fellow Scot, in Philadelphia,
+tried him at copper-plate printing.
+He quickly dropped this and
+went back to the old dreadful work of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+weaving&mdash;he became an American
+weaver and went wandering through
+the forests of New Jersey as a peddler:
+at least peddling left him free to roam
+the forests. Next he tried teaching
+but he himself had been taken from
+school at the age of eleven and must
+prepare himself as one of his own beginners.
+He did not like this teaching
+experiment in New Jersey and migrated
+to Virginia. Virginia did not
+please him and he remigrated to Pennsylvania.
+There he tried one school
+after another in various places and
+finally settled on the outskirts of Philadelphia:
+here was his last school, for
+here was the turning point of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had time to describe for
+you the school-house with its surroundings,
+for the place is to us now a picture
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+in the early American life of a
+great man&mdash;all such historic pictures
+are invaluable. Catch one glimpse of
+it: a neat stone school-house on a
+sloping green; with grey old white
+oaks growing around and rows of stripling
+poplars and scattered cedar trees.
+A road ran near and not far away was a
+little yellow-faced cottage where he
+lived. The yard was walled off from
+the road and there were seats within
+and rosebushes and plum trees and
+hop-vines. On one side hung a signboard
+waving before a little roadside
+inn; on the other a blacksmith shop
+with its hammering. Not far off stood
+the edge of the great forest 'resounding
+with the songs of warblers.' In the
+depths of it was a favourite spot&mdash;a
+secret retreat for him in Nature.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There then you see him: no longer
+a youth but still young; every road he
+had tried closed to him in America as
+in Scotland: not a doctor, not a minister,
+not a good poet, not a good flutist,
+not a good violinist, not a copper-plate
+engraver, not a willing weaver,
+not a willing peddler, not a willing
+school-teacher&mdash;none of these. No idea
+yet in him that he could ever be anything.
+A homeless self-exile, playing at
+lonely twilights on flute and violin the
+loved airs of rejected Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>"Now it happened that near his
+school was a botanical garden owned
+by an American naturalist. The
+American, seeing the stranger cast
+down by his aimless life, offered him
+his portfolio of drawings and suggested
+that he try to draw a landscape,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+draw the human figure. The Scotch
+weaver, the American school-teacher,
+tried and disastrously failed. As a
+final chance the American suggested
+that he try to draw a bird. He did
+try: he drew a bird. He drew again.
+He drew again and again. He kept
+on drawing. Nothing could keep him
+from drawing. And there at last the
+miracle of power and genius, so long
+restless in him and driving him aimlessly
+from one wrong thing to another
+wrong thing, disclosed itself as dwelling
+within his eyes and hands. His
+drawings were so true to life, that
+there could be no doubt: the road lay
+straight before him and ran clear
+through coming time toward eternal
+fame.</p>
+
+<p>"All the experience which he had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+been unconsciously storing as a peddler
+in Scotland now came back to
+him as guiding knowledge. The marvelous
+memory of his eye furnished
+its discipline: from early boyhood
+through sheer love he had unconsciously
+been studying birds in nature,
+and thus during all these wretched
+years had been laying up as a youth
+the foundation of his life-work as a man.</p>
+
+<p>"Genius builds with lavish magnificence
+and inconceivable swiftness;
+and hardly had he succeeded with his
+first drawings before he had wrought
+out a monumental plan: to turn himself
+free as soon as possible into the
+vast, untravelled forest of the North
+American continent and draw and paint
+its birds. Other men, he said, would
+have to found the cities of the New
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+World and open up its country. His
+study was to be the lineaments of the
+owl and the plumage of the lark: he had
+cast in his lot with Nature's green
+magnificence untouched by man."</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer paused, as a traveller
+instinctively stops to look around him
+at a pleasant turn of his road. It had,
+in truth, been a hard, crooked human
+road along which he had been leading
+his young listeners&mdash;a career choked
+at every step by inward and outward
+pressures. He had not failed to notice
+the change in every countenance, the
+brightening of every eye, as soon as
+his audience discovered that they were
+listening to a story, not of mere weaknesses
+and failures, but of the misfortunes
+and mistakes of a man, who at
+last stood out as truly great. This
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+hapless weaver, this aimless wanderer
+through the forests of two worlds, after
+all had success in him, strength in him,
+genius in him, fame in him! He was a
+hero. Henceforth they were alive with
+curiosity for the rest of the story which
+would bring the distant hero to Kentucky,
+to their Lexington.</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer realised all this. But
+he had for some time been even more
+acutely aware that something wholly
+personal and extraordinary was taking
+place: one of the pupils of the high
+school was listening with an attention
+so absorbed and noticeable as to set
+him apart from all the rest. Just at
+what point this intense attention had
+been so aroused, had not been observed;
+but when once observed, there was
+no forgetting it: it filled the room, the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+other listeners were merely grouped
+around it as accessories and helped to
+make its breathless picture.</p>
+
+<p>The particularly interested pupil sat
+rather far back in the school-room,
+near a window&mdash;as though from a vain
+wish to jump out and be free. The
+morning light thus fell across his face:
+it was possible to watch its expression,
+its responsive change of light at each
+turn of the story. He seemed to hold
+some kind of leadership in the school:
+other pupils occasionally turned their
+faces to glance at him, to keep in touch
+with him: he did not return their
+glances&mdash;being their leader; or he had
+forgotten them for the story he was
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer became convinced that
+what had more than once happened
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+to him before as a teacher was happening
+again: before him a young life
+was unexpectedly being solved&mdash;to its
+own wonderment and liberation, to
+its amazement and joy.</p>
+
+<p>That perpetual miracle in nature&mdash;the
+contexture of the generations&mdash;the
+living taking the meaning of their
+lives from the dead! You stand beside
+some all but forgotten mound of human
+ashes; before you are arrayed a band
+of youths, unconsciously holding in
+their hands the unlighted torches of
+the future. You utter some word
+about the cold ashes and silently one
+of them walks forward to the ashes,
+lights his torch and goes his radiant
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Geologist felt a graver responsibility
+resting on him&mdash;placed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+there by one of them, more than by
+all of them: the words he was speaking
+might or might not give final direction
+to a whole career. He went on with
+his heroic narrative more glowingly,
+more guardedly:</p>
+
+<p>"For a while he must keep on teaching
+in order to live: he taught all day,
+often after night, barely had time to
+swallow his meals, at the end of one
+term tells us he had as large a sum as
+fifteen dollars. Often he coloured his
+first drawings by candle light, drew
+and painted birds without knowing
+what they were. Drawing and painting
+by candle light!&mdash;but now he had
+within himself the risen sun of a splendid
+enthusiasm. That sun kindled
+his schoolboys. They found out what
+he wanted and helped. One boy
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+brought him a large basketful of crows.
+Another caught a mouse in school and
+contributed that&mdash;the incident is worth
+quoting by showing that the boy preferred
+a mouse to a school-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Take one instance of the energy
+with which he was now working and
+worked for the rest of his life: he
+wished to see Niagara Falls, and to
+lose no time while doing it he started
+out one autumn through the forest to
+walk to the Falls and back, a short
+trip for him of over twelve hundred
+miles. He reached home 'mid the deep
+snows of winter with no soles to his
+boots. What of that? On his way
+back he had shot two strange birds in
+the valley of the Hudson! For ten
+days&mdash;ten days, mind you!&mdash;he worked
+on a drawing of these and sent it with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+a letter to Thomas Jefferson. You
+may as yet have thought of Jefferson
+only as one of America's earliest statesmen:
+begin now to think of him as
+one of the first American naturalists.
+And if you wish to read a courteous
+letter from an American President to
+a young stranger, go back to Jefferson's
+letter to the Scotch weaver who
+sent him the drawing of a jaybird.</p>
+
+<p>"Pass rapidly over the next few
+years. He has made one trip from
+Maine down the Atlantic Seaboard to
+the South. He has returned and is
+starting out again to cover the vast
+interior basin of the Mississippi Valley:
+he is to begin at Pittsburgh and
+end at New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>"Now again you see that he is coming
+nearer&mdash;nearer to you here.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look then at this bold, splendid
+picture of him outlined against the
+background of early American life.
+All such pictures are part of our richest
+heritage.</p>
+
+<p>"The scene is Pittsburgh. He has
+ransacked the winter woods for new
+species, he has found only sparrows
+and snow-birds. That was the year
+1810; this is the year 1916&mdash;over a
+hundred years later in the history of
+our country. Gaze then upon this wild
+scene of the olden time, all such pictures
+are good for young eyes: it is
+the twenty-fourth of February: the
+river, swollen with the spring flood,
+is full of white masses of moving ice.
+A frail skiff puts off from shore and
+goes winding its way until it is lost to
+sight among the noble hills.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They warned him of his danger,
+urged him to take a rower, urged him
+not to go at all. Those who risked the
+passage of the river floated down on
+barges called Kentucky arks or in
+canoes hollowed each out of a single
+tree, usually the tulip tree, which you
+know is very common in our Kentucky
+woods. But to mention danger was
+to make him go to meet it. He would
+have no rower, had no money to hire
+one, had he wished one. He tells us
+what he had on board: in one end of
+the boat some biscuit and cheese, a
+bottle of cordial given him by a gentleman
+in Pittsburgh, his gun and trunk
+and overcoat; at the other end himself
+and his oars and a tin with which
+to bail out the skiff, if necessary, to
+keep it from sinking and also to use
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+as his drinking-cup to dip from the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>"That February day&mdash;the swollen,
+rushing river, the masses of white ice&mdash;the
+solitary young boatman borne
+away to a new world on his great work:
+his heart expanding with excitement
+and joy as he headed toward the unexplored
+wilderness of the Mississippi
+Valley.</p>
+
+<p>"Wondrous experiences were his:
+from the densely wooded shores there
+would reach him as he drifted down,
+the whistle of the red bird&mdash;those first
+spring notes so familiar and so welcome
+to us on mild days toward the
+last of February. Away off in dim
+forest valleys, between bold headlands,
+he saw the rising smoke of sugar camps.
+At other openings on the landscape,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+grotesque log cabins looked like dog-houses
+under impending mighty mountains.
+His rapidly steered skiff passed
+flotillas of Kentucky arks heavily making
+their way southward, transporting
+men and women and children&mdash;the
+moving pioneers of the young nation:
+the first river merchant-marine of the
+new world: carrying horses and plows
+to clearings yet to be made for homesteads
+in the wilderness; transporting
+mill-stones for mills not yet built on
+any wilderness stream; bearing merchandise
+for the pioneers who in this
+way got their clothing until they could
+grow flax and weave to clothe themselves.
+Thus in the Alps of the Alleghenies
+he came upon the river peddlers
+of America as years before amid
+the Alps of Scotland he had come
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+upon the foot peddlers of his own land.
+On the river were floating caravans of
+men selling shawls and muslins. He
+boarded a number of these barges; as
+they approached a settlement, they
+blew a trumpet or a lonely horn on
+the great river stillness.</p>
+
+<p>"The first night he drew in to shore
+some fifty miles down at a riverside
+hovel and tried to sleep on the only
+bed offered him&mdash;some corn-stalks. Unable
+to sleep, he got up before day and
+pushed out again into the river, listening
+to the hooting of the big-horned
+owl echoing away among the dawn-dark
+mountains, or to the strangely
+familiar crowing of cocks as they
+awoke the hen roosts about the first
+American settlements in the West.</p>
+
+<p>"He records what to us now sounds
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+incredible, that on March fifth he saw
+a flock of parrokeets. Think of parrokeets
+on the Ohio River in March!
+Of nights it turned freezing cold and
+he drew liberally on his bottle of cordial
+for warmth. Once he encountered
+a storm of wind and hail and snow
+and rain, during which the river foamed
+and rolled like the sea and he had to
+make good use of his tin to keep the
+skiff bailed out till he could put in to
+shore. The call of wild turkeys enticed
+him now toward the shore of
+Indiana, now toward the shore of
+Kentucky, but before he reached either
+they had disappeared. His first night
+on the Kentucky shore he spent in the
+cabin of a squatter and heard him tell
+tales of bear-treeing and wildcat-hunting
+and wolf-baiting. All night wolves
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+howled in the forests near by and kept
+the dogs in an uproar; the region
+swarmed with wolves and wildcats
+'black and brown.'</p>
+
+<p>"On and on, until at last the skiff
+reached the rapids of the Ohio at Louisville
+and he stepped ashore and sold
+his frail saviour craft which, at starting,
+he had named the Ornithologist. The
+Kentuckian who bought it as the Ornithologist
+accepted the droll name as
+that of some Indian chief. He soon
+left Louisville, having sent his baggage
+on by wagon, and plunged into the
+Kentucky forest on his way to Lexington.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, indeed, you see he is
+coming nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the twenty-fourth of March
+when he began his first trip southward
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+through the woods of Kentucky. Spring
+was on the way but had not yet passed
+northward. Nine-tenths of the Kentucky
+soil, he states, was then unbroken
+wilderness. The surface soil was deeper
+than now. The spring thaw had set in,
+permeating the rich loam. He describes
+his progress through it as like travelling
+through soft soap. The woods were
+bare as yet, though filled with pigeons
+and squirrels and wood-peckers. On
+everything he was using his marvellous
+eyes: looking for birds but looking at
+all human life, interested in the whole
+life of the forest. He mentions large
+corn fields and orchards of apple and of
+peach trees. Already he finds the high
+fences, characteristic of the Kentuckians.
+He turned aside once to visit a
+roosting place of the passenger pigeon.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was on March twenty-ninth that,
+emerging from the thick forest, he saw
+before him the little Western metropolis
+of the pioneers, the city of the forefathers
+of many of us here today&mdash;Lexington.
+I wish I could stop to describe
+to you the picture as he painted
+it: the town stretching along its low
+valley; a stream running through the
+valley and turning several mills&mdash;water
+mills in Lexington a hundred years ago!
+In the market-place which you now call
+Cheapside he saw the pillory and the
+stocks and he noted that the stocks
+were so arranged as to be serviceable for
+gallows: our Kentucky forefathers arranged
+that they should be conveniently
+hanged, if they deserved it, as a public
+spectacle of warning.</p>
+
+<p>"On a country court day he saw a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+thousand horses hitched around the
+courthouse square and in churchyards
+and in graveyards. He states that
+even then Kentucky horses were the
+most remarkable in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"He makes no mention of one thing
+he must have seen, but was perhaps
+glad to forget&mdash;the weavers and the
+busy looms; for in those days Kentuckians
+were busy making good linen
+and good homespun, as in Paisley.</p>
+
+<p>"He slept while in Lexington&mdash;this
+great unknown man&mdash;in a garret called
+Salter White's, wherever that was: and
+he shivered with cold, for you know we
+can have chill nights in April. He says
+that he had no firewood, it being scarce,
+the universal forest of firewood being
+half a mile away: this was like going
+hungry in a loft over a full baker-shop.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And I must not omit one note of his
+on the Kentuckians themselves, which
+flashes a vivid historic light on their
+character. By this time he rightly
+considered that he had had adventures
+worth relating; but he declares that if
+he attempted to relate them to any
+Kentuckian, the Kentuckian at once
+interrupted him and insisted upon relating
+his own adventures as better
+worth while. Western civilization was
+of itself the one absorbing adventure to
+every man who had had his share in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here I must pause to intimate that
+Wilson all his life carried with him one
+bird&mdash;one vigourous and vociferous bird&mdash;a
+crow to pick. He picked it savagely
+with Louisville. But he had begun to
+pick it with Scotland. He had picked
+it with Great Britain and with New
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+Jersey and Virginia. In New England
+the feathers of the crow fairly flew. In
+truth, civilization never quite satisfied
+him; wild nature alone he found no
+fault with&mdash;there only was he happy
+and at home. He now picked his crow
+with Lexington. Afterward an indignant
+Kentuckian, quite in the good
+Kentucky way, attacked him and left
+the crow featherless&mdash;as regards Lexington.</p>
+
+<p>"On the fourteenth day of April
+he departed from Lexington, moving
+southward through the forest to New
+Orleans. Scarcely yet had the woods
+begun to turn green. He notes merely
+the white blossoms of the redroot peeping
+through the withered leaves, and
+the buds of the buckeye. With those
+sharp eyes of his he observed that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+wherever a hackberry tree had fallen,
+cattle had eaten the bark.</p>
+
+<p>"And now we begin to take leave of
+him: he passes from our picture. We
+catch a glimpse of him standing on the
+perpendicular cliffs of solid limestone
+at the Kentucky River, green with a
+great number of uncommon plants and
+flowers&mdash;we catch a glimpse of him
+standing there, watching bank swallows
+and listening to the faint music of the
+boat horns in the deep romantic valley
+below, where the Kentucky arks, passing
+on their way southward, turned the
+corners of the verduous cliffs as the
+musical gondolas turn the corners of
+vine-hung Venice in the waters of the
+Adriatic.</p>
+
+<p>"On and on southward; visiting a
+roosting-place of the passenger pigeon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+which was reported to him as forty
+miles long: he counted ninety nests in
+one beech tree. We see him emerging
+upon the Kentucky barrens which were
+covered with vegetation and open for
+the sweep of the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, at last, he begins to meet the
+approach of spring in full tide: all Nature
+is bursting into leaf and blossom.
+No longer are the redbud and the dogwood
+and the sassafras conspicuous as
+its heralds. And now, overflowing the
+forest, advances the full-crested wave
+of bird-life up from the south, from the
+tropics. New and unknown species are
+everywhere before his eyes; their new
+melodies are in his ears; he is busy
+drawing, colouring, naming them for
+his work.</p>
+
+<p>"So he passes out of our picture:
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+southward bound, encountering a cloud
+of parrakeets and pigeons, emerging
+from a cave with a handkerchief full of
+bats, swimming creeks, sleeping at
+night alone in the wilderness, his gun
+and pistol in his bosom. He vanishes
+from the forest scene, never from the
+memory of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me tell you that he did not live
+to complete his work. Death overtook
+him, not a youth but still young; for, as
+a Roman of the heroic years deeply
+said: 'Death always finds those young
+who are still at work for the future of
+the world.'</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I was going to speak to
+you of a boy's life. I asked you to fix
+your eyes upon it as a far-off human
+spark, barely glimmering through mist
+and fog but slowly, as the years passed,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+getting stronger, growing brighter, always
+drawing nearer until it shone
+about you here as a great light and then
+passed on, leaving an eternal glory.</p>
+
+<p>"I have done that.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw a little fellow taken from
+school at about the age of eleven and
+put to hard work at weaving; now you
+see one of the world's great ornithologists,
+who had traversed some ten thousand
+miles of comparative wilderness&mdash;an
+imperishable figure, doing an imperishable
+deed. I love to think of him as
+being in the end what he most hated
+to be in the beginning&mdash;a weaver: he
+wove a vast, original tapestry of the
+bird-life of the American forest.</p>
+
+<p>"As he passed southward from Lexington
+that distant April of 1810, encountering
+his first spring in the Ohio
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+valley with its myriads of birds, somewhere
+he discovered a new and beautiful
+species of American wood warbler
+and gave it a local habitation and a
+name.</p>
+
+<p>"He called it the Kentucky Warbler.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," the lecturer said, by way
+of climax, "would you not like to see a
+picture of that mighty hunter who lived
+in the great days of the young American
+republic and crossed Kentucky in
+the great days of the pioneers? And
+would you not also like to see a picture
+of the exquisite and only bird that bears
+the name of our State&mdash;the Kentucky
+Warbler?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">He passed over to them a portrait engraving
+of Alexander Wilson in the
+dress of a gentleman of his time, his
+fowling-piece on his forearm. And
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+along with this he delivered to them a
+life-like, a singing portrait, of the warbler,
+painted by a great American animal
+painter and bird painter&mdash;Fuertes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_109.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter II, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_110.jpg" width="550" height="207" alt="chapter III, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h2><a id="chap_III">III</a><br />
+
+THE FOREST</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_110__initial.jpg" width="100" height="98" alt="I initial" title="" />
+</span>t was the first day of vacation.</p>
+
+<p>Schools, if you were not
+through with them, had
+now become empty, closed, silent
+buildings, stripped of authority to
+imprison and bedevil you and then
+mark you discreditably because you
+righteously rebelled against being imprisoned
+and bedeviled. They could
+safely be left to dust and cobwebs
+within and to any weeds that might
+lodge and sprout outside&mdash;the more the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+better. You stood on the spring edge
+of the long, free, careless summer and
+could look unconcernedly across at the
+distant autumn edge. Then as the
+woods, now in their first full green, were
+beginning to turn dry and yellow, the
+powerless buildings would again become
+tyrannical schools.</p>
+
+<p>But if you had finished high school,
+on this first day of vacation you were
+on the Boy's Common: schools behind
+you, the world of business around you,
+ahead of you ambitious college or the
+stately University. Webster had been
+turned loose on the Boy's Common.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The family were at breakfast. Every
+breakfast in the cottage was much the
+same breakfast: routine is the peace of
+the roadless. Existence there throughout
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+the year was three hundred and
+sixty-five times more or less like itself.
+The earth meantime did change for the
+signs of the zodiac: the cottage changed
+also, but had a zodiac of its own.
+Thus, when the planet was in the sign
+of <i>Capricornus</i>, the cottage on a morning
+had fried perch for breakfast, as a
+sign that it was in <i>Pisces</i>; when earth
+was in <i>Gemini</i>, the family might have
+a steak which showed that it was in
+<i>Taurus</i>&mdash;or that <i>Taurus</i> was in the
+family.</p>
+
+<p>There was always hot meat of one
+kind and hot bread of two kinds and
+hot coffee of any kind. If Webster's
+father upon entering the breakfast
+room had not seen a dish before him
+to carve or apportion, the shock could
+not have been greater, had he found
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+lying on his folded napkin an enclosure
+from the bank notifying him that he
+had been discharged for having made
+the figure four instead of the figure two.</p>
+
+<p>He sat squarely facing the table as
+long as his own portion of the meat
+lasted, meantime eating rapidly and
+bending over to glance at his paper
+which lay flat beside his coffee cup.
+With the final morsel of meat he turned
+sidewise and sat cross-legged, with his
+paper held before his face as a screen&mdash;notification
+that he would rather not
+talk at the moment, unless they preferred....
+If they showed that
+they did prefer, he still had means to
+discourage their preference. Now and
+then he reached around toward his
+plate and groped for the remaining
+crumbs of bread, or hooked his forefinger
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+in the handle of his cup and conveyed
+it behind the paper.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother, busied with service
+at the tray, commenced her breakfast
+after the others. She talked to
+her husband until he interposed his
+newspaper. Then she unconsciously
+lowered her voice and addressed remarks
+to the children. Occasionally
+she tried to arrange their dissensions.</p>
+
+<p>A satirist of human life, studying
+Webster's father and mother at the
+head and foot of the table&mdash;symbol at
+once of their opposition and conjunction&mdash;a
+satirist, who for his own amusement
+turns life into pictures of something
+else, might have described their
+bodily and pictorial relation as that
+of a large, soft deep-dished pudding
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+to a well trimmed mutton chop. Their
+minds he would possibly have imagined
+as two south winds moving
+along, side by side; whatever else they
+blew against, they could not possibly
+blow against each other.</p>
+
+<p>On this fine June morning, the first
+day of his vacation, Webster was late
+for breakfast. He arranged to be late.
+From his bathroom-bedroom he could
+hear the family with their usual morning
+talk, Elinor's shrill chatter predominating.
+When her chatter ceased
+he would know that she had satisfied
+her whimsical appetite and had slipped
+from her chair, impatient either to get
+to the front porch with its creaky
+rocking-chair or to dart out the gate
+to other little girls in the block; restlessly
+seeking some adventure elsewhere
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+if none should pass before her
+eyes at home.</p>
+
+<p>He waited till she should go; there
+was something especial to speak of
+with his father and he did not wish
+this to be spoiled by Elinor's interference
+and ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>When she was gone he went in to
+breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my son, how are you going
+to spend your first day of vacation?"
+his father inquired, helping him to his
+portion and not particularly noticing
+his own question.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I'd go over into the
+woods," Webster replied.</p>
+
+<p>An unfavourable silence followed
+this announcement. That old stubborn
+controversy about the woods!...</p>
+
+<p>"Father," asked Webster, with his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+eyes on his plate, "did you ever see
+the Kentucky warbler?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father looked over the
+top of the wood-pulp screen. His
+face had a somewhat vacant expression.
+He waited. Finally he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"My son, I believe you asked me a
+question: I shall have to ask you to
+repeat your question; I may be losing
+my hearing or I may be losing my
+mind. You asked me&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster, in the same deliberate tone,
+repeated his question:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever see the Kentucky
+warbler?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father looked over his
+spectacles at Webster's mother as with
+the air of an appeal for guidance:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, your son asks me, if I
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+understand him, whether I have ever
+seen a Kentucky wooden war horse?"</p>
+
+<p>He was not above fun-making and
+it seemed to him that the occasion
+called for it.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother explained:</p>
+
+<p>"One of the professors from the
+University lectured to them in April
+about birds. His head has been full
+of birds ever since: I shouldn't wonder
+if his dreams have been full of them."
+She looked at Webster not without
+ineradicable tenderness and pride; she
+could not quite have explained the
+pride, she could have explained the
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>Now the truth of the matter was
+that since that memorable morning
+of the April talk at high school, she
+had been hearing from Webster repeatedly
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+on that subject. He had told
+her of the lecture immediately upon
+reaching home; she had never seen
+him so wrought up. And from that
+time he had upon occasion plied her
+with questions: as to what she knew
+of birds when she lived in the country.
+She had to tell him that she knew very
+little; everybody identified the several
+species that preyed upon fruit and
+berries and young chickens; she named
+these readily enough. She had never
+heard of a bird called the Kentucky
+warbler. And she had never heard of
+Alexander Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>All this she had duly narrated to
+Webster's father&mdash;greatly to his dejection.
+A bank officer with a solitary
+son, now graduated from high school,
+going after bird-nests&mdash;that was a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+prospect before such a father! He had
+shaken his head in silence that more
+than spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I told him," Webster's mother had
+concluded, "that the only Wilsons
+worth knowing in Kentucky were the
+horse-people Wilsons: of course we
+know <i>them</i>. It has been amusing to
+watch Elinor. Whenever Webster has
+begun about birds, if she has overheard
+him, she has made it convenient
+to settle somewhere near and listen.
+She would break in and stop his questions,
+but then there would be no more
+entertainment for her. She has been
+a study."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Webster's father was not so
+ill-informed as he now appeared. In
+return for the information from Webster's
+mother, apparently for the first
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+time imparted, he looked at his son
+with an expression which plainly meant
+that as a speculation the latter was
+becoming a graver risk.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my son," he said, "I have
+never met your forest friend. I am
+merely a Kentucky bank warbler. One
+who did his warbling years ago. There
+is some <i>war</i> left in me. I suppose there
+will always be <i>war</i> left in me, but there
+isn't any <i>war</i>-ble. I warbled one distant
+solitary spring to your mother.
+She replied beautifully in kind and
+lavishly in degree. We made a nest
+and had a hatching. Since then the
+male bird has been trying&mdash;not to
+escape the consequences of his song&mdash;but
+to meet his notes like a man. I
+have never stumbled upon your forest
+friend."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Webster ate in silence for a few
+moments and then remarked, as though
+it were a matter of vital importance:</p>
+
+<p>"His notes are:</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Tweedle tweedle tweedle, Tweedle
+tweedle tweedle</i>,' Wilson described them
+that way a hundred and six years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt it, my son. I am not
+questioning your word&mdash;nor Mr. Wilson's.
+But I don't see anything very
+remarkable in that: if you come to the
+bank any day, you can hear men say
+the same thing. They come in and
+say, 'Tweedle.' And they go out."</p>
+
+<p>Webster continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Audubon described the notes as
+'<i>Turdle turdle turdle</i>.'"</p>
+
+<p>Deeper silence at the table. Webster
+continued in the face of the
+silence;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A living naturalist says the notes
+may be:</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Toodle toodle toodle.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>Silence at the table still more deep.
+Webster broke it:</p>
+
+<p>"Another naturalist describes the
+bird as saying:</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Ter-wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter
+wheeter.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>The silence! Webster continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Another naturalist thinks the song
+is:</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Che che che peery peery peery.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father raised his eyebrows&mdash;he
+had no hair to raise&mdash;at Webster's
+mother: a sign that their graduate
+was beginning to celebrate his vacation.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," he said, "when I was a
+little fellow in school, one of the reading
+lessons was a poem called 'Try,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+Try Again.' Perhaps the bird is working
+along that line."</p>
+
+<p>"Thomas Jefferson followed a bird
+for hours in the woods," said Webster,
+with dignity: he somehow felt rebuked.
+"And for twenty years he
+tried to catch sight of another."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let me come between you and
+Thomas Jefferson," said Webster's
+father, waving his hand toward his
+son in protest. "God forbid that I
+should come between any two such
+persons as Daniel Webster and Thomas
+Jefferson!"</p>
+
+<p>"The government at Washington,"
+observed Webster stoutly, "is behind
+the Kentucky warbler."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, my son, I advise you to get
+behind the Government."</p>
+
+<p>The rusty bell at the little front door
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+went off with a sound like the whirr of
+a frightened prairie chicken. The
+breakfast maid, also the cook, also the
+maid of all work, also a unit of the
+standardised population of disservice
+and discontent, entered and pushed a
+bill at Webster's father.</p>
+
+<p>"The butcher," she announced with
+sullen gratification, "He's waiting."</p>
+
+<p>As Webster's father left the table,
+he tapped his son affectionately on the
+head with his paper: "You follow the
+bird, my boy; and follow Thomas
+Jefferson, if you can. The butcher
+follows me."</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother sat watching him.
+He had begun to get his lunch ready.
+He held the bottom-half of a long,
+slender roll, which might have served
+as a miniature model for an old-time
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+Kentucky river-ark; and with his knife,
+grasped like an oar, he was lining the
+inside with some highly specialised yellow
+substance. She deplored his awkwardness
+and fought his independence.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me put up your lunch for you,
+my son!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put it up."</p>
+
+<p>He was not to be cheated out of that
+fresh sensation of pleasure which comes
+to the male, young or old, who tries to
+cook in camp, to fry, to boil, to season,
+or to serve things edible.</p>
+
+<p>Webster pulled out of his pocket a
+crumpled piece of brown paper and
+smoothed it out on the table cloth. It
+showed butcher stains.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother protested.</p>
+
+<p>"My son! Take a napkin! Take
+this clean napkin for your lunch!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I like this paper."</p>
+
+<p>The idea of being in the forest and
+unrolling his lunch from a napkin:
+what would Wilson have thought?
+Elinor, being "nice," always rolled her
+lunch in a napkin.</p>
+
+<p>"But you will be hungry: let me get
+you some preserves!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not anything sweet." Elinor always
+had preserves. He rolled his
+lunch roughly and thrust it, butcher-stains
+and all, into his pocket. His
+mother was exasperated and distressed.</p>
+
+<p>"My son, your lunch will come loose
+in your pocket: I'll get you a string."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want a string." Elinor tied
+everything. Girls tied; boys buttoned.
+The difference between men and women
+was strings.</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll get the grease on you,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+Webster! It will run down your
+legs!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then, I'll have greasy
+legs. Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>She followed him out to the porch.
+Her character lacked capacity of initiative.
+She waited for him to be old
+enough to take some initiative; then she
+would stand by him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go too far," she said tenderly,
+"and you ought to have some of your
+friends to go with you, some of the boys
+from school."</p>
+
+<p>"They can't go today. Nobody can
+go today. Anybody would be in the
+way today."</p>
+
+<p>He said this to himself.</p>
+
+<p>She watched him from the porch and
+called: "Don't stay too late."</p>
+
+<p>Webster walked quickly to the main
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+corner of the block&mdash;Jenny's corner.
+On this first morning of being through
+with school and of feeling more like a
+man free to do as he pleased, Jenny for
+that reason became more important&mdash;he
+must see her before starting. Heretofore
+the pleasure of being with Jenny
+had definitely depended upon what
+Jenny might do; this morning the idea
+was beginning to be Jenny herself.</p>
+
+<p>She was in her trumpet-vine arbour,
+the roof of which was already sun-dried.
+The shaded sides were still dew-wet.
+She bounded across to him, very
+exquisite in her light blue frock with
+broad, fresh white ribbons in her light-brown
+hair: healthy, docile, joyous,
+with innocent blue eyes and the complexion
+of apple blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" she asked
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+in a voice which implied that the day
+would be as pleasant, no matter where
+he went: nevertheless she had no
+thought of appearing indifferent to him.</p>
+
+<p>He told her.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going into the woods
+for?" she inquired, with little dancing
+movements of her feet on the yard
+grass in irrepressible health and joy and
+with no especial interest in his reply.</p>
+
+<p>He told her.</p>
+
+<p>"Could <i>you</i> go?" He very well knew
+she could not and merely yielded to an
+impulse to express himself: he was
+offering to ruin the day for her.</p>
+
+<p>"They wouldn't let me," said Jenny,
+apparently not disappointed at being
+thus kept at home.</p>
+
+<p>He sought to make the best of his
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Even if you could go, I am afraid
+you never would be quiet, Jenny."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I wouldn't," Jenny replied,
+responsive to every suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>He lingered, tenderly disturbed by
+her: the roots of the future were growing
+in him this morning. He was
+changing, he was changing <i>her</i>: there
+was an outreaching of his nature to
+draw her into the future alongside him.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny suddenly stopped dancing and
+came closer to the fence, having all at
+once become more conscious of Webster,
+standing there as he had never
+stood before, looking at her as he had
+never looked. Her nature was of yielding
+sweetness, clasping trust. She
+glanced around the cottage windows:
+the situation was very exposed. Webster
+glanced at the cottage windows:
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+the situation did not appear in the
+least exposed. Her eyes became more
+round with an idea:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you coming back this way?"</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>will</i> come back this way."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny danced away from the fence,
+laughing excitedly: "Will it be late?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can <i>make</i> it late?"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Webster climbed the fence of the
+forest under the foliage of a big tree
+of some unknown kind and descended
+waist-deep into the foliage of a weed
+with a leaf as big as an elephant's ear:
+it had a beautiful trumpet-shaped white
+and purple flower. He wished he knew
+what it was: on the very edge of the
+forest, at his very first step, he had
+sunk waist-deep into ignorance. Then
+he waded through the rank nightshade
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+and stepped out upon the grass
+of the woods&mdash;the green carpet of
+thick turf, Kentucky bluegrass.</p>
+
+<p>At last he was there under those
+softly waving trees which summer after
+summer he had watched from the porch
+and windows: long they had called to
+him and now he had answered their call.</p>
+
+<p>But the disappointment! As he had
+looked at the forest across the distance,
+the tree-tops had made an unbroken
+billowy line of green along the blue
+horizon, continuous like the waves of
+the sea as he imagined the sea. Somewhere
+under that forest roof he had
+taken it for granted that there would
+be thick undergrowth, wild spots for
+shy singing nesting birds. The disappointment!
+The trees stood ten or
+twenty or thirty feet apart. The longest
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+boughs barely touched each other,
+their lowest sometimes hung forty or
+fifty feet in the air. He did not see a
+tree whose branches he could reach
+with his upstretched arm. The sun
+shone everywhere under them every
+bright day and the grass grew thick up
+to their trunks.</p>
+
+<p>Another disappointment! The wood
+was small. He walked to the middle
+of it and from there could see to its
+edge on each of its four sides. On one
+side was a field of yellow grain&mdash;what
+the grain was he did not know&mdash;ignorance
+again. On the side opposite this
+was a field of green grain&mdash;what he
+did not know. Straight ahead of him
+as he looked through the trees, he
+could see an open paddock on which
+the sunlight fell in a blazing sheen; it
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+turned to silver the white flanks of
+some calves and made soft gold of the
+coats of grazing thoroughbreds. Beyond
+the paddock he could see stables
+and sheds and beyond these a farmhouse:
+he could faintly hear the cackle
+of barnyard poultry.</p>
+
+<p>He stood in bluegrass pasture&mdash;once
+Kentucky wilderness. It was like
+an exquisite natural park. As he had
+skirmished toward the country along
+turnpikes with school-mates or other
+friends during his life, often his eyes
+had been drawn toward these world-famous
+bluegrass pastures. Now he
+was in one; and it was here that he had
+come to look for the warbler which
+haunts the secret forest solitudes!</p>
+
+<p>He sat down under a big tree with a
+feeling of how foolish he had been.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+This was again followed by an overwhelming
+sense of his ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know the kind of tree he
+sat under nor of any other that stood
+far or near. These were such as sugar
+maple and red oak and white oak and
+black ash and white ash and black
+walnut and white walnut&mdash;rarely white
+walnut&mdash;and hickory and locust and
+elm and a few haws: he did recognise a
+locust tree but then a locust tree grew
+in Jenny's yard! All around him weeds
+and wild flowers and other grasses
+sprang up out of the bluegrass: he did
+not know them.</p>
+
+<p>There was one tree he curiously
+looked around for, positive that he
+should not be blind to it if fortunate
+enough to set his eyes on one&mdash;the
+coffee tree. That is, he felt sure he'd
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+recognise it if it yielded coffee ready to
+drink, of which never in his life had
+they given him enough. Not once
+throughout his long troubled experience
+as to being fed had he been allowed
+as much coffee as he craved.
+Once, when younger, he had heard some
+one say that the only tree in all the
+American forest that bore the name of
+Kentucky was the Kentucky coffee tree;
+and he had instantly conceived a desire
+to pay a visit in secret to that corner
+of the woods. To take his cup and
+a few lumps of sugar and sit under the
+boughs and catch the coffee as it
+dripped down.... No one to hold
+him back ... as much as he wanted at
+last ...! The Kentucky coffee tree&mdash;his
+favourite in Nature!</p>
+
+<p>He said to himself, looking all
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+round him, that he had the outdoor
+loneliness and blindness of Silas
+Marner this wonderful morning.</p>
+
+<p>Propped against the tree he sat still
+a while, thinking of the long day before
+him and of how he should spend it
+in this thin empty pasture, abandoned
+by the wild creatures. But as he deliberated,
+suddenly and then more and
+more he awoke to things going on
+around him.</p>
+
+<p>A few feet away and on a level with
+his eyes a little fellow descended from
+high over-head. A little green gymnast
+trying to reach the ground by
+means of his own rope which he manufactured
+out of his body as he came
+down. How could he do it? How had
+he learned the very first time to make
+the rope strong enough to bear his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+weight instead of its giving way and
+letting him drop? Something seized one
+of Webster's ankles with a pair of small
+jaws like pincers and reminded him that
+his foot was in the way: it had better
+move on. A black ant suddenly rushed
+angrily over his knee. A cricket leaped
+in the grass. One autumn one of them
+had started its song behind the wainscoting,
+Elinor had pushed her toe
+against the woodwork and silenced it.
+A few feet away a bunch of white clover
+blossomed: a honey bee was searching
+it. Webster found on the back of one
+of his hands, which was pressed against
+the grass, a tiny crimson coach&mdash;a
+mere dot of a crimson coach being
+moved along he could not see how.
+The colour was most gorgeous and the
+material of the finest velvet. He let it
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+go on its way across his hand withersoever
+it might be journeying. Directly
+opposite his eyes, some forty feet
+from the ground, was a round hole in a
+rotten tree-trunk. Webster wondered
+whether a bird ever pecked a square
+hole in anything. Suddenly from behind
+him a red-headed bird flew to the
+dead tree-trunk and alighted near the
+hole: he recognised the wood-pecker.
+And he remembered that this was the
+first bird Wilson had killed that first
+day he entered the American forest:
+he was glad that it was the first <i>he</i>
+encountered! No sooner had the wood-pecker
+alighted than the head of another
+bird appeared at the hole and the
+wood-pecker took to his heels&mdash;to his
+wings. Webster wished he had known
+what this other bird was: it had a black
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+band across its chest and wore a
+speckled jacket and a dull reddish cap
+on the back of its head. A disturbance
+reached him from a nearby treetop, a
+wailing voice, a gulping sound, as if
+something up there were sick and full
+of suffering and were trying to take its
+medicine. He watched the spot and
+presently a crow flew out of the thick
+leaves: the crow's family seemed not in
+good health. A ground squirrel jumped
+to the end of a rotting log some yards
+away but at sight of him shrieked and
+darted in again. The whole pasture
+was alive.</p>
+
+<p>Webster had all this time become
+conscious that another sound had been
+reaching his ear at regular intervals
+from the high branches of the trees,
+first in one place and then in another.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+His eyes had followed the voice but he
+could see no bird. The sound was like
+this:</p>
+
+<p><i>Se&mdash;u&mdash;re?</i></p>
+
+<p>That was the first half of the song&mdash;a
+question. A few moments later the
+other half followed, perhaps from another
+tree&mdash;the answer:</p>
+
+<p><i>Se&mdash;u&mdash;u.</i></p>
+
+<p>Here was a mystery: what was the
+bird? Could it be the bluebird!&mdash;his
+ignorance again, the comicality of his
+ignorance! Webster had never seen or
+heard a bluebird. He recalled what the
+professor had told them&mdash;that Alexander
+Wilson had written the first poem
+on the American bluebird, perhaps still
+the best poem; and he had given them
+the poem to memorise if they liked,
+saying that they might not think it
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+good poetry, but at least it was the
+poetry of a man who thought he could
+criticise Robert Burns! Webster had
+memorised the verses and as he now
+searched the forest boughs for this invisible
+bluebird, he repeated to himself
+some of Wilson's lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When all the gay scenes of summer are o'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And autumn slow enters so silent and sallow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And millions of warblers that charmed us before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bluebird, forsaken, but true to his home<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still lingers and looks for a milder tomorrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till forced by the horrors of winter to roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Again that long fine strain cast far
+out upon the air like a silken reel:</p>
+
+<p><i>Se&mdash;u&mdash;re? Se&mdash;u&mdash;u.</i></p>
+
+<p>Or could it be a woodcock?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He got up by and bye and walked
+toward the field of yellow grain on one
+side of the pasture. Before he was halfway
+he stopped, arrested by a wonderful
+sound: from the top rail of the
+fence before him, separating the pasture
+from the grain, came a loud ringing
+whistle. It was Bobwhite! Boys at
+school sometimes whistled "bobwhite."
+He knew this bird because he had seen
+him hanging amid snow and ice and
+holly boughs outside meat shops about
+Christmas time. Here now was the
+summer song: in it the green of the
+woods, the gold of the grain, the far
+brave clearness of the June sky.</p>
+
+<p>He tipped forward, not because his
+feet made any noise. Once again,
+nearer, that marvellous music rang past
+him, echoing on into the woods. Then
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+it ceased; and as Webster approached
+the field fence what he saw was a rabbit
+watching him over the grass tops until
+with long soft leaps it escaped through
+the fence to the safety of the field.</p>
+
+<p>For a while he remained leaning on
+this fence and looking out across the
+coming harvest. Twenty yards away a
+clump of alders was in bloom: some
+bird was singing out there joyously. It
+made a <i>che che che</i> sound, also; but its
+colour was brown.</p>
+
+<p>The idea occurred to Webster that
+he would recross the pasture to the
+field on the other side and go on to the
+turnpike: one ran there, for he heard
+vehicles passing. He would make inquiry
+about some piece of forest further
+from the city. He remembered
+again what the professor told them:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Some of you this summer during
+your vacation may go out to some
+nearby strip of woods&mdash;what little is
+left of the old forest&mdash;in quest of the
+warbler. Seek the wildest spots you
+can find. The Kentucky bluegrass
+landscape is thin and tame now, but
+there are places of thick undergrowth
+where the bird still spends his Kentucky
+summer. Shall I give you my
+own experience as to where I found
+him when a boy half a century ago?
+On my father's farm there was a woodland
+pasture. The land dipped there
+into a marshy hollow. In this hollow
+was a stock pond. Around the edges
+of the pond grew young cane. It was
+always low because the cattle browsed
+it. The highest stalks were scarcely
+five feet. On the edge of the canebrake
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+a thicket of papaw and blackberry
+vines added rankness and forest secrecy.
+It was here I discovered him. The
+pale green and yellow of his plumage
+blent with the pale green and yellow
+of the leaves and stalks. But it was
+many years before I knew that the
+bird I had found was the Kentucky
+warbler. If I had only known it when
+I was a boy!"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When Webster reached the turnpike
+and looked up and down, no one was
+in sight. He sat on the fence and
+waited. By and bye, coming in from
+the country, a spring wagon appeared.
+Curious projections stuck out from the
+top and sides of boxes in the wagon.
+When it drew nearer Webster saw
+poultry being taken to market. He
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+looked at the driver but let him pass
+unaccosted: there would be little use
+in applying for information about warblers
+at headquarters for broilers.</p>
+
+<p>Next from the direction of the city
+he saw coming a splendid open carriage
+drawn by a splendid horse and
+driven by a very pompous coloured
+coachman in livery. An aristocratic
+old lady sat in the carriage, shielding
+her face from the dazzling sunlight with
+a rich parasol. She leaned out and
+looked curiously at Webster.</p>
+
+<p>"Suydam," she called out to her
+coachman with a voice that had the
+faded sweetness of faded rose leaves,
+"did you notice that remarkable boy?
+He looked as though he would have
+liked to drive with me out into the
+country. I wish I had invited him to
+do so."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A milk cart followed with a great
+noise of tin cans. With milk carts
+Webster felt somewhat at home: it
+was often his business to receive the
+family milk. As the cart was passing,
+he motioned for the milkman to stop.
+Perhaps all milkmen stop at any sign:
+there may be an order: Webster called
+out with a good deal of hesitation:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know of a woods further
+out full of bushes and thickets?"</p>
+
+<p>The milkman gave a little flap of
+the rein to his horse:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with <i>you</i>?" he
+said with patient forbearance:</p>
+
+<p>Finally Webster saw creeping down
+the turnpike toward him an empty
+wagon-bed drawn by a yoke of oxen.
+A good-natured young negro man sat
+sideways on the wagon-tongue, smoking.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+Webster halted him by a gesture
+and a voice of command:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know of a bushy woods
+further out?"</p>
+
+<p>Any negro enjoys being questioned
+because he enjoys not answering questions.
+Most of all he enjoys any puzzling
+exercise of his mother wit.</p>
+
+<p>"A bushy woods?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a bushy woods."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want with a bushy
+woods?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to find where there is one."</p>
+
+<p>The negro hesitated: "there's a
+bushy woods about four miles out."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it on the pike?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the pike! Did you ever see a
+bushy woods on the pike? It's <i>beside</i>
+the pike."</p>
+
+<p>"Right side or left side?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Depends which way you're going.
+Right side if you are going out, left
+side if you're coming in."</p>
+
+<p>"You say it's four miles out?"</p>
+
+<p>"You pass the three mile post and
+then you go a little further."</p>
+
+<p>"Are there any birds in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Birds? There's owls in it. There's
+coons in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know a young canebrake
+when you see one?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know an old hempbrake when I
+see one."</p>
+
+<p>Webster enjoyed his new authority
+in holding up his negro and questioning
+him about a forest. And it seemed to
+him that the moment had come when
+it was right to use money if you had it,
+horns or no horns. He pulled out a
+dime. The negro, too surprised to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+speak, came across and received it.
+He declined to express thanks but felt
+disposed to show that he had earned
+the money by repeating a piece of information:</p>
+
+<p>"It's four miles out."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there much of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Much of it? Much as you want."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you live in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't live in it: I live in a
+house."</p>
+
+<p>He had retaken his seat on the
+wagon-tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of pipe stem is that you
+are using?"</p>
+
+<p>"What kind? It's a cane pipe stem."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you get the cane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where did I get it? I got it in the
+woods."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there <i>is</i> young cane growing
+in the woods?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who said there wasn't?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster, beginning this morning to
+use his eyes, took notice of something
+which greatly interested him as the
+wagon moved slowly off down the
+pike: strands of hemp clung to it here
+and there like a dry hanging moss.
+The geologist had told them that his
+own boyhood lay far back in the era
+of great Kentucky hemp-raising. Much
+of the hemp was broken in March, the
+month of high winds. As the hemp-breakers
+busily shook out their handfuls
+while separating the fibre from
+the shard, strands were carried away
+on the roaring gales, lodging against
+stubble and stumps and fences of the
+fields or blown further on into the
+pastures. Later when it was baled
+and hauled in, other filaments were
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+caught on the rafters and shingles of
+hemp-houses and barns. Thus when
+in April the northward migration of
+birds reached Kentucky, this material
+was everywhere ready and plentiful,
+and the Baltimore orioles on the bluegrass
+plateau built their long hanging
+nests of Kentucky hemp.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, sitting on the fence and
+thinking of this, meantime laid his
+plans for the larger adventure of the
+following day: the clue he sought had
+unexpectedly been found: he would go
+out to the place where young cane
+grew: there he might have a real
+chance at the warbler.</p>
+
+<p>This being settled to his satisfaction,
+he hurried impatiently back to his
+woodland pasture. It had seemed empty
+of living creatures when he entered
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+it; soon it had revealed itself as a whole
+teeming world. The mere green carpet
+of the woods was one vast birthplace
+and nursery, concert hall, playground,
+battlefield, slaughter-pen,
+cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>"But my ignorance!" he complained.
+"I have good strong eyes, but all these
+years they have been required to look
+at dead maps, dead books, dead pencils
+and figures, dead everything: not
+once in all that time have they been
+trained upon the study of a living
+object."</p>
+
+<p>His ears were as ignorant as his eyes:
+he had not been educated to hear and
+to know what he heard. Innumerable
+strange sounds high and low beat incessantly
+on them&mdash;wave upon wave
+of louder and fainter melodies, the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+summer music of the intent and earnest
+earth. And everywhere what fragrances!
+The tonic woody smells! Each
+deep breath he drew laved his lungs
+with sun-clean, leaf-sweet atmosphere.
+Hour after hour of this until his whole
+body and being&mdash;sight, smell, hearing,
+mind and spirit&mdash;became steeped in
+the forest joyousness.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Now it was alone in the June woods
+that long bright afternoon that Webster
+took final account of the last wonderful
+things the geologist had told
+them that memorable morning. He
+pondered those sayings as best he
+could, made out of them what he could:</p>
+
+<div class="block1">
+<p>"<i>I am not afraid to trust you, the
+young, with big ideas which will lift your
+minds as on strong wings and carry them
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+swiftly and far through time and space.
+If you are taught to look for great things
+early in life, you will early learn how to
+find great things; and the things you love
+to find will be the things you will desire
+and try to do. I wish not to give you a
+single trivial, mean weak thought.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>The Kentucky warbler for over a hundred
+years has worn the name of the State
+and has carried it all over the world&mdash;leading
+the students of bird life to form
+some image of a far country and to fix
+their thoughts at least for some brief moment
+on this same beautiful spot of the
+world's surface. As long as he remains
+in the forests of the earth, he will keep the
+name of Kentucky alive though all else it
+once meant shall have perished and been
+forgotten. He is thus, as nearly as anything
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+in Nature can be, its winged worldwide
+emblem, ever young as each spring
+is young, as the green of the woods is
+young.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>Study the warbler while you may:
+how long he will inhabit the Kentucky
+forest no one can tell. As civilisation
+advances upon the forest, the wild species
+retreat; when the forest falls, the wild
+species are gone. Every human generation
+during these centuries has a last look
+at many things in Nature. No one will
+ever see them again: Nature can never
+find what she has once lost: if it is gone,
+it is gone forever. What Wilson records
+he saw of bird life in Kentucky a hundred
+years ago reads to us now as fables of the
+marvellous, of the incredible. Were he
+the sole witness, some of us might think
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+him to be a lying witness. Let me tell you
+that I in my boyhood&mdash;half a century
+later than Wilson's visit to Kentucky&mdash;beheld
+things that you will hardly believe.
+The vast oak forest of Kentucky
+was what attracted the passenger pigeon.
+In the autumn when acorns were ripe but
+not yet fallen, the pigeons filled the trees
+at times and places, eating them from the
+cups. Walking quietly some sunny afternoon
+through the bluegrass pastures, you
+might approach an oak and see nothing
+but the tree itself, thick boughs with the
+afternoon sunlight sparkling on the leaves
+along one side. As you drew nearer, all
+at once, as if some violent explosion had
+taken place within the tree, a blue smoke-like
+cloud burst out all around the treetop&mdash;the
+simultaneous explosive flight
+of the frightened pigeons. Or all night
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+long there might be wind and rain and
+the swishing of boughs and the tapping
+of loosened leaves against the window
+panes; and when you stepped out of
+doors next morning, it had suddenly become
+clear and cold. Walking out into
+the open and looking up at the clear sky
+you might see this: an arch of pigeons
+breast by breast, wing-tip to wing-tip,
+high up in the air as the wild geese fly,
+slowly moving southward. You could not
+see the end of the arch on one horizon or
+the other: the whole firmament was
+spanned by that mighty arch of pigeons
+flying south from the sudden cold. Not
+all the forces in Nature can ever restore
+that morning sunlit arch of pigeons flying
+south. The distant time may come, or
+a nearer, when the Kentucky warbler
+will have vanished like the wild pigeon:
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+then any story of him will be as one of
+the ancient fables of bird life.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>The rocks of the earth are the one
+flooring on which every thing develops its
+story, then either disappears upon the
+stillness of the earth's atmosphere or
+sinks toward the silence of its rocks.
+Of the myriad forms of life on the earth
+the bird has always been the one thing
+nearest to what we call the higher life of
+the human species.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>It is the form and flight of the bird
+alone that has given man at last the mastery
+of the atmosphere. Without the bird
+as a living model we have not the slightest
+reason to believe that he could have ever
+learned the mechanism of flight. Now
+it is the flight of the bird, studied under
+the American sky, that has given the</i>
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+nations the war engine that will perhaps
+rule the destiny of the human race henceforth.
+<i>The form of the bird will fly before
+our autumn-brown American armies
+as they cross the sea&mdash;leading them
+as the symbol of their victory. When
+they lie along the trenches of France as
+thick as fallen brown autumn leaves in
+woodland hollows, it will be the flight of
+bird-like emblems of destruction that
+will guide them like hurricane-rushing
+leaves as they sweep toward their evil
+enemy.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>Through all ages the flight of the
+bird alone has been the interpreter of the
+human spirit. The living, standing on
+the earth and seeing the souls of their dead
+pass beyond their knowledge, have fixed
+upon the bird as the symbol of their faith.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+When you are old enough, if not already,
+to know your Shakespeare, you will find
+in one line of one of his plays the whole
+vast human farewell of the living to the
+dead: they are the words of Horatio to
+Hamlet, his dying prince: 'the flights of
+angels sing thee to thy rest.'</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>As far as we geologists know, this
+is the morning of the planet. Not its
+dawn but somewhere near its sunrise.
+The bird music we hear in these human
+ages are morning songs. Back of that
+morning stretches the earth's long dawn;
+and the rocks tell us that thrushes were
+singing in the green forests of the earth
+millions of years before man had been
+moulded of the dust and had awakened
+and begun to listen to them. Thus bird
+music which seems to us so fresh is the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+oldest music of the earth&mdash;millions of
+years older than man's. And yet all this
+is still but a morning song. The earth is
+young, the birds are young, man is
+young&mdash;all young together at the morning
+of the earth's geologic day. What
+the evening will be we do not know. It
+is possible that the birds will be singing
+their evening song to the earth and man
+already have vanished millions of years
+before.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Many questions vex us: all others lead
+to one: when man vanishes, does he pass
+into the stillness of the earth's atmosphere
+and sink toward the stillness of its rocks
+like every other species? He answers
+with his faith: that his spirit is here he
+knows not why, but takes flight from it he
+knows not how or whither. Only, faith
+discloses to him one picture: the snowy
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+pinion folded and at rest in the Final
+Places.</i>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>That long sunny afternoon in the
+June woods! The shadows of the trees
+slowly lengthened eastward. The sun
+sank below the forest boughs and
+shot its long lances against the tree
+trunks. It made a straight path of
+gold, deeper gold, across the yellow
+grain. The sounds of life died away,
+the atmosphere grew sweeter with
+the odours of leaves and grasses and
+blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>Webster recrossed the woods as he
+had entered it, waded through the
+nightshade and climbed the fence under
+the dark tree.</p>
+
+<p>It was twilight when he entered the
+City.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As he passed her yard, Jenny bounded
+across to him joyous, innocent, tender,
+in a white frock with fresh blue
+ribbons in her brown hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you find him?" she asked, her
+happiness not depending on his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not the right place. Tomorrow
+I am going out further into the
+country to a better place."</p>
+
+<p>"The humming-bird has been here,"
+Jenny announced with an air of saying
+that she had been more successful as a
+naturalist.</p>
+
+<p>He made no reply: as the veteran
+observer of a day, he had somewhat
+outgrown the trumpet-vine arbour and
+the ruby-throat.</p>
+
+<p>He lingered close to the fence. Jenny
+lingered. He moved off, disappointed
+but devoid of speech.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come back!" Jenny whispered,
+with reproach and vexation.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first invitation. It was
+the first acceptance of an invitation.
+There would have been a second acceptance
+but the invitation was not
+there to accept.</p>
+
+<p>When Webster turned in at his home
+gate, everything was just as he had
+foreseen: his father sat on one side of the
+porch, smoking the one daily cigar; his
+mother faced him from the opposite
+side, slowly rocking. Elinor crouched
+on the top step between them: he would
+have to walk around her or over her.</p>
+
+<p>His father laughed heartily as he
+sauntered up.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my son, where is your game
+bag? What have you brought us for
+breakfast?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Webster looked crestfallen: he returned
+empty-handed but not empty-minded:
+he had had a great rich
+day; they thought it an idle wasted
+one.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of the boys have been here
+for you," said his mother. "They left
+word you must be certain to meet them,
+in the morning for the game. Freshen
+yourself up and I'll give you your supper."</p>
+
+<p>Elinor said nothing&mdash;a bad sign with
+her. She sat with her sharp little chin
+resting on her palms and with her eyes
+on him with calculating secrecy. He
+stepped around her.</p>
+
+<p>His room had never seemed so
+cramped after those hours in the
+woods under the open sky. The whole
+cottage seemed so unnatural, everything
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+in the City so unnatural, after
+that day in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>At supper he had not much to say;
+his mother talked to him:</p>
+
+<p>"I put my berries away to eat with
+you for company." They ate their
+berries together.</p>
+
+<p>He felt tired and said he would go to
+bed. His room was darkened when he
+returned to it; he felt sure he had left
+his lamp burning; someone had been
+in it. He lighted his lamp again.</p>
+
+<p>As he started toward his window to
+close the shutters, his eye caught sight
+of an object hanging from the window
+sash. A paper was pinned around it.
+The handwriting was Elinor's. It was
+a bluejay, brought down by a lucky
+stone from some cottager's hand. Webster
+read Elinor's message for him:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="i1">"Your favourite Kentucky Warbler,</p>
+
+<p class="i2">From your old friend,</p>
+<p class="i3">Thomas Jefferson."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>He sat on the side of his bed. The
+sights and sounds and fragrances of the
+pasture were all through him; the sunlight
+warmed his blood still, the young
+blood of perfect health.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">He turned in for the night and sleep
+drew him away at once from reality.
+And some time during the night he
+awoke out of his sleep to the reality of a
+great dream.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_170.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter III, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_171.jpg" width="550" height="207" alt="chapter IV, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h2>IV<br />
+
+THE BIRD</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_171__initial.jpg" width="100" height="98" alt="I initial" title="" />
+</span>t was in the depths of a
+wonderful forest, green
+with summer and hoary
+with age. He was sitting
+on the ground in a small open space.
+No path led to this or away from it, but
+all around him grew grasses and plants
+which would be natural coverts for wild
+creatures. No human tread had ever
+crushed those plants.</p>
+
+<p>The soft vivid light resting on the
+woods was not morning-light nor evening-light:
+it was clear light without the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+hours. Yet the time must have been
+near noonday; for as Webster looked
+straight up toward the unseen sky,
+barred from his eyes by the forest roof
+of leaves, slender beams of sunlight
+filtered perpendicularly down, growing
+mistier as they descended until they
+could be traced no longer even as luminous
+vapour; no palest radiance from
+them reached the grass.</p>
+
+<p>He could not see far in any direction.
+At the edge of the open space where he
+sat, fallen rotten trees lay amid the
+standing live ones&mdash;parents, grandparents,
+great-grandparents of the rising
+forest, passing back into the soil of
+the planet toward the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Strange as was the spot, stranger
+was Webster to himself and did not
+know what had changed him. It
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+seemed that for the first time in his life
+his eyes were fully opened; never had
+he seen with such vision; and his feeling
+was so deep, so intense. The whole
+scene was enchantment. It was more
+than reality. <i>He</i> was more than reality.
+The singing of birds far away&mdash;it
+was so crystal sweet, yet he could see
+none. A few yards from him a rivulet
+made its way from somewhere to somewhere.
+He could trace its course by
+the growth of plants which crowded
+its banks and covered it with their
+leaves.</p>
+
+<p>Expectancy weighed heavily on him.
+He was there for a purpose but could
+not say what the purpose was.</p>
+
+<p>All at once as his eyes were fixed on
+the low, green thicket opposite him, he
+saw that it was shaken; something was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+on its way to him. He watched the
+top of the thicket being parted to the
+right and to the left. With a great
+leaping of his heart he waited, motionless
+where he sat on the grass. What
+creature could be coming? Then he
+saw just within the edge of the thicket
+a curious piece of head-gear&mdash;he had
+no knowledge of any such hat. Then
+he saw a gun barrel. Then the hand
+and forearm of a man was thrust forward
+and it pushed the underbrush
+aside; and then there stepped forth into
+the open the figure of a hunter, lean,
+vigorous, tall, athletic. The hunter
+stepped out with a bold stride or two
+and stopped and glanced eagerly around
+with an air of one in a search; he discovered
+Webster and with a look of
+relief stood still and smiled.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There could be no mistake. Webster
+held imprinted on memory from a picture
+those features, those all-seeing
+eyes; it was Wilson&mdash;weaver lad of
+Paisley, wandering peddler youth of the
+grey Scotch mountains, violinist, flutist,
+the poet who had burned his poem
+standing in the public cross, the exile,
+the school teacher for whom the boy
+caught the mouse, the failure who sent
+the drawing to Thomas Jefferson, the
+bold figure in the skiff drifting down the
+Ohio&mdash;the naturalist plunging into the
+Kentucky wilderness and walking to
+Lexington and shivering in White's garret&mdash;the
+great American ornithologist,
+the immortal man.</p>
+
+<p>There he stood: how could it be? It
+was reality yet more than reality.</p>
+
+<p>The hunter walked straight toward
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+him with the light of recognition in his
+eyes. He came and stood before Webster
+and looked down at him with a
+smile:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you found him, Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster strangely heard his own
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I have not found him."</p>
+
+<p>"You have looked long?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have looked everywhere and I
+cannot find him."</p>
+
+<p>The hunter sat down and laid on the
+grass beside him his fowling piece, his
+game bag holding new species of birds,
+and his portfolio of fresh drawings.
+Then he turned upon Webster a searching
+look as if to draw the inmost truth
+out of him and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you look for the Kentucky
+Warbler?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Webster hesitated long:</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," he faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Something in you makes you seek
+him, but you do not know what that
+something is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I do not know what it is: I
+know I wish to find him."</p>
+
+<p>"Not him alone but many other
+things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, many other things."</p>
+
+<p>"The whole wild life of the forest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all the wild things in the forest&mdash;and
+the wild forest itself."</p>
+
+<p>"You wish to know about these
+things&mdash;you wish to know them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to know them."</p>
+
+<p>The hunter searched Webster's countenance
+more keenly, more severely:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence. The forest was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+becoming more wonderful. The singing
+of the unseen birds more silvery
+sweet. It was beyond all reality. Webster
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure."</p>
+
+<p>The hunter hurled questions now
+with no pity:</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be afraid to stay here
+all night alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would not."</p>
+
+<p>"If, during the night, a storm should
+pass over the forest with thunder
+deafening you and lightning flashing
+close to your eyes and trees falling
+everywhere, you would fear for your life
+and that would be natural and wise;
+but would you come again?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would."</p>
+
+<p>"If it were winter and the forest
+were bowed deep with ice and snow
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+and you were alone in it, having lost
+your way, would you cry enough?
+Would you hunt for a fireside and never
+return?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would not."</p>
+
+<p>"You can stand cold and hunger and
+danger and fatigue; can you be patient
+and can you be persevering?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Look long and not find what you
+look for and still not give up?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a little while:
+the mood of the hunter seemed to
+soften:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where you are, Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know where I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not know then, that this
+is the wilderness of your forefathers&mdash;the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+Kentucky pioneers. You have
+wandered back to it."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you read their great story?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you beginning to realise what
+it means to be sprung from such men
+and women?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say."</p>
+
+<p>"But you want to do great things?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I loved them."</p>
+
+<p>The hunter stood up and gathered
+his belongings together. His questions
+had become more kind as though he
+were satisfied. He struck Webster
+on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Come</i>," he said, as with high trust,
+"<i>I will show you the Kentucky warbler.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He looked around and his eyes fell
+upon the forest brook. He walked over
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+to it, to discover in what direction it
+ran and beckoned.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll follow this stream up: the
+spring may not be far away." He
+glanced at the tree-tops: "It is nearly
+noon: the bird will come to the spring
+to drink and to bathe."</p>
+
+<p>Webster followed the hunter as he
+threaded his way through the forest
+toward the source of the brook.</p>
+
+<p>Not many yards off his guide turned:</p>
+
+<p>"There is the spring," he said, pointing
+to a green bank out of which
+bubbled the cool current.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us sit here. Make no movement
+and make no noise."</p>
+
+<p>How tense the stillness! They waited
+and listened. Finally the hunter spoke
+in an undertone:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear that?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Away off in the forest Webster heard
+the song of a bird. Presently it came
+nearer. Now it was nearer still. It
+sounded at last within the thicket just
+above the spring, clear, sweet, bold,
+emphatic notes distinctly repeated at
+short intervals. And then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>There he was&mdash;the Kentucky Warbler!</i></p>
+
+<p>Webster could see every mark of
+identification. The bird had come out
+of the dense growth and showed himself
+on the bough of a sapling about
+twenty feet from the earth, in his grace
+and shapeliness and manly character.
+With a swift, gliding flight downward
+he lighted on a sweeping limb of a tree
+still nearer, within a few inches of the
+ground. Then he dropped to the
+ground and moved about, turning over
+dead leaves. He was only several
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+yards away and Webster could plainly
+trace the yellow line over his eye, the
+blackish crown and black sides of the
+throat, the underparts all of solid yellowish
+gold, the upper parts of olive
+green. An instant later the bird was
+on the wing again, hither, thither, up
+and down, continually in motion. No
+white in the wings, none in the tail
+feathers. Once he stopped and poured
+out his loud, musical song&mdash;unlike any
+other warbler's. A moment later he
+was on the ground again, with a manner
+of self-possession, dignity&mdash;as on
+his namesake soil, Kentucky.</p>
+
+<p>Webster had sat bent over toward
+him, forgetful of everything else. At
+last drawing a deep breath, he looked
+around gratefully, remembering his
+guide.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No one was near him. Webster saw
+the hunter on the edge of the thicket
+yards away; he stood looking back, his
+figure dim, fading. Webster, forgetful
+of the bird, cried out with quick pain:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going away? Am I never
+to see you again?"</p>
+
+<p>The voice that reached him seemed
+scarcely a voice; it was more like an
+echo, close to his ear, of a voice lost
+forever:</p>
+
+<div class="block1">
+<p class="pmb3">"<i>If you ever wish to see me, enter the
+forest of your own heart.</i>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_184.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter IV, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_185.jpg" width="550" height="207" alt="chapter V, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<h2>V<br />
+
+THE ROAD</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_185__initial.jpg" width="100" height="99" alt="W initial" title="" />
+</span>ebster sprang to his feet
+in the depths of the strange
+summer-dark forest: that
+is to say, he awoke with a
+violent start and found himself sitting
+on his bed with his feet hanging over
+one side.</p>
+
+<p>It was late to be getting up. The sun
+already soared above the roof of the
+cottage opposite his window and the
+light slanted in full blaze against his
+shutters. Shafts penetrated some
+weather-loosened slats and fell on his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+head and shoulders and on the wall
+behind him. Breakfast must be nearly
+ready. Fresh cooking odours&mdash;coffee
+odour, meat odour, bread odour&mdash;filled
+the little bathroom-bedroom. Feet were
+hurrying, scurrying, in the kitchen.
+Quieter footsteps approached his door
+along the narrow hall outside and there
+came a tap:</p>
+
+<p>"Breakfast, Webster!"</p>
+
+<p>It was his mother's voice, indulgent,
+peaceful, sweet. He suddenly thought
+that never before had he fully realised
+how sweet it was, had always been, notwithstanding
+he disappointed her.</p>
+
+<p>He got up and went across to open
+his shutters and had taken hold of the
+catch, when he was arrested in his
+movement. At night he tilted the
+shutters, so that the morning sun
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+might not enter crevices and shine
+in his face and awaken him. Now
+looking down through the slats, he
+discovered something going on in the
+yard beneath his window. Elinor had
+come tipping around the corner of
+the cottage. She held one dark little
+witch-like finger unconsciously pressed
+against her tense lips. Her dark eyes
+were brimming with a secret, mischievous
+purpose. A ribbon which looked
+like a huge, crumpled purple morning-glory
+was knotted into the peak of her
+ravenish hair. Her fresh little gown,
+too, suggested the colours of the purple
+morning-glory and her whole presence,
+with a freshness as of dew-drops formed
+amid moonbeams at midnight, somehow
+symbolised that flower which
+surprises us at dawn as having matured
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+its unfolding in the dark: half sinister,
+half innocent.</p>
+
+<p>With cautious, delicate steps, which
+could not possibly have made any noise
+in the grass, she approached the window
+and stopped and lifted the notched
+pole which was used to hold up the
+clothes-line in the back yard. Setting
+the pole on end and planting herself
+beside it, she pushed it with all her
+slight but concentrated strength against
+the window shutters. It struck violently
+and fell over to the grass in one
+direction as Elinor, with the silence of
+a light wind, fled in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Webster stood looking down at it all:
+he understood now: that was the crashing
+sound which had awakened him.</p>
+
+<p>It had been Elinor who had ended
+his dream.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But his dream was not ended. It
+would never end. It was in him to
+stay and it was doing its work. The
+feeling which had surprised him as to
+the sweetness of his mother's voice but
+marked the deeper awakening that
+had taken place in his sleep, an unfolding,
+his natural growth. It was this
+growth that now animated him as he
+smiled at Elinor's flying figure. Her
+prank had not irritated him: no intrigue
+of hers would ever annoy him
+again. Instead, the idea struck him
+that Elinor must be thinking of him
+a great deal, if so much of her life&mdash;incessantly
+active as it was with the
+other children of the cottages&mdash;were
+devoted to plans to worry him. She
+must often have him in mind quite to
+herself, he reflected; and this fresh
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+picture of Elinor's secret brooding
+about him somehow for the first time
+touched him tenderly and finely.</p>
+
+<p>He turned back from the window
+shutters without opening them and
+sat on the edge of his bed. He could
+not shake off his dream. How could
+it possibly be true that there was no
+such forest as he had wandered into
+in his dream&mdash;that Kentucky wilderness
+of the old heroic days? Could
+anything destroy in him the certainty
+that with wildly beating heart he had
+seen the living colours and heard the
+actual notes and watched the characteristic
+movements of the warbler?
+Then, though these things were not
+real, still they were true and would remain
+true always.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, often and to many of us, between
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+closing the curtains of the eyes
+upon the outer world at night and
+drawing them wide in the morning,
+within that closed theatre a stage has
+been erected and we have stepped forth
+and spoken some solitary part or played
+a r&ocirc;le in a drama that leaves us changed
+for the rest of our days. Yesterday an
+old self, today a new self. We have
+been shifted completely away from
+our last foot-prints and our steps move
+off in another direction, taking a truer
+course.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond all else a high, solemn sense
+subdued Webster with the thought,
+that in his sleep he had come near as to
+unearthly things. The long-dead hunter,
+who had appeared to him, spoke as
+though he lived elsewhere than on the
+earth and lived more nobly; his accents,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+the majesty of his countenance, were
+moulded as by higher wisdom and
+goodness. Webster was overwhelmed
+with the feeling that he had been
+brought near the mystery of life and
+death and as from an immortal spirit
+had received his consecration to the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>... He got down on his knees at his
+bedside, after a while, though little
+used to prayer....</p>
+
+<p>When he walked into the breakfast-room
+with a fresh step and freshened
+countenance, probably all were not
+slow to notice the change. Families
+whose lives run along the groove of
+familiar routine quickly observe the
+slightest departure from the customary,
+whether in voice or behaviour, of
+any member. There was response soon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+after his entrance to something in him
+obviously unusual.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," said his father, who had
+laid down his paper to help him to the
+slice which had been put aside, "the
+woods must agree with you"; and he
+even scraped the dish for a little extra
+gravy. Ordinarily, when deeply interested
+in his paper or occasionally
+when conscious of some disappointment
+as to his son, he forgot, or was indifferent
+about, the gravy.</p>
+
+<p>"They do agree with me!" Webster
+replied, laughing and in fresh tones.
+He held out his plate hungrily for his
+slice and he waited for all the gravy
+that might be coming to him.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the boys has already been
+here this morning," said his mother,
+handing him his cup. "They want you
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+to be sure to meet them this afternoon,
+not to fail. You must have been dead
+asleep, for I called you at three different
+times."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you knock three times?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster asked his question with a
+sinking of the heart; what if his mother's
+first knock had awakened him?
+He might never have finished his dream,
+might never have dreamed at all. How
+different the morning might have
+been, how different the world&mdash;if his
+mother had awakened him before his
+dream!</p>
+
+<p>He received his cup from her and
+smiled at her:</p>
+
+<p>"I was dreaming," he said, and he
+smiled also at the safety of his vision.</p>
+
+<p>Elinor, sitting opposite him, had
+said nothing. She had finished her
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+breakfast before he had come in and
+plainly lingered till he should enter.
+Since his entrance she had sat restless
+in her chair, toying with her fork or her
+napkin, and humming significantly to
+herself. She had this habit. "You
+must not sing at the table, Elinor," her
+mother had once said. "I am <i>not</i> singing,"
+Elinor had replied, "I am humming
+to myself, and <i>no</i> one is supposed
+to listen." Meantime this morning, her
+quickly shifting eyes would sweep his
+face questioningly; she must have been
+waiting for some sign as to what had
+been the effect of the Thomas Jefferson
+bluejay the night before and of the
+repeated attack on his window shutters.</p>
+
+<p>Often when out of humour with her
+he had declined to notice her at table;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+now once, when he caught her searching
+glance, he smiled. Dubiously, half
+with disbelief and half with amazement,
+she looked steadily back at him
+for an instant; then she slipped confusedly
+from her seat and was gone.
+Webster laughed within himself: "what
+will she be up to next?" he thought.</p>
+
+<p>It was quiet now at the table: his
+father had gone back to his paper, his
+mother was eating the last of her
+breakfast fruit, and perhaps, thinking
+that out in the country things were
+getting ripe. After an interval Webster
+broke the silence: he was white
+with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," he said quietly, "I have
+decided what I'd like to do."</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father dropped his paper:
+Webster's mother's eyes were on him.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+The years had waited for this moment,
+the future depended upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"If you and mother do not need me
+for anything else just yet, I'd like to
+work my way through the University.
+But if there's something different you'd
+rather I'd do, or if you both want me
+in any other way, I am here."</p>
+
+<p>"My son," exclaimed his father,
+rudely with the back of his hand brushing
+away a tear that rolled down his
+cheek&mdash;a tear perhaps started by something
+in his son's words that brought
+back his own hard boyhood, "your
+father is here to work for you as long
+as he is alive and able. Your mother
+and I are glad&mdash;!" but he, got no further:
+his eyes had filled and his voice
+choked him.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother stood beside him,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+her hand on his head, her handkerchief
+pressed to her eyes.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When he had made his preparations
+for the glad day's adventure and
+stepped out on the front porch, his
+father had gone to the bank, his mother
+was in the kitchen. Elinor was sitting
+on the top step. Her back was turned.
+Her sharp little elbows rested on her
+knees and her face was propped in her
+palms. Her figure again suggested a
+crumpled, purple morning-glory&mdash;fragile,
+not threatened by any human
+violence but imperilled by nature.</p>
+
+<p>She did not look around as he
+stepped out or move as he passed down.
+He felt a new wish to say something
+pleasant but could not quite so conquer
+himself. As he laid his hand on the yard
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+gate, he was stopped by these words,
+reaching his ears from the porch:</p>
+
+<p>"Take me with you!"</p>
+
+<p>He could not believe his ears. Could
+this be Elinor, his tease, his torment?
+This wounded appeal, timid pleading&mdash;could
+it proceed from Elinor? He
+was thrown off his balance and too
+surprised to act. The words were
+repeated more beseechingly, wistfully:</p>
+
+<p>"Take me with you, will you, Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>For now that she had given herself
+away to him, he might as well see
+everything: that at last she was openly
+begging that she be admitted to a share
+in his plans and pleasures, that he no
+longer disdain to play with her.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with rough embarrassment
+over his shoulder:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You can't go today. Nobody can
+go today. I'm going miles out into
+the country to the woods."</p>
+
+<p>"But some day will you take me
+over into the woods yonder?"</p>
+
+<p>After a while he turned toward her:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much. Thank
+you very much, indeed, Webster!"</p>
+
+<p>The tide of feeling began to rush
+toward her:</p>
+
+<p>"There are some wild violets over
+there, Elinor, wild blue violets and
+wild white violets&mdash;thick beds of them
+in the shade."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how lovely!" She clasped her
+hands and knotted them tensely under
+her chin and kept her eyes fixed more
+hopefully on him.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a flock of the funniest little
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+fairies dancing under one of the big
+forest trees, each carrying the queerest
+little green parasol."</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I found one little cedar tree.
+If they'll let us, I'll dig it up and bring
+it home and plant it in the front yard.
+It will be your own cedar tree, Elinor."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Webster! Could anything be
+more lovely of you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You and I and Jenny will go some
+day soon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no!" cried Elinor, stamping
+her feet fiercely and wringing her
+hands. "I don't want Jenny to go!
+I won't have Jenny! Just you and I!
+Not Jenny! Just you and I!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then just you and I," he said,
+smiling at her and moving away.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wait!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She darted down the steps and ran
+to him and drew his face over and laid
+her cheek against his cheek, clinging
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>He struggled to get away, laughing
+with his new happiness: tears welled
+out of her eyes with hers.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Webster had taken to the turnpike.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was cool, the blue of
+the sky vast, tender, noble. Rain during
+the night had left the atmosphere
+fresh and clear and the pike dustless.
+Little knobs of the bluish limestone
+jutted out. The greyish grass and
+weeds on each side had been washed
+till they looked green again.</p>
+
+<p>The pike climbed a hill and from
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+this hilltop he turned and looked back.
+He could see the packed outskirts of
+the city and away over in the heart of
+it church spires rising here and there.
+The heart of it had once been the green
+valley through which a stream of the
+wilderness ran: there Wilson had seen
+the water mills and the gallows for
+hanging Kentuckians and the thousand
+hitched horses and folks sitting
+on the public square selling cakes of
+maple sugar and split squirrels.</p>
+
+<p>Soon he passed the pasture where
+he had spent yesterday. That had
+done well enough as a beginning: today
+he would go further. He remembered
+many things he had seen in the park-like
+bluegrass woods. Sweet to his ear
+sounded the call of bobwhite from the
+yellow grain. He wondered whether
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+the ailing young crows in the tree-tops
+had at last taken all their medicine.
+The curious bird which had watched
+him out of a hole in the tree-trunk&mdash;the
+chap with the black band across
+his chest and the speckled jacket and
+the red cap on the back of his head,
+was he still on the lookout? What had
+become of the gorgeous little velvet
+coach that had travelled across the
+back of his hand on its unknown road?
+And that mystery of the high leaves&mdash;that
+wandering disembodied voice:
+<i>Se-u-re? Se-u-u.</i> Did it still haunt
+the waving boughs?</p>
+
+<p>But miles on ahead in the country,
+undergrowth, shade, secrecy for wild
+creatures&mdash;his heart leaped forward
+to these and his feet hastened.</p>
+
+<p>This day with both eyes open, not
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+shut in sleep, he might find the warbler.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">Whole-heartedly, with a boy's eagerness,
+Webster suddenly took off his
+hat and ran down the middle of the
+gleaming white turnpike toward the
+green forest&mdash;toward all, whether much
+or little, that he was ever to be.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_205.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter V, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 140px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_206.jpg" width="140" height="141" alt="decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<p class="center font09 pmb3">
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS<br />
+GARDEN CITY, N.Y.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 46905 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #46905 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46905)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Kentucky Warbler, by James Lane Allen
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Kentucky Warbler
+
+
+Author: James Lane Allen
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 19, 2014  [eBook #46905]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KENTUCKY WARBLER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Matthias Grammel, Greg Bergquist, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(https://archive.org/details/americana)
+
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+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 46905-h.htm or 46905-h.zip:
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+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46905/46905-h.zip)
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE KENTUCKY WARBLER
+
+
+[Illustration: "THERE HE WAS--THE KENTUCKY WARBLER!"]
+
+
+THE KENTUCKY WARBLER
+
+by
+
+JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+[Illustration: logo]
+
+
+        _When the population of this immense Western
+      Republic will have diffused itself over every acre of
+      ground fit for the comfortable habitation of man,
+      ... then not a warbler shall flit through our
+      thickets, but its name, its notes, its habits will be
+      familiar to all--repeated in their sayings and
+      celebrated in their village songs._
+                                      --ALEXANDER WILSON
+
+With a Frontispiece in Colour
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City    New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1918
+
+Copyright, 1918, by
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved, Including That of
+Translation into Foreign Languages,
+Including the Scandinavian
+
+
+
+
+                                TO
+                        THE YOUNG KENTUCKY
+                           FOREST-LOVER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                            PAGE
+
+    CHAPTER I
+        HOME                   3
+
+    CHAPTER II
+        SCHOOL                45
+
+    CHAPTER III
+        FOREST               100
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+        BIRD                 161
+
+    CHAPTER V
+        ROAD                 175
+
+
+
+
+                            THE KENTUCKY
+
+                               WARBLER
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter I--title decoration]
+
+
+I
+
+THE HOME
+
+
+Webster, along with thousands of other lusty forward-looking Kentucky
+children, went to the crowded public schools.
+
+There every morning against his will but with the connivance of his
+parents he was made a prisoner, as it seemed to him, and for long hours
+held as such while many things disagreeable or unnecessary, some by
+one teacher and some by another, were forced into his head. Soon after
+they were forced in most of the things disappeared from the head. What
+became of them nobody knew: Webster didn't know and he didn't care.
+During the forcing-in process month by month and year by year he now
+and then picked up a pleasant idea for himself, some wonderful idea
+about great things on ahead in life or about the tempting world just
+outside school. He picked up such ideas with ease and eagerness and
+held on to them.
+
+He lived in a small white-frame cottage which was rather new but
+already looked rather old. It stood in a small green yard, which was
+naturally very old but still looked young. The still-young yard and the
+already-ageing cottage were to be found--should anybody have tried to
+find them--on the rim of the city. If the architectural plan of the
+city had been mapped out as an open-air theatre, the cottage would have
+been a rear seat in the very last row at the very lowest price. The
+block was made up of such cottages--rear seats. They faced the city but
+couldn't see the city, couldn't see anything worth seeing, and might as
+well have looked in some other direction or not looked at all.
+
+If Webster stepped out of the front door, he was within five yards of
+the outmost thoroughfare--native dirt-road for milk wagons, butchers'
+wagons, coal carts, and fruit-and-berry wagons. Webster's father
+kept an especial eye on the coal carts: they weighed heavily on his
+salary. Webster's mother kept her eye on the fruit-and-berry wagons:
+they tantalised her passion for preserves. Everybody kept uneasy eyes
+on milk and butchers' and vegetable wagons, which brought expensive
+satisfaction to appetites for three meals a day. The edges of the
+thoroughfare were paths for the cottagers, all of whom walked and
+were glad and grateful even to be able to walk. The visitors of the
+cottagers walked. Everybody walked but the drivers. The French would
+have called the street The Avenue of Soles.
+
+One wet winter morning as Webster, walking beside his father, lifted
+his feet out of the mud and felt sorry about their shoes, he complained
+because there was no pavement.
+
+"My son," replied his father, whose remarks on any subject appeared
+to come out of a clear sky, so unclouded were they by uncertainty,
+"my son, your father's salary is not a paved-sidewalk salary. The mud
+on your shoes is in an inverse ratio to the funds in his pockets. I
+believe you have learned in your arithmetic at school by this time what
+ratio is."
+
+One dry summer morning as Webster walked beside his father, a butcher's
+wagon whirled past and covered them quickly with dust. He considered
+this injury to their best clothes and complained because there was no
+watering-cart.
+
+"My son," replied his father out of his daily clear sky, "my salary is
+not a watering-cart salary. The presence of the earth's dust in your
+eyes exactly equals the lack of gold-dust in your father's earthly
+account. I believe by this time you have studied equations."
+
+But if Webster had stepped out of the back door of the cottage and
+passed under the clothes-line which was held up at its middle point
+by a forked pole, if he had crossed their very small vegetable garden
+and then had crossed a wide deep cow-lot where some rich man of the
+city pastured his fat milk cows, he would have been on the edge of the
+country. It was possible for one standing on the rear porch to see all
+summer thick, softly waving woods.
+
+Within the past two or three years, as summer had come again and the
+world turned green, a change had taken place in Webster, a growth. More
+and more he began to look from the porch or windows at those distant
+massed trees. Something from them seemed to cross over to him, an
+influence powerful and compelling; it drew him out of the house back
+with it into the mystery of the forest and he never returned.
+
+In truth, almost as soon as he could go anywhere he had started toward
+the forest without asking permission. They had overtaken him then
+and dragged him back. When he was old enough to understand, they had
+explained: he was too young, he would get lost, the bull would hook him.
+
+"But why?" Webster had asked, complaining of this new injustice in the
+world. He was perpetually being surprised that so many things in the
+world were bent on getting one into trouble; all around him things
+seemed to be waiting to make trouble. "Why should the bull hook _me_?
+_I've_ done nothing to _the bull_."
+
+They were about finishing breakfast. He was eating in his slow ruminant
+way--he ate enormously but never hungrily. His father, whose custom it
+was to divide the last half of his breakfast with the first half of his
+newspaper, lowered the paper and looked over the top.
+
+"My son," he said, "the bull has horns. Every living creature is bound
+to use everything it has. Use what you have or lose what you have--that
+is the terrible law in this world. Therefore the bull is obliged to
+hook what he can to keep his horns going. If you give him the chance,
+he will practise them on you. Otherwise his great-great-grandson might
+not have any horns when he really needed them. Do you understand?"
+
+"No," said Webster.
+
+"I'll explain again when you are mature enough to comprehend," said his
+father, returning to his paper.
+
+Webster returned to the subject.
+
+"If I ever have any money in my pocket, you always tell me not to spend
+it: now you say I ought to use whatever I have."
+
+His father quickly lowered his paper and raised his voice:
+
+"I have never said that you must use everything all at once, my son.
+You must learn to use it at the right time."
+
+"When _is_ the right time to use a thing?" asked Webster, eating
+quietly on.
+
+"I'll answer that question when it is necessary," his father replied
+grumblingly from behind his paper, putting an end to the disturbance.
+
+A few weeks prior to this breakfast-scene Webster one day at recess had
+laid bare a trouble in himself, confiding it to one of his intimate
+school-mates. He did so with a tone of uncertainty, for he was not sure
+but he was not being disloyal.
+
+"Can _your_ father answer all the questions _you_ ask _him_?"
+
+"Not half of them!" exclaimed the comrade with splendid candour--"Not
+half!"
+
+"My father answers very few _I_ ask _him_," interposed a fragile little
+white-faced fellow who had strolled up in time to catch the drift of
+the confidential talk. He did not appear strong enough even to put a
+question: he nursed a ragged ball, had lost a front tooth, and gave off
+the general skim-milk look which some children carry about with them.
+
+Webster, without inquiring further, began to feel a new respect for
+himself as not being worse off than other boys as to fathers; also a
+new respect for his father as not being worse than his class: fathers
+were deficient!
+
+Remembering this discovery at school--one of the big pleasant ideas
+he picked up outside lessons--he did not on the morning in question
+press his father more closely as to using horns when you have them and
+not using money when you have it. In fact, he was already beginning
+to shield his father and had quite ceased to interrogate him in
+company, lest he expose some ignorance. He therefore credited this
+incident where it belonged: as a part of his growing knowledge that
+he couldn't look to his father for any great help on things that
+puzzled him--fathers, as had been said, being deficient, though always
+contriving to look so proficient that from merely surveying them you
+would never suspect the truth.
+
+Webster's father was a minor bookkeeper in one of the city's minor
+banks. Like his bankbooks, he was always perfectly balanced, perfectly
+behaved; and he was also perfectly bald. Even his baldness might have
+been credited to him as one of the triumphs of exact calculation:
+the baldness of one side being exactly equal to the baldness of the
+other: hardly a hair on either exposure stood out as an unaccounted-for
+remainder.
+
+Webster thought of his father as having worked at nothing but
+arithmetic for nearly forty years. Sometimes it became a kind of
+disgust to him to remember this: as was his custom when displeased at
+anything he grew contemptuous. In one of his contemptuous moments he
+one day asked:
+
+"How many times have you made the figure 2?"
+
+"Three quadrillion times, my son," replied his father with perfect
+accuracy and a spirit of hourly freshness. His father went on:
+
+"The same number of times for all of them. When you're in the
+thousands, you may think one or the other figure is ahead, but when you
+get well on into the millions, there isn't any difference: they are
+neck and neck."
+
+This subject of arithmetic was the sorest that father and son could
+have broached: perhaps that was the reason why neither could get away
+from it. The family lived on arithmetic or off it--had married on it,
+were born unto it, were fed by it, housed and heated by it, ventilated
+and cooled by it. Webster's father's knowledge of arithmetic had
+marched at the head of the family as they made their way through time
+and trouble like music. It had been a lifelong bugle-blast of correct
+numerals.
+
+Hence the terrible disappointment: after Webster had been at school
+long enough for grading to begin to come home as to what faculties
+he possessed and the progress he made, his parents discovered to
+their terror and shame that he was good in nothing and least good in
+arithmetic. It was like a child's turning against his own bread and
+butter and shirt and shoes. To his father it meant a clear family
+breakdown. The moment had come to him which, in unlike ways, comes to
+many a father when he feels obliged to say: "This is no son of mine."
+
+In reality, Webster's father had had somewhat that feeling from the
+first. When summoned and permitted, he had tipped into the room on the
+day of Webster's birth and taken a father's anxious defensive look. He
+had turned off with a gesture of repudiation but of the deepest respect:
+
+"No such head and countenance ever descended to him from me! We must
+be square with him from the start! I place to his credit the name of
+Daniel Webster. His mother, instead of admiring her husband, had been
+gazing too fondly at the steel engraving of the statesman over the
+mantelpiece in the parlour."
+
+When Webster was several years old, one day during a meal--nobody knew
+just what brought forth the question--he asked:
+
+"Why was I named Webster?"
+
+His father answered:
+
+"Because you looked like him."
+
+Webster got up quietly and went into the parlour and quietly returned
+to his seat at table:
+
+"No, I don't look like him," he said.
+
+"You looked like him the day you were born, my son. Any resemblance to
+Daniel Webster is apt to become less and less. Finally, you don't look
+like him any more. In the United States Senate nowadays, for instance,
+there isn't a trace of resemblance left anywhere. Senators at present
+look more like me and you know what that means: it means that nobody
+need feel obliged to think of Daniel Webster!"
+
+That birthday jest--that he was not quite entitled to the nativity
+of his own son, an uneasiness perhaps inherited by fathers from the
+rudimentary marriages of primitive society--was but a jest then.
+It gradually took on serious meaning as his son grew further away
+from him with each year of growth. The bad passing of the arithmetic
+milestone had brought the worst distinct shock. Still, even that left
+Webster's father perfectly balanced, perfectly behaved: he remained
+proud of his unlike offspring, fed and clothed him, and was fond of him.
+
+There is a bare possibility also that in Webster he saw the only chance
+to risk part of his salary in secret speculation. Nearly everybody
+in the town gambled on something. The bank did not favour the idea
+that its employees should enjoy any such monetary pastime. But even a
+bank cannot prevent a father from betting on his own son if he keeps
+the indiscretion to himself. Thus it is barely possible that, in the
+language of the country, Webster's father took chances on Webster as a
+winning colt on some unknown track, if he should ever take a notion to
+run! Why not bet, if it cost the same as not to bet: at least you had
+the excitement?
+
+Webster on his part grew more and more into the belief that his father
+not only could not answer his questions but--what was of far greater
+consequence--did not open up before him any path in life. His first
+natural and warm desire had been to imitate his father, to follow in
+his footsteps: slowly he discovered that his father did not have any
+footsteps, he made no path. His affection still encircled his father
+like a pair of arms; his eyes had completely abandoned him as a
+sign-post on life's road.
+
+Mothers often open up roads for their sons or point them out, but
+Webster could not look to his mother for one unless he had wished to
+take a short road to an uneventful past. The kind of a mother she was
+resulted from the kind of a wife she was. She had taken her husband's
+arm at marriage to keep step at his side through life. Had he moved
+forward, she would have moved forward. Since he did not advance, but in
+his life-work represented a kind of perpetual motion without progress,
+she stayed by him and busied herself with multifarious daily little
+motions of her own. Her roadless life had one main path of memory. That
+led her backward to a large orchard and garden and yard out in the
+country, filled with fruit trees and berry-bearing bushes and vines.
+She, now a middle-aged wife and mother, was a sentimental calendar
+of far-away things "just ripe." The procession of fruit-and-berry
+wagons past the cottage from May to October had upon her the effect
+of an acute exacerbation of this chronic lament. The street cry of a
+vendor, no matter how urgent her duty anywhere in the cottage at the
+moment, brought her to a front window or to the front porch or even
+swept her out to the front gate, to gratify her eyes with memories and
+pay her respects to the impossible. She inquired the cost of so much
+and bought so little that the drivers, who are keen and unfavourable
+judges of human nature, when they met at cross streets and compared
+notes--the disappointed, exasperated drivers named her _Mrs. Price_:
+though one insisted upon calling her _Lady Not-Today_. Whenever at the
+bottom of her pocketbook she found spare change for a box of brilliant,
+transparent red cherries, she bore it into the cottage as rapaciously
+as some miser of jewels might have carried off a casket of rubies. Thus
+you could almost have said that Webster had been born of arithmetic and
+preserves. Still, his life with his father and mother was wholesome and
+affectionate and peaceful--an existence bounded by the horizon of the
+day.
+
+His boyhood certainly had no wide field of vision, no distant horizon,
+as regards his sleeping quarters. In building the cottage a bathroom
+on the first floor had been added to one side of it as a last luxurious
+afterthought. If you stood before the cottage and looked it squarely
+in the face, the bathroom protruded on one side like a badly swollen
+jaw. The building-plan when worked out, had involved expense beyond
+the calculation, as usually happens, and this had threatened the
+Salary: the extra bath, therefore, remained unrealised. Webster
+always asked at least one question about everything new and untried,
+and when old enough to be put there to sleep, he had looked around
+the cramped enclosure and inquired why it had been built. Thus he
+learned that in the family he had now taken the place of the Bath That
+Failed. It caused him a queer feeling as to his general repute in the
+neighbourhood that the very sight of him might bring to any observer's
+mind thoughts of a missing tub.
+
+His window opened upon a few feet of yard. Just over the fence was the
+kitchen window of the cottage next in the row. When that window was
+open, Webster had to see the kitchen table and the preparation for
+meals. He violently disliked the sight of the preparations. If the
+window was closed, tidings as to what was going on reached him through
+another sense; his bedroom-bathroom became as a whispering gallery
+of cooking odours. But their own kitchen was just across a narrow
+hall, and fragrances from it occasionally mingled with those from the
+kitchen over the fence. Made hungry by nasal intelligence of something
+appetising, Webster would sometimes hurriedly dress and follow his
+pointer into the breakfast room, only to find that he was on a false
+trail: what he had expected to get his share of was being consumed by
+the family next door. He no longer had confidence, so to speak, in his
+own nose--not as a leading authority on meals to be eaten by him.
+
+One beautiful use his window had, one glorious use, one enchantment.
+In the depth of winter sometimes of mornings when he got out of bed
+and went to open the shutter, on the window panes would be a forest
+of glittering trees. The first time he beheld such a forest, he stood
+before it spell-bound: wondering whether there were silvery birds
+singing far off amid the silvery boughs and what wild frost-creatures
+crouched in the tall stiff frost-grass. From the ice-forests on his
+window panes his thoughts always returned to the green summer forest on
+the distant horizon.
+
+The pest of his existence at home was Elinor--a year younger but much
+older in her ways: to Webster she was as old as Mischief, as old as
+Evil. For Elinor had early fastened herself upon his existence as a
+tease. She laughed at him, ridiculed his remarks, especially when he
+thought them wise, dragged down everything in him. As they sat at table
+and he launched out upon any subject with his father--quite in the
+manner of one gentleman indulging his intellect with another gentleman
+over their rich viands--Elinor went away up into a little gallery of
+her own and tried to boo him off the stage. His father and mother did
+not at times conceal their amusement at Elinor's boo's. He sometimes
+broke out savagely at her, which only made her worse. His mother, who
+was not without gentle firmness and a saving measure of good sense, one
+day disapproved of his temper and remarked advisedly to him, Elinor
+having fled after a victory over him:
+
+"Elinor teases you because she sees that it annoys you. She ought to
+keep on teasing you till you stop being annoyed. When she sees that she
+can't tease you, she'll stop trying."
+
+That was all very well: but one day he teased Elinor. She puckered up
+and began to cry and his mother said quickly:
+
+"Don't do that, Webster."
+
+Then besides: a few years before he had one day overheard his mother
+persuading his father that Elinor must not be sent to the public school.
+
+"I want her to go to a private school. She has such a difficult
+disposition, it will require delicate attention. The teachers haven't
+time to give her that patient attention in the public schools."
+
+"My dear," Elinor's father had replied, shaking his head, "your
+husband's salary is not a private-school salary. It also has a
+difficult disposition, it also requires the most careful watching!"
+
+"The cost will be more but she must go. Some extra expense will be
+unavoidable even for her clothing but I'll take that out of _my_
+clothes."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind! If Elinor has a difficult
+disposition, she gets it from Elinor's father; for _he_ had one once,
+thank God! He had it until he went into the bank. But a bank takes
+every kind of disposition out of you, good or bad. After you've been
+in a bank so many years, you haven't any more disposition. Only the
+president of a bank enjoys the right to have a disposition. All the
+rest of us are mere habits--certain habits on uncertain salaries. Let
+Elinor go to her select school and I'll go a little more ragged. The
+outside world thinks it a bank joke when they look through the windows
+and see bank clerks at work in ragged coats: instead they know better.
+Let Elinor go and let the damages fall on her father. He will be glad
+to take the extra cost off his own back as a tribute to his unbanked
+boyhood. I hope you noticed my pun--my dooble intender."
+
+Thus Elinor was sent to the most select private school of the city.
+Webster weighed the matter on the scales of boyish justice. If you had
+a bad disposition, you were rewarded by being better dressed and being
+sent to the best school; if you had a good disposition, you dressed
+plainly and went to the public school. What ought he to do about his
+own disposition? Why not turn it into a bad one? It was among Webster's
+bewilderments that he was so poorly off as not to be able to muster a
+troublesome enough disposition to be sent to one of the city's select
+private schools for boys: he should very much have liked to go!
+
+"I go to a private school because I am _nice_," Elinor had boasted to
+him one morning. She was sitting on the front steps as he came out on
+his way to school, and she looked very dainty and very charming--a
+dark, wiry, fiery, restless little creature, and at the moment a bit of
+brilliant decoration. "And I get nice marks," she added pointedly.
+
+He paused to make a quietly contemptuous reply.
+
+"Of course you get nice marks: that's what private schools are for--to
+give everybody nice marks. If you went to the public school, you'd get
+what you deserved."
+
+"Then you seem to deserve very little," said Elinor, smoothing a lock
+of her black hair over one ear.
+
+His rage burst out at her deadly thrust:
+
+"You go to a private school because you are a little devil," he said.
+
+"Why don't you be a little devil too?" inquired Elinor, her bright eyes
+mocking him. "Can't you be a little devil too?"
+
+He jerked the strap tighter around his battered books:
+
+"If you were in the public schools, they wouldn't put up with you.
+They'd send you home or they'd break you in."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Elinor, with an encouraging smile, "they seem
+to get along with you very well."
+
+Webster knew that Elinor's teasing, ridiculing eyes followed him as he
+walked away. They became part of the things that cheapened him in his
+life. When he had passed through the front gate, he started off in a
+direction which was not the direction to school.
+
+Elinor sang out shrilly:
+
+"I know where you are going. But it's of no use. Jenny's sweetheart
+goes to a private school and he stands well in his classes."
+
+He walked on, but turned his face toward her:
+
+"It's none of _your_ meddlesome business, you little black scorpion,"
+he said quietly.
+
+With an upward bound of his nature he thought of Jenny, a very
+different sort of girl.
+
+Jenny lived in the largest cottage of the block, at the better of the
+two corners. The families visited intimately. Jenny's father was a coal
+merchant and Webster's father bought his coal of Jenny's father. A
+grocer lived in the middle of the block: he bought supplies from that
+grocer. "If you can," he said, "deal with your neighbours. It will
+make them more careful: they won't dare ...!" On the contrary, Jenny's
+father did not deposit his cheques in Webster's father's bank. "Don't
+do your business with a neighbour," he said. "Neighbours pry."
+
+Jenny represented in Webster's life the masculine awakening of his
+nature toward womankind. In the white light of that general dawn, she
+stood revealed but not recognised. A little thing had happened, the
+summer previous, which was of common interest to them. In a corner of
+Jenny's yard grew a locust tree, not a full forest-sized locust tree
+but still quite a respectable locust tree for its place and advantages.
+All around the trunk and up the trunk clambered the trumpet-vine.
+Several yards from the earth some of the branches bent over and spread
+out as a roof for a little arbour--Jenny's summer play-house.
+
+One dewy morning Jenny had first noticed a humming-bird hovering about
+the blossoms. She did not know that it was the ruby-throat, seeking
+the trumpet-vine where Audubon painted him. She only knew that she was
+excited and delighted. She told Webster.
+
+"If he comes back, run and tell me, will you, Jenny?" he pleaded, with
+some strange new joy in him. Several times she had run and summoned
+him; and the two children, unconsciously drawing nearer to each other,
+and hand in hand watched the ruby-throat hovering about the adopted
+flower of the State.
+
+The distant green forest and the locust tree with the trumpet-vine and
+the humming-bird--these, though distant from one another, became in
+Webster's mind part of something deep and powerful in his life, toward
+which he was moving.
+
+If no road opened before him at home, none opened at school. He would
+gladly have quit any day. He tried to make lessons appear worse than
+they were in order to justify himself in his philosophy of contempt
+and rejection.
+
+When any two old ladies met on the street, he argued, they did not
+begin to parse as fast as possible at each other. Old gentlemen of the
+city did not walk up and down with books glued to their noses, trying
+to memorise things they would rather forget. When people went to the
+library for delightful books to read, nobody took home arithmetics and
+geographies. There wasn't a grown person in the city who cared what
+bounded Indiana on the north or if all the creeks in Maine emptied into
+the mouths of school teachers. In church, when the minister climbed to
+the pulpit, the congregation didn't begin to examine him in history.
+They didn't even examine him in the Bible; he couldn't have stood the
+examination if they had. In the court-room, at the fair, at the races,
+at the theatre, when you were born, when you were playing, when you had
+a sweetheart, when you married, when you were a father, when you were
+sick, when you were in any way happy or unhappy, when you were dying,
+when you were dead and buried and forgotten, nobody called for school
+books.
+
+Webster, nevertheless, both at home and at school made his impression.
+No one could have defined the nature of the impression but every one
+knew he made it. If he failed at his lessons, his teachers were not
+angry; they looked mortified and said as little as possible and all
+the while pushed him along by hook or crook, until at last they had
+smuggled him into high school--the final heaven of the whole torment.
+
+The impression upon his school fellows was likewise strongly in his
+favour. Toward the close of each session there was intense struggle and
+strain for the highest mark in class and the next highest and the next.
+When the nerve-racking race was over and everybody had time to look
+around and inquire for Webster, they could see him cantering quietly
+down the home stretch, unmindful of the good-natured jeers that greeted
+his arrival: he had gone over the course, he had not run. As soon as
+they were out of doors in a game, Webster stepped to the front. Those
+who had just outstripped him now followed him.
+
+Roadless parents--a child looking for its road in life! That is
+Nature's plan to stop imitation, to block the roads of parents to
+their children, and force these into new paths for the development
+of the individual and of the race. And in what other country is that
+spectacle so common as in our American democracy, where progress is
+so swift and the future so vast and untrod and untried that nearly
+every generation in thousands of cottages represents a revolt and a
+revolution of children against their parents, their work and their
+ways? But Webster's father and mother were not philosophers as to how
+Nature works out her plan through our American democracy: they merely
+had their parental apprehensions and confidentially discussed these.
+What would Webster be, would he ever be anything? He would finish at
+high school this year and it was time to decide.
+
+A son of the grocer in the block had made an unexpected upward stride
+in life and surprised all the cottagers. Webster's father and mother
+took care to bring this meritorious example to their son's attention.
+
+"What are _you_ going to be, Webster?" his mother asked one morning at
+breakfast, looking understandingly at Webster's father.
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to be," Webster had replied unconcernedly.
+"I know I'm not going to be what _he_ is!"
+
+"It would never do to try to force him," his father said later. "Not
+_him_. Besides, think of a couple of American parents undertaking to
+force their children to do anything--_any_ children! We'll have to wait
+a while longer. If he's never to be anything, of course forcing could
+never make him into something. It would certainly bring on a family
+disturbance and the family disturbance would be sure to get on my
+nerves at the bank and I might make mistakes in my figures."
+
+Then in the April of that year, about the time the woods were turning
+green and he began to look toward them with the old longing now grown
+stronger, a great thing happened to Webster.
+
+[Illustration: chapter I--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter II--title decoration]
+
+
+II
+
+THE SCHOOL
+
+
+One clear morning of that budding month of April, a professor from one
+of the two institutions of learning in the city stood before the pupils
+of the high school.
+
+He was there to fulfill his part of an experimental plan which, through
+the courtesy of all concerned, had been started upon its course at
+the opening of the session the previous autumn: that members of the
+two faculties should be asked to be good enough to come--some one of
+them once each month--and address the school on some pleasant field or
+by-field of university work, where learning at last meets life. That
+is, each professor was requested to appear before the ravenous pupils
+of the high school with a basket of ripe fruit from his promised land
+of knowledge and to distribute these as samples from an orchard which
+each pupil, if he but chose, could some day own for himself. Or if he
+could not quite bring anything so luscious and graspable as fruit, he
+might at least stand in their full view on the boundary of his kingdom
+and mark out, across that dubious Common which lies between high school
+and college, a path that would lead a boy straight to some one of the
+world's great highways of knowledge.
+
+Eight professors had courteously responded to this invitation and had
+disclosed eight splendid roadways of the world's study. The Latin
+professor had opened up his colossal Roman-built highway with its
+pictures of the ages when all the world's thoroughfares led to Rome.
+The professor of Greek had disclosed the longer path which leads back
+to Hellas with its frieze of youth in eternal snow. The professor of
+Astronomy had taken his band of listeners forth into the immensities
+of roadless space and had all but lost them and the poor little earth
+itself in the coming and going of myriads of entangled stars. Eight
+professors had come, eight professors had gone, it was now April, a
+professor of Geology, as next to the last lecturer, stood before them.
+
+Interest in the lectures had steadily mounted from the first and
+was now at highest pitch. He faced an audience eager, intelligent,
+respectful and grateful. On their part they consented that the man
+before them embodied what he had come to teach--the blending of life
+and learning. Plainly the study of the earth's rocks had not hardened
+him, acquaintance with fossils had not left him a human fossil. And he
+hid the number of his years within the sap of living sympathies as a
+tree hides the notation of its years within the bark.
+
+Letting his eyes wander over them silently for a moment, he began
+without waste of a word--a straightforward and powerful personality.
+
+"I am going to speak to you boys about a boy who never reached high
+school. I want you to watch how that boy's life, first seen in the
+distance through mist and snow and storm as a faint glimmering spark,
+rudely blown upon by the winds of misfortune, endangered and all but
+ready to go out--I want you to watch how that endangered spark of a
+boy's life slowly begins to brighten in the distance, to grow stronger,
+and finally to draw nearer and nearer until at last it shines as a
+great light about you here in this very place. Watch, I say, how a
+troubled ray, low on life's horizon, at last becomes a star in the
+world of men, high fixed and resplendent--to be seen by human eyes as
+long as there shall be human eyes to see anything."
+
+He saw that he had caught their attention. Their sympathy reacted upon
+him.
+
+"Before I speak of the boy I wish to speak of a book. I hope all of you
+have read one of the very beautiful stories of English literature by
+George Eliot called _Silas Marner_. If you have, none of you will ever
+forget that Silas Marner belonged to a class of pallid, undersized men
+who, a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, under pressure upon
+the centres of population in England and through competition of trade,
+were driven out of the towns into the country. There, as strangers,
+as alien-looking remnants of a discredited race, there in districts
+far away among the lanes or in the deep bosom of the hills, perhaps
+an hour's ride from any turnpike or beyond the faint sound of the
+coach-horn, they spent their lives as obscure weavers and peddlers.
+
+"You will never forget George Eliot's vivid, powerful, touching picture
+of Silas Marner at work in a little stone cottage near a deserted
+stone pit, amid the nut-bearing hedgerows of the village of Raveloe.
+When the schoolboys of the village came to the hedges in autumn to
+gather nuts or in spring to look for bird-nests--you boys still do
+that, I hope--when they came and heard the uncanny sound of the loom,
+so unlike that of the familiar flail on threshing floors, they would
+crowd around the windows and peep in at the weaver in his treadmill
+attitude, weaving like a solitary spider month after month and year
+after year his endless web. Silas Marner, pausing in his work to
+adjust some trouble in his thread and discovering them and annoyed by
+the intrusion, would descend from the loom and come to his door and
+gaze out at them with his strange, blurred, protuberant eyes; for he
+was so near-sighted that he could see distinctly only objects close to
+him, such as his thread, his shuttle, his loom.
+
+"If for a few days the sound of the loom stopped, it was because the
+weaver, with his pack on his feeble shoulders, was away on journeys
+through fields and lanes to deliver his linen to those who had ordered
+it or who might haply buy.
+
+"The village of Raveloe, as you remember, lay on the rich, central
+plain of Merry England, with wooded hollows and well-walled orchards
+and ornamental weathercocks and church spires rising peacefully
+above green tree-tops. But Silas Marner saw nothing of the Merry
+England through which he peddled his cloth. He walked through it all
+with the outdoor loneliness of those who cannot see. His mother had
+bequeathed him knowledge of a few herbs; and these were the only thing
+in nature that he had ever gropingly looked for along hedgerows and
+lanesides--foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot.
+
+"Now, if you have read the story, you have a far more living, touching
+picture of the life of a weaver in those distant times that I could
+possibly paint. The genius of George Eliot painted it supremely and I
+point to her masterpiece rather than to any faint semblance I could
+draw. What I want you to do is to get deeply into your minds what the
+life of a weaver in those days meant: a little further on you will
+understand why.
+
+"Next I want you to think of Silas Marner as an all too common figure
+of the present time. He is a type of those of us who go through our
+lives all but blind to the surpassingly beautiful life of the planet
+on which it is our strange and glorious destiny to spend our human
+days. He is a type of those of us who, in town or city, see only
+the implements of our trade or business ever close to our eyes--our
+shuttle, our thread, our loom, of whatever kind these may be. When we
+go out into the world of nature, he is also a type of those of us, who
+recognise only the few things we need--our coltsfoot, our foxglove, our
+dandelion, of whatever kind these may be. In the midst of woods and
+fields we gaze blankly around us with vision blurred by ignorance--not
+born blind but remaining as blind because we do not care or have not
+learned to open and to train our eyes. We have the outdoor loneliness
+of Silas Marner."
+
+He waited a few moments to allow his words to make their impression,
+and long accustomed to the countenance of listeners, he felt sure
+that they were following him in the road he pursued: then he led them
+forward:
+
+"Now, about the period that George Eliot paints the life of her poor
+English weaver there lived, not in Merry England but in Bonnie
+Scotland--and to be bonnie is not to be merry--there lived in the
+little town of Paisley, in the west of Scotland, a man by the name of
+Alexander Wilson, a poor illiterate distiller. He had a son--the boy I
+am to tell you about.
+
+"The poor illiterate distiller and father desired to give his son
+his name but not to assign him his place in life, not his own road;
+he named him Alexander and he wished him to be not a distiller but
+a physician. The boy's mother was a native of an island of the
+Hebrides--your geographies will have to tell you where the Hebrides
+are, for doubtless you have all forgotten! The inhabitants of those
+wild, bleak, storm-swept islands thought much of danger and death
+and therefore often of God. Perhaps the natives of small islands are,
+as a rule, either very superstitious or very religious. His mother
+desired him to be a minister. You may not know that the Scotch people
+are, perhaps, peculiarly addicted to being either doctors of the
+body or doctors of the soul. The entire Scottish race would appear
+to be desirous of being physicians to something or to somebody--not
+submitting easily, however, to be doctored!
+
+"Thus the boy's father and mother opened before him the two main
+honoured roads of Scottish life and bade him choose. He chose neither,
+for he was self-willed and wavering, and did not know his own mind or
+his own wish. He did know that he would not take the roads his parents
+pointed out; as to them he was a roadless boy.
+
+"His mother died when he was quite young, a stepmother stepped into a
+stepmother's place, and she quickly decided with Scotch thrift. A third
+Scottish road should be opened to the boy and into that he should be
+pushed and made to go: he must be put to trade. Accordingly, when he
+was about eleven years old, he was taken from school and bound as an
+apprentice to a weaver: we lament child labour now: it is an old lament.
+
+"The boy hated weaving as, perhaps, he never hated anything else in
+his life and in time he hated much and he hated many things. He seems
+soon to have become known as the lazy weaver. Years afterward he put
+into bitter words a description of the weaver: 'A weaver is a poor,
+emaciated, helpless being, shivering over rotten yarn and groaning over
+his empty flour barrel.' Elsewhere he called the weaver a scarecrow in
+rags. He wrote a poem entitled _Groans from the Loom_.
+
+"Five interminable years of those groans and all his eager, wild,
+headstrong, liberty-loving boyhood was ended: gone from him as he sat
+like a boy-spider with a thread passing endlessly into a web. During
+these interminable years, whenever he lifted his eyes from his loom
+and looked ahead, he could see nothing but penury and dependence and
+loneliness--his loom to the end of his life.
+
+"Five years of this imprisonment and then he was eighteen and his own
+master; and the first thing he did was to descend from the loom, take a
+pack of cloth upon his shoulders and go wandering away from the hills
+and valleys and lakes of Scotland--free at last like a young deer in
+the heather. He said of himself that from that hour when his eyes had
+first opened on the light of grey Scotch mountains, the world of nature
+had called him. He did not yet know what the forest and the life of the
+forest meant or would ever mean; he only knew that there he was happy
+and at home.
+
+"Thus, like Silas Marner, he became a poor weaver and peddler but not
+with Silas Marner's eyes. Seldom in any human head has the mechanism of
+vision been driven by a mind with such power and eagerness to observe.
+And he had the special memory of the eye. There are those of us who
+have the special memory of the ear or of taste or of touch. He had the
+long, faithful recollection of things seen. With this pair of eyes
+during the next several years he traversed on foot three-fourths of
+Scotland. Remember, you boys of the rolling bluegrass plateau, what the
+scenery of Scotland is! Think what it meant to traverse three-fourths
+of that country, you who consider it a hardship to walk five level
+miles, a misfortune to be obliged to walk ten, the adventure of a
+lifetime to walk twenty.
+
+"But though he followed one after another well nigh all the roads of
+Scotland, he could find in all Scotland no road of life for him. It
+is true that certain misleading paths beckoned to him, as is apt
+to be true in every life. Thus he had conceived a great desire to
+weave poetry instead of cloth, to weave music instead of listening to
+the noise of the loom: he had his flute and his violin. But what he
+accomplished with poetry and flute and violin were obstacles to his
+necessary work and rendered this harder. The time he gave to them made
+his work less: the less his work, the less his living; the less his
+living, the more his troubles and hardships.
+
+"Once he started out both to peddle his wares and to solicit orders for
+a little book of his poems he wished to publish. To help both pack and
+poetry he wrote a handbill in verse. Some of the lines ran thus:
+
+    "'Here's handkerchiefs charming, book muslins like ermine,
+      Brocaded, striped, corded, or checked.
+    Sweet Venus, they say, on Cupid's birthday
+      In British-made muslin was decked.
+
+    "'Now, ye Fair, if you choose any piece to peruse,
+      With pleasure I'll instantly show it.
+    If the peddler should fail to be favoured with sale,
+      Then I hope you'll encourage the poet.'
+
+"The result seems to have been but small sale for British-made muslins
+and no sale at all for Wilson-made poems.
+
+"Robert Burns was just then the idolised poet of Scotland, a new
+sun shining with vital splendour into all Scottish hearts. Friends
+of the young weaver and apparently the young weaver himself thought
+there was room in Scotland for another Burns. Some of his poems were
+published anonymously and the authorship was attributed to Burns. That
+was bad for him, it made bad worse. Wilson greatly desired to know
+the rustic poet-king of Scotland. The two poets met in Edinburgh and
+were to become friends. Then Burns published _Tam O'Shanter_. As young
+Kentuckians, of course, you love horses and cannot be indifferent even
+to poems on the tails of horses. Therefore, you must already know the
+world's most famous poem concerning a horse-tail--_Tam O'Shanter_.
+The Paisley weaver by this time had such conceit of himself as a poet
+that he wrote Burns a caustic letter, telling him the kind of poem
+_Tam O'Shanter_ should and should not be. Burns replied, closing the
+correspondence, ending the brief friendship and leaving the weaver to
+go back to his loom. It was a terrible rebuff, and left its mark on an
+already discouraged man.
+
+"Next Wilson wrote an anonymous poem, so violently attacking a wealthy
+manufacturer on behalf of his poor brother weavers, that the enraged
+merchant demanded the name of the writer and had him put in prison and
+compelled him to stand in the public cross of Paisley and burn his poem.
+
+"Darker, bitterer days followed. He shrank away to a little village
+even more obscure than his birthplace. There, lifting his eyes, again
+he looked all over Scotland: he saw the wrongs and sufferings of the
+poor, the luxury and oppression of the rich: he blamed the British
+government for evils inherent in human nature and for the imperfections
+of all human society: turned against his native country and at heart
+found himself without a fatherland.
+
+"Then that glorious vision which has opened before so many men in their
+despair, disclosed itself: his eyes turned to America. You should never
+forget that from the first your country has been the refuge and the
+hope for the oppressed, the unfortunate, the discouraged of the whole
+world. In America he thought all roads were open, new roads were being
+made for human lives; that should become his country. One autumn he
+saw in a newspaper an advertisement that an American merchantman would
+sail from Belfast the following spring and he turned to weaving and
+wove as never before to earn his passage money. At this time he lived
+on one shilling a week! And it seems that just now he undertook to make
+up his lack of knowledge of arithmetic. Some of you boys will doubtless
+greatly rejoice to hear that he was deficient in arithmetic! When
+spring came, with the earnings of his loom he walked across Scotland
+to the nearest port. When he reached Belfast every berth on the vessel
+had been taken: he asked to be allowed to sleep on the deck and was
+accepted as a passenger.
+
+"He had now left Scotland to escape the loom--never to see Scotland
+again.
+
+"And you see, he is beginning to come nearer.
+
+"The vessel was called The Swift and it took The Swift two months
+to make the passage. The port was to be Philadelphia but he seems
+to have been so impatient to set foot on the soil of the New World
+that he left the ship at New Castle, Delaware. He had borrowed from a
+fellow-passenger sufficient money to pay his expenses while walking to
+Philadelphia thirty-four miles away; and with this in his pocket and
+his fowling-piece on his shoulder he disappeared in the July forests of
+New Jersey. The first thing he did was to kill a red-headed wood-pecker
+which he declared to be the most beautiful bird he had ever seen.
+
+"I do not find any word of his that he had ever killed a bird in
+Scotland during all his years of wandering. Now the first event that
+befell him in the New World was to go straight to the American woods
+and kill what he declared to be the most beautiful bird he had ever
+seen. This might naturally have been to him a sign of his life-road.
+But he still stood blinded in his path, with not a plan, not an idea,
+of what he should be or could be: he had not yet read the handwriting
+on the wall within himself.
+
+"His first years in the New World were more disastrous than any in
+Scotland, for always now he had the loneliness and dejection of a man
+who has rejected his own country and does not know that any other
+country will accept him. A fellow Scot, in Philadelphia, tried him at
+copper-plate printing. He quickly dropped this and went back to the
+old dreadful work of weaving--he became an American weaver and went
+wandering through the forests of New Jersey as a peddler: at least
+peddling left him free to roam the forests. Next he tried teaching
+but he himself had been taken from school at the age of eleven and
+must prepare himself as one of his own beginners. He did not like this
+teaching experiment in New Jersey and migrated to Virginia. Virginia
+did not please him and he remigrated to Pennsylvania. There he tried
+one school after another in various places and finally settled on the
+outskirts of Philadelphia: here was his last school, for here was the
+turning point of his life.
+
+"I wish I had time to describe for you the school-house with its
+surroundings, for the place is to us now a picture in the early
+American life of a great man--all such historic pictures are
+invaluable. Catch one glimpse of it: a neat stone school-house on a
+sloping green; with grey old white oaks growing around and rows of
+stripling poplars and scattered cedar trees. A road ran near and not
+far away was a little yellow-faced cottage where he lived. The yard was
+walled off from the road and there were seats within and rosebushes and
+plum trees and hop-vines. On one side hung a signboard waving before a
+little roadside inn; on the other a blacksmith shop with its hammering.
+Not far off stood the edge of the great forest 'resounding with the
+songs of warblers.' In the depths of it was a favourite spot--a secret
+retreat for him in Nature.
+
+"There then you see him: no longer a youth but still young; every road
+he had tried closed to him in America as in Scotland: not a doctor, not
+a minister, not a good poet, not a good flutist, not a good violinist,
+not a copper-plate engraver, not a willing weaver, not a willing
+peddler, not a willing school-teacher--none of these. No idea yet in
+him that he could ever be anything. A homeless self-exile, playing
+at lonely twilights on flute and violin the loved airs of rejected
+Scotland.
+
+"Now it happened that near his school was a botanical garden owned by
+an American naturalist. The American, seeing the stranger cast down by
+his aimless life, offered him his portfolio of drawings and suggested
+that he try to draw a landscape, draw the human figure. The Scotch
+weaver, the American school-teacher, tried and disastrously failed. As
+a final chance the American suggested that he try to draw a bird. He
+did try: he drew a bird. He drew again. He drew again and again. He
+kept on drawing. Nothing could keep him from drawing. And there at last
+the miracle of power and genius, so long restless in him and driving
+him aimlessly from one wrong thing to another wrong thing, disclosed
+itself as dwelling within his eyes and hands. His drawings were so true
+to life, that there could be no doubt: the road lay straight before him
+and ran clear through coming time toward eternal fame.
+
+"All the experience which he had been unconsciously storing as a
+peddler in Scotland now came back to him as guiding knowledge. The
+marvelous memory of his eye furnished its discipline: from early
+boyhood through sheer love he had unconsciously been studying birds in
+nature, and thus during all these wretched years had been laying up as
+a youth the foundation of his life-work as a man.
+
+"Genius builds with lavish magnificence and inconceivable swiftness;
+and hardly had he succeeded with his first drawings before he had
+wrought out a monumental plan: to turn himself free as soon as possible
+into the vast, untravelled forest of the North American continent and
+draw and paint its birds. Other men, he said, would have to found the
+cities of the New World and open up its country. His study was to be
+the lineaments of the owl and the plumage of the lark: he had cast in
+his lot with Nature's green magnificence untouched by man."
+
+The lecturer paused, as a traveller instinctively stops to look
+around him at a pleasant turn of his road. It had, in truth, been a
+hard, crooked human road along which he had been leading his young
+listeners--a career choked at every step by inward and outward
+pressures. He had not failed to notice the change in every countenance,
+the brightening of every eye, as soon as his audience discovered that
+they were listening to a story, not of mere weaknesses and failures,
+but of the misfortunes and mistakes of a man, who at last stood out as
+truly great. This hapless weaver, this aimless wanderer through the
+forests of two worlds, after all had success in him, strength in him,
+genius in him, fame in him! He was a hero. Henceforth they were alive
+with curiosity for the rest of the story which would bring the distant
+hero to Kentucky, to their Lexington.
+
+The lecturer realised all this. But he had for some time been even
+more acutely aware that something wholly personal and extraordinary
+was taking place: one of the pupils of the high school was listening
+with an attention so absorbed and noticeable as to set him apart from
+all the rest. Just at what point this intense attention had been so
+aroused, had not been observed; but when once observed, there was no
+forgetting it: it filled the room, the other listeners were merely
+grouped around it as accessories and helped to make its breathless
+picture.
+
+The particularly interested pupil sat rather far back in the
+school-room, near a window--as though from a vain wish to jump out and
+be free. The morning light thus fell across his face: it was possible
+to watch its expression, its responsive change of light at each turn
+of the story. He seemed to hold some kind of leadership in the school:
+other pupils occasionally turned their faces to glance at him, to keep
+in touch with him: he did not return their glances--being their leader;
+or he had forgotten them for the story he was hearing.
+
+The lecturer became convinced that what had more than once happened to
+him before as a teacher was happening again: before him a young life
+was unexpectedly being solved--to its own wonderment and liberation, to
+its amazement and joy.
+
+That perpetual miracle in nature--the contexture of the
+generations--the living taking the meaning of their lives from the
+dead! You stand beside some all but forgotten mound of human ashes;
+before you are arrayed a band of youths, unconsciously holding in their
+hands the unlighted torches of the future. You utter some word about
+the cold ashes and silently one of them walks forward to the ashes,
+lights his torch and goes his radiant way.
+
+Thus the Geologist felt a graver responsibility resting on him--placed
+there by one of them, more than by all of them: the words he was
+speaking might or might not give final direction to a whole career. He
+went on with his heroic narrative more glowingly, more guardedly:
+
+"For a while he must keep on teaching in order to live: he taught all
+day, often after night, barely had time to swallow his meals, at the
+end of one term tells us he had as large a sum as fifteen dollars.
+Often he coloured his first drawings by candle light, drew and painted
+birds without knowing what they were. Drawing and painting by candle
+light!--but now he had within himself the risen sun of a splendid
+enthusiasm. That sun kindled his schoolboys. They found out what he
+wanted and helped. One boy brought him a large basketful of crows.
+Another caught a mouse in school and contributed that--the incident
+is worth quoting by showing that the boy preferred a mouse to a
+school-book.
+
+"Take one instance of the energy with which he was now working and
+worked for the rest of his life: he wished to see Niagara Falls, and
+to lose no time while doing it he started out one autumn through the
+forest to walk to the Falls and back, a short trip for him of over
+twelve hundred miles. He reached home 'mid the deep snows of winter
+with no soles to his boots. What of that? On his way back he had shot
+two strange birds in the valley of the Hudson! For ten days--ten days,
+mind you!--he worked on a drawing of these and sent it with a letter
+to Thomas Jefferson. You may as yet have thought of Jefferson only as
+one of America's earliest statesmen: begin now to think of him as one
+of the first American naturalists. And if you wish to read a courteous
+letter from an American President to a young stranger, go back to
+Jefferson's letter to the Scotch weaver who sent him the drawing of a
+jaybird.
+
+"Pass rapidly over the next few years. He has made one trip from
+Maine down the Atlantic Seaboard to the South. He has returned and is
+starting out again to cover the vast interior basin of the Mississippi
+Valley: he is to begin at Pittsburgh and end at New Orleans.
+
+"Now again you see that he is coming nearer--nearer to you here.
+
+"Look then at this bold, splendid picture of him outlined against the
+background of early American life. All such pictures are part of our
+richest heritage.
+
+"The scene is Pittsburgh. He has ransacked the winter woods for new
+species, he has found only sparrows and snow-birds. That was the year
+1810; this is the year 1916--over a hundred years later in the history
+of our country. Gaze then upon this wild scene of the olden time, all
+such pictures are good for young eyes: it is the twenty-fourth of
+February: the river, swollen with the spring flood, is full of white
+masses of moving ice. A frail skiff puts off from shore and goes
+winding its way until it is lost to sight among the noble hills.
+
+"They warned him of his danger, urged him to take a rower, urged him not
+to go at all. Those who risked the passage of the river floated down on
+barges called Kentucky arks or in canoes hollowed each out of a single
+tree, usually the tulip tree, which you know is very common in our
+Kentucky woods. But to mention danger was to make him go to meet it. He
+would have no rower, had no money to hire one, had he wished one. He
+tells us what he had on board: in one end of the boat some biscuit and
+cheese, a bottle of cordial given him by a gentleman in Pittsburgh, his
+gun and trunk and overcoat; at the other end himself and his oars and
+a tin with which to bail out the skiff, if necessary, to keep it from
+sinking and also to use as his drinking-cup to dip from the river.
+
+"That February day--the swollen, rushing river, the masses of white
+ice--the solitary young boatman borne away to a new world on his great
+work: his heart expanding with excitement and joy as he headed toward
+the unexplored wilderness of the Mississippi Valley.
+
+"Wondrous experiences were his: from the densely wooded shores there
+would reach him as he drifted down, the whistle of the red bird--those
+first spring notes so familiar and so welcome to us on mild days toward
+the last of February. Away off in dim forest valleys, between bold
+headlands, he saw the rising smoke of sugar camps. At other openings
+on the landscape, grotesque log cabins looked like dog-houses under
+impending mighty mountains. His rapidly steered skiff passed flotillas
+of Kentucky arks heavily making their way southward, transporting men
+and women and children--the moving pioneers of the young nation: the
+first river merchant-marine of the new world: carrying horses and
+plows to clearings yet to be made for homesteads in the wilderness;
+transporting mill-stones for mills not yet built on any wilderness
+stream; bearing merchandise for the pioneers who in this way got their
+clothing until they could grow flax and weave to clothe themselves.
+Thus in the Alps of the Alleghenies he came upon the river peddlers of
+America as years before amid the Alps of Scotland he had come upon the
+foot peddlers of his own land. On the river were floating caravans of
+men selling shawls and muslins. He boarded a number of these barges; as
+they approached a settlement, they blew a trumpet or a lonely horn on
+the great river stillness.
+
+"The first night he drew in to shore some fifty miles down at a
+riverside hovel and tried to sleep on the only bed offered him--some
+corn-stalks. Unable to sleep, he got up before day and pushed out again
+into the river, listening to the hooting of the big-horned owl echoing
+away among the dawn-dark mountains, or to the strangely familiar
+crowing of cocks as they awoke the hen roosts about the first American
+settlements in the West.
+
+"He records what to us now sounds incredible, that on March fifth he
+saw a flock of parrokeets. Think of parrokeets on the Ohio River in
+March! Of nights it turned freezing cold and he drew liberally on his
+bottle of cordial for warmth. Once he encountered a storm of wind and
+hail and snow and rain, during which the river foamed and rolled like
+the sea and he had to make good use of his tin to keep the skiff bailed
+out till he could put in to shore. The call of wild turkeys enticed him
+now toward the shore of Indiana, now toward the shore of Kentucky, but
+before he reached either they had disappeared. His first night on the
+Kentucky shore he spent in the cabin of a squatter and heard him tell
+tales of bear-treeing and wildcat-hunting and wolf-baiting. All night
+wolves howled in the forests near by and kept the dogs in an uproar;
+the region swarmed with wolves and wildcats 'black and brown.'
+
+"On and on, until at last the skiff reached the rapids of the Ohio
+at Louisville and he stepped ashore and sold his frail saviour craft
+which, at starting, he had named the Ornithologist. The Kentuckian who
+bought it as the Ornithologist accepted the droll name as that of some
+Indian chief. He soon left Louisville, having sent his baggage on by
+wagon, and plunged into the Kentucky forest on his way to Lexington.
+
+"And now, indeed, you see he is coming nearer.
+
+"It was the twenty-fourth of March when he began his first trip
+southward through the woods of Kentucky. Spring was on the way but had
+not yet passed northward. Nine-tenths of the Kentucky soil, he states,
+was then unbroken wilderness. The surface soil was deeper than now.
+The spring thaw had set in, permeating the rich loam. He describes
+his progress through it as like travelling through soft soap. The
+woods were bare as yet, though filled with pigeons and squirrels and
+wood-peckers. On everything he was using his marvellous eyes: looking
+for birds but looking at all human life, interested in the whole life
+of the forest. He mentions large corn fields and orchards of apple and
+of peach trees. Already he finds the high fences, characteristic of
+the Kentuckians. He turned aside once to visit a roosting place of the
+passenger pigeon.
+
+"It was on March twenty-ninth that, emerging from the thick forest,
+he saw before him the little Western metropolis of the pioneers, the
+city of the forefathers of many of us here today--Lexington. I wish I
+could stop to describe to you the picture as he painted it: the town
+stretching along its low valley; a stream running through the valley
+and turning several mills--water mills in Lexington a hundred years
+ago! In the market-place which you now call Cheapside he saw the
+pillory and the stocks and he noted that the stocks were so arranged as
+to be serviceable for gallows: our Kentucky forefathers arranged that
+they should be conveniently hanged, if they deserved it, as a public
+spectacle of warning.
+
+"On a country court day he saw a thousand horses hitched around the
+courthouse square and in churchyards and in graveyards. He states that
+even then Kentucky horses were the most remarkable in the world.
+
+"He makes no mention of one thing he must have seen, but was perhaps
+glad to forget--the weavers and the busy looms; for in those days
+Kentuckians were busy making good linen and good homespun, as in
+Paisley.
+
+"He slept while in Lexington--this great unknown man--in a garret
+called Salter White's, wherever that was: and he shivered with cold,
+for you know we can have chill nights in April. He says that he had
+no firewood, it being scarce, the universal forest of firewood being
+half a mile away: this was like going hungry in a loft over a full
+baker-shop.
+
+"And I must not omit one note of his on the Kentuckians themselves,
+which flashes a vivid historic light on their character. By this time
+he rightly considered that he had had adventures worth relating; but
+he declares that if he attempted to relate them to any Kentuckian, the
+Kentuckian at once interrupted him and insisted upon relating his own
+adventures as better worth while. Western civilization was of itself
+the one absorbing adventure to every man who had had his share in it.
+
+"Here I must pause to intimate that Wilson all his life carried with
+him one bird--one vigourous and vociferous bird--a crow to pick. He
+picked it savagely with Louisville. But he had begun to pick it with
+Scotland. He had picked it with Great Britain and with New Jersey
+and Virginia. In New England the feathers of the crow fairly flew. In
+truth, civilization never quite satisfied him; wild nature alone he
+found no fault with--there only was he happy and at home. He now picked
+his crow with Lexington. Afterward an indignant Kentuckian, quite in
+the good Kentucky way, attacked him and left the crow featherless--as
+regards Lexington.
+
+"On the fourteenth day of April he departed from Lexington, moving
+southward through the forest to New Orleans. Scarcely yet had the woods
+begun to turn green. He notes merely the white blossoms of the redroot
+peeping through the withered leaves, and the buds of the buckeye. With
+those sharp eyes of his he observed that wherever a hackberry tree had
+fallen, cattle had eaten the bark.
+
+"And now we begin to take leave of him: he passes from our picture. We
+catch a glimpse of him standing on the perpendicular cliffs of solid
+limestone at the Kentucky River, green with a great number of uncommon
+plants and flowers--we catch a glimpse of him standing there, watching
+bank swallows and listening to the faint music of the boat horns in the
+deep romantic valley below, where the Kentucky arks, passing on their
+way southward, turned the corners of the verduous cliffs as the musical
+gondolas turn the corners of vine-hung Venice in the waters of the
+Adriatic.
+
+"On and on southward; visiting a roosting-place of the passenger
+pigeon which was reported to him as forty miles long: he counted
+ninety nests in one beech tree. We see him emerging upon the Kentucky
+barrens which were covered with vegetation and open for the sweep of
+the eye.
+
+"Now, at last, he begins to meet the approach of spring in full tide:
+all Nature is bursting into leaf and blossom. No longer are the redbud
+and the dogwood and the sassafras conspicuous as its heralds. And now,
+overflowing the forest, advances the full-crested wave of bird-life
+up from the south, from the tropics. New and unknown species are
+everywhere before his eyes; their new melodies are in his ears; he is
+busy drawing, colouring, naming them for his work.
+
+"So he passes out of our picture: southward bound, encountering
+a cloud of parrakeets and pigeons, emerging from a cave with a
+handkerchief full of bats, swimming creeks, sleeping at night alone in
+the wilderness, his gun and pistol in his bosom. He vanishes from the
+forest scene, never from the memory of mankind.
+
+"Let me tell you that he did not live to complete his work. Death
+overtook him, not a youth but still young; for, as a Roman of the
+heroic years deeply said: 'Death always finds those young who are still
+at work for the future of the world.'
+
+"I told you I was going to speak to you of a boy's life. I asked you
+to fix your eyes upon it as a far-off human spark, barely glimmering
+through mist and fog but slowly, as the years passed, getting
+stronger, growing brighter, always drawing nearer until it shone about
+you here as a great light and then passed on, leaving an eternal glory.
+
+"I have done that.
+
+"You saw a little fellow taken from school at about the age of eleven
+and put to hard work at weaving; now you see one of the world's
+great ornithologists, who had traversed some ten thousand miles of
+comparative wilderness--an imperishable figure, doing an imperishable
+deed. I love to think of him as being in the end what he most hated to
+be in the beginning--a weaver: he wove a vast, original tapestry of the
+bird-life of the American forest.
+
+"As he passed southward from Lexington that distant April of 1810,
+encountering his first spring in the Ohio valley with its myriads of
+birds, somewhere he discovered a new and beautiful species of American
+wood warbler and gave it a local habitation and a name.
+
+"He called it the Kentucky Warbler.
+
+"And now," the lecturer said, by way of climax, "would you not like to
+see a picture of that mighty hunter who lived in the great days of the
+young American republic and crossed Kentucky in the great days of the
+pioneers? And would you not also like to see a picture of the exquisite
+and only bird that bears the name of our State--the Kentucky Warbler?"
+
+He passed over to them a portrait engraving of Alexander Wilson in the
+dress of a gentleman of his time, his fowling-piece on his forearm.
+And along with this he delivered to them a life-like, a singing
+portrait, of the warbler, painted by a great American animal painter
+and bird painter--Fuertes.
+
+[Illustration: chapter II--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter III--title decoration]
+
+
+III
+
+THE FOREST
+
+
+It was the first day of vacation.
+
+Schools, if you were not through with them, had now become empty,
+closed, silent buildings, stripped of authority to imprison and bedevil
+you and then mark you discreditably because you righteously rebelled
+against being imprisoned and bedeviled. They could safely be left to
+dust and cobwebs within and to any weeds that might lodge and sprout
+outside--the more the better. You stood on the spring edge of the
+long, free, careless summer and could look unconcernedly across at the
+distant autumn edge. Then as the woods, now in their first full green,
+were beginning to turn dry and yellow, the powerless buildings would
+again become tyrannical schools.
+
+But if you had finished high school, on this first day of vacation you
+were on the Boy's Common: schools behind you, the world of business
+around you, ahead of you ambitious college or the stately University.
+Webster had been turned loose on the Boy's Common.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The family were at breakfast. Every breakfast in the cottage was much
+the same breakfast: routine is the peace of the roadless. Existence
+there throughout the year was three hundred and sixty-five times more
+or less like itself. The earth meantime did change for the signs of
+the zodiac: the cottage changed also, but had a zodiac of its own.
+Thus, when the planet was in the sign of _Capricornus_, the cottage
+on a morning had fried perch for breakfast, as a sign that it was in
+_Pisces_; when earth was in _Gemini_, the family might have a steak
+which showed that it was in _Taurus_--or that _Taurus_ was in the
+family.
+
+There was always hot meat of one kind and hot bread of two kinds and
+hot coffee of any kind. If Webster's father upon entering the breakfast
+room had not seen a dish before him to carve or apportion, the shock
+could not have been greater, had he found lying on his folded napkin
+an enclosure from the bank notifying him that he had been discharged
+for having made the figure four instead of the figure two.
+
+He sat squarely facing the table as long as his own portion of the meat
+lasted, meantime eating rapidly and bending over to glance at his paper
+which lay flat beside his coffee cup. With the final morsel of meat he
+turned sidewise and sat cross-legged, with his paper held before his
+face as a screen--notification that he would rather not talk at the
+moment, unless they preferred.... If they showed that they did prefer,
+he still had means to discourage their preference. Now and then he
+reached around toward his plate and groped for the remaining crumbs of
+bread, or hooked his forefinger in the handle of his cup and conveyed
+it behind the paper.
+
+Webster's mother, busied with service at the tray, commenced her
+breakfast after the others. She talked to her husband until he
+interposed his newspaper. Then she unconsciously lowered her voice and
+addressed remarks to the children. Occasionally she tried to arrange
+their dissensions.
+
+A satirist of human life, studying Webster's father and mother at the
+head and foot of the table--symbol at once of their opposition and
+conjunction--a satirist, who for his own amusement turns life into
+pictures of something else, might have described their bodily and
+pictorial relation as that of a large, soft deep-dished pudding to a
+well trimmed mutton chop. Their minds he would possibly have imagined
+as two south winds moving along, side by side; whatever else they blew
+against, they could not possibly blow against each other.
+
+On this fine June morning, the first day of his vacation, Webster was
+late for breakfast. He arranged to be late. From his bathroom-bedroom
+he could hear the family with their usual morning talk, Elinor's
+shrill chatter predominating. When her chatter ceased he would know
+that she had satisfied her whimsical appetite and had slipped from
+her chair, impatient either to get to the front porch with its creaky
+rocking-chair or to dart out the gate to other little girls in the
+block; restlessly seeking some adventure elsewhere if none should pass
+before her eyes at home.
+
+He waited till she should go; there was something especial to speak
+of with his father and he did not wish this to be spoiled by Elinor's
+interference and ridicule.
+
+When she was gone he went in to breakfast.
+
+"Well, my son, how are you going to spend your first day of vacation?"
+his father inquired, helping him to his portion and not particularly
+noticing his own question.
+
+"I thought I'd go over into the woods," Webster replied.
+
+An unfavourable silence followed this announcement. That old stubborn
+controversy about the woods!...
+
+"Father," asked Webster, with his eyes on his plate, "did you ever see
+the Kentucky warbler?"
+
+Webster's father looked over the top of the wood-pulp screen. His face
+had a somewhat vacant expression. He waited. Finally he said:
+
+"My son, I believe you asked me a question: I shall have to ask you to
+repeat your question; I may be losing my hearing or I may be losing my
+mind. You asked me--?"
+
+Webster, in the same deliberate tone, repeated his question:
+
+"Did you ever see the Kentucky warbler?"
+
+Webster's father looked over his spectacles at Webster's mother as with
+the air of an appeal for guidance:
+
+"My dear, your son asks me, if I understand him, whether I have ever
+seen a Kentucky wooden war horse?"
+
+He was not above fun-making and it seemed to him that the occasion
+called for it.
+
+Webster's mother explained:
+
+"One of the professors from the University lectured to them in April
+about birds. His head has been full of birds ever since: I shouldn't
+wonder if his dreams have been full of them." She looked at Webster not
+without ineradicable tenderness and pride; she could not quite have
+explained the pride, she could have explained the tenderness.
+
+Now the truth of the matter was that since that memorable morning
+of the April talk at high school, she had been hearing from Webster
+repeatedly on that subject. He had told her of the lecture immediately
+upon reaching home; she had never seen him so wrought up. And from that
+time he had upon occasion plied her with questions: as to what she knew
+of birds when she lived in the country. She had to tell him that she
+knew very little; everybody identified the several species that preyed
+upon fruit and berries and young chickens; she named these readily
+enough. She had never heard of a bird called the Kentucky warbler. And
+she had never heard of Alexander Wilson.
+
+All this she had duly narrated to Webster's father--greatly to his
+dejection. A bank officer with a solitary son, now graduated from high
+school, going after bird-nests--that was a prospect before such a
+father! He had shaken his head in silence that more than spoke.
+
+"I told him," Webster's mother had concluded, "that the only Wilsons
+worth knowing in Kentucky were the horse-people Wilsons: of course we
+know _them_. It has been amusing to watch Elinor. Whenever Webster has
+begun about birds, if she has overheard him, she has made it convenient
+to settle somewhere near and listen. She would break in and stop his
+questions, but then there would be no more entertainment for her. She
+has been a study."
+
+Thus Webster's father was not so ill-informed as he now appeared. In
+return for the information from Webster's mother, apparently for the
+first time imparted, he looked at his son with an expression which
+plainly meant that as a speculation the latter was becoming a graver
+risk.
+
+"No, my son," he said, "I have never met your forest friend. I am
+merely a Kentucky bank warbler. One who did his warbling years ago.
+There is some _war_ left in me. I suppose there will always be _war_
+left in me, but there isn't any _war_-ble. I warbled one distant
+solitary spring to your mother. She replied beautifully in kind and
+lavishly in degree. We made a nest and had a hatching. Since then
+the male bird has been trying--not to escape the consequences of his
+song--but to meet his notes like a man. I have never stumbled upon your
+forest friend."
+
+Webster ate in silence for a few moments and then remarked, as though
+it were a matter of vital importance:
+
+"His notes are:
+
+"'_Tweedle tweedle tweedle, Tweedle tweedle tweedle_,' Wilson described
+them that way a hundred and six years ago."
+
+"I don't doubt it, my son. I am not questioning your word--nor Mr.
+Wilson's. But I don't see anything very remarkable in that: if you come
+to the bank any day, you can hear men say the same thing. They come in
+and say, 'Tweedle.' And they go out."
+
+Webster continued:
+
+"Audubon described the notes as '_Turdle turdle turdle_.'"
+
+Deeper silence at the table. Webster continued in the face of the
+silence;
+
+"A living naturalist says the notes may be:
+
+"'_Toodle toodle toodle._'"
+
+Silence at the table still more deep. Webster broke it:
+
+"Another naturalist describes the bird as saying:
+
+"'_Ter-wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter._'"
+
+The silence! Webster continued:
+
+"Another naturalist thinks the song is:
+
+"'_Che che che peery peery peery._'"
+
+Webster's father raised his eyebrows--he had no hair to raise--at
+Webster's mother: a sign that their graduate was beginning to celebrate
+his vacation.
+
+"My son," he said, "when I was a little fellow in school, one of the
+reading lessons was a poem called 'Try, Try Again.' Perhaps the bird
+is working along that line."
+
+"Thomas Jefferson followed a bird for hours in the woods," said
+Webster, with dignity: he somehow felt rebuked. "And for twenty years
+he tried to catch sight of another."
+
+"Don't let me come between you and Thomas Jefferson," said Webster's
+father, waving his hand toward his son in protest. "God forbid that I
+should come between any two such persons as Daniel Webster and Thomas
+Jefferson!"
+
+"The government at Washington," observed Webster stoutly, "is behind
+the Kentucky warbler."
+
+"Then, my son, I advise you to get behind the Government."
+
+The rusty bell at the little front door went off with a sound like
+the whirr of a frightened prairie chicken. The breakfast maid, also
+the cook, also the maid of all work, also a unit of the standardised
+population of disservice and discontent, entered and pushed a bill at
+Webster's father.
+
+"The butcher," she announced with sullen gratification, "He's waiting."
+
+As Webster's father left the table, he tapped his son affectionately
+on the head with his paper: "You follow the bird, my boy; and follow
+Thomas Jefferson, if you can. The butcher follows me."
+
+Webster's mother sat watching him. He had begun to get his lunch ready.
+He held the bottom-half of a long, slender roll, which might have
+served as a miniature model for an old-time Kentucky river-ark; and
+with his knife, grasped like an oar, he was lining the inside with some
+highly specialised yellow substance. She deplored his awkwardness and
+fought his independence.
+
+"Let me put up your lunch for you, my son!"
+
+"I'll put it up."
+
+He was not to be cheated out of that fresh sensation of pleasure which
+comes to the male, young or old, who tries to cook in camp, to fry, to
+boil, to season, or to serve things edible.
+
+Webster pulled out of his pocket a crumpled piece of brown paper and
+smoothed it out on the table cloth. It showed butcher stains.
+
+Webster's mother protested.
+
+"My son! Take a napkin! Take this clean napkin for your lunch!"
+
+"I like this paper."
+
+The idea of being in the forest and unrolling his lunch from a napkin:
+what would Wilson have thought? Elinor, being "nice," always rolled her
+lunch in a napkin.
+
+"But you will be hungry: let me get you some preserves!"
+
+"Not anything sweet." Elinor always had preserves. He rolled his lunch
+roughly and thrust it, butcher-stains and all, into his pocket. His
+mother was exasperated and distressed.
+
+"My son, your lunch will come loose in your pocket: I'll get you a
+string."
+
+"I don't want a string." Elinor tied everything. Girls tied; boys
+buttoned. The difference between men and women was strings.
+
+"But you'll get the grease on you, Webster! It will run down your
+legs!"
+
+"Very well, then, I'll have greasy legs. Why not?"
+
+She followed him out to the porch. Her character lacked capacity
+of initiative. She waited for him to be old enough to take some
+initiative; then she would stand by him.
+
+"Don't go too far," she said tenderly, "and you ought to have some of
+your friends to go with you, some of the boys from school."
+
+"They can't go today. Nobody can go today. Anybody would be in the way
+today."
+
+He said this to himself.
+
+She watched him from the porch and called: "Don't stay too late."
+
+Webster walked quickly to the main corner of the block--Jenny's
+corner. On this first morning of being through with school and of
+feeling more like a man free to do as he pleased, Jenny for that reason
+became more important--he must see her before starting. Heretofore the
+pleasure of being with Jenny had definitely depended upon what Jenny
+might do; this morning the idea was beginning to be Jenny herself.
+
+She was in her trumpet-vine arbour, the roof of which was already
+sun-dried. The shaded sides were still dew-wet. She bounded across to
+him, very exquisite in her light blue frock with broad, fresh white
+ribbons in her light-brown hair: healthy, docile, joyous, with innocent
+blue eyes and the complexion of apple blossoms.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked in a voice which implied that the day
+would be as pleasant, no matter where he went: nevertheless she had no
+thought of appearing indifferent to him.
+
+He told her.
+
+"What are you going into the woods for?" she inquired, with little
+dancing movements of her feet on the yard grass in irrepressible health
+and joy and with no especial interest in his reply.
+
+He told her.
+
+"Could _you_ go?" He very well knew she could not and merely yielded to
+an impulse to express himself: he was offering to ruin the day for her.
+
+"They wouldn't let me," said Jenny, apparently not disappointed at
+being thus kept at home.
+
+He sought to make the best of his disappointment.
+
+"Even if you could go, I am afraid you never would be quiet, Jenny."
+
+"I'm afraid I wouldn't," Jenny replied, responsive to every suggestion.
+
+He lingered, tenderly disturbed by her: the roots of the future were
+growing in him this morning. He was changing, he was changing _her_:
+there was an outreaching of his nature to draw her into the future
+alongside him.
+
+Jenny suddenly stopped dancing and came closer to the fence, having
+all at once become more conscious of Webster, standing there as he had
+never stood before, looking at her as he had never looked. Her nature
+was of yielding sweetness, clasping trust. She glanced around the
+cottage windows: the situation was very exposed. Webster glanced at the
+cottage windows: the situation did not appear in the least exposed.
+Her eyes became more round with an idea:
+
+"Are you coming back this way?"
+
+"I _will_ come back this way."
+
+Jenny danced away from the fence, laughing excitedly: "Will it be late?"
+
+"I can _make_ it late?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Webster climbed the fence of the forest under the foliage of a big
+tree of some unknown kind and descended waist-deep into the foliage
+of a weed with a leaf as big as an elephant's ear: it had a beautiful
+trumpet-shaped white and purple flower. He wished he knew what it was:
+on the very edge of the forest, at his very first step, he had sunk
+waist-deep into ignorance. Then he waded through the rank nightshade
+and stepped out upon the grass of the woods--the green carpet of thick
+turf, Kentucky bluegrass.
+
+At last he was there under those softly waving trees which summer after
+summer he had watched from the porch and windows: long they had called
+to him and now he had answered their call.
+
+But the disappointment! As he had looked at the forest across the
+distance, the tree-tops had made an unbroken billowy line of green
+along the blue horizon, continuous like the waves of the sea as he
+imagined the sea. Somewhere under that forest roof he had taken it
+for granted that there would be thick undergrowth, wild spots for shy
+singing nesting birds. The disappointment! The trees stood ten or
+twenty or thirty feet apart. The longest boughs barely touched each
+other, their lowest sometimes hung forty or fifty feet in the air. He
+did not see a tree whose branches he could reach with his upstretched
+arm. The sun shone everywhere under them every bright day and the grass
+grew thick up to their trunks.
+
+Another disappointment! The wood was small. He walked to the middle of
+it and from there could see to its edge on each of its four sides. On
+one side was a field of yellow grain--what the grain was he did not
+know--ignorance again. On the side opposite this was a field of green
+grain--what he did not know. Straight ahead of him as he looked through
+the trees, he could see an open paddock on which the sunlight fell in
+a blazing sheen; it turned to silver the white flanks of some calves
+and made soft gold of the coats of grazing thoroughbreds. Beyond the
+paddock he could see stables and sheds and beyond these a farmhouse: he
+could faintly hear the cackle of barnyard poultry.
+
+He stood in bluegrass pasture--once Kentucky wilderness. It was like an
+exquisite natural park. As he had skirmished toward the country along
+turnpikes with school-mates or other friends during his life, often his
+eyes had been drawn toward these world-famous bluegrass pastures. Now
+he was in one; and it was here that he had come to look for the warbler
+which haunts the secret forest solitudes!
+
+He sat down under a big tree with a feeling of how foolish he had
+been. This was again followed by an overwhelming sense of his
+ignorance.
+
+He did not know the kind of tree he sat under nor of any other that
+stood far or near. These were such as sugar maple and red oak and
+white oak and black ash and white ash and black walnut and white
+walnut--rarely white walnut--and hickory and locust and elm and a few
+haws: he did recognise a locust tree but then a locust tree grew in
+Jenny's yard! All around him weeds and wild flowers and other grasses
+sprang up out of the bluegrass: he did not know them.
+
+There was one tree he curiously looked around for, positive that he
+should not be blind to it if fortunate enough to set his eyes on
+one--the coffee tree. That is, he felt sure he'd recognise it if it
+yielded coffee ready to drink, of which never in his life had they
+given him enough. Not once throughout his long troubled experience as
+to being fed had he been allowed as much coffee as he craved. Once,
+when younger, he had heard some one say that the only tree in all the
+American forest that bore the name of Kentucky was the Kentucky coffee
+tree; and he had instantly conceived a desire to pay a visit in secret
+to that corner of the woods. To take his cup and a few lumps of sugar
+and sit under the boughs and catch the coffee as it dripped down.... No
+one to hold him back ... as much as he wanted at last ...! The Kentucky
+coffee tree--his favourite in Nature!
+
+He said to himself, looking all round him, that he had the outdoor
+loneliness and blindness of Silas Marner this wonderful morning.
+
+Propped against the tree he sat still a while, thinking of the long day
+before him and of how he should spend it in this thin empty pasture,
+abandoned by the wild creatures. But as he deliberated, suddenly and
+then more and more he awoke to things going on around him.
+
+A few feet away and on a level with his eyes a little fellow descended
+from high over-head. A little green gymnast trying to reach the ground
+by means of his own rope which he manufactured out of his body as he
+came down. How could he do it? How had he learned the very first time
+to make the rope strong enough to bear his weight instead of its
+giving way and letting him drop? Something seized one of Webster's
+ankles with a pair of small jaws like pincers and reminded him that his
+foot was in the way: it had better move on. A black ant suddenly rushed
+angrily over his knee. A cricket leaped in the grass. One autumn one
+of them had started its song behind the wainscoting, Elinor had pushed
+her toe against the woodwork and silenced it. A few feet away a bunch
+of white clover blossomed: a honey bee was searching it. Webster found
+on the back of one of his hands, which was pressed against the grass, a
+tiny crimson coach--a mere dot of a crimson coach being moved along he
+could not see how. The colour was most gorgeous and the material of the
+finest velvet. He let it go on its way across his hand withersoever it
+might be journeying. Directly opposite his eyes, some forty feet from
+the ground, was a round hole in a rotten tree-trunk. Webster wondered
+whether a bird ever pecked a square hole in anything. Suddenly from
+behind him a red-headed bird flew to the dead tree-trunk and alighted
+near the hole: he recognised the wood-pecker. And he remembered that
+this was the first bird Wilson had killed that first day he entered the
+American forest: he was glad that it was the first _he_ encountered!
+No sooner had the wood-pecker alighted than the head of another bird
+appeared at the hole and the wood-pecker took to his heels--to his
+wings. Webster wished he had known what this other bird was: it had
+a black band across its chest and wore a speckled jacket and a dull
+reddish cap on the back of its head. A disturbance reached him from
+a nearby treetop, a wailing voice, a gulping sound, as if something
+up there were sick and full of suffering and were trying to take its
+medicine. He watched the spot and presently a crow flew out of the
+thick leaves: the crow's family seemed not in good health. A ground
+squirrel jumped to the end of a rotting log some yards away but at
+sight of him shrieked and darted in again. The whole pasture was alive.
+
+Webster had all this time become conscious that another sound had been
+reaching his ear at regular intervals from the high branches of the
+trees, first in one place and then in another. His eyes had followed
+the voice but he could see no bird. The sound was like this:
+
+_Se--u--re?_
+
+That was the first half of the song--a question. A few moments later
+the other half followed, perhaps from another tree--the answer:
+
+_Se--u--u._
+
+Here was a mystery: what was the bird? Could it be the bluebird!--his
+ignorance again, the comicality of his ignorance! Webster had never
+seen or heard a bluebird. He recalled what the professor had told
+them--that Alexander Wilson had written the first poem on the American
+bluebird, perhaps still the best poem; and he had given them the poem
+to memorise if they liked, saying that they might not think it good
+poetry, but at least it was the poetry of a man who thought he could
+criticise Robert Burns! Webster had memorised the verses and as he now
+searched the forest boughs for this invisible bluebird, he repeated to
+himself some of Wilson's lines:
+
+    "When all the gay scenes of summer are o'er
+    And autumn slow enters so silent and sallow
+    And millions of warblers that charmed us before
+    Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow;
+    The bluebird, forsaken, but true to his home
+    Still lingers and looks for a milder tomorrow
+    Till forced by the horrors of winter to roam,
+    He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow."
+
+Again that long fine strain cast far out upon the air like a silken
+reel:
+
+_Se--u--re? Se--u--u._
+
+Or could it be a woodcock?
+
+He got up by and bye and walked toward the field of yellow grain on one
+side of the pasture. Before he was halfway he stopped, arrested by a
+wonderful sound: from the top rail of the fence before him, separating
+the pasture from the grain, came a loud ringing whistle. It was
+Bobwhite! Boys at school sometimes whistled "bobwhite." He knew this
+bird because he had seen him hanging amid snow and ice and holly boughs
+outside meat shops about Christmas time. Here now was the summer song:
+in it the green of the woods, the gold of the grain, the far brave
+clearness of the June sky.
+
+He tipped forward, not because his feet made any noise. Once again,
+nearer, that marvellous music rang past him, echoing on into the woods.
+Then it ceased; and as Webster approached the field fence what he saw
+was a rabbit watching him over the grass tops until with long soft
+leaps it escaped through the fence to the safety of the field.
+
+For a while he remained leaning on this fence and looking out across
+the coming harvest. Twenty yards away a clump of alders was in bloom:
+some bird was singing out there joyously. It made a _che che che_
+sound, also; but its colour was brown.
+
+The idea occurred to Webster that he would recross the pasture to the
+field on the other side and go on to the turnpike: one ran there, for
+he heard vehicles passing. He would make inquiry about some piece of
+forest further from the city. He remembered again what the professor
+told them:
+
+"Some of you this summer during your vacation may go out to some
+nearby strip of woods--what little is left of the old forest--in quest
+of the warbler. Seek the wildest spots you can find. The Kentucky
+bluegrass landscape is thin and tame now, but there are places of thick
+undergrowth where the bird still spends his Kentucky summer. Shall I
+give you my own experience as to where I found him when a boy half a
+century ago? On my father's farm there was a woodland pasture. The
+land dipped there into a marshy hollow. In this hollow was a stock
+pond. Around the edges of the pond grew young cane. It was always low
+because the cattle browsed it. The highest stalks were scarcely five
+feet. On the edge of the canebrake a thicket of papaw and blackberry
+vines added rankness and forest secrecy. It was here I discovered him.
+The pale green and yellow of his plumage blent with the pale green and
+yellow of the leaves and stalks. But it was many years before I knew
+that the bird I had found was the Kentucky warbler. If I had only known
+it when I was a boy!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Webster reached the turnpike and looked up and down, no one was in
+sight. He sat on the fence and waited. By and bye, coming in from the
+country, a spring wagon appeared. Curious projections stuck out from
+the top and sides of boxes in the wagon. When it drew nearer Webster
+saw poultry being taken to market. He looked at the driver but let him
+pass unaccosted: there would be little use in applying for information
+about warblers at headquarters for broilers.
+
+Next from the direction of the city he saw coming a splendid open
+carriage drawn by a splendid horse and driven by a very pompous
+coloured coachman in livery. An aristocratic old lady sat in the
+carriage, shielding her face from the dazzling sunlight with a rich
+parasol. She leaned out and looked curiously at Webster.
+
+"Suydam," she called out to her coachman with a voice that had the
+faded sweetness of faded rose leaves, "did you notice that remarkable
+boy? He looked as though he would have liked to drive with me out into
+the country. I wish I had invited him to do so."
+
+A milk cart followed with a great noise of tin cans. With milk carts
+Webster felt somewhat at home: it was often his business to receive
+the family milk. As the cart was passing, he motioned for the milkman
+to stop. Perhaps all milkmen stop at any sign: there may be an order:
+Webster called out with a good deal of hesitation:
+
+"Do you know of a woods further out full of bushes and thickets?"
+
+The milkman gave a little flap of the rein to his horse:
+
+"What's the matter with _you_?" he said with patient forbearance:
+
+Finally Webster saw creeping down the turnpike toward him an empty
+wagon-bed drawn by a yoke of oxen. A good-natured young negro man sat
+sideways on the wagon-tongue, smoking. Webster halted him by a gesture
+and a voice of command:
+
+"Do you know of a bushy woods further out?"
+
+Any negro enjoys being questioned because he enjoys not answering
+questions. Most of all he enjoys any puzzling exercise of his mother
+wit.
+
+"A bushy woods?"
+
+"Yes, a bushy woods."
+
+"What do you want with a bushy woods?"
+
+"I want to find where there is one."
+
+The negro hesitated: "there's a bushy woods about four miles out."
+
+"Is it on the pike?"
+
+"On the pike! Did you ever see a bushy woods on the pike? It's _beside_
+the pike."
+
+"Right side or left side?"
+
+"Depends which way you're going. Right side if you are going out, left
+side if you're coming in."
+
+"You say it's four miles out?"
+
+"You pass the three mile post and then you go a little further."
+
+"Are there any birds in it?"
+
+"Birds? There's owls in it. There's coons in it."
+
+"Do you know a young canebrake when you see one?"
+
+"I know an old hempbrake when I see one."
+
+Webster enjoyed his new authority in holding up his negro and
+questioning him about a forest. And it seemed to him that the moment
+had come when it was right to use money if you had it, horns or no
+horns. He pulled out a dime. The negro, too surprised to speak,
+came across and received it. He declined to express thanks but felt
+disposed to show that he had earned the money by repeating a piece of
+information:
+
+"It's four miles out."
+
+"Is there much of it?"
+
+"Much of it? Much as you want."
+
+"Do you live in it?"
+
+"No, I don't live in it: I live in a house."
+
+He had retaken his seat on the wagon-tongue.
+
+"What kind of pipe stem is that you are using?"
+
+"What kind? It's a cane pipe stem."
+
+"Where did you get the cane?"
+
+"Where did I get it? I got it in the woods."
+
+"Then there _is_ young cane growing in the woods?"
+
+"Who said there wasn't?"
+
+Webster, beginning this morning to use his eyes, took notice of
+something which greatly interested him as the wagon moved slowly off
+down the pike: strands of hemp clung to it here and there like a dry
+hanging moss. The geologist had told them that his own boyhood lay
+far back in the era of great Kentucky hemp-raising. Much of the hemp
+was broken in March, the month of high winds. As the hemp-breakers
+busily shook out their handfuls while separating the fibre from the
+shard, strands were carried away on the roaring gales, lodging against
+stubble and stumps and fences of the fields or blown further on into
+the pastures. Later when it was baled and hauled in, other filaments
+were caught on the rafters and shingles of hemp-houses and barns. Thus
+when in April the northward migration of birds reached Kentucky, this
+material was everywhere ready and plentiful, and the Baltimore orioles
+on the bluegrass plateau built their long hanging nests of Kentucky
+hemp.
+
+Webster, sitting on the fence and thinking of this, meantime laid his
+plans for the larger adventure of the following day: the clue he sought
+had unexpectedly been found: he would go out to the place where young
+cane grew: there he might have a real chance at the warbler.
+
+This being settled to his satisfaction, he hurried impatiently back to
+his woodland pasture. It had seemed empty of living creatures when he
+entered it; soon it had revealed itself as a whole teeming world. The
+mere green carpet of the woods was one vast birthplace and nursery,
+concert hall, playground, battlefield, slaughter-pen, cemetery.
+
+"But my ignorance!" he complained. "I have good strong eyes, but all
+these years they have been required to look at dead maps, dead books,
+dead pencils and figures, dead everything: not once in all that time
+have they been trained upon the study of a living object."
+
+His ears were as ignorant as his eyes: he had not been educated to hear
+and to know what he heard. Innumerable strange sounds high and low beat
+incessantly on them--wave upon wave of louder and fainter melodies,
+the summer music of the intent and earnest earth. And everywhere what
+fragrances! The tonic woody smells! Each deep breath he drew laved
+his lungs with sun-clean, leaf-sweet atmosphere. Hour after hour of
+this until his whole body and being--sight, smell, hearing, mind and
+spirit--became steeped in the forest joyousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now it was alone in the June woods that long bright afternoon that
+Webster took final account of the last wonderful things the geologist
+had told them that memorable morning. He pondered those sayings as best
+he could, made out of them what he could:
+
+"_I am not afraid to trust you, the young, with big ideas which will
+lift your minds as on strong wings and carry them swiftly and far
+through time and space. If you are taught to look for great things
+early in life, you will early learn how to find great things; and the
+things you love to find will be the things you will desire and try to
+do. I wish not to give you a single trivial, mean weak thought._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_The Kentucky warbler for over a hundred years has worn the name of
+the State and has carried it all over the world--leading the students
+of bird life to form some image of a far country and to fix their
+thoughts at least for some brief moment on this same beautiful spot
+of the world's surface. As long as he remains in the forests of the
+earth, he will keep the name of Kentucky alive though all else it once
+meant shall have perished and been forgotten. He is thus, as nearly as
+anything in Nature can be, its winged worldwide emblem, ever young as
+each spring is young, as the green of the woods is young._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Study the warbler while you may: how long he will inhabit the
+Kentucky forest no one can tell. As civilisation advances upon the
+forest, the wild species retreat; when the forest falls, the wild
+species are gone. Every human generation during these centuries has a
+last look at many things in Nature. No one will ever see them again:
+Nature can never find what she has once lost: if it is gone, it is
+gone forever. What Wilson records he saw of bird life in Kentucky a
+hundred years ago reads to us now as fables of the marvellous, of the
+incredible. Were he the sole witness, some of us might think him to be
+a lying witness. Let me tell you that I in my boyhood--half a century
+later than Wilson's visit to Kentucky--beheld things that you will
+hardly believe. The vast oak forest of Kentucky was what attracted
+the passenger pigeon. In the autumn when acorns were ripe but not
+yet fallen, the pigeons filled the trees at times and places, eating
+them from the cups. Walking quietly some sunny afternoon through the
+bluegrass pastures, you might approach an oak and see nothing but the
+tree itself, thick boughs with the afternoon sunlight sparkling on the
+leaves along one side. As you drew nearer, all at once, as if some
+violent explosion had taken place within the tree, a blue smoke-like
+cloud burst out all around the treetop--the simultaneous explosive
+flight of the frightened pigeons. Or all night long there might be
+wind and rain and the swishing of boughs and the tapping of loosened
+leaves against the window panes; and when you stepped out of doors
+next morning, it had suddenly become clear and cold. Walking out into
+the open and looking up at the clear sky you might see this: an arch
+of pigeons breast by breast, wing-tip to wing-tip, high up in the air
+as the wild geese fly, slowly moving southward. You could not see the
+end of the arch on one horizon or the other: the whole firmament was
+spanned by that mighty arch of pigeons flying south from the sudden
+cold. Not all the forces in Nature can ever restore that morning sunlit
+arch of pigeons flying south. The distant time may come, or a nearer,
+when the Kentucky warbler will have vanished like the wild pigeon:
+then any story of him will be as one of the ancient fables of bird
+life._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_The rocks of the earth are the one flooring on which every thing
+develops its story, then either disappears upon the stillness of the
+earth's atmosphere or sinks toward the silence of its rocks. Of the
+myriad forms of life on the earth the bird has always been the one
+thing nearest to what we call the higher life of the human species._
+
+"_It is the form and flight of the bird alone that has given man at
+last the mastery of the atmosphere. Without the bird as a living model
+we have not the slightest reason to believe that he could have ever
+learned the mechanism of flight. Now it is the flight of the bird,
+studied under the American sky, that has given the_ nations the war
+engine that will perhaps rule the destiny of the human race henceforth.
+_The form of the bird will fly before our autumn-brown American armies
+as they cross the sea--leading them as the symbol of their victory.
+When they lie along the trenches of France as thick as fallen brown
+autumn leaves in woodland hollows, it will be the flight of bird-like
+emblems of destruction that will guide them like hurricane-rushing
+leaves as they sweep toward their evil enemy._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Through all ages the flight of the bird alone has been the
+interpreter of the human spirit. The living, standing on the earth and
+seeing the souls of their dead pass beyond their knowledge, have fixed
+upon the bird as the symbol of their faith. When you are old enough,
+if not already, to know your Shakespeare, you will find in one line of
+one of his plays the whole vast human farewell of the living to the
+dead: they are the words of Horatio to Hamlet, his dying prince: 'the
+flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.'_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_As far as we geologists know, this is the morning of the planet. Not
+its dawn but somewhere near its sunrise. The bird music we hear in
+these human ages are morning songs. Back of that morning stretches the
+earth's long dawn; and the rocks tell us that thrushes were singing
+in the green forests of the earth millions of years before man had
+been moulded of the dust and had awakened and begun to listen to them.
+Thus bird music which seems to us so fresh is the oldest music of the
+earth--millions of years older than man's. And yet all this is still
+but a morning song. The earth is young, the birds are young, man is
+young--all young together at the morning of the earth's geologic day.
+What the evening will be we do not know. It is possible that the birds
+will be singing their evening song to the earth and man already have
+vanished millions of years before._"
+
+"_Many questions vex us: all others lead to one: when man vanishes,
+does he pass into the stillness of the earth's atmosphere and sink
+toward the stillness of its rocks like every other species? He answers
+with his faith: that his spirit is here he knows not why, but takes
+flight from it he knows not how or whither. Only, faith discloses to
+him one picture: the snowy pinion folded and at rest in the Final
+Places._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That long sunny afternoon in the June woods! The shadows of the trees
+slowly lengthened eastward. The sun sank below the forest boughs and
+shot its long lances against the tree trunks. It made a straight path
+of gold, deeper gold, across the yellow grain. The sounds of life died
+away, the atmosphere grew sweeter with the odours of leaves and grasses
+and blossoms.
+
+Webster recrossed the woods as he had entered it, waded through the
+nightshade and climbed the fence under the dark tree.
+
+It was twilight when he entered the City.
+
+As he passed her yard, Jenny bounded across to him joyous, innocent,
+tender, in a white frock with fresh blue ribbons in her brown hair.
+
+"Did you find him?" she asked, her happiness not depending on his
+answer.
+
+"It was not the right place. Tomorrow I am going out further into the
+country to a better place."
+
+"The humming-bird has been here," Jenny announced with an air of saying
+that she had been more successful as a naturalist.
+
+He made no reply: as the veteran observer of a day, he had somewhat
+outgrown the trumpet-vine arbour and the ruby-throat.
+
+He lingered close to the fence. Jenny lingered. He moved off,
+disappointed but devoid of speech.
+
+"Come back!" Jenny whispered, with reproach and vexation.
+
+It was the first invitation. It was the first acceptance of an
+invitation. There would have been a second acceptance but the
+invitation was not there to accept.
+
+When Webster turned in at his home gate, everything was just as he
+had foreseen: his father sat on one side of the porch, smoking the
+one daily cigar; his mother faced him from the opposite side, slowly
+rocking. Elinor crouched on the top step between them: he would have to
+walk around her or over her.
+
+His father laughed heartily as he sauntered up.
+
+"Well, my son, where is your game bag? What have you brought us for
+breakfast?"
+
+Webster looked crestfallen: he returned empty-handed but not
+empty-minded: he had had a great rich day; they thought it an idle
+wasted one.
+
+"Some of the boys have been here for you," said his mother. "They left
+word you must be certain to meet them, in the morning for the game.
+Freshen yourself up and I'll give you your supper."
+
+Elinor said nothing--a bad sign with her. She sat with her sharp little
+chin resting on her palms and with her eyes on him with calculating
+secrecy. He stepped around her.
+
+His room had never seemed so cramped after those hours in the woods
+under the open sky. The whole cottage seemed so unnatural, everything
+in the City so unnatural, after that day in the forest.
+
+At supper he had not much to say; his mother talked to him:
+
+"I put my berries away to eat with you for company." They ate their
+berries together.
+
+He felt tired and said he would go to bed. His room was darkened when
+he returned to it; he felt sure he had left his lamp burning; someone
+had been in it. He lighted his lamp again.
+
+As he started toward his window to close the shutters, his eye caught
+sight of an object hanging from the window sash. A paper was pinned
+around it. The handwriting was Elinor's. It was a bluejay, brought
+down by a lucky stone from some cottager's hand. Webster read Elinor's
+message for him:
+
+    "Your favourite Kentucky Warbler,
+
+           From your old friend,
+                   Thomas Jefferson."
+
+He sat on the side of his bed. The sights and sounds and fragrances of
+the pasture were all through him; the sunlight warmed his blood still,
+the young blood of perfect health.
+
+He turned in for the night and sleep drew him away at once from
+reality. And some time during the night he awoke out of his sleep to
+the reality of a great dream.
+
+[Illustration: chapter III--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter IV--title decoration]
+
+
+IV
+
+THE BIRD
+
+
+It was in the depths of a wonderful forest, green with summer and hoary
+with age. He was sitting on the ground in a small open space. No path
+led to this or away from it, but all around him grew grasses and plants
+which would be natural coverts for wild creatures. No human tread had
+ever crushed those plants.
+
+The soft vivid light resting on the woods was not morning-light nor
+evening-light: it was clear light without the hours. Yet the time must
+have been near noonday; for as Webster looked straight up toward the
+unseen sky, barred from his eyes by the forest roof of leaves, slender
+beams of sunlight filtered perpendicularly down, growing mistier as
+they descended until they could be traced no longer even as luminous
+vapour; no palest radiance from them reached the grass.
+
+He could not see far in any direction. At the edge of the open
+space where he sat, fallen rotten trees lay amid the standing live
+ones--parents, grandparents, great-grandparents of the rising forest,
+passing back into the soil of the planet toward the rocks.
+
+Strange as was the spot, stranger was Webster to himself and did
+not know what had changed him. It seemed that for the first time
+in his life his eyes were fully opened; never had he seen with such
+vision; and his feeling was so deep, so intense. The whole scene was
+enchantment. It was more than reality. _He_ was more than reality.
+The singing of birds far away--it was so crystal sweet, yet he could
+see none. A few yards from him a rivulet made its way from somewhere
+to somewhere. He could trace its course by the growth of plants which
+crowded its banks and covered it with their leaves.
+
+Expectancy weighed heavily on him. He was there for a purpose but could
+not say what the purpose was.
+
+All at once as his eyes were fixed on the low, green thicket opposite
+him, he saw that it was shaken; something was on its way to him. He
+watched the top of the thicket being parted to the right and to the
+left. With a great leaping of his heart he waited, motionless where
+he sat on the grass. What creature could be coming? Then he saw just
+within the edge of the thicket a curious piece of head-gear--he had no
+knowledge of any such hat. Then he saw a gun barrel. Then the hand and
+forearm of a man was thrust forward and it pushed the underbrush aside;
+and then there stepped forth into the open the figure of a hunter,
+lean, vigorous, tall, athletic. The hunter stepped out with a bold
+stride or two and stopped and glanced eagerly around with an air of
+one in a search; he discovered Webster and with a look of relief stood
+still and smiled.
+
+There could be no mistake. Webster held imprinted on memory from a
+picture those features, those all-seeing eyes; it was Wilson--weaver
+lad of Paisley, wandering peddler youth of the grey Scotch mountains,
+violinist, flutist, the poet who had burned his poem standing in the
+public cross, the exile, the school teacher for whom the boy caught the
+mouse, the failure who sent the drawing to Thomas Jefferson, the bold
+figure in the skiff drifting down the Ohio--the naturalist plunging
+into the Kentucky wilderness and walking to Lexington and shivering in
+White's garret--the great American ornithologist, the immortal man.
+
+There he stood: how could it be? It was reality yet more than reality.
+
+The hunter walked straight toward him with the light of recognition in
+his eyes. He came and stood before Webster and looked down at him with
+a smile:
+
+"Have you found him, Webster?"
+
+Webster strangely heard his own voice:
+
+"I have not found him."
+
+"You have looked long?"
+
+"I have looked everywhere and I cannot find him."
+
+The hunter sat down and laid on the grass beside him his fowling piece,
+his game bag holding new species of birds, and his portfolio of fresh
+drawings. Then he turned upon Webster a searching look as if to draw
+the inmost truth out of him and asked:
+
+"Why do you look for the Kentucky Warbler?"
+
+Webster hesitated long:
+
+"I do not know," he faltered.
+
+"Something in you makes you seek him, but you do not know what that
+something is?"
+
+"No, I do not know what it is: I know I wish to find him."
+
+"Not him alone but many other things?"
+
+"Yes, many other things."
+
+"The whole wild life of the forest?"
+
+"Yes, all the wild things in the forest--and the wild forest itself."
+
+"You wish to know about these things--you wish to know them?"
+
+"I wish to know them."
+
+The hunter searched Webster's countenance more keenly, more severely:
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+There was silence. The forest was becoming more wonderful. The singing
+of the unseen birds more silvery sweet. It was beyond all reality.
+Webster answered:
+
+"I am sure."
+
+The hunter hurled questions now with no pity:
+
+"Would you be afraid to stay here all night alone?"
+
+"I would not."
+
+"If, during the night, a storm should pass over the forest with thunder
+deafening you and lightning flashing close to your eyes and trees
+falling everywhere, you would fear for your life and that would be
+natural and wise; but would you come again?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"If it were winter and the forest were bowed deep with ice and snow
+and you were alone in it, having lost your way, would you cry enough?
+Would you hunt for a fireside and never return?"
+
+"I would not."
+
+"You can stand cold and hunger and danger and fatigue; can you be
+patient and can you be persevering?"
+
+"I can."
+
+"Look long and not find what you look for and still not give up?"
+
+"I can."
+
+There was silence for a little while: the mood of the hunter seemed to
+soften:
+
+"Do you know where you are, Webster?"
+
+"I do not know where I am."
+
+"You did not know then, that this is the wilderness of your
+forefathers--the Kentucky pioneers. You have wandered back to it."
+
+"I did not know."
+
+"Have you read their great story?"
+
+"Not much of it."
+
+"Are you beginning to realise what it means to be sprung from such men
+and women?"
+
+"I cannot say."
+
+"But you want to do great things?"
+
+"If I loved them."
+
+The hunter stood up and gathered his belongings together. His questions
+had become more kind as though he were satisfied. He struck Webster on
+his shoulder.
+
+"_Come_," he said, as with high trust, "_I will show you the Kentucky
+warbler._"
+
+He looked around and his eyes fell upon the forest brook. He walked
+over to it, to discover in what direction it ran and beckoned.
+
+"We'll follow this stream up: the spring may not be far away." He
+glanced at the tree-tops: "It is nearly noon: the bird will come to the
+spring to drink and to bathe."
+
+Webster followed the hunter as he threaded his way through the forest
+toward the source of the brook.
+
+Not many yards off his guide turned:
+
+"There is the spring," he said, pointing to a green bank out of which
+bubbled the cool current.
+
+"Let us sit here. Make no movement and make no noise."
+
+How tense the stillness! They waited and listened. Finally the hunter
+spoke in an undertone:
+
+"Did you hear that?"
+
+Away off in the forest Webster heard the song of a bird. Presently
+it came nearer. Now it was nearer still. It sounded at last within
+the thicket just above the spring, clear, sweet, bold, emphatic notes
+distinctly repeated at short intervals. And then--
+
+_There he was--the Kentucky Warbler!_
+
+Webster could see every mark of identification. The bird had come
+out of the dense growth and showed himself on the bough of a sapling
+about twenty feet from the earth, in his grace and shapeliness and
+manly character. With a swift, gliding flight downward he lighted on
+a sweeping limb of a tree still nearer, within a few inches of the
+ground. Then he dropped to the ground and moved about, turning over
+dead leaves. He was only several yards away and Webster could plainly
+trace the yellow line over his eye, the blackish crown and black sides
+of the throat, the underparts all of solid yellowish gold, the upper
+parts of olive green. An instant later the bird was on the wing again,
+hither, thither, up and down, continually in motion. No white in the
+wings, none in the tail feathers. Once he stopped and poured out his
+loud, musical song--unlike any other warbler's. A moment later he was
+on the ground again, with a manner of self-possession, dignity--as on
+his namesake soil, Kentucky.
+
+Webster had sat bent over toward him, forgetful of everything else. At
+last drawing a deep breath, he looked around gratefully, remembering
+his guide.
+
+No one was near him. Webster saw the hunter on the edge of the thicket
+yards away; he stood looking back, his figure dim, fading. Webster,
+forgetful of the bird, cried out with quick pain:
+
+"Are you going away? Am I never to see you again?"
+
+The voice that reached him seemed scarcely a voice; it was more like an
+echo, close to his ear, of a voice lost forever:
+
+"_If you ever wish to see me, enter the forest of your own heart._"
+
+[Illustration: chapter IV--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter V--title decoration]
+
+
+V
+
+THE ROAD
+
+
+Webster sprang to his feet in the depths of the strange summer-dark
+forest: that is to say, he awoke with a violent start and found himself
+sitting on his bed with his feet hanging over one side.
+
+It was late to be getting up. The sun already soared above the roof of
+the cottage opposite his window and the light slanted in full blaze
+against his shutters. Shafts penetrated some weather-loosened slats and
+fell on his head and shoulders and on the wall behind him. Breakfast
+must be nearly ready. Fresh cooking odours--coffee odour, meat odour,
+bread odour--filled the little bathroom-bedroom. Feet were hurrying,
+scurrying, in the kitchen. Quieter footsteps approached his door along
+the narrow hall outside and there came a tap:
+
+"Breakfast, Webster!"
+
+It was his mother's voice, indulgent, peaceful, sweet. He suddenly
+thought that never before had he fully realised how sweet it was, had
+always been, notwithstanding he disappointed her.
+
+He got up and went across to open his shutters and had taken hold of
+the catch, when he was arrested in his movement. At night he tilted
+the shutters, so that the morning sun might not enter crevices and
+shine in his face and awaken him. Now looking down through the slats,
+he discovered something going on in the yard beneath his window.
+Elinor had come tipping around the corner of the cottage. She held one
+dark little witch-like finger unconsciously pressed against her tense
+lips. Her dark eyes were brimming with a secret, mischievous purpose.
+A ribbon which looked like a huge, crumpled purple morning-glory was
+knotted into the peak of her ravenish hair. Her fresh little gown,
+too, suggested the colours of the purple morning-glory and her whole
+presence, with a freshness as of dew-drops formed amid moonbeams at
+midnight, somehow symbolised that flower which surprises us at dawn as
+having matured its unfolding in the dark: half sinister, half innocent.
+
+With cautious, delicate steps, which could not possibly have made any
+noise in the grass, she approached the window and stopped and lifted
+the notched pole which was used to hold up the clothes-line in the
+back yard. Setting the pole on end and planting herself beside it, she
+pushed it with all her slight but concentrated strength against the
+window shutters. It struck violently and fell over to the grass in one
+direction as Elinor, with the silence of a light wind, fled in the
+other.
+
+Webster stood looking down at it all: he understood now: that was the
+crashing sound which had awakened him.
+
+It had been Elinor who had ended his dream.
+
+But his dream was not ended. It would never end. It was in him to stay
+and it was doing its work. The feeling which had surprised him as to
+the sweetness of his mother's voice but marked the deeper awakening
+that had taken place in his sleep, an unfolding, his natural growth. It
+was this growth that now animated him as he smiled at Elinor's flying
+figure. Her prank had not irritated him: no intrigue of hers would
+ever annoy him again. Instead, the idea struck him that Elinor must
+be thinking of him a great deal, if so much of her life--incessantly
+active as it was with the other children of the cottages--were
+devoted to plans to worry him. She must often have him in mind quite
+to herself, he reflected; and this fresh picture of Elinor's secret
+brooding about him somehow for the first time touched him tenderly and
+finely.
+
+He turned back from the window shutters without opening them and sat
+on the edge of his bed. He could not shake off his dream. How could it
+possibly be true that there was no such forest as he had wandered into
+in his dream--that Kentucky wilderness of the old heroic days? Could
+anything destroy in him the certainty that with wildly beating heart he
+had seen the living colours and heard the actual notes and watched the
+characteristic movements of the warbler? Then, though these things were
+not real, still they were true and would remain true always.
+
+Thus, often and to many of us, between closing the curtains of the
+eyes upon the outer world at night and drawing them wide in the
+morning, within that closed theatre a stage has been erected and we
+have stepped forth and spoken some solitary part or played a rôle in a
+drama that leaves us changed for the rest of our days. Yesterday an old
+self, today a new self. We have been shifted completely away from our
+last foot-prints and our steps move off in another direction, taking a
+truer course.
+
+Beyond all else a high, solemn sense subdued Webster with the thought,
+that in his sleep he had come near as to unearthly things. The
+long-dead hunter, who had appeared to him, spoke as though he lived
+elsewhere than on the earth and lived more nobly; his accents, the
+majesty of his countenance, were moulded as by higher wisdom and
+goodness. Webster was overwhelmed with the feeling that he had been
+brought near the mystery of life and death and as from an immortal
+spirit had received his consecration to the forest.
+
+... He got down on his knees at his bedside, after a while, though
+little used to prayer....
+
+When he walked into the breakfast-room with a fresh step and freshened
+countenance, probably all were not slow to notice the change. Families
+whose lives run along the groove of familiar routine quickly observe
+the slightest departure from the customary, whether in voice or
+behaviour, of any member. There was response soon after his entrance
+to something in him obviously unusual.
+
+"My son," said his father, who had laid down his paper to help him to
+the slice which had been put aside, "the woods must agree with you";
+and he even scraped the dish for a little extra gravy. Ordinarily, when
+deeply interested in his paper or occasionally when conscious of some
+disappointment as to his son, he forgot, or was indifferent about, the
+gravy.
+
+"They do agree with me!" Webster replied, laughing and in fresh tones.
+He held out his plate hungrily for his slice and he waited for all the
+gravy that might be coming to him.
+
+"One of the boys has already been here this morning," said his mother,
+handing him his cup. "They want you to be sure to meet them this
+afternoon, not to fail. You must have been dead asleep, for I called
+you at three different times."
+
+"Did you knock three times?"
+
+Webster asked his question with a sinking of the heart; what if his
+mother's first knock had awakened him? He might never have finished his
+dream, might never have dreamed at all. How different the morning might
+have been, how different the world--if his mother had awakened him
+before his dream!
+
+He received his cup from her and smiled at her:
+
+"I was dreaming," he said, and he smiled also at the safety of his
+vision.
+
+Elinor, sitting opposite him, had said nothing. She had finished her
+breakfast before he had come in and plainly lingered till he should
+enter. Since his entrance she had sat restless in her chair, toying
+with her fork or her napkin, and humming significantly to herself. She
+had this habit. "You must not sing at the table, Elinor," her mother
+had once said. "I am _not_ singing," Elinor had replied, "I am humming
+to myself, and _no_ one is supposed to listen." Meantime this morning,
+her quickly shifting eyes would sweep his face questioningly; she must
+have been waiting for some sign as to what had been the effect of the
+Thomas Jefferson bluejay the night before and of the repeated attack on
+his window shutters.
+
+Often when out of humour with her he had declined to notice her at
+table; now once, when he caught her searching glance, he smiled.
+Dubiously, half with disbelief and half with amazement, she looked
+steadily back at him for an instant; then she slipped confusedly from
+her seat and was gone. Webster laughed within himself: "what will she
+be up to next?" he thought.
+
+It was quiet now at the table: his father had gone back to his paper,
+his mother was eating the last of her breakfast fruit, and perhaps,
+thinking that out in the country things were getting ripe. After an
+interval Webster broke the silence: he was white with emotion.
+
+"Father," he said quietly, "I have decided what I'd like to do."
+
+Webster's father dropped his paper: Webster's mother's eyes were on
+him. The years had waited for this moment, the future depended upon it.
+
+"If you and mother do not need me for anything else just yet, I'd
+like to work my way through the University. But if there's something
+different you'd rather I'd do, or if you both want me in any other way,
+I am here."
+
+"My son," exclaimed his father, rudely with the back of his hand
+brushing away a tear that rolled down his cheek--a tear perhaps started
+by something in his son's words that brought back his own hard boyhood,
+"your father is here to work for you as long as he is alive and able.
+Your mother and I are glad--!" but he, got no further: his eyes had
+filled and his voice choked him.
+
+Webster's mother stood beside him, her hand on his head, her
+handkerchief pressed to her eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he had made his preparations for the glad day's adventure and
+stepped out on the front porch, his father had gone to the bank, his
+mother was in the kitchen. Elinor was sitting on the top step. Her
+back was turned. Her sharp little elbows rested on her knees and her
+face was propped in her palms. Her figure again suggested a crumpled,
+purple morning-glory--fragile, not threatened by any human violence but
+imperilled by nature.
+
+She did not look around as he stepped out or move as he passed down.
+He felt a new wish to say something pleasant but could not quite so
+conquer himself. As he laid his hand on the yard gate, he was stopped
+by these words, reaching his ears from the porch:
+
+"Take me with you!"
+
+He could not believe his ears. Could this be Elinor, his tease, his
+torment? This wounded appeal, timid pleading--could it proceed from
+Elinor? He was thrown off his balance and too surprised to act. The
+words were repeated more beseechingly, wistfully:
+
+"Take me with you, will you, Webster?"
+
+For now that she had given herself away to him, he might as well see
+everything: that at last she was openly begging that she be admitted to
+a share in his plans and pleasures, that he no longer disdain to play
+with her.
+
+He spoke with rough embarrassment over his shoulder:
+
+"You can't go today. Nobody can go today. I'm going miles out into the
+country to the woods."
+
+"But some day will you take me over into the woods yonder?"
+
+After a while he turned toward her:
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"Thank you very much. Thank you very much, indeed, Webster!"
+
+The tide of feeling began to rush toward her:
+
+"There are some wild violets over there, Elinor, wild blue violets and
+wild white violets--thick beds of them in the shade."
+
+"Oh, how lovely!" She clasped her hands and knotted them tensely under
+her chin and kept her eyes fixed more hopefully on him.
+
+"There is a flock of the funniest little fairies dancing under one of
+the big forest trees, each carrying the queerest little green parasol."
+
+"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!"
+
+"And I found one little cedar tree. If they'll let us, I'll dig it up
+and bring it home and plant it in the front yard. It will be your own
+cedar tree, Elinor."
+
+"Oh, Webster! Could anything be more lovely of you?"
+
+"You and I and Jenny will go some day soon--"
+
+"No, no, no!" cried Elinor, stamping her feet fiercely and wringing her
+hands. "I don't want Jenny to go! I won't have Jenny! Just you and I!
+Not Jenny! Just you and I!"
+
+"Then just you and I," he said, smiling at her and moving away.
+
+"_Wait!_"
+
+She darted down the steps and ran to him and drew his face over and
+laid her cheek against his cheek, clinging to him.
+
+He struggled to get away, laughing with his new happiness: tears welled
+out of her eyes with hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Webster had taken to the turnpike.
+
+The morning was cool, the blue of the sky vast, tender, noble. Rain
+during the night had left the atmosphere fresh and clear and the pike
+dustless. Little knobs of the bluish limestone jutted out. The greyish
+grass and weeds on each side had been washed till they looked green
+again.
+
+The pike climbed a hill and from this hilltop he turned and looked
+back. He could see the packed outskirts of the city and away over in
+the heart of it church spires rising here and there. The heart of it
+had once been the green valley through which a stream of the wilderness
+ran: there Wilson had seen the water mills and the gallows for hanging
+Kentuckians and the thousand hitched horses and folks sitting on the
+public square selling cakes of maple sugar and split squirrels.
+
+Soon he passed the pasture where he had spent yesterday. That had done
+well enough as a beginning: today he would go further. He remembered
+many things he had seen in the park-like bluegrass woods. Sweet to his
+ear sounded the call of bobwhite from the yellow grain. He wondered
+whether the ailing young crows in the tree-tops had at last taken all
+their medicine. The curious bird which had watched him out of a hole in
+the tree-trunk--the chap with the black band across his chest and the
+speckled jacket and the red cap on the back of his head, was he still
+on the lookout? What had become of the gorgeous little velvet coach
+that had travelled across the back of his hand on its unknown road?
+And that mystery of the high leaves--that wandering disembodied voice:
+_Se-u-re? Se-u-u._ Did it still haunt the waving boughs?
+
+But miles on ahead in the country, undergrowth, shade, secrecy for wild
+creatures--his heart leaped forward to these and his feet hastened.
+
+This day with both eyes open, not shut in sleep, he might find the
+warbler.
+
+Whole-heartedly, with a boy's eagerness, Webster suddenly took off his
+hat and ran down the middle of the gleaming white turnpike toward the
+green forest--toward all, whether much or little, that he was ever to
+be.
+
+[Illustration: chapter V--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: logo--Country Life Press]
+
+                        THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
+                           GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Kentucky Warbler, by James Lane Allen</h1>
+<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
+and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at <a
+href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>.  If you are not
+located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this ebook.</p>
+<p>Title: The Kentucky Warbler</p>
+<p>Author: James Lane Allen</p>
+<p>Release Date: September 19, 2014  [eBook #46905]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KENTUCKY WARBLER***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by Matthias Grammel, Greg Bergquist,<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive/American Libraries<br />
+    (<a href="https://archive.org/details/americana">https://archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      <a href="https://archive.org/details/kentuckywarb00allerich">
+      https://archive.org/details/kentuckywarb00allerich</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h1>THE KENTUCKY<br />
+WARBLER</h1>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_004.jpg" width="475" height="700" alt="Frontispiece" title="" />
+  <p class="center font11">
+    &quot;<span class="smcap">There He was&mdash;The Kentucky Warbler!</span>&quot;</p>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="p3 center font24 pmb1">
+THE KENTUCKY<br />
+WARBLER</p>
+
+<p class="p3 center">BY</p>
+<p class="center font15 pmb1">JAMES LANE ALLEN</p>
+
+<p class="pmb1" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 110px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_005.jpg" width="110" height="115" alt="decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb1" />
+
+<div class="block2">
+<p class="p3 font09"><i>When the population of this immense Western<br />
+Republic will have diffused itself over every acre of<br />
+ground fit for the comfortable habitation of man,<br />
+... then not a warbler shall flit through our<br />
+thickets, but its name, its notes, its habits will be<br />
+familiar to all&mdash;repeated in their sayings and<br />
+celebrated in their village songs.</i></p>
+
+<p class="i10 font09 pmb2"><span class="smcap">&mdash;Alexander Wilson</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center font10 pmb3">WITH A<br />
+FRONTISPIECE IN COLOUR</p>
+
+
+<p class="center font12 pmb3">GARDEN&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;CITY NEW YORK<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1918</p>
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="p3 center font09 pmb3">
+COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF<br />
+TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,<br />
+INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="p3 center font13 pmb3">
+TO<br />
+THE YOUNG KENTUCKY<br />
+FOREST-LOVER
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+
+<div class="block3">
+<table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" class="tdl" summary="Table of contents">
+  <colgroup> <col width="50%" /> <col width="10%" /> </colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2" align="right"><span class="font07">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter I<br />
+    Home</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter II<br />
+    School</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter III<br />
+    Forest</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter IV<br />
+    Bird</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td><p class="i5 font12 smcap">Chapter V<br />
+    Road</p></td>
+    <td align="right"><br /><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="p2 center font18 pmb3">
+THE KENTUCKY<br />
+
+WARBLER</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+<p class="pmb2" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_013.jpg" width="550" height="208" alt="chapter I, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h2><a id="chap_I">I</a><br /><br />
+
+THE HOME</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_013__initial.jpg" width="100" height="99" alt="W initial" title="" />
+</span>
+ebster, along with thousands
+of other lusty forward-looking
+Kentucky
+children, went to the
+crowded public schools.</p>
+
+<p>There every morning against his will
+but with the connivance of his parents
+he was made a prisoner, as it seemed
+to him, and for long hours held as such
+while many things disagreeable or unnecessary,
+some by one teacher and
+some by another, were forced into his
+head. Soon after they were forced in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+most of the things disappeared from
+the head. What became of them nobody
+knew: Webster didn't know and
+he didn't care. During the forcing-in
+process month by month and year by
+year he now and then picked up a
+pleasant idea for himself, some wonderful
+idea about great things on ahead in
+life or about the tempting world just
+outside school. He picked up such
+ideas with ease and eagerness and held
+on to them.</p>
+
+<p>He lived in a small white-frame cottage
+which was rather new but already
+looked rather old. It stood in a small
+green yard, which was naturally very
+old but still looked young. The still-young
+yard and the already-ageing
+cottage were to be found&mdash;should anybody
+have tried to find them&mdash;on the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+rim of the city. If the architectural
+plan of the city had been mapped out
+as an open-air theatre, the cottage
+would have been a rear seat in the very
+last row at the very lowest price. The
+block was made up of such cottages&mdash;rear
+seats. They faced the city but
+couldn't see the city, couldn't see anything
+worth seeing, and might as well
+have looked in some other direction or
+not looked at all.</p>
+
+<p>If Webster stepped out of the front
+door, he was within five yards of the
+outmost thoroughfare&mdash;native dirt-road
+for milk wagons, butchers' wagons,
+coal carts, and fruit-and-berry
+wagons. Webster's father kept an
+especial eye on the coal carts: they
+weighed heavily on his salary. Webster's
+mother kept her eye on the fruit-and-berry
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+wagons: they tantalised her
+passion for preserves. Everybody
+kept uneasy eyes on milk and butchers'
+and vegetable wagons, which brought
+expensive satisfaction to appetites for
+three meals a day. The edges of the
+thoroughfare were paths for the cottagers,
+all of whom walked and were
+glad and grateful even to be able to
+walk. The visitors of the cottagers
+walked. Everybody walked but the
+drivers. The French would have called
+the street The Avenue of Soles.</p>
+
+<p>One wet winter morning as Webster,
+walking beside his father, lifted his
+feet out of the mud and felt sorry about
+their shoes, he complained because
+there was no pavement.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," replied his father, whose
+remarks on any subject appeared to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+come out of a clear sky, so unclouded
+were they by uncertainty, "my son,
+your father's salary is not a paved-sidewalk
+salary. The mud on your
+shoes is in an inverse ratio to the funds
+in his pockets. I believe you have
+learned in your arithmetic at school by
+this time what ratio is."</p>
+
+<p>One dry summer morning as Webster
+walked beside his father, a butcher's
+wagon whirled past and covered
+them quickly with dust. He considered
+this injury to their best clothes
+and complained because there was no
+watering-cart.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," replied his father out of
+his daily clear sky, "my salary is not a
+watering-cart salary. The presence of
+the earth's dust in your eyes exactly
+equals the lack of gold-dust in your
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+father's earthly account. I believe by
+this time you have studied equations."</p>
+
+<p>But if Webster had stepped out of the
+back door of the cottage and passed
+under the clothes-line which was held
+up at its middle point by a forked pole,
+if he had crossed their very small vegetable
+garden and then had crossed a wide
+deep cow-lot where some rich man of
+the city pastured his fat milk cows, he
+would have been on the edge of the
+country. It was possible for one standing
+on the rear porch to see all summer
+thick, softly waving woods.</p>
+
+<p>Within the past two or three years,
+as summer had come again and the
+world turned green, a change had taken
+place in Webster, a growth. More and
+more he began to look from the porch
+or windows at those distant massed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+trees. Something from them seemed
+to cross over to him, an influence powerful
+and compelling; it drew him out
+of the house back with it into the mystery
+of the forest and he never returned.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, almost as soon as he could
+go anywhere he had started toward the
+forest without asking permission. They
+had overtaken him then and dragged
+him back. When he was old enough
+to understand, they had explained:
+he was too young, he would get lost,
+the bull would hook him.</p>
+
+<p>"But why?" Webster had asked,
+complaining of this new injustice in
+the world. He was perpetually being
+surprised that so many things in the
+world were bent on getting one into
+trouble; all around him things seemed
+to be waiting to make trouble. "Why
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+should the bull hook <i>me</i>? <i>I've</i> done
+nothing to <i>the bull</i>."</p>
+
+<p>They were about finishing breakfast.
+He was eating in his slow ruminant
+way&mdash;he ate enormously but never
+hungrily. His father, whose custom it
+was to divide the last half of his breakfast
+with the first half of his newspaper,
+lowered the paper and looked
+over the top.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," he said, "the bull has
+horns. Every living creature is bound
+to use everything it has. Use what
+you have or lose what you have&mdash;that
+is the terrible law in this world. Therefore
+the bull is obliged to hook what
+he can to keep his horns going. If you
+give him the chance, he will practise
+them on you. Otherwise his great-great-grandson
+might not have any
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+horns when he really needed them.
+Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Webster.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll explain again when you are
+mature enough to comprehend," said
+his father, returning to his paper.</p>
+
+<p>Webster returned to the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"If I ever have any money in my
+pocket, you always tell me not to spend
+it: now you say I ought to use whatever
+I have."</p>
+
+<p>His father quickly lowered his paper
+and raised his voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I have never said that you must
+use everything all at once, my son.
+You must learn to use it at the right
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"When <i>is</i> the right time to use a
+thing?" asked Webster, eating quietly
+on.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll answer that question when it
+is necessary," his father replied grumblingly
+from behind his paper, putting
+an end to the disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks prior to this breakfast-scene
+Webster one day at recess had
+laid bare a trouble in himself, confiding
+it to one of his intimate school-mates.
+He did so with a tone of uncertainty,
+for he was not sure but he was not
+being disloyal.</p>
+
+<p>"Can <i>your</i> father answer all the
+questions <i>you</i> ask <i>him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not half of them!" exclaimed the
+comrade with splendid candour&mdash;"Not
+half!"</p>
+
+<p>"My father answers very few <i>I</i> ask
+<i>him</i>," interposed a fragile little white-faced
+fellow who had strolled up in
+time to catch the drift of the confidential
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+talk. He did not appear strong
+enough even to put a question: he
+nursed a ragged ball, had lost a front
+tooth, and gave off the general skim-milk
+look which some children carry
+about with them.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, without inquiring further,
+began to feel a new respect for himself
+as not being worse off than other boys
+as to fathers; also a new respect for
+his father as not being worse than his
+class: fathers were deficient!</p>
+
+<p>Remembering this discovery at
+school&mdash;one of the big pleasant ideas
+he picked up outside lessons&mdash;he did
+not on the morning in question press
+his father more closely as to using horns
+when you have them and not using
+money when you have it. In fact, he
+was already beginning to shield his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+father and had quite ceased to interrogate
+him in company, lest he expose
+some ignorance. He therefore credited
+this incident where it belonged: as a
+part of his growing knowledge that he
+couldn't look to his father for any great
+help on things that puzzled him&mdash;fathers,
+as had been said, being deficient,
+though always contriving to look
+so proficient that from merely surveying
+them you would never suspect the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father was a minor bookkeeper
+in one of the city's minor banks.
+Like his bankbooks, he was always
+perfectly balanced, perfectly behaved;
+and he was also perfectly bald. Even
+his baldness might have been credited
+to him as one of the triumphs of exact
+calculation: the baldness of one side
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+being exactly equal to the baldness of
+the other: hardly a hair on either exposure
+stood out as an unaccounted-for
+remainder.</p>
+
+<p>Webster thought of his father as
+having worked at nothing but arithmetic
+for nearly forty years. Sometimes
+it became a kind of disgust to
+him to remember this: as was his
+custom when displeased at anything
+he grew contemptuous. In one of his
+contemptuous moments he one day
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"How many times have you made
+the figure 2?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three quadrillion times, my son,"
+replied his father with perfect accuracy
+and a spirit of hourly freshness. His
+father went on:</p>
+
+<p>"The same number of times for all
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+of them. When you're in the thousands,
+you may think one or the other
+figure is ahead, but when you get
+well on into the millions, there isn't
+any difference: they are neck and
+neck."</p>
+
+<p>This subject of arithmetic was the
+sorest that father and son could have
+broached: perhaps that was the reason
+why neither could get away from it.
+The family lived on arithmetic or off
+it&mdash;had married on it, were born unto
+it, were fed by it, housed and heated
+by it, ventilated and cooled by it.
+Webster's father's knowledge of arithmetic
+had marched at the head of the
+family as they made their way through
+time and trouble like music. It had
+been a lifelong bugle-blast of correct
+numerals.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hence the terrible disappointment:
+after Webster had been at school long
+enough for grading to begin to come
+home as to what faculties he possessed
+and the progress he made, his parents
+discovered to their terror and shame
+that he was good in nothing and least
+good in arithmetic. It was like a
+child's turning against his own bread
+and butter and shirt and shoes. To his
+father it meant a clear family breakdown.
+The moment had come to him
+which, in unlike ways, comes to many
+a father when he feels obliged to say:
+"This is no son of mine."</p>
+
+<p>In reality, Webster's father had
+had somewhat that feeling from the
+first. When summoned and permitted,
+he had tipped into the room on the day
+of Webster's birth and taken a father's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+anxious defensive look. He had turned
+off with a gesture of repudiation but of
+the deepest respect:</p>
+
+<p>"No such head and countenance ever
+descended to him from me! We must
+be square with him from the start! I
+place to his credit the name of Daniel
+Webster. His mother, instead of admiring
+her husband, had been gazing
+too fondly at the steel engraving of the
+statesman over the mantelpiece in the
+parlour."</p>
+
+<p>When Webster was several years old,
+one day during a meal&mdash;nobody knew
+just what brought forth the question&mdash;he
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Why was I named Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>His father answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Because you looked like him."</p>
+
+<p>Webster got up quietly and went
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+into the parlour and quietly returned
+to his seat at table:</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't look like him," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You looked like him the day you
+were born, my son. Any resemblance
+to Daniel Webster is apt to become less
+and less. Finally, you don't look like
+him any more. In the United States
+Senate nowadays, for instance, there
+isn't a trace of resemblance left anywhere.
+Senators at present look more
+like me and you know what that means:
+it means that nobody need feel obliged
+to think of Daniel Webster!"</p>
+
+<p>That birthday jest&mdash;that he was
+not quite entitled to the nativity of
+his own son, an uneasiness perhaps inherited
+by fathers from the rudimentary
+marriages of primitive society&mdash;was
+but a jest then. It gradually took
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+on serious meaning as his son grew
+further away from him with each
+year of growth. The bad passing
+of the arithmetic milestone had
+brought the worst distinct shock.
+Still, even that left Webster's father
+perfectly balanced, perfectly behaved:
+he remained proud of his unlike offspring,
+fed and clothed him, and was
+fond of him.</p>
+
+<p>There is a bare possibility also that
+in Webster he saw the only chance to
+risk part of his salary in secret speculation.
+Nearly everybody in the town
+gambled on something. The bank did
+not favour the idea that its employees
+should enjoy any such monetary
+pastime. But even a bank cannot
+prevent a father from betting on his
+own son if he keeps the indiscretion
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+to himself. Thus it is barely possible
+that, in the language of the country,
+Webster's father took chances on Webster
+as a winning colt on some unknown
+track, if he should ever take a notion
+to run! Why not bet, if it cost the
+same as not to bet: at least you had
+the excitement?</p>
+
+<p>Webster on his part grew more and
+more into the belief that his father not
+only could not answer his questions
+but&mdash;what was of far greater consequence&mdash;did
+not open up before him
+any path in life. His first natural and
+warm desire had been to imitate his
+father, to follow in his footsteps: slowly
+he discovered that his father did not
+have any footsteps, he made no path.
+His affection still encircled his father
+like a pair of arms; his eyes had completely
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+abandoned him as a sign-post
+on life's road.</p>
+
+<p>Mothers often open up roads for
+their sons or point them out, but Webster
+could not look to his mother for
+one unless he had wished to take a
+short road to an uneventful past. The
+kind of a mother she was resulted from
+the kind of a wife she was. She had
+taken her husband's arm at marriage
+to keep step at his side through life.
+Had he moved forward, she would have
+moved forward. Since he did not advance,
+but in his life-work represented
+a kind of perpetual motion without
+progress, she stayed by him and busied
+herself with multifarious daily little
+motions of her own. Her roadless life
+had one main path of memory. That
+led her backward to a large orchard and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+garden and yard out in the country,
+filled with fruit trees and berry-bearing
+bushes and vines. She, now a middle-aged
+wife and mother, was a sentimental
+calendar of far-away things "just
+ripe." The procession of fruit-and-berry
+wagons past the cottage from
+May to October had upon her the
+effect of an acute exacerbation of this
+chronic lament. The street cry of a
+vendor, no matter how urgent her duty
+anywhere in the cottage at the moment,
+brought her to a front window
+or to the front porch or even swept her
+out to the front gate, to gratify her
+eyes with memories and pay her respects
+to the impossible. She inquired
+the cost of so much and bought so little
+that the drivers, who are keen and unfavourable
+judges of human nature,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+when they met at cross streets and
+compared notes&mdash;the disappointed, exasperated
+drivers named her <i>Mrs. Price</i>:
+though one insisted upon calling her
+<i>Lady Not-Today</i>. Whenever at the bottom
+of her pocketbook she found spare
+change for a box of brilliant, transparent
+red cherries, she bore it into the
+cottage as rapaciously as some miser
+of jewels might have carried off a casket
+of rubies. Thus you could almost
+have said that Webster had been born
+of arithmetic and preserves. Still, his
+life with his father and mother was
+wholesome and affectionate and peaceful&mdash;an
+existence bounded by the horizon
+of the day.</p>
+
+<p>His boyhood certainly had no wide
+field of vision, no distant horizon, as regards
+his sleeping quarters. In building
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+the cottage a bathroom on the first
+floor had been added to one side of it
+as a last luxurious afterthought. If
+you stood before the cottage and looked
+it squarely in the face, the bathroom
+protruded on one side like a badly
+swollen jaw. The building-plan when
+worked out, had involved expense beyond
+the calculation, as usually happens,
+and this had threatened the Salary:
+the extra bath, therefore, remained
+unrealised. Webster always asked at
+least one question about everything
+new and untried, and when old enough
+to be put there to sleep, he had looked
+around the cramped enclosure and inquired
+why it had been built. Thus
+he learned that in the family he had
+now taken the place of the Bath That
+Failed. It caused him a queer feeling
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+as to his general repute in the neighbourhood
+that the very sight of him
+might bring to any observer's mind
+thoughts of a missing tub.</p>
+
+<p>His window opened upon a few feet
+of yard. Just over the fence was the
+kitchen window of the cottage next in
+the row. When that window was open,
+Webster had to see the kitchen table
+and the preparation for meals. He
+violently disliked the sight of the preparations.
+If the window was closed,
+tidings as to what was going on reached
+him through another sense; his bedroom-bathroom
+became as a whispering
+gallery of cooking odours. But
+their own kitchen was just across a
+narrow hall, and fragrances from it
+occasionally mingled with those from
+the kitchen over the fence. Made
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+hungry by nasal intelligence of something
+appetising, Webster would sometimes
+hurriedly dress and follow his
+pointer into the breakfast room, only
+to find that he was on a false trail:
+what he had expected to get his share
+of was being consumed by the family
+next door. He no longer had confidence,
+so to speak, in his own nose&mdash;not
+as a leading authority on meals to
+be eaten by him.</p>
+
+<p>One beautiful use his window had,
+one glorious use, one enchantment. In
+the depth of winter sometimes of mornings
+when he got out of bed and went
+to open the shutter, on the window
+panes would be a forest of glittering
+trees. The first time he beheld such a
+forest, he stood before it spell-bound:
+wondering whether there were silvery
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+birds singing far off amid the silvery
+boughs and what wild frost-creatures
+crouched in the tall stiff frost-grass.
+From the ice-forests on his window
+panes his thoughts always returned to
+the green summer forest on the distant
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>The pest of his existence at home was
+Elinor&mdash;a year younger but much older
+in her ways: to Webster she was as old
+as Mischief, as old as Evil. For Elinor
+had early fastened herself upon his existence
+as a tease. She laughed at
+him, ridiculed his remarks, especially
+when he thought them wise, dragged
+down everything in him. As they sat
+at table and he launched out upon any
+subject with his father&mdash;quite in the
+manner of one gentleman indulging his
+intellect with another gentleman over
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+their rich viands&mdash;Elinor went away up
+into a little gallery of her own and
+tried to boo him off the stage. His
+father and mother did not at times conceal
+their amusement at Elinor's boo's.
+He sometimes broke out savagely at
+her, which only made her worse. His
+mother, who was not without gentle
+firmness and a saving measure of good
+sense, one day disapproved of his temper
+and remarked advisedly to him,
+Elinor having fled after a victory over
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"Elinor teases you because she sees
+that it annoys you. She ought to
+keep on teasing you till you stop being
+annoyed. When she sees that she
+can't tease you, she'll stop trying."</p>
+
+<p>That was all very well: but one day
+he teased Elinor. She puckered up and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+began to cry and his mother said
+quickly:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't do that, Webster."</p>
+
+<p>Then besides: a few years before he
+had one day overheard his mother persuading
+his father that Elinor must
+not be sent to the public school.</p>
+
+<p>"I want her to go to a private school.
+She has such a difficult disposition, it
+will require delicate attention. The
+teachers haven't time to give her that
+patient attention in the public schools."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," Elinor's father had replied,
+shaking his head, "your husband's
+salary is not a private-school
+salary. It also has a difficult disposition,
+it also requires the most careful
+watching!"</p>
+
+<p>"The cost will be more but she must
+go. Some extra expense will be unavoidable
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+even for her clothing but
+I'll take that out of <i>my</i> clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"You will do nothing of the kind! If
+Elinor has a difficult disposition, she
+gets it from Elinor's father; for <i>he</i> had
+one once, thank God! He had it until
+he went into the bank. But a bank
+takes every kind of disposition out of
+you, good or bad. After you've been
+in a bank so many years, you haven't
+any more disposition. Only the president
+of a bank enjoys the right to have
+a disposition. All the rest of us are
+mere habits&mdash;certain habits on uncertain
+salaries. Let Elinor go to her
+select school and I'll go a little more
+ragged. The outside world thinks it a
+bank joke when they look through the
+windows and see bank clerks at work
+in ragged coats: instead they know better.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+Let Elinor go and let the damages
+fall on her father. He will be glad to
+take the extra cost off his own back as
+a tribute to his unbanked boyhood. I
+hope you noticed my pun&mdash;my dooble
+intender."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Elinor was sent to the most
+select private school of the city. Webster
+weighed the matter on the scales
+of boyish justice. If you had a bad
+disposition, you were rewarded by being
+better dressed and being sent to the
+best school; if you had a good disposition,
+you dressed plainly and went to
+the public school. What ought he to do
+about his own disposition? Why not
+turn it into a bad one? It was among
+Webster's bewilderments that he was
+so poorly off as not to be able to muster
+a troublesome enough disposition to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+be sent to one of the city's select
+private schools for boys: he should
+very much have liked to go!</p>
+
+<p>"I go to a private school because I
+am <i>nice</i>," Elinor had boasted to him
+one morning. She was sitting on the
+front steps as he came out on his way
+to school, and she looked very dainty
+and very charming&mdash;a dark, wiry, fiery,
+restless little creature, and at the moment
+a bit of brilliant decoration. "And
+I get nice marks," she added pointedly.</p>
+
+<p>He paused to make a quietly contemptuous
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you get nice marks: that's
+what private schools are for&mdash;to give
+everybody nice marks. If you went to
+the public school, you'd get what you
+deserved."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you seem to deserve very
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+little," said Elinor, smoothing a lock
+of her black hair over one ear.</p>
+
+<p>His rage burst out at her deadly
+thrust:</p>
+
+<p>"You go to a private school because
+you are a little devil," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you be a little devil
+too?" inquired Elinor, her bright eyes
+mocking him. "Can't you be a little
+devil too?"</p>
+
+<p>He jerked the strap tighter around
+his battered books:</p>
+
+<p>"If you were in the public schools,
+they wouldn't put up with you. They'd
+send you home or they'd break you
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know," said Elinor,
+with an encouraging smile, "they seem
+to get along with you very well."</p>
+
+<p>Webster knew that Elinor's teasing,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+ridiculing eyes followed him as he
+walked away. They became part of
+the things that cheapened him in his
+life. When he had passed through the
+front gate, he started off in a direction
+which was not the direction to school.</p>
+
+<p>Elinor sang out shrilly:</p>
+
+<p>"I know where you are going. But
+it's of no use. Jenny's sweetheart goes
+to a private school and he stands well
+in his classes."</p>
+
+<p>He walked on, but turned his face
+toward her:</p>
+
+<p>"It's none of <i>your</i> meddlesome business,
+you little black scorpion," he said
+quietly.</p>
+
+<p>With an upward bound of his nature
+he thought of Jenny, a very different
+sort of girl.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny lived in the largest cottage of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+the block, at the better of the two corners.
+The families visited intimately.
+Jenny's father was a coal merchant and
+Webster's father bought his coal of
+Jenny's father. A grocer lived in the
+middle of the block: he bought supplies
+from that grocer. "If you can," he
+said, "deal with your neighbours. It
+will make them more careful: they
+won't dare ...!" On the contrary,
+Jenny's father did not deposit his
+cheques in Webster's father's bank.
+"Don't do your business with a neighbour,"
+he said. "Neighbours pry."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny represented in Webster's life
+the masculine awakening of his nature
+toward womankind. In the white light
+of that general dawn, she stood revealed
+but not recognised. A little
+thing had happened, the summer previous,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+which was of common interest
+to them. In a corner of Jenny's yard
+grew a locust tree, not a full forest-sized
+locust tree but still quite a respectable
+locust tree for its place and
+advantages. All around the trunk and
+up the trunk clambered the trumpet-vine.
+Several yards from the earth
+some of the branches bent over and
+spread out as a roof for a little arbour&mdash;Jenny's
+summer play-house.</p>
+
+<p>One dewy morning Jenny had first
+noticed a humming-bird hovering about
+the blossoms. She did not know that
+it was the ruby-throat, seeking the
+trumpet-vine where Audubon painted
+him. She only knew that she was excited
+and delighted. She told Webster.</p>
+
+<p>"If he comes back, run and tell me,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+will you, Jenny?" he pleaded, with
+some strange new joy in him. Several
+times she had run and summoned him;
+and the two children, unconsciously
+drawing nearer to each other, and hand
+in hand watched the ruby-throat hovering
+about the adopted flower of the
+State.</p>
+
+<p>The distant green forest and the
+locust tree with the trumpet-vine and
+the humming-bird&mdash;these, though distant
+from one another, became in
+Webster's mind part of something
+deep and powerful in his life, toward
+which he was moving.</p>
+
+<p>If no road opened before him at
+home, none opened at school. He
+would gladly have quit any day. He
+tried to make lessons appear worse
+than they were in order to justify himself
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+in his philosophy of contempt and
+rejection.</p>
+
+<p>When any two old ladies met on the
+street, he argued, they did not begin
+to parse as fast as possible at each other.
+Old gentlemen of the city did not walk
+up and down with books glued to their
+noses, trying to memorise things they
+would rather forget. When people
+went to the library for delightful books
+to read, nobody took home arithmetics
+and geographies. There wasn't a
+grown person in the city who cared
+what bounded Indiana on the north
+or if all the creeks in Maine emptied
+into the mouths of school teachers. In
+church, when the minister climbed to
+the pulpit, the congregation didn't begin
+to examine him in history. They
+didn't even examine him in the Bible;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+he couldn't have stood the examination
+if they had. In the court-room,
+at the fair, at the races, at the theatre,
+when you were born, when you were
+playing, when you had a sweetheart,
+when you married, when you were a
+father, when you were sick, when you
+were in any way happy or unhappy,
+when you were dying, when you were
+dead and buried and forgotten, nobody
+called for school books.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, nevertheless, both at home
+and at school made his impression. No
+one could have defined the nature of
+the impression but every one knew he
+made it. If he failed at his lessons, his
+teachers were not angry; they looked
+mortified and said as little as possible
+and all the while pushed him along by
+hook or crook, until at last they had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+smuggled him into high school&mdash;the
+final heaven of the whole torment.</p>
+
+<p>The impression upon his school fellows
+was likewise strongly in his favour.
+Toward the close of each session there
+was intense struggle and strain for the
+highest mark in class and the next
+highest and the next. When the nerve-racking
+race was over and everybody
+had time to look around and inquire
+for Webster, they could see him cantering
+quietly down the home stretch,
+unmindful of the good-natured jeers
+that greeted his arrival: he had gone
+over the course, he had not run. As
+soon as they were out of doors in a
+game, Webster stepped to the front.
+Those who had just outstripped him
+now followed him.</p>
+
+<p>Roadless parents&mdash;a child looking
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+for its road in life! That is Nature's
+plan to stop imitation, to block the
+roads of parents to their children, and
+force these into new paths for the development
+of the individual and of
+the race. And in what other country
+is that spectacle so common as in our
+American democracy, where progress
+is so swift and the future so vast and
+untrod and untried that nearly every
+generation in thousands of cottages
+represents a revolt and a revolution of
+children against their parents, their
+work and their ways? But Webster's
+father and mother were not philosophers
+as to how Nature works out her
+plan through our American democracy:
+they merely had their parental
+apprehensions and confidentially discussed
+these. What would Webster
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+be, would he ever be anything? He
+would finish at high school this year
+and it was time to decide.</p>
+
+<p>A son of the grocer in the block had
+made an unexpected upward stride in
+life and surprised all the cottagers.
+Webster's father and mother took care
+to bring this meritorious example to
+their son's attention.</p>
+
+<p>"What are <i>you</i> going to be, Webster?"
+his mother asked one morning
+at breakfast, looking understandingly
+at Webster's father.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what I'm going to
+be," Webster had replied unconcernedly.
+"I know I'm not going to be
+what <i>he</i> is!"</p>
+
+<p>"It would never do to try to force
+him," his father said later. "Not <i>him</i>.
+Besides, think of a couple of American
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+parents undertaking to force their
+children to do anything&mdash;<i>any</i> children!
+We'll have to wait a while longer. If
+he's never to be anything, of course
+forcing could never make him into
+something. It would certainly bring
+on a family disturbance and the family
+disturbance would be sure to get on
+my nerves at the bank and I might
+make mistakes in my figures."</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">Then in the April of that year, about
+the time the woods were turning green
+and he began to look toward them with
+the old longing now grown stronger,
+a great thing happened to Webster.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_054.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter I, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_055.jpg" width="550" height="208" alt="chapter II, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<h2>II<br />
+
+THE SCHOOL</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_055__initial.jpg" width="100" height="99" alt="O initial" title="" />
+</span>ne clear morning of that
+budding month of April, a
+professor from one of the
+two institutions of learning
+in the city stood before the pupils of
+the high school.</p>
+
+<p>He was there to fulfill his part of an
+experimental plan which, through the
+courtesy of all concerned, had been
+started upon its course at the opening
+of the session the previous autumn: that
+members of the two faculties should
+be asked to be good enough to come&mdash;some
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+one of them once each month&mdash;and
+address the school on some pleasant
+field or by-field of university work,
+where learning at last meets life. That
+is, each professor was requested to appear
+before the ravenous pupils of the
+high school with a basket of ripe fruit
+from his promised land of knowledge
+and to distribute these as samples from
+an orchard which each pupil, if he but
+chose, could some day own for himself.
+Or if he could not quite bring anything
+so luscious and graspable as fruit, he
+might at least stand in their full view
+on the boundary of his kingdom and
+mark out, across that dubious Common
+which lies between high school
+and college, a path that would lead a
+boy straight to some one of the world's
+great highways of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Eight professors had courteously responded
+to this invitation and had disclosed
+eight splendid roadways of
+the world's study. The Latin professor
+had opened up his colossal Roman-built
+highway with its pictures of the
+ages when all the world's thoroughfares
+led to Rome. The professor of Greek
+had disclosed the longer path which
+leads back to Hellas with its frieze of
+youth in eternal snow. The professor
+of Astronomy had taken his band of
+listeners forth into the immensities of
+roadless space and had all but lost
+them and the poor little earth itself in
+the coming and going of myriads of
+entangled stars. Eight professors had
+come, eight professors had gone, it was
+now April, a professor of Geology, as
+next to the last lecturer, stood before
+them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Interest in the lectures had steadily
+mounted from the first and was now at
+highest pitch. He faced an audience
+eager, intelligent, respectful and grateful.
+On their part they consented that
+the man before them embodied what
+he had come to teach&mdash;the blending of
+life and learning. Plainly the study
+of the earth's rocks had not hardened
+him, acquaintance with fossils had not
+left him a human fossil. And he hid
+the number of his years within the sap
+of living sympathies as a tree hides
+the notation of its years within the
+bark.</p>
+
+<p>Letting his eyes wander over them
+silently for a moment, he began without
+waste of a word&mdash;a straightforward
+and powerful personality.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to speak to you boys
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+about a boy who never reached high
+school. I want you to watch how that
+boy's life, first seen in the distance
+through mist and snow and storm as a
+faint glimmering spark, rudely blown
+upon by the winds of misfortune, endangered
+and all but ready to go out&mdash;I
+want you to watch how that endangered
+spark of a boy's life slowly begins
+to brighten in the distance, to
+grow stronger, and finally to draw nearer
+and nearer until at last it shines as a
+great light about you here in this very
+place. Watch, I say, how a troubled
+ray, low on life's horizon, at last becomes
+a star in the world of men, high
+fixed and resplendent&mdash;to be seen by
+human eyes as long as there shall be
+human eyes to see anything."</p>
+
+<p>He saw that he had caught their attention.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+Their sympathy reacted upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Before I speak of the boy I wish to
+speak of a book. I hope all of you have
+read one of the very beautiful stories
+of English literature by George Eliot
+called <i>Silas Marner</i>. If you have,
+none of you will ever forget that Silas
+Marner belonged to a class of pallid,
+undersized men who, a hundred or a
+hundred and fifty years ago, under
+pressure upon the centres of population
+in England and through competition
+of trade, were driven out of the
+towns into the country. There, as
+strangers, as alien-looking remnants of
+a discredited race, there in districts far
+away among the lanes or in the deep
+bosom of the hills, perhaps an hour's
+ride from any turnpike or beyond the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+faint sound of the coach-horn, they
+spent their lives as obscure weavers
+and peddlers.</p>
+
+<p>"You will never forget George Eliot's
+vivid, powerful, touching picture of
+Silas Marner at work in a little stone
+cottage near a deserted stone pit, amid
+the nut-bearing hedgerows of the
+village of Raveloe. When the schoolboys
+of the village came to the hedges
+in autumn to gather nuts or in spring
+to look for bird-nests&mdash;you boys still
+do that, I hope&mdash;when they came and
+heard the uncanny sound of the loom,
+so unlike that of the familiar flail on
+threshing floors, they would crowd
+around the windows and peep in at the
+weaver in his treadmill attitude, weaving
+like a solitary spider month after
+month and year after year his endless
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+web. Silas Marner, pausing in his
+work to adjust some trouble in his
+thread and discovering them and annoyed
+by the intrusion, would descend
+from the loom and come to his door
+and gaze out at them with his strange,
+blurred, protuberant eyes; for he was
+so near-sighted that he could see distinctly
+only objects close to him, such
+as his thread, his shuttle, his loom.</p>
+
+<p>"If for a few days the sound of the
+loom stopped, it was because the
+weaver, with his pack on his feeble
+shoulders, was away on journeys
+through fields and lanes to deliver
+his linen to those who had ordered it
+or who might haply buy.</p>
+
+<p>"The village of Raveloe, as you remember,
+lay on the rich, central plain
+of Merry England, with wooded hollows
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+and well-walled orchards and ornamental
+weathercocks and church
+spires rising peacefully above green
+tree-tops. But Silas Marner saw nothing
+of the Merry England through
+which he peddled his cloth. He walked
+through it all with the outdoor loneliness
+of those who cannot see. His
+mother had bequeathed him knowledge
+of a few herbs; and these were the only
+thing in nature that he had ever gropingly
+looked for along hedgerows and
+lanesides&mdash;foxglove and dandelion and
+coltsfoot.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if you have read the story,
+you have a far more living, touching
+picture of the life of a weaver in those
+distant times that I could possibly
+paint. The genius of George Eliot
+painted it supremely and I point to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+her masterpiece rather than to any
+faint semblance I could draw. What
+I want you to do is to get deeply into
+your minds what the life of a weaver
+in those days meant: a little further
+on you will understand why.</p>
+
+<p>"Next I want you to think of Silas
+Marner as an all too common figure
+of the present time. He is a type of
+those of us who go through our lives
+all but blind to the surpassingly beautiful
+life of the planet on which it is
+our strange and glorious destiny to
+spend our human days. He is a type
+of those of us who, in town or city, see
+only the implements of our trade or
+business ever close to our eyes&mdash;our
+shuttle, our thread, our loom, of whatever
+kind these may be. When we go
+out into the world of nature, he is also
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+a type of those of us, who recognise
+only the few things we need&mdash;our coltsfoot,
+our foxglove, our dandelion, of
+whatever kind these may be. In the
+midst of woods and fields we gaze
+blankly around us with vision blurred
+by ignorance&mdash;not born blind but remaining
+as blind because we do not
+care or have not learned to open and
+to train our eyes. We have the outdoor
+loneliness of Silas Marner."</p>
+
+<p>He waited a few moments to allow
+his words to make their impression,
+and long accustomed to the countenance
+of listeners, he felt sure that
+they were following him in the road
+he pursued: then he led them forward:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, about the period that George
+Eliot paints the life of her poor English
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+weaver there lived, not in Merry England
+but in Bonnie Scotland&mdash;and to be
+bonnie is not to be merry&mdash;there lived
+in the little town of Paisley, in the west
+of Scotland, a man by the name of
+Alexander Wilson, a poor illiterate
+distiller. He had a son&mdash;the boy I am
+to tell you about.</p>
+
+<p>"The poor illiterate distiller and
+father desired to give his son his name
+but not to assign him his place in life,
+not his own road; he named him Alexander
+and he wished him to be not a
+distiller but a physician. The boy's
+mother was a native of an island of the
+Hebrides&mdash;your geographies will have
+to tell you where the Hebrides are, for
+doubtless you have all forgotten! The
+inhabitants of those wild, bleak, storm-swept
+islands thought much of danger
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+and death and therefore often of God.
+Perhaps the natives of small islands
+are, as a rule, either very superstitious
+or very religious. His mother desired
+him to be a minister. You may not
+know that the Scotch people are, perhaps,
+peculiarly addicted to being either
+doctors of the body or doctors of the
+soul. The entire Scottish race would
+appear to be desirous of being physicians
+to something or to somebody&mdash;not
+submitting easily, however, to be
+doctored!</p>
+
+<p>"Thus the boy's father and mother
+opened before him the two main honoured
+roads of Scottish life and bade
+him choose. He chose neither, for he
+was self-willed and wavering, and did
+not know his own mind or his own wish.
+He did know that he would not take
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+the roads his parents pointed out; as to
+them he was a roadless boy.</p>
+
+<p>"His mother died when he was quite
+young, a stepmother stepped into a
+stepmother's place, and she quickly
+decided with Scotch thrift. A third
+Scottish road should be opened to the
+boy and into that he should be pushed
+and made to go: he must be put to
+trade. Accordingly, when he was about
+eleven years old, he was taken from
+school and bound as an apprentice to
+a weaver: we lament child labour now:
+it is an old lament.</p>
+
+<p>"The boy hated weaving as, perhaps,
+he never hated anything else in
+his life and in time he hated much and
+he hated many things. He seems soon
+to have become known as the lazy
+weaver. Years afterward he put into
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+bitter words a description of the weaver:
+'A weaver is a poor, emaciated,
+helpless being, shivering over rotten
+yarn and groaning over his empty flour
+barrel.' Elsewhere he called the weaver
+a scarecrow in rags. He wrote a poem
+entitled <i>Groans from the Loom</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Five interminable years of those
+groans and all his eager, wild, headstrong,
+liberty-loving boyhood was
+ended: gone from him as he sat like a
+boy-spider with a thread passing endlessly
+into a web. During these interminable
+years, whenever he lifted his
+eyes from his loom and looked ahead,
+he could see nothing but penury and
+dependence and loneliness&mdash;his loom
+to the end of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Five years of this imprisonment
+and then he was eighteen and his own
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+master; and the first thing he did was
+to descend from the loom, take a pack
+of cloth upon his shoulders and go
+wandering away from the hills and valleys
+and lakes of Scotland&mdash;free at last
+like a young deer in the heather. He
+said of himself that from that hour
+when his eyes had first opened on the
+light of grey Scotch mountains, the
+world of nature had called him. He
+did not yet know what the forest and
+the life of the forest meant or would
+ever mean; he only knew that there he
+was happy and at home.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus, like Silas Marner, he became
+a poor weaver and peddler but not with
+Silas Marner's eyes. Seldom in any
+human head has the mechanism of
+vision been driven by a mind with such
+power and eagerness to observe. And
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+he had the special memory of the eye.
+There are those of us who have the
+special memory of the ear or of taste or
+of touch. He had the long, faithful
+recollection of things seen. With this
+pair of eyes during the next several
+years he traversed on foot three-fourths
+of Scotland. Remember, you boys
+of the rolling bluegrass plateau, what
+the scenery of Scotland is! Think what
+it meant to traverse three-fourths of
+that country, you who consider it a
+hardship to walk five level miles, a
+misfortune to be obliged to walk ten,
+the adventure of a lifetime to walk
+twenty.</p>
+
+<p>"But though he followed one after
+another well nigh all the roads of
+Scotland, he could find in all Scotland
+no road of life for him. It is true that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+certain misleading paths beckoned to
+him, as is apt to be true in every life.
+Thus he had conceived a great desire
+to weave poetry instead of cloth, to
+weave music instead of listening to the
+noise of the loom: he had his flute and
+his violin. But what he accomplished
+with poetry and flute and violin were
+obstacles to his necessary work and
+rendered this harder. The time he
+gave to them made his work less: the
+less his work, the less his living; the
+less his living, the more his troubles
+and hardships.</p>
+
+<p>"Once he started out both to peddle
+his wares and to solicit orders for a
+little book of his poems he wished to
+publish. To help both pack and poetry
+he wrote a handbill in verse. Some of
+the lines ran thus:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Here's handkerchiefs charming, book muslins like ermine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brocaded, striped, corded, or checked.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet Venus, they say, on Cupid's birthday<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In British-made muslin was decked.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Now, ye Fair, if you choose any piece to peruse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With pleasure I'll instantly show it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If the peddler should fail to be favoured with sale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then I hope you'll encourage the poet.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The result seems to have been but
+small sale for British-made muslins and
+no sale at all for Wilson-made poems.</p>
+
+<p>"Robert Burns was just then the
+idolised poet of Scotland, a new sun
+shining with vital splendour into all
+Scottish hearts. Friends of the young
+weaver and apparently the young weaver
+himself thought there was room in
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+Scotland for another Burns. Some of
+his poems were published anonymously
+and the authorship was attributed to
+Burns. That was bad for him, it made
+bad worse. Wilson greatly desired to
+know the rustic poet-king of Scotland.
+The two poets met in Edinburgh and
+were to become friends. Then Burns
+published <i>Tam O'Shanter</i>. As young
+Kentuckians, of course, you love horses
+and cannot be indifferent even to
+poems on the tails of horses. Therefore,
+you must already know the world's
+most famous poem concerning a horse-tail&mdash;<i>Tam
+O'Shanter</i>. The Paisley
+weaver by this time had such conceit of
+himself as a poet that he wrote Burns
+a caustic letter, telling him the kind of
+poem <i>Tam O'Shanter</i> should and should
+not be. Burns replied, closing the correspondence,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+ending the brief friendship
+and leaving the weaver to go back
+to his loom. It was a terrible rebuff,
+and left its mark on an already discouraged
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"Next Wilson wrote an anonymous
+poem, so violently attacking a wealthy
+manufacturer on behalf of his poor
+brother weavers, that the enraged merchant
+demanded the name of the
+writer and had him put in prison and
+compelled him to stand in the public
+cross of Paisley and burn his poem.</p>
+
+<p>"Darker, bitterer days followed. He
+shrank away to a little village even
+more obscure than his birthplace.
+There, lifting his eyes, again he looked
+all over Scotland: he saw the wrongs
+and sufferings of the poor, the luxury
+and oppression of the rich: he blamed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+the British government for evils inherent
+in human nature and for the
+imperfections of all human society:
+turned against his native country and
+at heart found himself without a fatherland.</p>
+
+<p>"Then that glorious vision which has
+opened before so many men in their
+despair, disclosed itself: his eyes turned
+to America. You should never forget
+that from the first your country has
+been the refuge and the hope for the
+oppressed, the unfortunate, the discouraged
+of the whole world. In
+America he thought all roads were open,
+new roads were being made for human
+lives; that should become his country.
+One autumn he saw in a newspaper an
+advertisement that an American merchantman
+would sail from Belfast the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+following spring and he turned to weaving
+and wove as never before to earn
+his passage money. At this time he
+lived on one shilling a week! And it
+seems that just now he undertook to
+make up his lack of knowledge of arithmetic.
+Some of you boys will doubtless
+greatly rejoice to hear that he was deficient
+in arithmetic! When spring came,
+with the earnings of his loom he walked
+across Scotland to the nearest port.
+When he reached Belfast every berth
+on the vessel had been taken: he asked
+to be allowed to sleep on the deck and
+was accepted as a passenger.</p>
+
+<p>"He had now left Scotland to escape
+the loom&mdash;never to see Scotland again.</p>
+
+<p>"And you see, he is beginning to
+come nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"The vessel was called The Swift and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+it took The Swift two months to make
+the passage. The port was to be Philadelphia
+but he seems to have been so
+impatient to set foot on the soil of the
+New World that he left the ship at
+New Castle, Delaware. He had borrowed
+from a fellow-passenger sufficient
+money to pay his expenses while walking
+to Philadelphia thirty-four miles
+away; and with this in his pocket and
+his fowling-piece on his shoulder he
+disappeared in the July forests of New
+Jersey. The first thing he did was to
+kill a red-headed wood-pecker which he
+declared to be the most beautiful bird
+he had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not find any word of his that
+he had ever killed a bird in Scotland
+during all his years of wandering. Now
+the first event that befell him in the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+New World was to go straight to the
+American woods and kill what he declared
+to be the most beautiful bird
+he had ever seen. This might naturally
+have been to him a sign of his life-road.
+But he still stood blinded in
+his path, with not a plan, not an idea,
+of what he should be or could be: he
+had not yet read the handwriting on
+the wall within himself.</p>
+
+<p>"His first years in the New World
+were more disastrous than any in Scotland,
+for always now he had the loneliness
+and dejection of a man who has
+rejected his own country and does not
+know that any other country will accept
+him. A fellow Scot, in Philadelphia,
+tried him at copper-plate printing.
+He quickly dropped this and
+went back to the old dreadful work of
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+weaving&mdash;he became an American
+weaver and went wandering through
+the forests of New Jersey as a peddler:
+at least peddling left him free to roam
+the forests. Next he tried teaching
+but he himself had been taken from
+school at the age of eleven and must
+prepare himself as one of his own beginners.
+He did not like this teaching
+experiment in New Jersey and migrated
+to Virginia. Virginia did not
+please him and he remigrated to Pennsylvania.
+There he tried one school
+after another in various places and
+finally settled on the outskirts of Philadelphia:
+here was his last school, for
+here was the turning point of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had time to describe for
+you the school-house with its surroundings,
+for the place is to us now a picture
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+in the early American life of a
+great man&mdash;all such historic pictures
+are invaluable. Catch one glimpse of
+it: a neat stone school-house on a
+sloping green; with grey old white
+oaks growing around and rows of stripling
+poplars and scattered cedar trees.
+A road ran near and not far away was a
+little yellow-faced cottage where he
+lived. The yard was walled off from
+the road and there were seats within
+and rosebushes and plum trees and
+hop-vines. On one side hung a signboard
+waving before a little roadside
+inn; on the other a blacksmith shop
+with its hammering. Not far off stood
+the edge of the great forest 'resounding
+with the songs of warblers.' In the
+depths of it was a favourite spot&mdash;a
+secret retreat for him in Nature.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There then you see him: no longer
+a youth but still young; every road he
+had tried closed to him in America as
+in Scotland: not a doctor, not a minister,
+not a good poet, not a good flutist,
+not a good violinist, not a copper-plate
+engraver, not a willing weaver,
+not a willing peddler, not a willing
+school-teacher&mdash;none of these. No idea
+yet in him that he could ever be anything.
+A homeless self-exile, playing at
+lonely twilights on flute and violin the
+loved airs of rejected Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>"Now it happened that near his
+school was a botanical garden owned
+by an American naturalist. The
+American, seeing the stranger cast
+down by his aimless life, offered him
+his portfolio of drawings and suggested
+that he try to draw a landscape,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+draw the human figure. The Scotch
+weaver, the American school-teacher,
+tried and disastrously failed. As a
+final chance the American suggested
+that he try to draw a bird. He did
+try: he drew a bird. He drew again.
+He drew again and again. He kept
+on drawing. Nothing could keep him
+from drawing. And there at last the
+miracle of power and genius, so long
+restless in him and driving him aimlessly
+from one wrong thing to another
+wrong thing, disclosed itself as dwelling
+within his eyes and hands. His
+drawings were so true to life, that
+there could be no doubt: the road lay
+straight before him and ran clear
+through coming time toward eternal
+fame.</p>
+
+<p>"All the experience which he had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+been unconsciously storing as a peddler
+in Scotland now came back to
+him as guiding knowledge. The marvelous
+memory of his eye furnished
+its discipline: from early boyhood
+through sheer love he had unconsciously
+been studying birds in nature,
+and thus during all these wretched
+years had been laying up as a youth
+the foundation of his life-work as a man.</p>
+
+<p>"Genius builds with lavish magnificence
+and inconceivable swiftness;
+and hardly had he succeeded with his
+first drawings before he had wrought
+out a monumental plan: to turn himself
+free as soon as possible into the
+vast, untravelled forest of the North
+American continent and draw and paint
+its birds. Other men, he said, would
+have to found the cities of the New
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+World and open up its country. His
+study was to be the lineaments of the
+owl and the plumage of the lark: he had
+cast in his lot with Nature's green
+magnificence untouched by man."</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer paused, as a traveller
+instinctively stops to look around him
+at a pleasant turn of his road. It had,
+in truth, been a hard, crooked human
+road along which he had been leading
+his young listeners&mdash;a career choked
+at every step by inward and outward
+pressures. He had not failed to notice
+the change in every countenance, the
+brightening of every eye, as soon as
+his audience discovered that they were
+listening to a story, not of mere weaknesses
+and failures, but of the misfortunes
+and mistakes of a man, who at
+last stood out as truly great. This
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+hapless weaver, this aimless wanderer
+through the forests of two worlds, after
+all had success in him, strength in him,
+genius in him, fame in him! He was a
+hero. Henceforth they were alive with
+curiosity for the rest of the story which
+would bring the distant hero to Kentucky,
+to their Lexington.</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer realised all this. But
+he had for some time been even more
+acutely aware that something wholly
+personal and extraordinary was taking
+place: one of the pupils of the high
+school was listening with an attention
+so absorbed and noticeable as to set
+him apart from all the rest. Just at
+what point this intense attention had
+been so aroused, had not been observed;
+but when once observed, there was
+no forgetting it: it filled the room, the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+other listeners were merely grouped
+around it as accessories and helped to
+make its breathless picture.</p>
+
+<p>The particularly interested pupil sat
+rather far back in the school-room,
+near a window&mdash;as though from a vain
+wish to jump out and be free. The
+morning light thus fell across his face:
+it was possible to watch its expression,
+its responsive change of light at each
+turn of the story. He seemed to hold
+some kind of leadership in the school:
+other pupils occasionally turned their
+faces to glance at him, to keep in touch
+with him: he did not return their
+glances&mdash;being their leader; or he had
+forgotten them for the story he was
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer became convinced that
+what had more than once happened
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+to him before as a teacher was happening
+again: before him a young life
+was unexpectedly being solved&mdash;to its
+own wonderment and liberation, to
+its amazement and joy.</p>
+
+<p>That perpetual miracle in nature&mdash;the
+contexture of the generations&mdash;the
+living taking the meaning of their
+lives from the dead! You stand beside
+some all but forgotten mound of human
+ashes; before you are arrayed a band
+of youths, unconsciously holding in
+their hands the unlighted torches of
+the future. You utter some word
+about the cold ashes and silently one
+of them walks forward to the ashes,
+lights his torch and goes his radiant
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Geologist felt a graver responsibility
+resting on him&mdash;placed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+there by one of them, more than by
+all of them: the words he was speaking
+might or might not give final direction
+to a whole career. He went on with
+his heroic narrative more glowingly,
+more guardedly:</p>
+
+<p>"For a while he must keep on teaching
+in order to live: he taught all day,
+often after night, barely had time to
+swallow his meals, at the end of one
+term tells us he had as large a sum as
+fifteen dollars. Often he coloured his
+first drawings by candle light, drew
+and painted birds without knowing
+what they were. Drawing and painting
+by candle light!&mdash;but now he had
+within himself the risen sun of a splendid
+enthusiasm. That sun kindled
+his schoolboys. They found out what
+he wanted and helped. One boy
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+brought him a large basketful of crows.
+Another caught a mouse in school and
+contributed that&mdash;the incident is worth
+quoting by showing that the boy preferred
+a mouse to a school-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Take one instance of the energy
+with which he was now working and
+worked for the rest of his life: he
+wished to see Niagara Falls, and to
+lose no time while doing it he started
+out one autumn through the forest to
+walk to the Falls and back, a short
+trip for him of over twelve hundred
+miles. He reached home 'mid the deep
+snows of winter with no soles to his
+boots. What of that? On his way
+back he had shot two strange birds in
+the valley of the Hudson! For ten
+days&mdash;ten days, mind you!&mdash;he worked
+on a drawing of these and sent it with
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+a letter to Thomas Jefferson. You
+may as yet have thought of Jefferson
+only as one of America's earliest statesmen:
+begin now to think of him as
+one of the first American naturalists.
+And if you wish to read a courteous
+letter from an American President to
+a young stranger, go back to Jefferson's
+letter to the Scotch weaver who
+sent him the drawing of a jaybird.</p>
+
+<p>"Pass rapidly over the next few
+years. He has made one trip from
+Maine down the Atlantic Seaboard to
+the South. He has returned and is
+starting out again to cover the vast
+interior basin of the Mississippi Valley:
+he is to begin at Pittsburgh and
+end at New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>"Now again you see that he is coming
+nearer&mdash;nearer to you here.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look then at this bold, splendid
+picture of him outlined against the
+background of early American life.
+All such pictures are part of our richest
+heritage.</p>
+
+<p>"The scene is Pittsburgh. He has
+ransacked the winter woods for new
+species, he has found only sparrows
+and snow-birds. That was the year
+1810; this is the year 1916&mdash;over a
+hundred years later in the history of
+our country. Gaze then upon this wild
+scene of the olden time, all such pictures
+are good for young eyes: it is
+the twenty-fourth of February: the
+river, swollen with the spring flood,
+is full of white masses of moving ice.
+A frail skiff puts off from shore and
+goes winding its way until it is lost to
+sight among the noble hills.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They warned him of his danger,
+urged him to take a rower, urged him
+not to go at all. Those who risked the
+passage of the river floated down on
+barges called Kentucky arks or in
+canoes hollowed each out of a single
+tree, usually the tulip tree, which you
+know is very common in our Kentucky
+woods. But to mention danger was
+to make him go to meet it. He would
+have no rower, had no money to hire
+one, had he wished one. He tells us
+what he had on board: in one end of
+the boat some biscuit and cheese, a
+bottle of cordial given him by a gentleman
+in Pittsburgh, his gun and trunk
+and overcoat; at the other end himself
+and his oars and a tin with which
+to bail out the skiff, if necessary, to
+keep it from sinking and also to use
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+as his drinking-cup to dip from the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>"That February day&mdash;the swollen,
+rushing river, the masses of white ice&mdash;the
+solitary young boatman borne
+away to a new world on his great work:
+his heart expanding with excitement
+and joy as he headed toward the unexplored
+wilderness of the Mississippi
+Valley.</p>
+
+<p>"Wondrous experiences were his:
+from the densely wooded shores there
+would reach him as he drifted down,
+the whistle of the red bird&mdash;those first
+spring notes so familiar and so welcome
+to us on mild days toward the
+last of February. Away off in dim
+forest valleys, between bold headlands,
+he saw the rising smoke of sugar camps.
+At other openings on the landscape,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+grotesque log cabins looked like dog-houses
+under impending mighty mountains.
+His rapidly steered skiff passed
+flotillas of Kentucky arks heavily making
+their way southward, transporting
+men and women and children&mdash;the
+moving pioneers of the young nation:
+the first river merchant-marine of the
+new world: carrying horses and plows
+to clearings yet to be made for homesteads
+in the wilderness; transporting
+mill-stones for mills not yet built on
+any wilderness stream; bearing merchandise
+for the pioneers who in this
+way got their clothing until they could
+grow flax and weave to clothe themselves.
+Thus in the Alps of the Alleghenies
+he came upon the river peddlers
+of America as years before amid
+the Alps of Scotland he had come
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+upon the foot peddlers of his own land.
+On the river were floating caravans of
+men selling shawls and muslins. He
+boarded a number of these barges; as
+they approached a settlement, they
+blew a trumpet or a lonely horn on
+the great river stillness.</p>
+
+<p>"The first night he drew in to shore
+some fifty miles down at a riverside
+hovel and tried to sleep on the only
+bed offered him&mdash;some corn-stalks. Unable
+to sleep, he got up before day and
+pushed out again into the river, listening
+to the hooting of the big-horned
+owl echoing away among the dawn-dark
+mountains, or to the strangely
+familiar crowing of cocks as they
+awoke the hen roosts about the first
+American settlements in the West.</p>
+
+<p>"He records what to us now sounds
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+incredible, that on March fifth he saw
+a flock of parrokeets. Think of parrokeets
+on the Ohio River in March!
+Of nights it turned freezing cold and
+he drew liberally on his bottle of cordial
+for warmth. Once he encountered
+a storm of wind and hail and snow
+and rain, during which the river foamed
+and rolled like the sea and he had to
+make good use of his tin to keep the
+skiff bailed out till he could put in to
+shore. The call of wild turkeys enticed
+him now toward the shore of
+Indiana, now toward the shore of
+Kentucky, but before he reached either
+they had disappeared. His first night
+on the Kentucky shore he spent in the
+cabin of a squatter and heard him tell
+tales of bear-treeing and wildcat-hunting
+and wolf-baiting. All night wolves
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+howled in the forests near by and kept
+the dogs in an uproar; the region
+swarmed with wolves and wildcats
+'black and brown.'</p>
+
+<p>"On and on, until at last the skiff
+reached the rapids of the Ohio at Louisville
+and he stepped ashore and sold
+his frail saviour craft which, at starting,
+he had named the Ornithologist. The
+Kentuckian who bought it as the Ornithologist
+accepted the droll name as
+that of some Indian chief. He soon
+left Louisville, having sent his baggage
+on by wagon, and plunged into the
+Kentucky forest on his way to Lexington.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, indeed, you see he is
+coming nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the twenty-fourth of March
+when he began his first trip southward
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+through the woods of Kentucky. Spring
+was on the way but had not yet passed
+northward. Nine-tenths of the Kentucky
+soil, he states, was then unbroken
+wilderness. The surface soil was deeper
+than now. The spring thaw had set in,
+permeating the rich loam. He describes
+his progress through it as like travelling
+through soft soap. The woods were
+bare as yet, though filled with pigeons
+and squirrels and wood-peckers. On
+everything he was using his marvellous
+eyes: looking for birds but looking at
+all human life, interested in the whole
+life of the forest. He mentions large
+corn fields and orchards of apple and of
+peach trees. Already he finds the high
+fences, characteristic of the Kentuckians.
+He turned aside once to visit a
+roosting place of the passenger pigeon.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was on March twenty-ninth that,
+emerging from the thick forest, he saw
+before him the little Western metropolis
+of the pioneers, the city of the forefathers
+of many of us here today&mdash;Lexington.
+I wish I could stop to describe
+to you the picture as he painted
+it: the town stretching along its low
+valley; a stream running through the
+valley and turning several mills&mdash;water
+mills in Lexington a hundred years ago!
+In the market-place which you now call
+Cheapside he saw the pillory and the
+stocks and he noted that the stocks
+were so arranged as to be serviceable for
+gallows: our Kentucky forefathers arranged
+that they should be conveniently
+hanged, if they deserved it, as a public
+spectacle of warning.</p>
+
+<p>"On a country court day he saw a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+thousand horses hitched around the
+courthouse square and in churchyards
+and in graveyards. He states that
+even then Kentucky horses were the
+most remarkable in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"He makes no mention of one thing
+he must have seen, but was perhaps
+glad to forget&mdash;the weavers and the
+busy looms; for in those days Kentuckians
+were busy making good linen
+and good homespun, as in Paisley.</p>
+
+<p>"He slept while in Lexington&mdash;this
+great unknown man&mdash;in a garret called
+Salter White's, wherever that was: and
+he shivered with cold, for you know we
+can have chill nights in April. He says
+that he had no firewood, it being scarce,
+the universal forest of firewood being
+half a mile away: this was like going
+hungry in a loft over a full baker-shop.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And I must not omit one note of his
+on the Kentuckians themselves, which
+flashes a vivid historic light on their
+character. By this time he rightly
+considered that he had had adventures
+worth relating; but he declares that if
+he attempted to relate them to any
+Kentuckian, the Kentuckian at once
+interrupted him and insisted upon relating
+his own adventures as better
+worth while. Western civilization was
+of itself the one absorbing adventure to
+every man who had had his share in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here I must pause to intimate that
+Wilson all his life carried with him one
+bird&mdash;one vigourous and vociferous bird&mdash;a
+crow to pick. He picked it savagely
+with Louisville. But he had begun to
+pick it with Scotland. He had picked
+it with Great Britain and with New
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+Jersey and Virginia. In New England
+the feathers of the crow fairly flew. In
+truth, civilization never quite satisfied
+him; wild nature alone he found no
+fault with&mdash;there only was he happy
+and at home. He now picked his crow
+with Lexington. Afterward an indignant
+Kentuckian, quite in the good
+Kentucky way, attacked him and left
+the crow featherless&mdash;as regards Lexington.</p>
+
+<p>"On the fourteenth day of April
+he departed from Lexington, moving
+southward through the forest to New
+Orleans. Scarcely yet had the woods
+begun to turn green. He notes merely
+the white blossoms of the redroot peeping
+through the withered leaves, and
+the buds of the buckeye. With those
+sharp eyes of his he observed that
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+wherever a hackberry tree had fallen,
+cattle had eaten the bark.</p>
+
+<p>"And now we begin to take leave of
+him: he passes from our picture. We
+catch a glimpse of him standing on the
+perpendicular cliffs of solid limestone
+at the Kentucky River, green with a
+great number of uncommon plants and
+flowers&mdash;we catch a glimpse of him
+standing there, watching bank swallows
+and listening to the faint music of the
+boat horns in the deep romantic valley
+below, where the Kentucky arks, passing
+on their way southward, turned the
+corners of the verduous cliffs as the
+musical gondolas turn the corners of
+vine-hung Venice in the waters of the
+Adriatic.</p>
+
+<p>"On and on southward; visiting a
+roosting-place of the passenger pigeon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+which was reported to him as forty
+miles long: he counted ninety nests in
+one beech tree. We see him emerging
+upon the Kentucky barrens which were
+covered with vegetation and open for
+the sweep of the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, at last, he begins to meet the
+approach of spring in full tide: all Nature
+is bursting into leaf and blossom.
+No longer are the redbud and the dogwood
+and the sassafras conspicuous as
+its heralds. And now, overflowing the
+forest, advances the full-crested wave
+of bird-life up from the south, from the
+tropics. New and unknown species are
+everywhere before his eyes; their new
+melodies are in his ears; he is busy
+drawing, colouring, naming them for
+his work.</p>
+
+<p>"So he passes out of our picture:
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+southward bound, encountering a cloud
+of parrakeets and pigeons, emerging
+from a cave with a handkerchief full of
+bats, swimming creeks, sleeping at
+night alone in the wilderness, his gun
+and pistol in his bosom. He vanishes
+from the forest scene, never from the
+memory of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me tell you that he did not live
+to complete his work. Death overtook
+him, not a youth but still young; for, as
+a Roman of the heroic years deeply
+said: 'Death always finds those young
+who are still at work for the future of
+the world.'</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I was going to speak to
+you of a boy's life. I asked you to fix
+your eyes upon it as a far-off human
+spark, barely glimmering through mist
+and fog but slowly, as the years passed,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+getting stronger, growing brighter, always
+drawing nearer until it shone
+about you here as a great light and then
+passed on, leaving an eternal glory.</p>
+
+<p>"I have done that.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw a little fellow taken from
+school at about the age of eleven and
+put to hard work at weaving; now you
+see one of the world's great ornithologists,
+who had traversed some ten thousand
+miles of comparative wilderness&mdash;an
+imperishable figure, doing an imperishable
+deed. I love to think of him as
+being in the end what he most hated
+to be in the beginning&mdash;a weaver: he
+wove a vast, original tapestry of the
+bird-life of the American forest.</p>
+
+<p>"As he passed southward from Lexington
+that distant April of 1810, encountering
+his first spring in the Ohio
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+valley with its myriads of birds, somewhere
+he discovered a new and beautiful
+species of American wood warbler
+and gave it a local habitation and a
+name.</p>
+
+<p>"He called it the Kentucky Warbler.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," the lecturer said, by way
+of climax, "would you not like to see a
+picture of that mighty hunter who lived
+in the great days of the young American
+republic and crossed Kentucky in
+the great days of the pioneers? And
+would you not also like to see a picture
+of the exquisite and only bird that bears
+the name of our State&mdash;the Kentucky
+Warbler?"</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">He passed over to them a portrait engraving
+of Alexander Wilson in the
+dress of a gentleman of his time, his
+fowling-piece on his forearm. And
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+along with this he delivered to them a
+life-like, a singing portrait, of the warbler,
+painted by a great American animal
+painter and bird painter&mdash;Fuertes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_109.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter II, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_110.jpg" width="550" height="207" alt="chapter III, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h2><a id="chap_III">III</a><br />
+
+THE FOREST</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_110__initial.jpg" width="100" height="98" alt="I initial" title="" />
+</span>t was the first day of vacation.</p>
+
+<p>Schools, if you were not
+through with them, had
+now become empty, closed, silent
+buildings, stripped of authority to
+imprison and bedevil you and then
+mark you discreditably because you
+righteously rebelled against being imprisoned
+and bedeviled. They could
+safely be left to dust and cobwebs
+within and to any weeds that might
+lodge and sprout outside&mdash;the more the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+better. You stood on the spring edge
+of the long, free, careless summer and
+could look unconcernedly across at the
+distant autumn edge. Then as the
+woods, now in their first full green, were
+beginning to turn dry and yellow, the
+powerless buildings would again become
+tyrannical schools.</p>
+
+<p>But if you had finished high school,
+on this first day of vacation you were
+on the Boy's Common: schools behind
+you, the world of business around you,
+ahead of you ambitious college or the
+stately University. Webster had been
+turned loose on the Boy's Common.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The family were at breakfast. Every
+breakfast in the cottage was much the
+same breakfast: routine is the peace of
+the roadless. Existence there throughout
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+the year was three hundred and
+sixty-five times more or less like itself.
+The earth meantime did change for the
+signs of the zodiac: the cottage changed
+also, but had a zodiac of its own.
+Thus, when the planet was in the sign
+of <i>Capricornus</i>, the cottage on a morning
+had fried perch for breakfast, as a
+sign that it was in <i>Pisces</i>; when earth
+was in <i>Gemini</i>, the family might have
+a steak which showed that it was in
+<i>Taurus</i>&mdash;or that <i>Taurus</i> was in the
+family.</p>
+
+<p>There was always hot meat of one
+kind and hot bread of two kinds and
+hot coffee of any kind. If Webster's
+father upon entering the breakfast
+room had not seen a dish before him
+to carve or apportion, the shock could
+not have been greater, had he found
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+lying on his folded napkin an enclosure
+from the bank notifying him that he
+had been discharged for having made
+the figure four instead of the figure two.</p>
+
+<p>He sat squarely facing the table as
+long as his own portion of the meat
+lasted, meantime eating rapidly and
+bending over to glance at his paper
+which lay flat beside his coffee cup.
+With the final morsel of meat he turned
+sidewise and sat cross-legged, with his
+paper held before his face as a screen&mdash;notification
+that he would rather not
+talk at the moment, unless they preferred....
+If they showed that
+they did prefer, he still had means to
+discourage their preference. Now and
+then he reached around toward his
+plate and groped for the remaining
+crumbs of bread, or hooked his forefinger
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+in the handle of his cup and conveyed
+it behind the paper.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother, busied with service
+at the tray, commenced her breakfast
+after the others. She talked to
+her husband until he interposed his
+newspaper. Then she unconsciously
+lowered her voice and addressed remarks
+to the children. Occasionally
+she tried to arrange their dissensions.</p>
+
+<p>A satirist of human life, studying
+Webster's father and mother at the
+head and foot of the table&mdash;symbol at
+once of their opposition and conjunction&mdash;a
+satirist, who for his own amusement
+turns life into pictures of something
+else, might have described their
+bodily and pictorial relation as that
+of a large, soft deep-dished pudding
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+to a well trimmed mutton chop. Their
+minds he would possibly have imagined
+as two south winds moving
+along, side by side; whatever else they
+blew against, they could not possibly
+blow against each other.</p>
+
+<p>On this fine June morning, the first
+day of his vacation, Webster was late
+for breakfast. He arranged to be late.
+From his bathroom-bedroom he could
+hear the family with their usual morning
+talk, Elinor's shrill chatter predominating.
+When her chatter ceased
+he would know that she had satisfied
+her whimsical appetite and had slipped
+from her chair, impatient either to get
+to the front porch with its creaky
+rocking-chair or to dart out the gate
+to other little girls in the block; restlessly
+seeking some adventure elsewhere
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+if none should pass before her
+eyes at home.</p>
+
+<p>He waited till she should go; there
+was something especial to speak of
+with his father and he did not wish
+this to be spoiled by Elinor's interference
+and ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>When she was gone he went in to
+breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my son, how are you going
+to spend your first day of vacation?"
+his father inquired, helping him to his
+portion and not particularly noticing
+his own question.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I'd go over into the
+woods," Webster replied.</p>
+
+<p>An unfavourable silence followed
+this announcement. That old stubborn
+controversy about the woods!...</p>
+
+<p>"Father," asked Webster, with his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+eyes on his plate, "did you ever see
+the Kentucky warbler?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father looked over the
+top of the wood-pulp screen. His
+face had a somewhat vacant expression.
+He waited. Finally he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"My son, I believe you asked me a
+question: I shall have to ask you to
+repeat your question; I may be losing
+my hearing or I may be losing my
+mind. You asked me&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster, in the same deliberate tone,
+repeated his question:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever see the Kentucky
+warbler?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father looked over his
+spectacles at Webster's mother as with
+the air of an appeal for guidance:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, your son asks me, if I
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+understand him, whether I have ever
+seen a Kentucky wooden war horse?"</p>
+
+<p>He was not above fun-making and
+it seemed to him that the occasion
+called for it.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother explained:</p>
+
+<p>"One of the professors from the
+University lectured to them in April
+about birds. His head has been full
+of birds ever since: I shouldn't wonder
+if his dreams have been full of them."
+She looked at Webster not without
+ineradicable tenderness and pride; she
+could not quite have explained the
+pride, she could have explained the
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>Now the truth of the matter was
+that since that memorable morning
+of the April talk at high school, she
+had been hearing from Webster repeatedly
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+on that subject. He had told
+her of the lecture immediately upon
+reaching home; she had never seen
+him so wrought up. And from that
+time he had upon occasion plied her
+with questions: as to what she knew
+of birds when she lived in the country.
+She had to tell him that she knew very
+little; everybody identified the several
+species that preyed upon fruit and
+berries and young chickens; she named
+these readily enough. She had never
+heard of a bird called the Kentucky
+warbler. And she had never heard of
+Alexander Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>All this she had duly narrated to
+Webster's father&mdash;greatly to his dejection.
+A bank officer with a solitary
+son, now graduated from high school,
+going after bird-nests&mdash;that was a
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+prospect before such a father! He had
+shaken his head in silence that more
+than spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I told him," Webster's mother had
+concluded, "that the only Wilsons
+worth knowing in Kentucky were the
+horse-people Wilsons: of course we
+know <i>them</i>. It has been amusing to
+watch Elinor. Whenever Webster has
+begun about birds, if she has overheard
+him, she has made it convenient
+to settle somewhere near and listen.
+She would break in and stop his questions,
+but then there would be no more
+entertainment for her. She has been
+a study."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Webster's father was not so
+ill-informed as he now appeared. In
+return for the information from Webster's
+mother, apparently for the first
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+time imparted, he looked at his son
+with an expression which plainly meant
+that as a speculation the latter was
+becoming a graver risk.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my son," he said, "I have
+never met your forest friend. I am
+merely a Kentucky bank warbler. One
+who did his warbling years ago. There
+is some <i>war</i> left in me. I suppose there
+will always be <i>war</i> left in me, but there
+isn't any <i>war</i>-ble. I warbled one distant
+solitary spring to your mother.
+She replied beautifully in kind and
+lavishly in degree. We made a nest
+and had a hatching. Since then the
+male bird has been trying&mdash;not to
+escape the consequences of his song&mdash;but
+to meet his notes like a man. I
+have never stumbled upon your forest
+friend."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Webster ate in silence for a few
+moments and then remarked, as though
+it were a matter of vital importance:</p>
+
+<p>"His notes are:</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Tweedle tweedle tweedle, Tweedle
+tweedle tweedle</i>,' Wilson described them
+that way a hundred and six years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt it, my son. I am not
+questioning your word&mdash;nor Mr. Wilson's.
+But I don't see anything very
+remarkable in that: if you come to the
+bank any day, you can hear men say
+the same thing. They come in and
+say, 'Tweedle.' And they go out."</p>
+
+<p>Webster continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Audubon described the notes as
+'<i>Turdle turdle turdle</i>.'"</p>
+
+<p>Deeper silence at the table. Webster
+continued in the face of the
+silence;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A living naturalist says the notes
+may be:</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Toodle toodle toodle.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>Silence at the table still more deep.
+Webster broke it:</p>
+
+<p>"Another naturalist describes the
+bird as saying:</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Ter-wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter
+wheeter.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>The silence! Webster continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Another naturalist thinks the song
+is:</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Che che che peery peery peery.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father raised his eyebrows&mdash;he
+had no hair to raise&mdash;at Webster's
+mother: a sign that their graduate
+was beginning to celebrate his vacation.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," he said, "when I was a
+little fellow in school, one of the reading
+lessons was a poem called 'Try,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+Try Again.' Perhaps the bird is working
+along that line."</p>
+
+<p>"Thomas Jefferson followed a bird
+for hours in the woods," said Webster,
+with dignity: he somehow felt rebuked.
+"And for twenty years he
+tried to catch sight of another."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let me come between you and
+Thomas Jefferson," said Webster's
+father, waving his hand toward his
+son in protest. "God forbid that I
+should come between any two such
+persons as Daniel Webster and Thomas
+Jefferson!"</p>
+
+<p>"The government at Washington,"
+observed Webster stoutly, "is behind
+the Kentucky warbler."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, my son, I advise you to get
+behind the Government."</p>
+
+<p>The rusty bell at the little front door
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+went off with a sound like the whirr of
+a frightened prairie chicken. The
+breakfast maid, also the cook, also the
+maid of all work, also a unit of the
+standardised population of disservice
+and discontent, entered and pushed a
+bill at Webster's father.</p>
+
+<p>"The butcher," she announced with
+sullen gratification, "He's waiting."</p>
+
+<p>As Webster's father left the table,
+he tapped his son affectionately on the
+head with his paper: "You follow the
+bird, my boy; and follow Thomas
+Jefferson, if you can. The butcher
+follows me."</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother sat watching him.
+He had begun to get his lunch ready.
+He held the bottom-half of a long,
+slender roll, which might have served
+as a miniature model for an old-time
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+Kentucky river-ark; and with his knife,
+grasped like an oar, he was lining the
+inside with some highly specialised yellow
+substance. She deplored his awkwardness
+and fought his independence.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me put up your lunch for you,
+my son!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put it up."</p>
+
+<p>He was not to be cheated out of that
+fresh sensation of pleasure which comes
+to the male, young or old, who tries to
+cook in camp, to fry, to boil, to season,
+or to serve things edible.</p>
+
+<p>Webster pulled out of his pocket a
+crumpled piece of brown paper and
+smoothed it out on the table cloth. It
+showed butcher stains.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother protested.</p>
+
+<p>"My son! Take a napkin! Take
+this clean napkin for your lunch!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I like this paper."</p>
+
+<p>The idea of being in the forest and
+unrolling his lunch from a napkin:
+what would Wilson have thought?
+Elinor, being "nice," always rolled her
+lunch in a napkin.</p>
+
+<p>"But you will be hungry: let me get
+you some preserves!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not anything sweet." Elinor always
+had preserves. He rolled his
+lunch roughly and thrust it, butcher-stains
+and all, into his pocket. His
+mother was exasperated and distressed.</p>
+
+<p>"My son, your lunch will come loose
+in your pocket: I'll get you a string."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want a string." Elinor tied
+everything. Girls tied; boys buttoned.
+The difference between men and women
+was strings.</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll get the grease on you,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+Webster! It will run down your
+legs!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then, I'll have greasy
+legs. Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>She followed him out to the porch.
+Her character lacked capacity of initiative.
+She waited for him to be old
+enough to take some initiative; then she
+would stand by him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go too far," she said tenderly,
+"and you ought to have some of your
+friends to go with you, some of the boys
+from school."</p>
+
+<p>"They can't go today. Nobody can
+go today. Anybody would be in the
+way today."</p>
+
+<p>He said this to himself.</p>
+
+<p>She watched him from the porch and
+called: "Don't stay too late."</p>
+
+<p>Webster walked quickly to the main
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+corner of the block&mdash;Jenny's corner.
+On this first morning of being through
+with school and of feeling more like a
+man free to do as he pleased, Jenny for
+that reason became more important&mdash;he
+must see her before starting. Heretofore
+the pleasure of being with Jenny
+had definitely depended upon what
+Jenny might do; this morning the idea
+was beginning to be Jenny herself.</p>
+
+<p>She was in her trumpet-vine arbour,
+the roof of which was already sun-dried.
+The shaded sides were still dew-wet.
+She bounded across to him, very
+exquisite in her light blue frock with
+broad, fresh white ribbons in her light-brown
+hair: healthy, docile, joyous,
+with innocent blue eyes and the complexion
+of apple blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" she asked
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+in a voice which implied that the day
+would be as pleasant, no matter where
+he went: nevertheless she had no
+thought of appearing indifferent to him.</p>
+
+<p>He told her.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going into the woods
+for?" she inquired, with little dancing
+movements of her feet on the yard
+grass in irrepressible health and joy and
+with no especial interest in his reply.</p>
+
+<p>He told her.</p>
+
+<p>"Could <i>you</i> go?" He very well knew
+she could not and merely yielded to an
+impulse to express himself: he was
+offering to ruin the day for her.</p>
+
+<p>"They wouldn't let me," said Jenny,
+apparently not disappointed at being
+thus kept at home.</p>
+
+<p>He sought to make the best of his
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Even if you could go, I am afraid
+you never would be quiet, Jenny."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I wouldn't," Jenny replied,
+responsive to every suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>He lingered, tenderly disturbed by
+her: the roots of the future were growing
+in him this morning. He was
+changing, he was changing <i>her</i>: there
+was an outreaching of his nature to
+draw her into the future alongside him.</p>
+
+<p>Jenny suddenly stopped dancing and
+came closer to the fence, having all at
+once become more conscious of Webster,
+standing there as he had never
+stood before, looking at her as he had
+never looked. Her nature was of yielding
+sweetness, clasping trust. She
+glanced around the cottage windows:
+the situation was very exposed. Webster
+glanced at the cottage windows:
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+the situation did not appear in the
+least exposed. Her eyes became more
+round with an idea:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you coming back this way?"</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>will</i> come back this way."</p>
+
+<p>Jenny danced away from the fence,
+laughing excitedly: "Will it be late?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can <i>make</i> it late?"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Webster climbed the fence of the
+forest under the foliage of a big tree
+of some unknown kind and descended
+waist-deep into the foliage of a weed
+with a leaf as big as an elephant's ear:
+it had a beautiful trumpet-shaped white
+and purple flower. He wished he knew
+what it was: on the very edge of the
+forest, at his very first step, he had
+sunk waist-deep into ignorance. Then
+he waded through the rank nightshade
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+and stepped out upon the grass
+of the woods&mdash;the green carpet of
+thick turf, Kentucky bluegrass.</p>
+
+<p>At last he was there under those
+softly waving trees which summer after
+summer he had watched from the porch
+and windows: long they had called to
+him and now he had answered their call.</p>
+
+<p>But the disappointment! As he had
+looked at the forest across the distance,
+the tree-tops had made an unbroken
+billowy line of green along the blue
+horizon, continuous like the waves of
+the sea as he imagined the sea. Somewhere
+under that forest roof he had
+taken it for granted that there would
+be thick undergrowth, wild spots for
+shy singing nesting birds. The disappointment!
+The trees stood ten or
+twenty or thirty feet apart. The longest
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+boughs barely touched each other,
+their lowest sometimes hung forty or
+fifty feet in the air. He did not see a
+tree whose branches he could reach
+with his upstretched arm. The sun
+shone everywhere under them every
+bright day and the grass grew thick up
+to their trunks.</p>
+
+<p>Another disappointment! The wood
+was small. He walked to the middle
+of it and from there could see to its
+edge on each of its four sides. On one
+side was a field of yellow grain&mdash;what
+the grain was he did not know&mdash;ignorance
+again. On the side opposite this
+was a field of green grain&mdash;what he
+did not know. Straight ahead of him
+as he looked through the trees, he
+could see an open paddock on which
+the sunlight fell in a blazing sheen; it
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+turned to silver the white flanks of
+some calves and made soft gold of the
+coats of grazing thoroughbreds. Beyond
+the paddock he could see stables
+and sheds and beyond these a farmhouse:
+he could faintly hear the cackle
+of barnyard poultry.</p>
+
+<p>He stood in bluegrass pasture&mdash;once
+Kentucky wilderness. It was like
+an exquisite natural park. As he had
+skirmished toward the country along
+turnpikes with school-mates or other
+friends during his life, often his eyes
+had been drawn toward these world-famous
+bluegrass pastures. Now he
+was in one; and it was here that he had
+come to look for the warbler which
+haunts the secret forest solitudes!</p>
+
+<p>He sat down under a big tree with a
+feeling of how foolish he had been.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+This was again followed by an overwhelming
+sense of his ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>He did not know the kind of tree he
+sat under nor of any other that stood
+far or near. These were such as sugar
+maple and red oak and white oak and
+black ash and white ash and black
+walnut and white walnut&mdash;rarely white
+walnut&mdash;and hickory and locust and
+elm and a few haws: he did recognise a
+locust tree but then a locust tree grew
+in Jenny's yard! All around him weeds
+and wild flowers and other grasses
+sprang up out of the bluegrass: he did
+not know them.</p>
+
+<p>There was one tree he curiously
+looked around for, positive that he
+should not be blind to it if fortunate
+enough to set his eyes on one&mdash;the
+coffee tree. That is, he felt sure he'd
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+recognise it if it yielded coffee ready to
+drink, of which never in his life had
+they given him enough. Not once
+throughout his long troubled experience
+as to being fed had he been allowed
+as much coffee as he craved.
+Once, when younger, he had heard some
+one say that the only tree in all the
+American forest that bore the name of
+Kentucky was the Kentucky coffee tree;
+and he had instantly conceived a desire
+to pay a visit in secret to that corner
+of the woods. To take his cup and
+a few lumps of sugar and sit under the
+boughs and catch the coffee as it
+dripped down.... No one to hold
+him back ... as much as he wanted at
+last ...! The Kentucky coffee tree&mdash;his
+favourite in Nature!</p>
+
+<p>He said to himself, looking all
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+round him, that he had the outdoor
+loneliness and blindness of Silas
+Marner this wonderful morning.</p>
+
+<p>Propped against the tree he sat still
+a while, thinking of the long day before
+him and of how he should spend it
+in this thin empty pasture, abandoned
+by the wild creatures. But as he deliberated,
+suddenly and then more and
+more he awoke to things going on
+around him.</p>
+
+<p>A few feet away and on a level with
+his eyes a little fellow descended from
+high over-head. A little green gymnast
+trying to reach the ground by
+means of his own rope which he manufactured
+out of his body as he came
+down. How could he do it? How had
+he learned the very first time to make
+the rope strong enough to bear his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+weight instead of its giving way and
+letting him drop? Something seized one
+of Webster's ankles with a pair of small
+jaws like pincers and reminded him that
+his foot was in the way: it had better
+move on. A black ant suddenly rushed
+angrily over his knee. A cricket leaped
+in the grass. One autumn one of them
+had started its song behind the wainscoting,
+Elinor had pushed her toe
+against the woodwork and silenced it.
+A few feet away a bunch of white clover
+blossomed: a honey bee was searching
+it. Webster found on the back of one
+of his hands, which was pressed against
+the grass, a tiny crimson coach&mdash;a
+mere dot of a crimson coach being
+moved along he could not see how.
+The colour was most gorgeous and the
+material of the finest velvet. He let it
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+go on its way across his hand withersoever
+it might be journeying. Directly
+opposite his eyes, some forty feet
+from the ground, was a round hole in a
+rotten tree-trunk. Webster wondered
+whether a bird ever pecked a square
+hole in anything. Suddenly from behind
+him a red-headed bird flew to the
+dead tree-trunk and alighted near the
+hole: he recognised the wood-pecker.
+And he remembered that this was the
+first bird Wilson had killed that first
+day he entered the American forest:
+he was glad that it was the first <i>he</i>
+encountered! No sooner had the wood-pecker
+alighted than the head of another
+bird appeared at the hole and the
+wood-pecker took to his heels&mdash;to his
+wings. Webster wished he had known
+what this other bird was: it had a black
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+band across its chest and wore a
+speckled jacket and a dull reddish cap
+on the back of its head. A disturbance
+reached him from a nearby treetop, a
+wailing voice, a gulping sound, as if
+something up there were sick and full
+of suffering and were trying to take its
+medicine. He watched the spot and
+presently a crow flew out of the thick
+leaves: the crow's family seemed not in
+good health. A ground squirrel jumped
+to the end of a rotting log some yards
+away but at sight of him shrieked and
+darted in again. The whole pasture
+was alive.</p>
+
+<p>Webster had all this time become
+conscious that another sound had been
+reaching his ear at regular intervals
+from the high branches of the trees,
+first in one place and then in another.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+His eyes had followed the voice but he
+could see no bird. The sound was like
+this:</p>
+
+<p><i>Se&mdash;u&mdash;re?</i></p>
+
+<p>That was the first half of the song&mdash;a
+question. A few moments later the
+other half followed, perhaps from another
+tree&mdash;the answer:</p>
+
+<p><i>Se&mdash;u&mdash;u.</i></p>
+
+<p>Here was a mystery: what was the
+bird? Could it be the bluebird!&mdash;his
+ignorance again, the comicality of his
+ignorance! Webster had never seen or
+heard a bluebird. He recalled what the
+professor had told them&mdash;that Alexander
+Wilson had written the first poem
+on the American bluebird, perhaps still
+the best poem; and he had given them
+the poem to memorise if they liked,
+saying that they might not think it
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+good poetry, but at least it was the
+poetry of a man who thought he could
+criticise Robert Burns! Webster had
+memorised the verses and as he now
+searched the forest boughs for this invisible
+bluebird, he repeated to himself
+some of Wilson's lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When all the gay scenes of summer are o'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And autumn slow enters so silent and sallow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And millions of warblers that charmed us before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bluebird, forsaken, but true to his home<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still lingers and looks for a milder tomorrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till forced by the horrors of winter to roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Again that long fine strain cast far
+out upon the air like a silken reel:</p>
+
+<p><i>Se&mdash;u&mdash;re? Se&mdash;u&mdash;u.</i></p>
+
+<p>Or could it be a woodcock?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He got up by and bye and walked
+toward the field of yellow grain on one
+side of the pasture. Before he was halfway
+he stopped, arrested by a wonderful
+sound: from the top rail of the
+fence before him, separating the pasture
+from the grain, came a loud ringing
+whistle. It was Bobwhite! Boys at
+school sometimes whistled "bobwhite."
+He knew this bird because he had seen
+him hanging amid snow and ice and
+holly boughs outside meat shops about
+Christmas time. Here now was the
+summer song: in it the green of the
+woods, the gold of the grain, the far
+brave clearness of the June sky.</p>
+
+<p>He tipped forward, not because his
+feet made any noise. Once again,
+nearer, that marvellous music rang past
+him, echoing on into the woods. Then
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+it ceased; and as Webster approached
+the field fence what he saw was a rabbit
+watching him over the grass tops until
+with long soft leaps it escaped through
+the fence to the safety of the field.</p>
+
+<p>For a while he remained leaning on
+this fence and looking out across the
+coming harvest. Twenty yards away a
+clump of alders was in bloom: some
+bird was singing out there joyously. It
+made a <i>che che che</i> sound, also; but its
+colour was brown.</p>
+
+<p>The idea occurred to Webster that
+he would recross the pasture to the
+field on the other side and go on to the
+turnpike: one ran there, for he heard
+vehicles passing. He would make inquiry
+about some piece of forest further
+from the city. He remembered
+again what the professor told them:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Some of you this summer during
+your vacation may go out to some
+nearby strip of woods&mdash;what little is
+left of the old forest&mdash;in quest of the
+warbler. Seek the wildest spots you
+can find. The Kentucky bluegrass
+landscape is thin and tame now, but
+there are places of thick undergrowth
+where the bird still spends his Kentucky
+summer. Shall I give you my
+own experience as to where I found
+him when a boy half a century ago?
+On my father's farm there was a woodland
+pasture. The land dipped there
+into a marshy hollow. In this hollow
+was a stock pond. Around the edges
+of the pond grew young cane. It was
+always low because the cattle browsed
+it. The highest stalks were scarcely
+five feet. On the edge of the canebrake
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+a thicket of papaw and blackberry
+vines added rankness and forest secrecy.
+It was here I discovered him. The
+pale green and yellow of his plumage
+blent with the pale green and yellow
+of the leaves and stalks. But it was
+many years before I knew that the
+bird I had found was the Kentucky
+warbler. If I had only known it when
+I was a boy!"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When Webster reached the turnpike
+and looked up and down, no one was
+in sight. He sat on the fence and
+waited. By and bye, coming in from
+the country, a spring wagon appeared.
+Curious projections stuck out from the
+top and sides of boxes in the wagon.
+When it drew nearer Webster saw
+poultry being taken to market. He
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+looked at the driver but let him pass
+unaccosted: there would be little use
+in applying for information about warblers
+at headquarters for broilers.</p>
+
+<p>Next from the direction of the city
+he saw coming a splendid open carriage
+drawn by a splendid horse and
+driven by a very pompous coloured
+coachman in livery. An aristocratic
+old lady sat in the carriage, shielding
+her face from the dazzling sunlight with
+a rich parasol. She leaned out and
+looked curiously at Webster.</p>
+
+<p>"Suydam," she called out to her
+coachman with a voice that had the
+faded sweetness of faded rose leaves,
+"did you notice that remarkable boy?
+He looked as though he would have
+liked to drive with me out into the
+country. I wish I had invited him to
+do so."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A milk cart followed with a great
+noise of tin cans. With milk carts
+Webster felt somewhat at home: it
+was often his business to receive the
+family milk. As the cart was passing,
+he motioned for the milkman to stop.
+Perhaps all milkmen stop at any sign:
+there may be an order: Webster called
+out with a good deal of hesitation:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know of a woods further
+out full of bushes and thickets?"</p>
+
+<p>The milkman gave a little flap of
+the rein to his horse:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with <i>you</i>?" he
+said with patient forbearance:</p>
+
+<p>Finally Webster saw creeping down
+the turnpike toward him an empty
+wagon-bed drawn by a yoke of oxen.
+A good-natured young negro man sat
+sideways on the wagon-tongue, smoking.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+Webster halted him by a gesture
+and a voice of command:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know of a bushy woods
+further out?"</p>
+
+<p>Any negro enjoys being questioned
+because he enjoys not answering questions.
+Most of all he enjoys any puzzling
+exercise of his mother wit.</p>
+
+<p>"A bushy woods?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a bushy woods."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want with a bushy
+woods?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to find where there is one."</p>
+
+<p>The negro hesitated: "there's a
+bushy woods about four miles out."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it on the pike?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the pike! Did you ever see a
+bushy woods on the pike? It's <i>beside</i>
+the pike."</p>
+
+<p>"Right side or left side?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Depends which way you're going.
+Right side if you are going out, left
+side if you're coming in."</p>
+
+<p>"You say it's four miles out?"</p>
+
+<p>"You pass the three mile post and
+then you go a little further."</p>
+
+<p>"Are there any birds in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Birds? There's owls in it. There's
+coons in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know a young canebrake
+when you see one?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know an old hempbrake when I
+see one."</p>
+
+<p>Webster enjoyed his new authority
+in holding up his negro and questioning
+him about a forest. And it seemed to
+him that the moment had come when
+it was right to use money if you had it,
+horns or no horns. He pulled out a
+dime. The negro, too surprised to
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+speak, came across and received it.
+He declined to express thanks but felt
+disposed to show that he had earned
+the money by repeating a piece of information:</p>
+
+<p>"It's four miles out."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there much of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Much of it? Much as you want."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you live in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't live in it: I live in a
+house."</p>
+
+<p>He had retaken his seat on the
+wagon-tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of pipe stem is that you
+are using?"</p>
+
+<p>"What kind? It's a cane pipe stem."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you get the cane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where did I get it? I got it in the
+woods."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there <i>is</i> young cane growing
+in the woods?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who said there wasn't?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster, beginning this morning to
+use his eyes, took notice of something
+which greatly interested him as the
+wagon moved slowly off down the
+pike: strands of hemp clung to it here
+and there like a dry hanging moss.
+The geologist had told them that his
+own boyhood lay far back in the era
+of great Kentucky hemp-raising. Much
+of the hemp was broken in March, the
+month of high winds. As the hemp-breakers
+busily shook out their handfuls
+while separating the fibre from
+the shard, strands were carried away
+on the roaring gales, lodging against
+stubble and stumps and fences of the
+fields or blown further on into the
+pastures. Later when it was baled
+and hauled in, other filaments were
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+caught on the rafters and shingles of
+hemp-houses and barns. Thus when
+in April the northward migration of
+birds reached Kentucky, this material
+was everywhere ready and plentiful,
+and the Baltimore orioles on the bluegrass
+plateau built their long hanging
+nests of Kentucky hemp.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, sitting on the fence and
+thinking of this, meantime laid his
+plans for the larger adventure of the
+following day: the clue he sought had
+unexpectedly been found: he would go
+out to the place where young cane
+grew: there he might have a real
+chance at the warbler.</p>
+
+<p>This being settled to his satisfaction,
+he hurried impatiently back to his
+woodland pasture. It had seemed empty
+of living creatures when he entered
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+it; soon it had revealed itself as a whole
+teeming world. The mere green carpet
+of the woods was one vast birthplace
+and nursery, concert hall, playground,
+battlefield, slaughter-pen,
+cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>"But my ignorance!" he complained.
+"I have good strong eyes, but all these
+years they have been required to look
+at dead maps, dead books, dead pencils
+and figures, dead everything: not
+once in all that time have they been
+trained upon the study of a living
+object."</p>
+
+<p>His ears were as ignorant as his eyes:
+he had not been educated to hear and
+to know what he heard. Innumerable
+strange sounds high and low beat incessantly
+on them&mdash;wave upon wave
+of louder and fainter melodies, the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+summer music of the intent and earnest
+earth. And everywhere what fragrances!
+The tonic woody smells! Each
+deep breath he drew laved his lungs
+with sun-clean, leaf-sweet atmosphere.
+Hour after hour of this until his whole
+body and being&mdash;sight, smell, hearing,
+mind and spirit&mdash;became steeped in
+the forest joyousness.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Now it was alone in the June woods
+that long bright afternoon that Webster
+took final account of the last wonderful
+things the geologist had told
+them that memorable morning. He
+pondered those sayings as best he
+could, made out of them what he could:</p>
+
+<div class="block1">
+<p>"<i>I am not afraid to trust you, the
+young, with big ideas which will lift your
+minds as on strong wings and carry them
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+swiftly and far through time and space.
+If you are taught to look for great things
+early in life, you will early learn how to
+find great things; and the things you love
+to find will be the things you will desire
+and try to do. I wish not to give you a
+single trivial, mean weak thought.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>The Kentucky warbler for over a hundred
+years has worn the name of the State
+and has carried it all over the world&mdash;leading
+the students of bird life to form
+some image of a far country and to fix
+their thoughts at least for some brief moment
+on this same beautiful spot of the
+world's surface. As long as he remains
+in the forests of the earth, he will keep the
+name of Kentucky alive though all else it
+once meant shall have perished and been
+forgotten. He is thus, as nearly as anything
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+in Nature can be, its winged worldwide
+emblem, ever young as each spring
+is young, as the green of the woods is
+young.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>Study the warbler while you may:
+how long he will inhabit the Kentucky
+forest no one can tell. As civilisation
+advances upon the forest, the wild species
+retreat; when the forest falls, the wild
+species are gone. Every human generation
+during these centuries has a last look
+at many things in Nature. No one will
+ever see them again: Nature can never
+find what she has once lost: if it is gone,
+it is gone forever. What Wilson records
+he saw of bird life in Kentucky a hundred
+years ago reads to us now as fables of the
+marvellous, of the incredible. Were he
+the sole witness, some of us might think
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+him to be a lying witness. Let me tell you
+that I in my boyhood&mdash;half a century
+later than Wilson's visit to Kentucky&mdash;beheld
+things that you will hardly believe.
+The vast oak forest of Kentucky
+was what attracted the passenger pigeon.
+In the autumn when acorns were ripe but
+not yet fallen, the pigeons filled the trees
+at times and places, eating them from the
+cups. Walking quietly some sunny afternoon
+through the bluegrass pastures, you
+might approach an oak and see nothing
+but the tree itself, thick boughs with the
+afternoon sunlight sparkling on the leaves
+along one side. As you drew nearer, all
+at once, as if some violent explosion had
+taken place within the tree, a blue smoke-like
+cloud burst out all around the treetop&mdash;the
+simultaneous explosive flight
+of the frightened pigeons. Or all night
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+long there might be wind and rain and
+the swishing of boughs and the tapping
+of loosened leaves against the window
+panes; and when you stepped out of
+doors next morning, it had suddenly become
+clear and cold. Walking out into
+the open and looking up at the clear sky
+you might see this: an arch of pigeons
+breast by breast, wing-tip to wing-tip,
+high up in the air as the wild geese fly,
+slowly moving southward. You could not
+see the end of the arch on one horizon or
+the other: the whole firmament was
+spanned by that mighty arch of pigeons
+flying south from the sudden cold. Not
+all the forces in Nature can ever restore
+that morning sunlit arch of pigeons flying
+south. The distant time may come, or
+a nearer, when the Kentucky warbler
+will have vanished like the wild pigeon:
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+then any story of him will be as one of
+the ancient fables of bird life.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>The rocks of the earth are the one
+flooring on which every thing develops its
+story, then either disappears upon the
+stillness of the earth's atmosphere or
+sinks toward the silence of its rocks.
+Of the myriad forms of life on the earth
+the bird has always been the one thing
+nearest to what we call the higher life of
+the human species.</i></p>
+
+<p>"<i>It is the form and flight of the bird
+alone that has given man at last the mastery
+of the atmosphere. Without the bird
+as a living model we have not the slightest
+reason to believe that he could have ever
+learned the mechanism of flight. Now
+it is the flight of the bird, studied under
+the American sky, that has given the</i>
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+nations the war engine that will perhaps
+rule the destiny of the human race henceforth.
+<i>The form of the bird will fly before
+our autumn-brown American armies
+as they cross the sea&mdash;leading them
+as the symbol of their victory. When
+they lie along the trenches of France as
+thick as fallen brown autumn leaves in
+woodland hollows, it will be the flight of
+bird-like emblems of destruction that
+will guide them like hurricane-rushing
+leaves as they sweep toward their evil
+enemy.</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>Through all ages the flight of the
+bird alone has been the interpreter of the
+human spirit. The living, standing on
+the earth and seeing the souls of their dead
+pass beyond their knowledge, have fixed
+upon the bird as the symbol of their faith.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+When you are old enough, if not already,
+to know your Shakespeare, you will find
+in one line of one of his plays the whole
+vast human farewell of the living to the
+dead: they are the words of Horatio to
+Hamlet, his dying prince: 'the flights of
+angels sing thee to thy rest.'</i>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"<i>As far as we geologists know, this
+is the morning of the planet. Not its
+dawn but somewhere near its sunrise.
+The bird music we hear in these human
+ages are morning songs. Back of that
+morning stretches the earth's long dawn;
+and the rocks tell us that thrushes were
+singing in the green forests of the earth
+millions of years before man had been
+moulded of the dust and had awakened
+and begun to listen to them. Thus bird
+music which seems to us so fresh is the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+oldest music of the earth&mdash;millions of
+years older than man's. And yet all this
+is still but a morning song. The earth is
+young, the birds are young, man is
+young&mdash;all young together at the morning
+of the earth's geologic day. What
+the evening will be we do not know. It
+is possible that the birds will be singing
+their evening song to the earth and man
+already have vanished millions of years
+before.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Many questions vex us: all others lead
+to one: when man vanishes, does he pass
+into the stillness of the earth's atmosphere
+and sink toward the stillness of its rocks
+like every other species? He answers
+with his faith: that his spirit is here he
+knows not why, but takes flight from it he
+knows not how or whither. Only, faith
+discloses to him one picture: the snowy
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+pinion folded and at rest in the Final
+Places.</i>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>That long sunny afternoon in the
+June woods! The shadows of the trees
+slowly lengthened eastward. The sun
+sank below the forest boughs and
+shot its long lances against the tree
+trunks. It made a straight path of
+gold, deeper gold, across the yellow
+grain. The sounds of life died away,
+the atmosphere grew sweeter with
+the odours of leaves and grasses and
+blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>Webster recrossed the woods as he
+had entered it, waded through the
+nightshade and climbed the fence under
+the dark tree.</p>
+
+<p>It was twilight when he entered the
+City.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As he passed her yard, Jenny bounded
+across to him joyous, innocent, tender,
+in a white frock with fresh blue
+ribbons in her brown hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you find him?" she asked, her
+happiness not depending on his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not the right place. Tomorrow
+I am going out further into the
+country to a better place."</p>
+
+<p>"The humming-bird has been here,"
+Jenny announced with an air of saying
+that she had been more successful as a
+naturalist.</p>
+
+<p>He made no reply: as the veteran
+observer of a day, he had somewhat
+outgrown the trumpet-vine arbour and
+the ruby-throat.</p>
+
+<p>He lingered close to the fence. Jenny
+lingered. He moved off, disappointed
+but devoid of speech.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come back!" Jenny whispered,
+with reproach and vexation.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first invitation. It was
+the first acceptance of an invitation.
+There would have been a second acceptance
+but the invitation was not
+there to accept.</p>
+
+<p>When Webster turned in at his home
+gate, everything was just as he had
+foreseen: his father sat on one side of the
+porch, smoking the one daily cigar; his
+mother faced him from the opposite
+side, slowly rocking. Elinor crouched
+on the top step between them: he would
+have to walk around her or over her.</p>
+
+<p>His father laughed heartily as he
+sauntered up.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my son, where is your game
+bag? What have you brought us for
+breakfast?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Webster looked crestfallen: he returned
+empty-handed but not empty-minded:
+he had had a great rich
+day; they thought it an idle wasted
+one.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of the boys have been here
+for you," said his mother. "They left
+word you must be certain to meet them,
+in the morning for the game. Freshen
+yourself up and I'll give you your supper."</p>
+
+<p>Elinor said nothing&mdash;a bad sign with
+her. She sat with her sharp little chin
+resting on her palms and with her eyes
+on him with calculating secrecy. He
+stepped around her.</p>
+
+<p>His room had never seemed so
+cramped after those hours in the
+woods under the open sky. The whole
+cottage seemed so unnatural, everything
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+in the City so unnatural, after
+that day in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>At supper he had not much to say;
+his mother talked to him:</p>
+
+<p>"I put my berries away to eat with
+you for company." They ate their
+berries together.</p>
+
+<p>He felt tired and said he would go to
+bed. His room was darkened when he
+returned to it; he felt sure he had left
+his lamp burning; someone had been
+in it. He lighted his lamp again.</p>
+
+<p>As he started toward his window to
+close the shutters, his eye caught sight
+of an object hanging from the window
+sash. A paper was pinned around it.
+The handwriting was Elinor's. It was
+a bluejay, brought down by a lucky
+stone from some cottager's hand. Webster
+read Elinor's message for him:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="i1">"Your favourite Kentucky Warbler,</p>
+
+<p class="i2">From your old friend,</p>
+<p class="i3">Thomas Jefferson."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>He sat on the side of his bed. The
+sights and sounds and fragrances of the
+pasture were all through him; the sunlight
+warmed his blood still, the young
+blood of perfect health.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">He turned in for the night and sleep
+drew him away at once from reality.
+And some time during the night he
+awoke out of his sleep to the reality of a
+great dream.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_170.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter III, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_171.jpg" width="550" height="207" alt="chapter IV, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<h2>IV<br />
+
+THE BIRD</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_171__initial.jpg" width="100" height="98" alt="I initial" title="" />
+</span>t was in the depths of a
+wonderful forest, green
+with summer and hoary
+with age. He was sitting
+on the ground in a small open space.
+No path led to this or away from it, but
+all around him grew grasses and plants
+which would be natural coverts for wild
+creatures. No human tread had ever
+crushed those plants.</p>
+
+<p>The soft vivid light resting on the
+woods was not morning-light nor evening-light:
+it was clear light without the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+hours. Yet the time must have been
+near noonday; for as Webster looked
+straight up toward the unseen sky,
+barred from his eyes by the forest roof
+of leaves, slender beams of sunlight
+filtered perpendicularly down, growing
+mistier as they descended until they
+could be traced no longer even as luminous
+vapour; no palest radiance from
+them reached the grass.</p>
+
+<p>He could not see far in any direction.
+At the edge of the open space where he
+sat, fallen rotten trees lay amid the
+standing live ones&mdash;parents, grandparents,
+great-grandparents of the rising
+forest, passing back into the soil of
+the planet toward the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Strange as was the spot, stranger
+was Webster to himself and did not
+know what had changed him. It
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+seemed that for the first time in his life
+his eyes were fully opened; never had
+he seen with such vision; and his feeling
+was so deep, so intense. The whole
+scene was enchantment. It was more
+than reality. <i>He</i> was more than reality.
+The singing of birds far away&mdash;it
+was so crystal sweet, yet he could see
+none. A few yards from him a rivulet
+made its way from somewhere to somewhere.
+He could trace its course by
+the growth of plants which crowded
+its banks and covered it with their
+leaves.</p>
+
+<p>Expectancy weighed heavily on him.
+He was there for a purpose but could
+not say what the purpose was.</p>
+
+<p>All at once as his eyes were fixed on
+the low, green thicket opposite him, he
+saw that it was shaken; something was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+on its way to him. He watched the
+top of the thicket being parted to the
+right and to the left. With a great
+leaping of his heart he waited, motionless
+where he sat on the grass. What
+creature could be coming? Then he
+saw just within the edge of the thicket
+a curious piece of head-gear&mdash;he had
+no knowledge of any such hat. Then
+he saw a gun barrel. Then the hand
+and forearm of a man was thrust forward
+and it pushed the underbrush
+aside; and then there stepped forth into
+the open the figure of a hunter, lean,
+vigorous, tall, athletic. The hunter
+stepped out with a bold stride or two
+and stopped and glanced eagerly around
+with an air of one in a search; he discovered
+Webster and with a look of
+relief stood still and smiled.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There could be no mistake. Webster
+held imprinted on memory from a picture
+those features, those all-seeing
+eyes; it was Wilson&mdash;weaver lad of
+Paisley, wandering peddler youth of the
+grey Scotch mountains, violinist, flutist,
+the poet who had burned his poem
+standing in the public cross, the exile,
+the school teacher for whom the boy
+caught the mouse, the failure who sent
+the drawing to Thomas Jefferson, the
+bold figure in the skiff drifting down the
+Ohio&mdash;the naturalist plunging into the
+Kentucky wilderness and walking to
+Lexington and shivering in White's garret&mdash;the
+great American ornithologist,
+the immortal man.</p>
+
+<p>There he stood: how could it be? It
+was reality yet more than reality.</p>
+
+<p>The hunter walked straight toward
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+him with the light of recognition in his
+eyes. He came and stood before Webster
+and looked down at him with a
+smile:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you found him, Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster strangely heard his own
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I have not found him."</p>
+
+<p>"You have looked long?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have looked everywhere and I
+cannot find him."</p>
+
+<p>The hunter sat down and laid on the
+grass beside him his fowling piece, his
+game bag holding new species of birds,
+and his portfolio of fresh drawings.
+Then he turned upon Webster a searching
+look as if to draw the inmost truth
+out of him and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you look for the Kentucky
+Warbler?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Webster hesitated long:</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," he faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Something in you makes you seek
+him, but you do not know what that
+something is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I do not know what it is: I
+know I wish to find him."</p>
+
+<p>"Not him alone but many other
+things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, many other things."</p>
+
+<p>"The whole wild life of the forest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all the wild things in the forest&mdash;and
+the wild forest itself."</p>
+
+<p>"You wish to know about these
+things&mdash;you wish to know them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to know them."</p>
+
+<p>The hunter searched Webster's countenance
+more keenly, more severely:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence. The forest was
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+becoming more wonderful. The singing
+of the unseen birds more silvery
+sweet. It was beyond all reality. Webster
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure."</p>
+
+<p>The hunter hurled questions now
+with no pity:</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be afraid to stay here
+all night alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would not."</p>
+
+<p>"If, during the night, a storm should
+pass over the forest with thunder
+deafening you and lightning flashing
+close to your eyes and trees falling
+everywhere, you would fear for your life
+and that would be natural and wise;
+but would you come again?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would."</p>
+
+<p>"If it were winter and the forest
+were bowed deep with ice and snow
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+and you were alone in it, having lost
+your way, would you cry enough?
+Would you hunt for a fireside and never
+return?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would not."</p>
+
+<p>"You can stand cold and hunger and
+danger and fatigue; can you be patient
+and can you be persevering?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Look long and not find what you
+look for and still not give up?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a little while:
+the mood of the hunter seemed to
+soften:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where you are, Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know where I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not know then, that this
+is the wilderness of your forefathers&mdash;the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+Kentucky pioneers. You have
+wandered back to it."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you read their great story?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you beginning to realise what
+it means to be sprung from such men
+and women?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say."</p>
+
+<p>"But you want to do great things?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I loved them."</p>
+
+<p>The hunter stood up and gathered
+his belongings together. His questions
+had become more kind as though he
+were satisfied. He struck Webster
+on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Come</i>," he said, as with high trust,
+"<i>I will show you the Kentucky warbler.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He looked around and his eyes fell
+upon the forest brook. He walked over
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+to it, to discover in what direction it
+ran and beckoned.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll follow this stream up: the
+spring may not be far away." He
+glanced at the tree-tops: "It is nearly
+noon: the bird will come to the spring
+to drink and to bathe."</p>
+
+<p>Webster followed the hunter as he
+threaded his way through the forest
+toward the source of the brook.</p>
+
+<p>Not many yards off his guide turned:</p>
+
+<p>"There is the spring," he said, pointing
+to a green bank out of which
+bubbled the cool current.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us sit here. Make no movement
+and make no noise."</p>
+
+<p>How tense the stillness! They waited
+and listened. Finally the hunter spoke
+in an undertone:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear that?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Away off in the forest Webster heard
+the song of a bird. Presently it came
+nearer. Now it was nearer still. It
+sounded at last within the thicket just
+above the spring, clear, sweet, bold,
+emphatic notes distinctly repeated at
+short intervals. And then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>There he was&mdash;the Kentucky Warbler!</i></p>
+
+<p>Webster could see every mark of
+identification. The bird had come out
+of the dense growth and showed himself
+on the bough of a sapling about
+twenty feet from the earth, in his grace
+and shapeliness and manly character.
+With a swift, gliding flight downward
+he lighted on a sweeping limb of a tree
+still nearer, within a few inches of the
+ground. Then he dropped to the
+ground and moved about, turning over
+dead leaves. He was only several
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+yards away and Webster could plainly
+trace the yellow line over his eye, the
+blackish crown and black sides of the
+throat, the underparts all of solid yellowish
+gold, the upper parts of olive
+green. An instant later the bird was
+on the wing again, hither, thither, up
+and down, continually in motion. No
+white in the wings, none in the tail
+feathers. Once he stopped and poured
+out his loud, musical song&mdash;unlike any
+other warbler's. A moment later he
+was on the ground again, with a manner
+of self-possession, dignity&mdash;as on
+his namesake soil, Kentucky.</p>
+
+<p>Webster had sat bent over toward
+him, forgetful of everything else. At
+last drawing a deep breath, he looked
+around gratefully, remembering his
+guide.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No one was near him. Webster saw
+the hunter on the edge of the thicket
+yards away; he stood looking back, his
+figure dim, fading. Webster, forgetful
+of the bird, cried out with quick pain:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going away? Am I never
+to see you again?"</p>
+
+<p>The voice that reached him seemed
+scarcely a voice; it was more like an
+echo, close to his ear, of a voice lost
+forever:</p>
+
+<div class="block1">
+<p class="pmb3">"<i>If you ever wish to see me, enter the
+forest of your own heart.</i>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_184.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter IV, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<p class="break" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_185.jpg" width="550" height="207" alt="chapter V, title decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<h2>V<br />
+
+THE ROAD</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="figleft1" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_185__initial.jpg" width="100" height="99" alt="W initial" title="" />
+</span>ebster sprang to his feet
+in the depths of the strange
+summer-dark forest: that
+is to say, he awoke with a
+violent start and found himself sitting
+on his bed with his feet hanging over
+one side.</p>
+
+<p>It was late to be getting up. The sun
+already soared above the roof of the
+cottage opposite his window and the
+light slanted in full blaze against his
+shutters. Shafts penetrated some
+weather-loosened slats and fell on his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+head and shoulders and on the wall
+behind him. Breakfast must be nearly
+ready. Fresh cooking odours&mdash;coffee
+odour, meat odour, bread odour&mdash;filled
+the little bathroom-bedroom. Feet were
+hurrying, scurrying, in the kitchen.
+Quieter footsteps approached his door
+along the narrow hall outside and there
+came a tap:</p>
+
+<p>"Breakfast, Webster!"</p>
+
+<p>It was his mother's voice, indulgent,
+peaceful, sweet. He suddenly thought
+that never before had he fully realised
+how sweet it was, had always been, notwithstanding
+he disappointed her.</p>
+
+<p>He got up and went across to open
+his shutters and had taken hold of the
+catch, when he was arrested in his
+movement. At night he tilted the
+shutters, so that the morning sun
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+might not enter crevices and shine
+in his face and awaken him. Now
+looking down through the slats, he
+discovered something going on in the
+yard beneath his window. Elinor had
+come tipping around the corner of
+the cottage. She held one dark little
+witch-like finger unconsciously pressed
+against her tense lips. Her dark eyes
+were brimming with a secret, mischievous
+purpose. A ribbon which looked
+like a huge, crumpled purple morning-glory
+was knotted into the peak of her
+ravenish hair. Her fresh little gown,
+too, suggested the colours of the purple
+morning-glory and her whole presence,
+with a freshness as of dew-drops formed
+amid moonbeams at midnight, somehow
+symbolised that flower which
+surprises us at dawn as having matured
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+its unfolding in the dark: half sinister,
+half innocent.</p>
+
+<p>With cautious, delicate steps, which
+could not possibly have made any noise
+in the grass, she approached the window
+and stopped and lifted the notched
+pole which was used to hold up the
+clothes-line in the back yard. Setting
+the pole on end and planting herself
+beside it, she pushed it with all her
+slight but concentrated strength against
+the window shutters. It struck violently
+and fell over to the grass in one
+direction as Elinor, with the silence of
+a light wind, fled in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Webster stood looking down at it all:
+he understood now: that was the crashing
+sound which had awakened him.</p>
+
+<p>It had been Elinor who had ended
+his dream.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But his dream was not ended. It
+would never end. It was in him to
+stay and it was doing its work. The
+feeling which had surprised him as to
+the sweetness of his mother's voice but
+marked the deeper awakening that
+had taken place in his sleep, an unfolding,
+his natural growth. It was this
+growth that now animated him as he
+smiled at Elinor's flying figure. Her
+prank had not irritated him: no intrigue
+of hers would ever annoy him
+again. Instead, the idea struck him
+that Elinor must be thinking of him
+a great deal, if so much of her life&mdash;incessantly
+active as it was with the
+other children of the cottages&mdash;were
+devoted to plans to worry him. She
+must often have him in mind quite to
+herself, he reflected; and this fresh
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+picture of Elinor's secret brooding
+about him somehow for the first time
+touched him tenderly and finely.</p>
+
+<p>He turned back from the window
+shutters without opening them and
+sat on the edge of his bed. He could
+not shake off his dream. How could
+it possibly be true that there was no
+such forest as he had wandered into
+in his dream&mdash;that Kentucky wilderness
+of the old heroic days? Could
+anything destroy in him the certainty
+that with wildly beating heart he had
+seen the living colours and heard the
+actual notes and watched the characteristic
+movements of the warbler?
+Then, though these things were not
+real, still they were true and would remain
+true always.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, often and to many of us, between
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+closing the curtains of the eyes
+upon the outer world at night and
+drawing them wide in the morning,
+within that closed theatre a stage has
+been erected and we have stepped forth
+and spoken some solitary part or played
+a r&ocirc;le in a drama that leaves us changed
+for the rest of our days. Yesterday an
+old self, today a new self. We have
+been shifted completely away from
+our last foot-prints and our steps move
+off in another direction, taking a truer
+course.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond all else a high, solemn sense
+subdued Webster with the thought,
+that in his sleep he had come near as to
+unearthly things. The long-dead hunter,
+who had appeared to him, spoke as
+though he lived elsewhere than on the
+earth and lived more nobly; his accents,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+the majesty of his countenance, were
+moulded as by higher wisdom and
+goodness. Webster was overwhelmed
+with the feeling that he had been
+brought near the mystery of life and
+death and as from an immortal spirit
+had received his consecration to the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>... He got down on his knees at his
+bedside, after a while, though little
+used to prayer....</p>
+
+<p>When he walked into the breakfast-room
+with a fresh step and freshened
+countenance, probably all were not
+slow to notice the change. Families
+whose lives run along the groove of
+familiar routine quickly observe the
+slightest departure from the customary,
+whether in voice or behaviour, of
+any member. There was response soon
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+after his entrance to something in him
+obviously unusual.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," said his father, who had
+laid down his paper to help him to the
+slice which had been put aside, "the
+woods must agree with you"; and he
+even scraped the dish for a little extra
+gravy. Ordinarily, when deeply interested
+in his paper or occasionally
+when conscious of some disappointment
+as to his son, he forgot, or was indifferent
+about, the gravy.</p>
+
+<p>"They do agree with me!" Webster
+replied, laughing and in fresh tones.
+He held out his plate hungrily for his
+slice and he waited for all the gravy
+that might be coming to him.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the boys has already been
+here this morning," said his mother,
+handing him his cup. "They want you
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+to be sure to meet them this afternoon,
+not to fail. You must have been dead
+asleep, for I called you at three different
+times."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you knock three times?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster asked his question with a
+sinking of the heart; what if his mother's
+first knock had awakened him?
+He might never have finished his dream,
+might never have dreamed at all. How
+different the morning might have
+been, how different the world&mdash;if his
+mother had awakened him before his
+dream!</p>
+
+<p>He received his cup from her and
+smiled at her:</p>
+
+<p>"I was dreaming," he said, and he
+smiled also at the safety of his vision.</p>
+
+<p>Elinor, sitting opposite him, had
+said nothing. She had finished her
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+breakfast before he had come in and
+plainly lingered till he should enter.
+Since his entrance she had sat restless
+in her chair, toying with her fork or her
+napkin, and humming significantly to
+herself. She had this habit. "You
+must not sing at the table, Elinor," her
+mother had once said. "I am <i>not</i> singing,"
+Elinor had replied, "I am humming
+to myself, and <i>no</i> one is supposed
+to listen." Meantime this morning, her
+quickly shifting eyes would sweep his
+face questioningly; she must have been
+waiting for some sign as to what had
+been the effect of the Thomas Jefferson
+bluejay the night before and of the
+repeated attack on his window shutters.</p>
+
+<p>Often when out of humour with her
+he had declined to notice her at table;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+now once, when he caught her searching
+glance, he smiled. Dubiously, half
+with disbelief and half with amazement,
+she looked steadily back at him
+for an instant; then she slipped confusedly
+from her seat and was gone.
+Webster laughed within himself: "what
+will she be up to next?" he thought.</p>
+
+<p>It was quiet now at the table: his
+father had gone back to his paper, his
+mother was eating the last of her
+breakfast fruit, and perhaps, thinking
+that out in the country things were
+getting ripe. After an interval Webster
+broke the silence: he was white
+with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," he said quietly, "I have
+decided what I'd like to do."</p>
+
+<p>Webster's father dropped his paper:
+Webster's mother's eyes were on him.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+The years had waited for this moment,
+the future depended upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"If you and mother do not need me
+for anything else just yet, I'd like to
+work my way through the University.
+But if there's something different you'd
+rather I'd do, or if you both want me
+in any other way, I am here."</p>
+
+<p>"My son," exclaimed his father,
+rudely with the back of his hand brushing
+away a tear that rolled down his
+cheek&mdash;a tear perhaps started by something
+in his son's words that brought
+back his own hard boyhood, "your
+father is here to work for you as long
+as he is alive and able. Your mother
+and I are glad&mdash;!" but he, got no further:
+his eyes had filled and his voice
+choked him.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's mother stood beside him,
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+her hand on his head, her handkerchief
+pressed to her eyes.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When he had made his preparations
+for the glad day's adventure and
+stepped out on the front porch, his
+father had gone to the bank, his mother
+was in the kitchen. Elinor was sitting
+on the top step. Her back was turned.
+Her sharp little elbows rested on her
+knees and her face was propped in her
+palms. Her figure again suggested a
+crumpled, purple morning-glory&mdash;fragile,
+not threatened by any human
+violence but imperilled by nature.</p>
+
+<p>She did not look around as he
+stepped out or move as he passed down.
+He felt a new wish to say something
+pleasant but could not quite so conquer
+himself. As he laid his hand on the yard
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+gate, he was stopped by these words,
+reaching his ears from the porch:</p>
+
+<p>"Take me with you!"</p>
+
+<p>He could not believe his ears. Could
+this be Elinor, his tease, his torment?
+This wounded appeal, timid pleading&mdash;could
+it proceed from Elinor? He
+was thrown off his balance and too
+surprised to act. The words were
+repeated more beseechingly, wistfully:</p>
+
+<p>"Take me with you, will you, Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>For now that she had given herself
+away to him, he might as well see
+everything: that at last she was openly
+begging that she be admitted to a share
+in his plans and pleasures, that he no
+longer disdain to play with her.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with rough embarrassment
+over his shoulder:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You can't go today. Nobody can
+go today. I'm going miles out into
+the country to the woods."</p>
+
+<p>"But some day will you take me
+over into the woods yonder?"</p>
+
+<p>After a while he turned toward her:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much. Thank
+you very much, indeed, Webster!"</p>
+
+<p>The tide of feeling began to rush
+toward her:</p>
+
+<p>"There are some wild violets over
+there, Elinor, wild blue violets and
+wild white violets&mdash;thick beds of them
+in the shade."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how lovely!" She clasped her
+hands and knotted them tensely under
+her chin and kept her eyes fixed more
+hopefully on him.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a flock of the funniest little
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+fairies dancing under one of the big
+forest trees, each carrying the queerest
+little green parasol."</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I found one little cedar tree.
+If they'll let us, I'll dig it up and bring
+it home and plant it in the front yard.
+It will be your own cedar tree, Elinor."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Webster! Could anything be
+more lovely of you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You and I and Jenny will go some
+day soon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no!" cried Elinor, stamping
+her feet fiercely and wringing her
+hands. "I don't want Jenny to go!
+I won't have Jenny! Just you and I!
+Not Jenny! Just you and I!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then just you and I," he said,
+smiling at her and moving away.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wait!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She darted down the steps and ran
+to him and drew his face over and laid
+her cheek against his cheek, clinging
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>He struggled to get away, laughing
+with his new happiness: tears welled
+out of her eyes with hers.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Webster had taken to the turnpike.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was cool, the blue of
+the sky vast, tender, noble. Rain during
+the night had left the atmosphere
+fresh and clear and the pike dustless.
+Little knobs of the bluish limestone
+jutted out. The greyish grass and
+weeds on each side had been washed
+till they looked green again.</p>
+
+<p>The pike climbed a hill and from
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+this hilltop he turned and looked back.
+He could see the packed outskirts of
+the city and away over in the heart of
+it church spires rising here and there.
+The heart of it had once been the green
+valley through which a stream of the
+wilderness ran: there Wilson had seen
+the water mills and the gallows for
+hanging Kentuckians and the thousand
+hitched horses and folks sitting
+on the public square selling cakes of
+maple sugar and split squirrels.</p>
+
+<p>Soon he passed the pasture where
+he had spent yesterday. That had
+done well enough as a beginning: today
+he would go further. He remembered
+many things he had seen in the park-like
+bluegrass woods. Sweet to his ear
+sounded the call of bobwhite from the
+yellow grain. He wondered whether
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+the ailing young crows in the tree-tops
+had at last taken all their medicine.
+The curious bird which had watched
+him out of a hole in the tree-trunk&mdash;the
+chap with the black band across
+his chest and the speckled jacket and
+the red cap on the back of his head,
+was he still on the lookout? What had
+become of the gorgeous little velvet
+coach that had travelled across the
+back of his hand on its unknown road?
+And that mystery of the high leaves&mdash;that
+wandering disembodied voice:
+<i>Se-u-re? Se-u-u.</i> Did it still haunt
+the waving boughs?</p>
+
+<p>But miles on ahead in the country,
+undergrowth, shade, secrecy for wild
+creatures&mdash;his heart leaped forward
+to these and his feet hastened.</p>
+
+<p>This day with both eyes open, not
+    <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+shut in sleep, he might find the warbler.</p>
+
+<p class="pmb3">Whole-heartedly, with a boy's eagerness,
+Webster suddenly took off his
+hat and ran down the middle of the
+gleaming white turnpike toward the
+green forest&mdash;toward all, whether much
+or little, that he was ever to be.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_205.jpg" width="320" height="165" alt="chapter V, end decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<p class="pmb3" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 140px;">
+ <img src="images/illo_206.jpg" width="140" height="141" alt="decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p class="pmb3" />
+
+<p class="center font09 pmb3">
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS<br />
+GARDEN CITY, N.Y.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KENTUCKY WARBLER***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 46905-h.htm or 46905-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Kentucky Warbler, by James Lane Allen
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Kentucky Warbler
+
+
+Author: James Lane Allen
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 19, 2014  [eBook #46905]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KENTUCKY WARBLER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Matthias Grammel, Greg Bergquist, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(https://archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustration.
+      See 46905-h.htm or 46905-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46905/46905-h/46905-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46905/46905-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      https://archive.org/details/kentuckywarb00allerich
+
+
+
+
+
+THE KENTUCKY WARBLER
+
+
+[Illustration: "THERE HE WAS--THE KENTUCKY WARBLER!"]
+
+
+THE KENTUCKY WARBLER
+
+by
+
+JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+[Illustration: logo]
+
+
+        _When the population of this immense Western
+      Republic will have diffused itself over every acre of
+      ground fit for the comfortable habitation of man,
+      ... then not a warbler shall flit through our
+      thickets, but its name, its notes, its habits will be
+      familiar to all--repeated in their sayings and
+      celebrated in their village songs._
+                                      --ALEXANDER WILSON
+
+With a Frontispiece in Colour
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City    New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1918
+
+Copyright, 1918, by
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved, Including That of
+Translation into Foreign Languages,
+Including the Scandinavian
+
+
+
+
+                                TO
+                        THE YOUNG KENTUCKY
+                           FOREST-LOVER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                            PAGE
+
+    CHAPTER I
+        HOME                   3
+
+    CHAPTER II
+        SCHOOL                45
+
+    CHAPTER III
+        FOREST               100
+
+    CHAPTER IV
+        BIRD                 161
+
+    CHAPTER V
+        ROAD                 175
+
+
+
+
+                            THE KENTUCKY
+
+                               WARBLER
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter I--title decoration]
+
+
+I
+
+THE HOME
+
+
+Webster, along with thousands of other lusty forward-looking Kentucky
+children, went to the crowded public schools.
+
+There every morning against his will but with the connivance of his
+parents he was made a prisoner, as it seemed to him, and for long hours
+held as such while many things disagreeable or unnecessary, some by
+one teacher and some by another, were forced into his head. Soon after
+they were forced in most of the things disappeared from the head. What
+became of them nobody knew: Webster didn't know and he didn't care.
+During the forcing-in process month by month and year by year he now
+and then picked up a pleasant idea for himself, some wonderful idea
+about great things on ahead in life or about the tempting world just
+outside school. He picked up such ideas with ease and eagerness and
+held on to them.
+
+He lived in a small white-frame cottage which was rather new but
+already looked rather old. It stood in a small green yard, which was
+naturally very old but still looked young. The still-young yard and the
+already-ageing cottage were to be found--should anybody have tried to
+find them--on the rim of the city. If the architectural plan of the
+city had been mapped out as an open-air theatre, the cottage would have
+been a rear seat in the very last row at the very lowest price. The
+block was made up of such cottages--rear seats. They faced the city but
+couldn't see the city, couldn't see anything worth seeing, and might as
+well have looked in some other direction or not looked at all.
+
+If Webster stepped out of the front door, he was within five yards of
+the outmost thoroughfare--native dirt-road for milk wagons, butchers'
+wagons, coal carts, and fruit-and-berry wagons. Webster's father
+kept an especial eye on the coal carts: they weighed heavily on his
+salary. Webster's mother kept her eye on the fruit-and-berry wagons:
+they tantalised her passion for preserves. Everybody kept uneasy eyes
+on milk and butchers' and vegetable wagons, which brought expensive
+satisfaction to appetites for three meals a day. The edges of the
+thoroughfare were paths for the cottagers, all of whom walked and
+were glad and grateful even to be able to walk. The visitors of the
+cottagers walked. Everybody walked but the drivers. The French would
+have called the street The Avenue of Soles.
+
+One wet winter morning as Webster, walking beside his father, lifted
+his feet out of the mud and felt sorry about their shoes, he complained
+because there was no pavement.
+
+"My son," replied his father, whose remarks on any subject appeared
+to come out of a clear sky, so unclouded were they by uncertainty,
+"my son, your father's salary is not a paved-sidewalk salary. The mud
+on your shoes is in an inverse ratio to the funds in his pockets. I
+believe you have learned in your arithmetic at school by this time what
+ratio is."
+
+One dry summer morning as Webster walked beside his father, a butcher's
+wagon whirled past and covered them quickly with dust. He considered
+this injury to their best clothes and complained because there was no
+watering-cart.
+
+"My son," replied his father out of his daily clear sky, "my salary is
+not a watering-cart salary. The presence of the earth's dust in your
+eyes exactly equals the lack of gold-dust in your father's earthly
+account. I believe by this time you have studied equations."
+
+But if Webster had stepped out of the back door of the cottage and
+passed under the clothes-line which was held up at its middle point
+by a forked pole, if he had crossed their very small vegetable garden
+and then had crossed a wide deep cow-lot where some rich man of the
+city pastured his fat milk cows, he would have been on the edge of the
+country. It was possible for one standing on the rear porch to see all
+summer thick, softly waving woods.
+
+Within the past two or three years, as summer had come again and the
+world turned green, a change had taken place in Webster, a growth. More
+and more he began to look from the porch or windows at those distant
+massed trees. Something from them seemed to cross over to him, an
+influence powerful and compelling; it drew him out of the house back
+with it into the mystery of the forest and he never returned.
+
+In truth, almost as soon as he could go anywhere he had started toward
+the forest without asking permission. They had overtaken him then
+and dragged him back. When he was old enough to understand, they had
+explained: he was too young, he would get lost, the bull would hook him.
+
+"But why?" Webster had asked, complaining of this new injustice in the
+world. He was perpetually being surprised that so many things in the
+world were bent on getting one into trouble; all around him things
+seemed to be waiting to make trouble. "Why should the bull hook _me_?
+_I've_ done nothing to _the bull_."
+
+They were about finishing breakfast. He was eating in his slow ruminant
+way--he ate enormously but never hungrily. His father, whose custom it
+was to divide the last half of his breakfast with the first half of his
+newspaper, lowered the paper and looked over the top.
+
+"My son," he said, "the bull has horns. Every living creature is bound
+to use everything it has. Use what you have or lose what you have--that
+is the terrible law in this world. Therefore the bull is obliged to
+hook what he can to keep his horns going. If you give him the chance,
+he will practise them on you. Otherwise his great-great-grandson might
+not have any horns when he really needed them. Do you understand?"
+
+"No," said Webster.
+
+"I'll explain again when you are mature enough to comprehend," said his
+father, returning to his paper.
+
+Webster returned to the subject.
+
+"If I ever have any money in my pocket, you always tell me not to spend
+it: now you say I ought to use whatever I have."
+
+His father quickly lowered his paper and raised his voice:
+
+"I have never said that you must use everything all at once, my son.
+You must learn to use it at the right time."
+
+"When _is_ the right time to use a thing?" asked Webster, eating
+quietly on.
+
+"I'll answer that question when it is necessary," his father replied
+grumblingly from behind his paper, putting an end to the disturbance.
+
+A few weeks prior to this breakfast-scene Webster one day at recess had
+laid bare a trouble in himself, confiding it to one of his intimate
+school-mates. He did so with a tone of uncertainty, for he was not sure
+but he was not being disloyal.
+
+"Can _your_ father answer all the questions _you_ ask _him_?"
+
+"Not half of them!" exclaimed the comrade with splendid candour--"Not
+half!"
+
+"My father answers very few _I_ ask _him_," interposed a fragile little
+white-faced fellow who had strolled up in time to catch the drift of
+the confidential talk. He did not appear strong enough even to put a
+question: he nursed a ragged ball, had lost a front tooth, and gave off
+the general skim-milk look which some children carry about with them.
+
+Webster, without inquiring further, began to feel a new respect for
+himself as not being worse off than other boys as to fathers; also a
+new respect for his father as not being worse than his class: fathers
+were deficient!
+
+Remembering this discovery at school--one of the big pleasant ideas
+he picked up outside lessons--he did not on the morning in question
+press his father more closely as to using horns when you have them and
+not using money when you have it. In fact, he was already beginning
+to shield his father and had quite ceased to interrogate him in
+company, lest he expose some ignorance. He therefore credited this
+incident where it belonged: as a part of his growing knowledge that
+he couldn't look to his father for any great help on things that
+puzzled him--fathers, as had been said, being deficient, though always
+contriving to look so proficient that from merely surveying them you
+would never suspect the truth.
+
+Webster's father was a minor bookkeeper in one of the city's minor
+banks. Like his bankbooks, he was always perfectly balanced, perfectly
+behaved; and he was also perfectly bald. Even his baldness might have
+been credited to him as one of the triumphs of exact calculation:
+the baldness of one side being exactly equal to the baldness of the
+other: hardly a hair on either exposure stood out as an unaccounted-for
+remainder.
+
+Webster thought of his father as having worked at nothing but
+arithmetic for nearly forty years. Sometimes it became a kind of
+disgust to him to remember this: as was his custom when displeased at
+anything he grew contemptuous. In one of his contemptuous moments he
+one day asked:
+
+"How many times have you made the figure 2?"
+
+"Three quadrillion times, my son," replied his father with perfect
+accuracy and a spirit of hourly freshness. His father went on:
+
+"The same number of times for all of them. When you're in the
+thousands, you may think one or the other figure is ahead, but when you
+get well on into the millions, there isn't any difference: they are
+neck and neck."
+
+This subject of arithmetic was the sorest that father and son could
+have broached: perhaps that was the reason why neither could get away
+from it. The family lived on arithmetic or off it--had married on it,
+were born unto it, were fed by it, housed and heated by it, ventilated
+and cooled by it. Webster's father's knowledge of arithmetic had
+marched at the head of the family as they made their way through time
+and trouble like music. It had been a lifelong bugle-blast of correct
+numerals.
+
+Hence the terrible disappointment: after Webster had been at school
+long enough for grading to begin to come home as to what faculties
+he possessed and the progress he made, his parents discovered to
+their terror and shame that he was good in nothing and least good in
+arithmetic. It was like a child's turning against his own bread and
+butter and shirt and shoes. To his father it meant a clear family
+breakdown. The moment had come to him which, in unlike ways, comes to
+many a father when he feels obliged to say: "This is no son of mine."
+
+In reality, Webster's father had had somewhat that feeling from the
+first. When summoned and permitted, he had tipped into the room on the
+day of Webster's birth and taken a father's anxious defensive look. He
+had turned off with a gesture of repudiation but of the deepest respect:
+
+"No such head and countenance ever descended to him from me! We must
+be square with him from the start! I place to his credit the name of
+Daniel Webster. His mother, instead of admiring her husband, had been
+gazing too fondly at the steel engraving of the statesman over the
+mantelpiece in the parlour."
+
+When Webster was several years old, one day during a meal--nobody knew
+just what brought forth the question--he asked:
+
+"Why was I named Webster?"
+
+His father answered:
+
+"Because you looked like him."
+
+Webster got up quietly and went into the parlour and quietly returned
+to his seat at table:
+
+"No, I don't look like him," he said.
+
+"You looked like him the day you were born, my son. Any resemblance to
+Daniel Webster is apt to become less and less. Finally, you don't look
+like him any more. In the United States Senate nowadays, for instance,
+there isn't a trace of resemblance left anywhere. Senators at present
+look more like me and you know what that means: it means that nobody
+need feel obliged to think of Daniel Webster!"
+
+That birthday jest--that he was not quite entitled to the nativity
+of his own son, an uneasiness perhaps inherited by fathers from the
+rudimentary marriages of primitive society--was but a jest then.
+It gradually took on serious meaning as his son grew further away
+from him with each year of growth. The bad passing of the arithmetic
+milestone had brought the worst distinct shock. Still, even that left
+Webster's father perfectly balanced, perfectly behaved: he remained
+proud of his unlike offspring, fed and clothed him, and was fond of him.
+
+There is a bare possibility also that in Webster he saw the only chance
+to risk part of his salary in secret speculation. Nearly everybody
+in the town gambled on something. The bank did not favour the idea
+that its employees should enjoy any such monetary pastime. But even a
+bank cannot prevent a father from betting on his own son if he keeps
+the indiscretion to himself. Thus it is barely possible that, in the
+language of the country, Webster's father took chances on Webster as a
+winning colt on some unknown track, if he should ever take a notion to
+run! Why not bet, if it cost the same as not to bet: at least you had
+the excitement?
+
+Webster on his part grew more and more into the belief that his father
+not only could not answer his questions but--what was of far greater
+consequence--did not open up before him any path in life. His first
+natural and warm desire had been to imitate his father, to follow in
+his footsteps: slowly he discovered that his father did not have any
+footsteps, he made no path. His affection still encircled his father
+like a pair of arms; his eyes had completely abandoned him as a
+sign-post on life's road.
+
+Mothers often open up roads for their sons or point them out, but
+Webster could not look to his mother for one unless he had wished to
+take a short road to an uneventful past. The kind of a mother she was
+resulted from the kind of a wife she was. She had taken her husband's
+arm at marriage to keep step at his side through life. Had he moved
+forward, she would have moved forward. Since he did not advance, but in
+his life-work represented a kind of perpetual motion without progress,
+she stayed by him and busied herself with multifarious daily little
+motions of her own. Her roadless life had one main path of memory. That
+led her backward to a large orchard and garden and yard out in the
+country, filled with fruit trees and berry-bearing bushes and vines.
+She, now a middle-aged wife and mother, was a sentimental calendar
+of far-away things "just ripe." The procession of fruit-and-berry
+wagons past the cottage from May to October had upon her the effect
+of an acute exacerbation of this chronic lament. The street cry of a
+vendor, no matter how urgent her duty anywhere in the cottage at the
+moment, brought her to a front window or to the front porch or even
+swept her out to the front gate, to gratify her eyes with memories and
+pay her respects to the impossible. She inquired the cost of so much
+and bought so little that the drivers, who are keen and unfavourable
+judges of human nature, when they met at cross streets and compared
+notes--the disappointed, exasperated drivers named her _Mrs. Price_:
+though one insisted upon calling her _Lady Not-Today_. Whenever at the
+bottom of her pocketbook she found spare change for a box of brilliant,
+transparent red cherries, she bore it into the cottage as rapaciously
+as some miser of jewels might have carried off a casket of rubies. Thus
+you could almost have said that Webster had been born of arithmetic and
+preserves. Still, his life with his father and mother was wholesome and
+affectionate and peaceful--an existence bounded by the horizon of the
+day.
+
+His boyhood certainly had no wide field of vision, no distant horizon,
+as regards his sleeping quarters. In building the cottage a bathroom
+on the first floor had been added to one side of it as a last luxurious
+afterthought. If you stood before the cottage and looked it squarely
+in the face, the bathroom protruded on one side like a badly swollen
+jaw. The building-plan when worked out, had involved expense beyond
+the calculation, as usually happens, and this had threatened the
+Salary: the extra bath, therefore, remained unrealised. Webster
+always asked at least one question about everything new and untried,
+and when old enough to be put there to sleep, he had looked around
+the cramped enclosure and inquired why it had been built. Thus he
+learned that in the family he had now taken the place of the Bath That
+Failed. It caused him a queer feeling as to his general repute in the
+neighbourhood that the very sight of him might bring to any observer's
+mind thoughts of a missing tub.
+
+His window opened upon a few feet of yard. Just over the fence was the
+kitchen window of the cottage next in the row. When that window was
+open, Webster had to see the kitchen table and the preparation for
+meals. He violently disliked the sight of the preparations. If the
+window was closed, tidings as to what was going on reached him through
+another sense; his bedroom-bathroom became as a whispering gallery
+of cooking odours. But their own kitchen was just across a narrow
+hall, and fragrances from it occasionally mingled with those from the
+kitchen over the fence. Made hungry by nasal intelligence of something
+appetising, Webster would sometimes hurriedly dress and follow his
+pointer into the breakfast room, only to find that he was on a false
+trail: what he had expected to get his share of was being consumed by
+the family next door. He no longer had confidence, so to speak, in his
+own nose--not as a leading authority on meals to be eaten by him.
+
+One beautiful use his window had, one glorious use, one enchantment.
+In the depth of winter sometimes of mornings when he got out of bed
+and went to open the shutter, on the window panes would be a forest
+of glittering trees. The first time he beheld such a forest, he stood
+before it spell-bound: wondering whether there were silvery birds
+singing far off amid the silvery boughs and what wild frost-creatures
+crouched in the tall stiff frost-grass. From the ice-forests on his
+window panes his thoughts always returned to the green summer forest on
+the distant horizon.
+
+The pest of his existence at home was Elinor--a year younger but much
+older in her ways: to Webster she was as old as Mischief, as old as
+Evil. For Elinor had early fastened herself upon his existence as a
+tease. She laughed at him, ridiculed his remarks, especially when he
+thought them wise, dragged down everything in him. As they sat at table
+and he launched out upon any subject with his father--quite in the
+manner of one gentleman indulging his intellect with another gentleman
+over their rich viands--Elinor went away up into a little gallery of
+her own and tried to boo him off the stage. His father and mother did
+not at times conceal their amusement at Elinor's boo's. He sometimes
+broke out savagely at her, which only made her worse. His mother, who
+was not without gentle firmness and a saving measure of good sense, one
+day disapproved of his temper and remarked advisedly to him, Elinor
+having fled after a victory over him:
+
+"Elinor teases you because she sees that it annoys you. She ought to
+keep on teasing you till you stop being annoyed. When she sees that she
+can't tease you, she'll stop trying."
+
+That was all very well: but one day he teased Elinor. She puckered up
+and began to cry and his mother said quickly:
+
+"Don't do that, Webster."
+
+Then besides: a few years before he had one day overheard his mother
+persuading his father that Elinor must not be sent to the public school.
+
+"I want her to go to a private school. She has such a difficult
+disposition, it will require delicate attention. The teachers haven't
+time to give her that patient attention in the public schools."
+
+"My dear," Elinor's father had replied, shaking his head, "your
+husband's salary is not a private-school salary. It also has a
+difficult disposition, it also requires the most careful watching!"
+
+"The cost will be more but she must go. Some extra expense will be
+unavoidable even for her clothing but I'll take that out of _my_
+clothes."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind! If Elinor has a difficult
+disposition, she gets it from Elinor's father; for _he_ had one once,
+thank God! He had it until he went into the bank. But a bank takes
+every kind of disposition out of you, good or bad. After you've been
+in a bank so many years, you haven't any more disposition. Only the
+president of a bank enjoys the right to have a disposition. All the
+rest of us are mere habits--certain habits on uncertain salaries. Let
+Elinor go to her select school and I'll go a little more ragged. The
+outside world thinks it a bank joke when they look through the windows
+and see bank clerks at work in ragged coats: instead they know better.
+Let Elinor go and let the damages fall on her father. He will be glad
+to take the extra cost off his own back as a tribute to his unbanked
+boyhood. I hope you noticed my pun--my dooble intender."
+
+Thus Elinor was sent to the most select private school of the city.
+Webster weighed the matter on the scales of boyish justice. If you had
+a bad disposition, you were rewarded by being better dressed and being
+sent to the best school; if you had a good disposition, you dressed
+plainly and went to the public school. What ought he to do about his
+own disposition? Why not turn it into a bad one? It was among Webster's
+bewilderments that he was so poorly off as not to be able to muster a
+troublesome enough disposition to be sent to one of the city's select
+private schools for boys: he should very much have liked to go!
+
+"I go to a private school because I am _nice_," Elinor had boasted to
+him one morning. She was sitting on the front steps as he came out on
+his way to school, and she looked very dainty and very charming--a
+dark, wiry, fiery, restless little creature, and at the moment a bit of
+brilliant decoration. "And I get nice marks," she added pointedly.
+
+He paused to make a quietly contemptuous reply.
+
+"Of course you get nice marks: that's what private schools are for--to
+give everybody nice marks. If you went to the public school, you'd get
+what you deserved."
+
+"Then you seem to deserve very little," said Elinor, smoothing a lock
+of her black hair over one ear.
+
+His rage burst out at her deadly thrust:
+
+"You go to a private school because you are a little devil," he said.
+
+"Why don't you be a little devil too?" inquired Elinor, her bright eyes
+mocking him. "Can't you be a little devil too?"
+
+He jerked the strap tighter around his battered books:
+
+"If you were in the public schools, they wouldn't put up with you.
+They'd send you home or they'd break you in."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Elinor, with an encouraging smile, "they seem
+to get along with you very well."
+
+Webster knew that Elinor's teasing, ridiculing eyes followed him as he
+walked away. They became part of the things that cheapened him in his
+life. When he had passed through the front gate, he started off in a
+direction which was not the direction to school.
+
+Elinor sang out shrilly:
+
+"I know where you are going. But it's of no use. Jenny's sweetheart
+goes to a private school and he stands well in his classes."
+
+He walked on, but turned his face toward her:
+
+"It's none of _your_ meddlesome business, you little black scorpion,"
+he said quietly.
+
+With an upward bound of his nature he thought of Jenny, a very
+different sort of girl.
+
+Jenny lived in the largest cottage of the block, at the better of the
+two corners. The families visited intimately. Jenny's father was a coal
+merchant and Webster's father bought his coal of Jenny's father. A
+grocer lived in the middle of the block: he bought supplies from that
+grocer. "If you can," he said, "deal with your neighbours. It will
+make them more careful: they won't dare ...!" On the contrary, Jenny's
+father did not deposit his cheques in Webster's father's bank. "Don't
+do your business with a neighbour," he said. "Neighbours pry."
+
+Jenny represented in Webster's life the masculine awakening of his
+nature toward womankind. In the white light of that general dawn, she
+stood revealed but not recognised. A little thing had happened, the
+summer previous, which was of common interest to them. In a corner of
+Jenny's yard grew a locust tree, not a full forest-sized locust tree
+but still quite a respectable locust tree for its place and advantages.
+All around the trunk and up the trunk clambered the trumpet-vine.
+Several yards from the earth some of the branches bent over and spread
+out as a roof for a little arbour--Jenny's summer play-house.
+
+One dewy morning Jenny had first noticed a humming-bird hovering about
+the blossoms. She did not know that it was the ruby-throat, seeking
+the trumpet-vine where Audubon painted him. She only knew that she was
+excited and delighted. She told Webster.
+
+"If he comes back, run and tell me, will you, Jenny?" he pleaded, with
+some strange new joy in him. Several times she had run and summoned
+him; and the two children, unconsciously drawing nearer to each other,
+and hand in hand watched the ruby-throat hovering about the adopted
+flower of the State.
+
+The distant green forest and the locust tree with the trumpet-vine and
+the humming-bird--these, though distant from one another, became in
+Webster's mind part of something deep and powerful in his life, toward
+which he was moving.
+
+If no road opened before him at home, none opened at school. He would
+gladly have quit any day. He tried to make lessons appear worse than
+they were in order to justify himself in his philosophy of contempt
+and rejection.
+
+When any two old ladies met on the street, he argued, they did not
+begin to parse as fast as possible at each other. Old gentlemen of the
+city did not walk up and down with books glued to their noses, trying
+to memorise things they would rather forget. When people went to the
+library for delightful books to read, nobody took home arithmetics and
+geographies. There wasn't a grown person in the city who cared what
+bounded Indiana on the north or if all the creeks in Maine emptied into
+the mouths of school teachers. In church, when the minister climbed to
+the pulpit, the congregation didn't begin to examine him in history.
+They didn't even examine him in the Bible; he couldn't have stood the
+examination if they had. In the court-room, at the fair, at the races,
+at the theatre, when you were born, when you were playing, when you had
+a sweetheart, when you married, when you were a father, when you were
+sick, when you were in any way happy or unhappy, when you were dying,
+when you were dead and buried and forgotten, nobody called for school
+books.
+
+Webster, nevertheless, both at home and at school made his impression.
+No one could have defined the nature of the impression but every one
+knew he made it. If he failed at his lessons, his teachers were not
+angry; they looked mortified and said as little as possible and all
+the while pushed him along by hook or crook, until at last they had
+smuggled him into high school--the final heaven of the whole torment.
+
+The impression upon his school fellows was likewise strongly in his
+favour. Toward the close of each session there was intense struggle and
+strain for the highest mark in class and the next highest and the next.
+When the nerve-racking race was over and everybody had time to look
+around and inquire for Webster, they could see him cantering quietly
+down the home stretch, unmindful of the good-natured jeers that greeted
+his arrival: he had gone over the course, he had not run. As soon as
+they were out of doors in a game, Webster stepped to the front. Those
+who had just outstripped him now followed him.
+
+Roadless parents--a child looking for its road in life! That is
+Nature's plan to stop imitation, to block the roads of parents to
+their children, and force these into new paths for the development
+of the individual and of the race. And in what other country is that
+spectacle so common as in our American democracy, where progress is
+so swift and the future so vast and untrod and untried that nearly
+every generation in thousands of cottages represents a revolt and a
+revolution of children against their parents, their work and their
+ways? But Webster's father and mother were not philosophers as to how
+Nature works out her plan through our American democracy: they merely
+had their parental apprehensions and confidentially discussed these.
+What would Webster be, would he ever be anything? He would finish at
+high school this year and it was time to decide.
+
+A son of the grocer in the block had made an unexpected upward stride
+in life and surprised all the cottagers. Webster's father and mother
+took care to bring this meritorious example to their son's attention.
+
+"What are _you_ going to be, Webster?" his mother asked one morning at
+breakfast, looking understandingly at Webster's father.
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to be," Webster had replied unconcernedly.
+"I know I'm not going to be what _he_ is!"
+
+"It would never do to try to force him," his father said later. "Not
+_him_. Besides, think of a couple of American parents undertaking to
+force their children to do anything--_any_ children! We'll have to wait
+a while longer. If he's never to be anything, of course forcing could
+never make him into something. It would certainly bring on a family
+disturbance and the family disturbance would be sure to get on my
+nerves at the bank and I might make mistakes in my figures."
+
+Then in the April of that year, about the time the woods were turning
+green and he began to look toward them with the old longing now grown
+stronger, a great thing happened to Webster.
+
+[Illustration: chapter I--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter II--title decoration]
+
+
+II
+
+THE SCHOOL
+
+
+One clear morning of that budding month of April, a professor from one
+of the two institutions of learning in the city stood before the pupils
+of the high school.
+
+He was there to fulfill his part of an experimental plan which, through
+the courtesy of all concerned, had been started upon its course at
+the opening of the session the previous autumn: that members of the
+two faculties should be asked to be good enough to come--some one of
+them once each month--and address the school on some pleasant field or
+by-field of university work, where learning at last meets life. That
+is, each professor was requested to appear before the ravenous pupils
+of the high school with a basket of ripe fruit from his promised land
+of knowledge and to distribute these as samples from an orchard which
+each pupil, if he but chose, could some day own for himself. Or if he
+could not quite bring anything so luscious and graspable as fruit, he
+might at least stand in their full view on the boundary of his kingdom
+and mark out, across that dubious Common which lies between high school
+and college, a path that would lead a boy straight to some one of the
+world's great highways of knowledge.
+
+Eight professors had courteously responded to this invitation and had
+disclosed eight splendid roadways of the world's study. The Latin
+professor had opened up his colossal Roman-built highway with its
+pictures of the ages when all the world's thoroughfares led to Rome.
+The professor of Greek had disclosed the longer path which leads back
+to Hellas with its frieze of youth in eternal snow. The professor of
+Astronomy had taken his band of listeners forth into the immensities
+of roadless space and had all but lost them and the poor little earth
+itself in the coming and going of myriads of entangled stars. Eight
+professors had come, eight professors had gone, it was now April, a
+professor of Geology, as next to the last lecturer, stood before them.
+
+Interest in the lectures had steadily mounted from the first and
+was now at highest pitch. He faced an audience eager, intelligent,
+respectful and grateful. On their part they consented that the man
+before them embodied what he had come to teach--the blending of life
+and learning. Plainly the study of the earth's rocks had not hardened
+him, acquaintance with fossils had not left him a human fossil. And he
+hid the number of his years within the sap of living sympathies as a
+tree hides the notation of its years within the bark.
+
+Letting his eyes wander over them silently for a moment, he began
+without waste of a word--a straightforward and powerful personality.
+
+"I am going to speak to you boys about a boy who never reached high
+school. I want you to watch how that boy's life, first seen in the
+distance through mist and snow and storm as a faint glimmering spark,
+rudely blown upon by the winds of misfortune, endangered and all but
+ready to go out--I want you to watch how that endangered spark of a
+boy's life slowly begins to brighten in the distance, to grow stronger,
+and finally to draw nearer and nearer until at last it shines as a
+great light about you here in this very place. Watch, I say, how a
+troubled ray, low on life's horizon, at last becomes a star in the
+world of men, high fixed and resplendent--to be seen by human eyes as
+long as there shall be human eyes to see anything."
+
+He saw that he had caught their attention. Their sympathy reacted upon
+him.
+
+"Before I speak of the boy I wish to speak of a book. I hope all of you
+have read one of the very beautiful stories of English literature by
+George Eliot called _Silas Marner_. If you have, none of you will ever
+forget that Silas Marner belonged to a class of pallid, undersized men
+who, a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, under pressure upon
+the centres of population in England and through competition of trade,
+were driven out of the towns into the country. There, as strangers,
+as alien-looking remnants of a discredited race, there in districts
+far away among the lanes or in the deep bosom of the hills, perhaps
+an hour's ride from any turnpike or beyond the faint sound of the
+coach-horn, they spent their lives as obscure weavers and peddlers.
+
+"You will never forget George Eliot's vivid, powerful, touching picture
+of Silas Marner at work in a little stone cottage near a deserted
+stone pit, amid the nut-bearing hedgerows of the village of Raveloe.
+When the schoolboys of the village came to the hedges in autumn to
+gather nuts or in spring to look for bird-nests--you boys still do
+that, I hope--when they came and heard the uncanny sound of the loom,
+so unlike that of the familiar flail on threshing floors, they would
+crowd around the windows and peep in at the weaver in his treadmill
+attitude, weaving like a solitary spider month after month and year
+after year his endless web. Silas Marner, pausing in his work to
+adjust some trouble in his thread and discovering them and annoyed by
+the intrusion, would descend from the loom and come to his door and
+gaze out at them with his strange, blurred, protuberant eyes; for he
+was so near-sighted that he could see distinctly only objects close to
+him, such as his thread, his shuttle, his loom.
+
+"If for a few days the sound of the loom stopped, it was because the
+weaver, with his pack on his feeble shoulders, was away on journeys
+through fields and lanes to deliver his linen to those who had ordered
+it or who might haply buy.
+
+"The village of Raveloe, as you remember, lay on the rich, central
+plain of Merry England, with wooded hollows and well-walled orchards
+and ornamental weathercocks and church spires rising peacefully
+above green tree-tops. But Silas Marner saw nothing of the Merry
+England through which he peddled his cloth. He walked through it all
+with the outdoor loneliness of those who cannot see. His mother had
+bequeathed him knowledge of a few herbs; and these were the only thing
+in nature that he had ever gropingly looked for along hedgerows and
+lanesides--foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot.
+
+"Now, if you have read the story, you have a far more living, touching
+picture of the life of a weaver in those distant times that I could
+possibly paint. The genius of George Eliot painted it supremely and I
+point to her masterpiece rather than to any faint semblance I could
+draw. What I want you to do is to get deeply into your minds what the
+life of a weaver in those days meant: a little further on you will
+understand why.
+
+"Next I want you to think of Silas Marner as an all too common figure
+of the present time. He is a type of those of us who go through our
+lives all but blind to the surpassingly beautiful life of the planet
+on which it is our strange and glorious destiny to spend our human
+days. He is a type of those of us who, in town or city, see only
+the implements of our trade or business ever close to our eyes--our
+shuttle, our thread, our loom, of whatever kind these may be. When we
+go out into the world of nature, he is also a type of those of us, who
+recognise only the few things we need--our coltsfoot, our foxglove, our
+dandelion, of whatever kind these may be. In the midst of woods and
+fields we gaze blankly around us with vision blurred by ignorance--not
+born blind but remaining as blind because we do not care or have not
+learned to open and to train our eyes. We have the outdoor loneliness
+of Silas Marner."
+
+He waited a few moments to allow his words to make their impression,
+and long accustomed to the countenance of listeners, he felt sure
+that they were following him in the road he pursued: then he led them
+forward:
+
+"Now, about the period that George Eliot paints the life of her poor
+English weaver there lived, not in Merry England but in Bonnie
+Scotland--and to be bonnie is not to be merry--there lived in the
+little town of Paisley, in the west of Scotland, a man by the name of
+Alexander Wilson, a poor illiterate distiller. He had a son--the boy I
+am to tell you about.
+
+"The poor illiterate distiller and father desired to give his son
+his name but not to assign him his place in life, not his own road;
+he named him Alexander and he wished him to be not a distiller but
+a physician. The boy's mother was a native of an island of the
+Hebrides--your geographies will have to tell you where the Hebrides
+are, for doubtless you have all forgotten! The inhabitants of those
+wild, bleak, storm-swept islands thought much of danger and death
+and therefore often of God. Perhaps the natives of small islands are,
+as a rule, either very superstitious or very religious. His mother
+desired him to be a minister. You may not know that the Scotch people
+are, perhaps, peculiarly addicted to being either doctors of the
+body or doctors of the soul. The entire Scottish race would appear
+to be desirous of being physicians to something or to somebody--not
+submitting easily, however, to be doctored!
+
+"Thus the boy's father and mother opened before him the two main
+honoured roads of Scottish life and bade him choose. He chose neither,
+for he was self-willed and wavering, and did not know his own mind or
+his own wish. He did know that he would not take the roads his parents
+pointed out; as to them he was a roadless boy.
+
+"His mother died when he was quite young, a stepmother stepped into a
+stepmother's place, and she quickly decided with Scotch thrift. A third
+Scottish road should be opened to the boy and into that he should be
+pushed and made to go: he must be put to trade. Accordingly, when he
+was about eleven years old, he was taken from school and bound as an
+apprentice to a weaver: we lament child labour now: it is an old lament.
+
+"The boy hated weaving as, perhaps, he never hated anything else in
+his life and in time he hated much and he hated many things. He seems
+soon to have become known as the lazy weaver. Years afterward he put
+into bitter words a description of the weaver: 'A weaver is a poor,
+emaciated, helpless being, shivering over rotten yarn and groaning over
+his empty flour barrel.' Elsewhere he called the weaver a scarecrow in
+rags. He wrote a poem entitled _Groans from the Loom_.
+
+"Five interminable years of those groans and all his eager, wild,
+headstrong, liberty-loving boyhood was ended: gone from him as he sat
+like a boy-spider with a thread passing endlessly into a web. During
+these interminable years, whenever he lifted his eyes from his loom
+and looked ahead, he could see nothing but penury and dependence and
+loneliness--his loom to the end of his life.
+
+"Five years of this imprisonment and then he was eighteen and his own
+master; and the first thing he did was to descend from the loom, take a
+pack of cloth upon his shoulders and go wandering away from the hills
+and valleys and lakes of Scotland--free at last like a young deer in
+the heather. He said of himself that from that hour when his eyes had
+first opened on the light of grey Scotch mountains, the world of nature
+had called him. He did not yet know what the forest and the life of the
+forest meant or would ever mean; he only knew that there he was happy
+and at home.
+
+"Thus, like Silas Marner, he became a poor weaver and peddler but not
+with Silas Marner's eyes. Seldom in any human head has the mechanism of
+vision been driven by a mind with such power and eagerness to observe.
+And he had the special memory of the eye. There are those of us who
+have the special memory of the ear or of taste or of touch. He had the
+long, faithful recollection of things seen. With this pair of eyes
+during the next several years he traversed on foot three-fourths of
+Scotland. Remember, you boys of the rolling bluegrass plateau, what the
+scenery of Scotland is! Think what it meant to traverse three-fourths
+of that country, you who consider it a hardship to walk five level
+miles, a misfortune to be obliged to walk ten, the adventure of a
+lifetime to walk twenty.
+
+"But though he followed one after another well nigh all the roads of
+Scotland, he could find in all Scotland no road of life for him. It
+is true that certain misleading paths beckoned to him, as is apt
+to be true in every life. Thus he had conceived a great desire to
+weave poetry instead of cloth, to weave music instead of listening to
+the noise of the loom: he had his flute and his violin. But what he
+accomplished with poetry and flute and violin were obstacles to his
+necessary work and rendered this harder. The time he gave to them made
+his work less: the less his work, the less his living; the less his
+living, the more his troubles and hardships.
+
+"Once he started out both to peddle his wares and to solicit orders for
+a little book of his poems he wished to publish. To help both pack and
+poetry he wrote a handbill in verse. Some of the lines ran thus:
+
+    "'Here's handkerchiefs charming, book muslins like ermine,
+      Brocaded, striped, corded, or checked.
+    Sweet Venus, they say, on Cupid's birthday
+      In British-made muslin was decked.
+
+    "'Now, ye Fair, if you choose any piece to peruse,
+      With pleasure I'll instantly show it.
+    If the peddler should fail to be favoured with sale,
+      Then I hope you'll encourage the poet.'
+
+"The result seems to have been but small sale for British-made muslins
+and no sale at all for Wilson-made poems.
+
+"Robert Burns was just then the idolised poet of Scotland, a new
+sun shining with vital splendour into all Scottish hearts. Friends
+of the young weaver and apparently the young weaver himself thought
+there was room in Scotland for another Burns. Some of his poems were
+published anonymously and the authorship was attributed to Burns. That
+was bad for him, it made bad worse. Wilson greatly desired to know
+the rustic poet-king of Scotland. The two poets met in Edinburgh and
+were to become friends. Then Burns published _Tam O'Shanter_. As young
+Kentuckians, of course, you love horses and cannot be indifferent even
+to poems on the tails of horses. Therefore, you must already know the
+world's most famous poem concerning a horse-tail--_Tam O'Shanter_.
+The Paisley weaver by this time had such conceit of himself as a poet
+that he wrote Burns a caustic letter, telling him the kind of poem
+_Tam O'Shanter_ should and should not be. Burns replied, closing the
+correspondence, ending the brief friendship and leaving the weaver to
+go back to his loom. It was a terrible rebuff, and left its mark on an
+already discouraged man.
+
+"Next Wilson wrote an anonymous poem, so violently attacking a wealthy
+manufacturer on behalf of his poor brother weavers, that the enraged
+merchant demanded the name of the writer and had him put in prison and
+compelled him to stand in the public cross of Paisley and burn his poem.
+
+"Darker, bitterer days followed. He shrank away to a little village
+even more obscure than his birthplace. There, lifting his eyes, again
+he looked all over Scotland: he saw the wrongs and sufferings of the
+poor, the luxury and oppression of the rich: he blamed the British
+government for evils inherent in human nature and for the imperfections
+of all human society: turned against his native country and at heart
+found himself without a fatherland.
+
+"Then that glorious vision which has opened before so many men in their
+despair, disclosed itself: his eyes turned to America. You should never
+forget that from the first your country has been the refuge and the
+hope for the oppressed, the unfortunate, the discouraged of the whole
+world. In America he thought all roads were open, new roads were being
+made for human lives; that should become his country. One autumn he
+saw in a newspaper an advertisement that an American merchantman would
+sail from Belfast the following spring and he turned to weaving and
+wove as never before to earn his passage money. At this time he lived
+on one shilling a week! And it seems that just now he undertook to make
+up his lack of knowledge of arithmetic. Some of you boys will doubtless
+greatly rejoice to hear that he was deficient in arithmetic! When
+spring came, with the earnings of his loom he walked across Scotland
+to the nearest port. When he reached Belfast every berth on the vessel
+had been taken: he asked to be allowed to sleep on the deck and was
+accepted as a passenger.
+
+"He had now left Scotland to escape the loom--never to see Scotland
+again.
+
+"And you see, he is beginning to come nearer.
+
+"The vessel was called The Swift and it took The Swift two months
+to make the passage. The port was to be Philadelphia but he seems
+to have been so impatient to set foot on the soil of the New World
+that he left the ship at New Castle, Delaware. He had borrowed from a
+fellow-passenger sufficient money to pay his expenses while walking to
+Philadelphia thirty-four miles away; and with this in his pocket and
+his fowling-piece on his shoulder he disappeared in the July forests of
+New Jersey. The first thing he did was to kill a red-headed wood-pecker
+which he declared to be the most beautiful bird he had ever seen.
+
+"I do not find any word of his that he had ever killed a bird in
+Scotland during all his years of wandering. Now the first event that
+befell him in the New World was to go straight to the American woods
+and kill what he declared to be the most beautiful bird he had ever
+seen. This might naturally have been to him a sign of his life-road.
+But he still stood blinded in his path, with not a plan, not an idea,
+of what he should be or could be: he had not yet read the handwriting
+on the wall within himself.
+
+"His first years in the New World were more disastrous than any in
+Scotland, for always now he had the loneliness and dejection of a man
+who has rejected his own country and does not know that any other
+country will accept him. A fellow Scot, in Philadelphia, tried him at
+copper-plate printing. He quickly dropped this and went back to the
+old dreadful work of weaving--he became an American weaver and went
+wandering through the forests of New Jersey as a peddler: at least
+peddling left him free to roam the forests. Next he tried teaching
+but he himself had been taken from school at the age of eleven and
+must prepare himself as one of his own beginners. He did not like this
+teaching experiment in New Jersey and migrated to Virginia. Virginia
+did not please him and he remigrated to Pennsylvania. There he tried
+one school after another in various places and finally settled on the
+outskirts of Philadelphia: here was his last school, for here was the
+turning point of his life.
+
+"I wish I had time to describe for you the school-house with its
+surroundings, for the place is to us now a picture in the early
+American life of a great man--all such historic pictures are
+invaluable. Catch one glimpse of it: a neat stone school-house on a
+sloping green; with grey old white oaks growing around and rows of
+stripling poplars and scattered cedar trees. A road ran near and not
+far away was a little yellow-faced cottage where he lived. The yard was
+walled off from the road and there were seats within and rosebushes and
+plum trees and hop-vines. On one side hung a signboard waving before a
+little roadside inn; on the other a blacksmith shop with its hammering.
+Not far off stood the edge of the great forest 'resounding with the
+songs of warblers.' In the depths of it was a favourite spot--a secret
+retreat for him in Nature.
+
+"There then you see him: no longer a youth but still young; every road
+he had tried closed to him in America as in Scotland: not a doctor, not
+a minister, not a good poet, not a good flutist, not a good violinist,
+not a copper-plate engraver, not a willing weaver, not a willing
+peddler, not a willing school-teacher--none of these. No idea yet in
+him that he could ever be anything. A homeless self-exile, playing
+at lonely twilights on flute and violin the loved airs of rejected
+Scotland.
+
+"Now it happened that near his school was a botanical garden owned by
+an American naturalist. The American, seeing the stranger cast down by
+his aimless life, offered him his portfolio of drawings and suggested
+that he try to draw a landscape, draw the human figure. The Scotch
+weaver, the American school-teacher, tried and disastrously failed. As
+a final chance the American suggested that he try to draw a bird. He
+did try: he drew a bird. He drew again. He drew again and again. He
+kept on drawing. Nothing could keep him from drawing. And there at last
+the miracle of power and genius, so long restless in him and driving
+him aimlessly from one wrong thing to another wrong thing, disclosed
+itself as dwelling within his eyes and hands. His drawings were so true
+to life, that there could be no doubt: the road lay straight before him
+and ran clear through coming time toward eternal fame.
+
+"All the experience which he had been unconsciously storing as a
+peddler in Scotland now came back to him as guiding knowledge. The
+marvelous memory of his eye furnished its discipline: from early
+boyhood through sheer love he had unconsciously been studying birds in
+nature, and thus during all these wretched years had been laying up as
+a youth the foundation of his life-work as a man.
+
+"Genius builds with lavish magnificence and inconceivable swiftness;
+and hardly had he succeeded with his first drawings before he had
+wrought out a monumental plan: to turn himself free as soon as possible
+into the vast, untravelled forest of the North American continent and
+draw and paint its birds. Other men, he said, would have to found the
+cities of the New World and open up its country. His study was to be
+the lineaments of the owl and the plumage of the lark: he had cast in
+his lot with Nature's green magnificence untouched by man."
+
+The lecturer paused, as a traveller instinctively stops to look
+around him at a pleasant turn of his road. It had, in truth, been a
+hard, crooked human road along which he had been leading his young
+listeners--a career choked at every step by inward and outward
+pressures. He had not failed to notice the change in every countenance,
+the brightening of every eye, as soon as his audience discovered that
+they were listening to a story, not of mere weaknesses and failures,
+but of the misfortunes and mistakes of a man, who at last stood out as
+truly great. This hapless weaver, this aimless wanderer through the
+forests of two worlds, after all had success in him, strength in him,
+genius in him, fame in him! He was a hero. Henceforth they were alive
+with curiosity for the rest of the story which would bring the distant
+hero to Kentucky, to their Lexington.
+
+The lecturer realised all this. But he had for some time been even
+more acutely aware that something wholly personal and extraordinary
+was taking place: one of the pupils of the high school was listening
+with an attention so absorbed and noticeable as to set him apart from
+all the rest. Just at what point this intense attention had been so
+aroused, had not been observed; but when once observed, there was no
+forgetting it: it filled the room, the other listeners were merely
+grouped around it as accessories and helped to make its breathless
+picture.
+
+The particularly interested pupil sat rather far back in the
+school-room, near a window--as though from a vain wish to jump out and
+be free. The morning light thus fell across his face: it was possible
+to watch its expression, its responsive change of light at each turn
+of the story. He seemed to hold some kind of leadership in the school:
+other pupils occasionally turned their faces to glance at him, to keep
+in touch with him: he did not return their glances--being their leader;
+or he had forgotten them for the story he was hearing.
+
+The lecturer became convinced that what had more than once happened to
+him before as a teacher was happening again: before him a young life
+was unexpectedly being solved--to its own wonderment and liberation, to
+its amazement and joy.
+
+That perpetual miracle in nature--the contexture of the
+generations--the living taking the meaning of their lives from the
+dead! You stand beside some all but forgotten mound of human ashes;
+before you are arrayed a band of youths, unconsciously holding in their
+hands the unlighted torches of the future. You utter some word about
+the cold ashes and silently one of them walks forward to the ashes,
+lights his torch and goes his radiant way.
+
+Thus the Geologist felt a graver responsibility resting on him--placed
+there by one of them, more than by all of them: the words he was
+speaking might or might not give final direction to a whole career. He
+went on with his heroic narrative more glowingly, more guardedly:
+
+"For a while he must keep on teaching in order to live: he taught all
+day, often after night, barely had time to swallow his meals, at the
+end of one term tells us he had as large a sum as fifteen dollars.
+Often he coloured his first drawings by candle light, drew and painted
+birds without knowing what they were. Drawing and painting by candle
+light!--but now he had within himself the risen sun of a splendid
+enthusiasm. That sun kindled his schoolboys. They found out what he
+wanted and helped. One boy brought him a large basketful of crows.
+Another caught a mouse in school and contributed that--the incident
+is worth quoting by showing that the boy preferred a mouse to a
+school-book.
+
+"Take one instance of the energy with which he was now working and
+worked for the rest of his life: he wished to see Niagara Falls, and
+to lose no time while doing it he started out one autumn through the
+forest to walk to the Falls and back, a short trip for him of over
+twelve hundred miles. He reached home 'mid the deep snows of winter
+with no soles to his boots. What of that? On his way back he had shot
+two strange birds in the valley of the Hudson! For ten days--ten days,
+mind you!--he worked on a drawing of these and sent it with a letter
+to Thomas Jefferson. You may as yet have thought of Jefferson only as
+one of America's earliest statesmen: begin now to think of him as one
+of the first American naturalists. And if you wish to read a courteous
+letter from an American President to a young stranger, go back to
+Jefferson's letter to the Scotch weaver who sent him the drawing of a
+jaybird.
+
+"Pass rapidly over the next few years. He has made one trip from
+Maine down the Atlantic Seaboard to the South. He has returned and is
+starting out again to cover the vast interior basin of the Mississippi
+Valley: he is to begin at Pittsburgh and end at New Orleans.
+
+"Now again you see that he is coming nearer--nearer to you here.
+
+"Look then at this bold, splendid picture of him outlined against the
+background of early American life. All such pictures are part of our
+richest heritage.
+
+"The scene is Pittsburgh. He has ransacked the winter woods for new
+species, he has found only sparrows and snow-birds. That was the year
+1810; this is the year 1916--over a hundred years later in the history
+of our country. Gaze then upon this wild scene of the olden time, all
+such pictures are good for young eyes: it is the twenty-fourth of
+February: the river, swollen with the spring flood, is full of white
+masses of moving ice. A frail skiff puts off from shore and goes
+winding its way until it is lost to sight among the noble hills.
+
+"They warned him of his danger, urged him to take a rower, urged him not
+to go at all. Those who risked the passage of the river floated down on
+barges called Kentucky arks or in canoes hollowed each out of a single
+tree, usually the tulip tree, which you know is very common in our
+Kentucky woods. But to mention danger was to make him go to meet it. He
+would have no rower, had no money to hire one, had he wished one. He
+tells us what he had on board: in one end of the boat some biscuit and
+cheese, a bottle of cordial given him by a gentleman in Pittsburgh, his
+gun and trunk and overcoat; at the other end himself and his oars and
+a tin with which to bail out the skiff, if necessary, to keep it from
+sinking and also to use as his drinking-cup to dip from the river.
+
+"That February day--the swollen, rushing river, the masses of white
+ice--the solitary young boatman borne away to a new world on his great
+work: his heart expanding with excitement and joy as he headed toward
+the unexplored wilderness of the Mississippi Valley.
+
+"Wondrous experiences were his: from the densely wooded shores there
+would reach him as he drifted down, the whistle of the red bird--those
+first spring notes so familiar and so welcome to us on mild days toward
+the last of February. Away off in dim forest valleys, between bold
+headlands, he saw the rising smoke of sugar camps. At other openings
+on the landscape, grotesque log cabins looked like dog-houses under
+impending mighty mountains. His rapidly steered skiff passed flotillas
+of Kentucky arks heavily making their way southward, transporting men
+and women and children--the moving pioneers of the young nation: the
+first river merchant-marine of the new world: carrying horses and
+plows to clearings yet to be made for homesteads in the wilderness;
+transporting mill-stones for mills not yet built on any wilderness
+stream; bearing merchandise for the pioneers who in this way got their
+clothing until they could grow flax and weave to clothe themselves.
+Thus in the Alps of the Alleghenies he came upon the river peddlers of
+America as years before amid the Alps of Scotland he had come upon the
+foot peddlers of his own land. On the river were floating caravans of
+men selling shawls and muslins. He boarded a number of these barges; as
+they approached a settlement, they blew a trumpet or a lonely horn on
+the great river stillness.
+
+"The first night he drew in to shore some fifty miles down at a
+riverside hovel and tried to sleep on the only bed offered him--some
+corn-stalks. Unable to sleep, he got up before day and pushed out again
+into the river, listening to the hooting of the big-horned owl echoing
+away among the dawn-dark mountains, or to the strangely familiar
+crowing of cocks as they awoke the hen roosts about the first American
+settlements in the West.
+
+"He records what to us now sounds incredible, that on March fifth he
+saw a flock of parrokeets. Think of parrokeets on the Ohio River in
+March! Of nights it turned freezing cold and he drew liberally on his
+bottle of cordial for warmth. Once he encountered a storm of wind and
+hail and snow and rain, during which the river foamed and rolled like
+the sea and he had to make good use of his tin to keep the skiff bailed
+out till he could put in to shore. The call of wild turkeys enticed him
+now toward the shore of Indiana, now toward the shore of Kentucky, but
+before he reached either they had disappeared. His first night on the
+Kentucky shore he spent in the cabin of a squatter and heard him tell
+tales of bear-treeing and wildcat-hunting and wolf-baiting. All night
+wolves howled in the forests near by and kept the dogs in an uproar;
+the region swarmed with wolves and wildcats 'black and brown.'
+
+"On and on, until at last the skiff reached the rapids of the Ohio
+at Louisville and he stepped ashore and sold his frail saviour craft
+which, at starting, he had named the Ornithologist. The Kentuckian who
+bought it as the Ornithologist accepted the droll name as that of some
+Indian chief. He soon left Louisville, having sent his baggage on by
+wagon, and plunged into the Kentucky forest on his way to Lexington.
+
+"And now, indeed, you see he is coming nearer.
+
+"It was the twenty-fourth of March when he began his first trip
+southward through the woods of Kentucky. Spring was on the way but had
+not yet passed northward. Nine-tenths of the Kentucky soil, he states,
+was then unbroken wilderness. The surface soil was deeper than now.
+The spring thaw had set in, permeating the rich loam. He describes
+his progress through it as like travelling through soft soap. The
+woods were bare as yet, though filled with pigeons and squirrels and
+wood-peckers. On everything he was using his marvellous eyes: looking
+for birds but looking at all human life, interested in the whole life
+of the forest. He mentions large corn fields and orchards of apple and
+of peach trees. Already he finds the high fences, characteristic of
+the Kentuckians. He turned aside once to visit a roosting place of the
+passenger pigeon.
+
+"It was on March twenty-ninth that, emerging from the thick forest,
+he saw before him the little Western metropolis of the pioneers, the
+city of the forefathers of many of us here today--Lexington. I wish I
+could stop to describe to you the picture as he painted it: the town
+stretching along its low valley; a stream running through the valley
+and turning several mills--water mills in Lexington a hundred years
+ago! In the market-place which you now call Cheapside he saw the
+pillory and the stocks and he noted that the stocks were so arranged as
+to be serviceable for gallows: our Kentucky forefathers arranged that
+they should be conveniently hanged, if they deserved it, as a public
+spectacle of warning.
+
+"On a country court day he saw a thousand horses hitched around the
+courthouse square and in churchyards and in graveyards. He states that
+even then Kentucky horses were the most remarkable in the world.
+
+"He makes no mention of one thing he must have seen, but was perhaps
+glad to forget--the weavers and the busy looms; for in those days
+Kentuckians were busy making good linen and good homespun, as in
+Paisley.
+
+"He slept while in Lexington--this great unknown man--in a garret
+called Salter White's, wherever that was: and he shivered with cold,
+for you know we can have chill nights in April. He says that he had
+no firewood, it being scarce, the universal forest of firewood being
+half a mile away: this was like going hungry in a loft over a full
+baker-shop.
+
+"And I must not omit one note of his on the Kentuckians themselves,
+which flashes a vivid historic light on their character. By this time
+he rightly considered that he had had adventures worth relating; but
+he declares that if he attempted to relate them to any Kentuckian, the
+Kentuckian at once interrupted him and insisted upon relating his own
+adventures as better worth while. Western civilization was of itself
+the one absorbing adventure to every man who had had his share in it.
+
+"Here I must pause to intimate that Wilson all his life carried with
+him one bird--one vigourous and vociferous bird--a crow to pick. He
+picked it savagely with Louisville. But he had begun to pick it with
+Scotland. He had picked it with Great Britain and with New Jersey
+and Virginia. In New England the feathers of the crow fairly flew. In
+truth, civilization never quite satisfied him; wild nature alone he
+found no fault with--there only was he happy and at home. He now picked
+his crow with Lexington. Afterward an indignant Kentuckian, quite in
+the good Kentucky way, attacked him and left the crow featherless--as
+regards Lexington.
+
+"On the fourteenth day of April he departed from Lexington, moving
+southward through the forest to New Orleans. Scarcely yet had the woods
+begun to turn green. He notes merely the white blossoms of the redroot
+peeping through the withered leaves, and the buds of the buckeye. With
+those sharp eyes of his he observed that wherever a hackberry tree had
+fallen, cattle had eaten the bark.
+
+"And now we begin to take leave of him: he passes from our picture. We
+catch a glimpse of him standing on the perpendicular cliffs of solid
+limestone at the Kentucky River, green with a great number of uncommon
+plants and flowers--we catch a glimpse of him standing there, watching
+bank swallows and listening to the faint music of the boat horns in the
+deep romantic valley below, where the Kentucky arks, passing on their
+way southward, turned the corners of the verduous cliffs as the musical
+gondolas turn the corners of vine-hung Venice in the waters of the
+Adriatic.
+
+"On and on southward; visiting a roosting-place of the passenger
+pigeon which was reported to him as forty miles long: he counted
+ninety nests in one beech tree. We see him emerging upon the Kentucky
+barrens which were covered with vegetation and open for the sweep of
+the eye.
+
+"Now, at last, he begins to meet the approach of spring in full tide:
+all Nature is bursting into leaf and blossom. No longer are the redbud
+and the dogwood and the sassafras conspicuous as its heralds. And now,
+overflowing the forest, advances the full-crested wave of bird-life
+up from the south, from the tropics. New and unknown species are
+everywhere before his eyes; their new melodies are in his ears; he is
+busy drawing, colouring, naming them for his work.
+
+"So he passes out of our picture: southward bound, encountering
+a cloud of parrakeets and pigeons, emerging from a cave with a
+handkerchief full of bats, swimming creeks, sleeping at night alone in
+the wilderness, his gun and pistol in his bosom. He vanishes from the
+forest scene, never from the memory of mankind.
+
+"Let me tell you that he did not live to complete his work. Death
+overtook him, not a youth but still young; for, as a Roman of the
+heroic years deeply said: 'Death always finds those young who are still
+at work for the future of the world.'
+
+"I told you I was going to speak to you of a boy's life. I asked you
+to fix your eyes upon it as a far-off human spark, barely glimmering
+through mist and fog but slowly, as the years passed, getting
+stronger, growing brighter, always drawing nearer until it shone about
+you here as a great light and then passed on, leaving an eternal glory.
+
+"I have done that.
+
+"You saw a little fellow taken from school at about the age of eleven
+and put to hard work at weaving; now you see one of the world's
+great ornithologists, who had traversed some ten thousand miles of
+comparative wilderness--an imperishable figure, doing an imperishable
+deed. I love to think of him as being in the end what he most hated to
+be in the beginning--a weaver: he wove a vast, original tapestry of the
+bird-life of the American forest.
+
+"As he passed southward from Lexington that distant April of 1810,
+encountering his first spring in the Ohio valley with its myriads of
+birds, somewhere he discovered a new and beautiful species of American
+wood warbler and gave it a local habitation and a name.
+
+"He called it the Kentucky Warbler.
+
+"And now," the lecturer said, by way of climax, "would you not like to
+see a picture of that mighty hunter who lived in the great days of the
+young American republic and crossed Kentucky in the great days of the
+pioneers? And would you not also like to see a picture of the exquisite
+and only bird that bears the name of our State--the Kentucky Warbler?"
+
+He passed over to them a portrait engraving of Alexander Wilson in the
+dress of a gentleman of his time, his fowling-piece on his forearm.
+And along with this he delivered to them a life-like, a singing
+portrait, of the warbler, painted by a great American animal painter
+and bird painter--Fuertes.
+
+[Illustration: chapter II--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter III--title decoration]
+
+
+III
+
+THE FOREST
+
+
+It was the first day of vacation.
+
+Schools, if you were not through with them, had now become empty,
+closed, silent buildings, stripped of authority to imprison and bedevil
+you and then mark you discreditably because you righteously rebelled
+against being imprisoned and bedeviled. They could safely be left to
+dust and cobwebs within and to any weeds that might lodge and sprout
+outside--the more the better. You stood on the spring edge of the
+long, free, careless summer and could look unconcernedly across at the
+distant autumn edge. Then as the woods, now in their first full green,
+were beginning to turn dry and yellow, the powerless buildings would
+again become tyrannical schools.
+
+But if you had finished high school, on this first day of vacation you
+were on the Boy's Common: schools behind you, the world of business
+around you, ahead of you ambitious college or the stately University.
+Webster had been turned loose on the Boy's Common.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The family were at breakfast. Every breakfast in the cottage was much
+the same breakfast: routine is the peace of the roadless. Existence
+there throughout the year was three hundred and sixty-five times more
+or less like itself. The earth meantime did change for the signs of
+the zodiac: the cottage changed also, but had a zodiac of its own.
+Thus, when the planet was in the sign of _Capricornus_, the cottage
+on a morning had fried perch for breakfast, as a sign that it was in
+_Pisces_; when earth was in _Gemini_, the family might have a steak
+which showed that it was in _Taurus_--or that _Taurus_ was in the
+family.
+
+There was always hot meat of one kind and hot bread of two kinds and
+hot coffee of any kind. If Webster's father upon entering the breakfast
+room had not seen a dish before him to carve or apportion, the shock
+could not have been greater, had he found lying on his folded napkin
+an enclosure from the bank notifying him that he had been discharged
+for having made the figure four instead of the figure two.
+
+He sat squarely facing the table as long as his own portion of the meat
+lasted, meantime eating rapidly and bending over to glance at his paper
+which lay flat beside his coffee cup. With the final morsel of meat he
+turned sidewise and sat cross-legged, with his paper held before his
+face as a screen--notification that he would rather not talk at the
+moment, unless they preferred.... If they showed that they did prefer,
+he still had means to discourage their preference. Now and then he
+reached around toward his plate and groped for the remaining crumbs of
+bread, or hooked his forefinger in the handle of his cup and conveyed
+it behind the paper.
+
+Webster's mother, busied with service at the tray, commenced her
+breakfast after the others. She talked to her husband until he
+interposed his newspaper. Then she unconsciously lowered her voice and
+addressed remarks to the children. Occasionally she tried to arrange
+their dissensions.
+
+A satirist of human life, studying Webster's father and mother at the
+head and foot of the table--symbol at once of their opposition and
+conjunction--a satirist, who for his own amusement turns life into
+pictures of something else, might have described their bodily and
+pictorial relation as that of a large, soft deep-dished pudding to a
+well trimmed mutton chop. Their minds he would possibly have imagined
+as two south winds moving along, side by side; whatever else they blew
+against, they could not possibly blow against each other.
+
+On this fine June morning, the first day of his vacation, Webster was
+late for breakfast. He arranged to be late. From his bathroom-bedroom
+he could hear the family with their usual morning talk, Elinor's
+shrill chatter predominating. When her chatter ceased he would know
+that she had satisfied her whimsical appetite and had slipped from
+her chair, impatient either to get to the front porch with its creaky
+rocking-chair or to dart out the gate to other little girls in the
+block; restlessly seeking some adventure elsewhere if none should pass
+before her eyes at home.
+
+He waited till she should go; there was something especial to speak
+of with his father and he did not wish this to be spoiled by Elinor's
+interference and ridicule.
+
+When she was gone he went in to breakfast.
+
+"Well, my son, how are you going to spend your first day of vacation?"
+his father inquired, helping him to his portion and not particularly
+noticing his own question.
+
+"I thought I'd go over into the woods," Webster replied.
+
+An unfavourable silence followed this announcement. That old stubborn
+controversy about the woods!...
+
+"Father," asked Webster, with his eyes on his plate, "did you ever see
+the Kentucky warbler?"
+
+Webster's father looked over the top of the wood-pulp screen. His face
+had a somewhat vacant expression. He waited. Finally he said:
+
+"My son, I believe you asked me a question: I shall have to ask you to
+repeat your question; I may be losing my hearing or I may be losing my
+mind. You asked me--?"
+
+Webster, in the same deliberate tone, repeated his question:
+
+"Did you ever see the Kentucky warbler?"
+
+Webster's father looked over his spectacles at Webster's mother as with
+the air of an appeal for guidance:
+
+"My dear, your son asks me, if I understand him, whether I have ever
+seen a Kentucky wooden war horse?"
+
+He was not above fun-making and it seemed to him that the occasion
+called for it.
+
+Webster's mother explained:
+
+"One of the professors from the University lectured to them in April
+about birds. His head has been full of birds ever since: I shouldn't
+wonder if his dreams have been full of them." She looked at Webster not
+without ineradicable tenderness and pride; she could not quite have
+explained the pride, she could have explained the tenderness.
+
+Now the truth of the matter was that since that memorable morning
+of the April talk at high school, she had been hearing from Webster
+repeatedly on that subject. He had told her of the lecture immediately
+upon reaching home; she had never seen him so wrought up. And from that
+time he had upon occasion plied her with questions: as to what she knew
+of birds when she lived in the country. She had to tell him that she
+knew very little; everybody identified the several species that preyed
+upon fruit and berries and young chickens; she named these readily
+enough. She had never heard of a bird called the Kentucky warbler. And
+she had never heard of Alexander Wilson.
+
+All this she had duly narrated to Webster's father--greatly to his
+dejection. A bank officer with a solitary son, now graduated from high
+school, going after bird-nests--that was a prospect before such a
+father! He had shaken his head in silence that more than spoke.
+
+"I told him," Webster's mother had concluded, "that the only Wilsons
+worth knowing in Kentucky were the horse-people Wilsons: of course we
+know _them_. It has been amusing to watch Elinor. Whenever Webster has
+begun about birds, if she has overheard him, she has made it convenient
+to settle somewhere near and listen. She would break in and stop his
+questions, but then there would be no more entertainment for her. She
+has been a study."
+
+Thus Webster's father was not so ill-informed as he now appeared. In
+return for the information from Webster's mother, apparently for the
+first time imparted, he looked at his son with an expression which
+plainly meant that as a speculation the latter was becoming a graver
+risk.
+
+"No, my son," he said, "I have never met your forest friend. I am
+merely a Kentucky bank warbler. One who did his warbling years ago.
+There is some _war_ left in me. I suppose there will always be _war_
+left in me, but there isn't any _war_-ble. I warbled one distant
+solitary spring to your mother. She replied beautifully in kind and
+lavishly in degree. We made a nest and had a hatching. Since then
+the male bird has been trying--not to escape the consequences of his
+song--but to meet his notes like a man. I have never stumbled upon your
+forest friend."
+
+Webster ate in silence for a few moments and then remarked, as though
+it were a matter of vital importance:
+
+"His notes are:
+
+"'_Tweedle tweedle tweedle, Tweedle tweedle tweedle_,' Wilson described
+them that way a hundred and six years ago."
+
+"I don't doubt it, my son. I am not questioning your word--nor Mr.
+Wilson's. But I don't see anything very remarkable in that: if you come
+to the bank any day, you can hear men say the same thing. They come in
+and say, 'Tweedle.' And they go out."
+
+Webster continued:
+
+"Audubon described the notes as '_Turdle turdle turdle_.'"
+
+Deeper silence at the table. Webster continued in the face of the
+silence;
+
+"A living naturalist says the notes may be:
+
+"'_Toodle toodle toodle._'"
+
+Silence at the table still more deep. Webster broke it:
+
+"Another naturalist describes the bird as saying:
+
+"'_Ter-wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter._'"
+
+The silence! Webster continued:
+
+"Another naturalist thinks the song is:
+
+"'_Che che che peery peery peery._'"
+
+Webster's father raised his eyebrows--he had no hair to raise--at
+Webster's mother: a sign that their graduate was beginning to celebrate
+his vacation.
+
+"My son," he said, "when I was a little fellow in school, one of the
+reading lessons was a poem called 'Try, Try Again.' Perhaps the bird
+is working along that line."
+
+"Thomas Jefferson followed a bird for hours in the woods," said
+Webster, with dignity: he somehow felt rebuked. "And for twenty years
+he tried to catch sight of another."
+
+"Don't let me come between you and Thomas Jefferson," said Webster's
+father, waving his hand toward his son in protest. "God forbid that I
+should come between any two such persons as Daniel Webster and Thomas
+Jefferson!"
+
+"The government at Washington," observed Webster stoutly, "is behind
+the Kentucky warbler."
+
+"Then, my son, I advise you to get behind the Government."
+
+The rusty bell at the little front door went off with a sound like
+the whirr of a frightened prairie chicken. The breakfast maid, also
+the cook, also the maid of all work, also a unit of the standardised
+population of disservice and discontent, entered and pushed a bill at
+Webster's father.
+
+"The butcher," she announced with sullen gratification, "He's waiting."
+
+As Webster's father left the table, he tapped his son affectionately
+on the head with his paper: "You follow the bird, my boy; and follow
+Thomas Jefferson, if you can. The butcher follows me."
+
+Webster's mother sat watching him. He had begun to get his lunch ready.
+He held the bottom-half of a long, slender roll, which might have
+served as a miniature model for an old-time Kentucky river-ark; and
+with his knife, grasped like an oar, he was lining the inside with some
+highly specialised yellow substance. She deplored his awkwardness and
+fought his independence.
+
+"Let me put up your lunch for you, my son!"
+
+"I'll put it up."
+
+He was not to be cheated out of that fresh sensation of pleasure which
+comes to the male, young or old, who tries to cook in camp, to fry, to
+boil, to season, or to serve things edible.
+
+Webster pulled out of his pocket a crumpled piece of brown paper and
+smoothed it out on the table cloth. It showed butcher stains.
+
+Webster's mother protested.
+
+"My son! Take a napkin! Take this clean napkin for your lunch!"
+
+"I like this paper."
+
+The idea of being in the forest and unrolling his lunch from a napkin:
+what would Wilson have thought? Elinor, being "nice," always rolled her
+lunch in a napkin.
+
+"But you will be hungry: let me get you some preserves!"
+
+"Not anything sweet." Elinor always had preserves. He rolled his lunch
+roughly and thrust it, butcher-stains and all, into his pocket. His
+mother was exasperated and distressed.
+
+"My son, your lunch will come loose in your pocket: I'll get you a
+string."
+
+"I don't want a string." Elinor tied everything. Girls tied; boys
+buttoned. The difference between men and women was strings.
+
+"But you'll get the grease on you, Webster! It will run down your
+legs!"
+
+"Very well, then, I'll have greasy legs. Why not?"
+
+She followed him out to the porch. Her character lacked capacity
+of initiative. She waited for him to be old enough to take some
+initiative; then she would stand by him.
+
+"Don't go too far," she said tenderly, "and you ought to have some of
+your friends to go with you, some of the boys from school."
+
+"They can't go today. Nobody can go today. Anybody would be in the way
+today."
+
+He said this to himself.
+
+She watched him from the porch and called: "Don't stay too late."
+
+Webster walked quickly to the main corner of the block--Jenny's
+corner. On this first morning of being through with school and of
+feeling more like a man free to do as he pleased, Jenny for that reason
+became more important--he must see her before starting. Heretofore the
+pleasure of being with Jenny had definitely depended upon what Jenny
+might do; this morning the idea was beginning to be Jenny herself.
+
+She was in her trumpet-vine arbour, the roof of which was already
+sun-dried. The shaded sides were still dew-wet. She bounded across to
+him, very exquisite in her light blue frock with broad, fresh white
+ribbons in her light-brown hair: healthy, docile, joyous, with innocent
+blue eyes and the complexion of apple blossoms.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked in a voice which implied that the day
+would be as pleasant, no matter where he went: nevertheless she had no
+thought of appearing indifferent to him.
+
+He told her.
+
+"What are you going into the woods for?" she inquired, with little
+dancing movements of her feet on the yard grass in irrepressible health
+and joy and with no especial interest in his reply.
+
+He told her.
+
+"Could _you_ go?" He very well knew she could not and merely yielded to
+an impulse to express himself: he was offering to ruin the day for her.
+
+"They wouldn't let me," said Jenny, apparently not disappointed at
+being thus kept at home.
+
+He sought to make the best of his disappointment.
+
+"Even if you could go, I am afraid you never would be quiet, Jenny."
+
+"I'm afraid I wouldn't," Jenny replied, responsive to every suggestion.
+
+He lingered, tenderly disturbed by her: the roots of the future were
+growing in him this morning. He was changing, he was changing _her_:
+there was an outreaching of his nature to draw her into the future
+alongside him.
+
+Jenny suddenly stopped dancing and came closer to the fence, having
+all at once become more conscious of Webster, standing there as he had
+never stood before, looking at her as he had never looked. Her nature
+was of yielding sweetness, clasping trust. She glanced around the
+cottage windows: the situation was very exposed. Webster glanced at the
+cottage windows: the situation did not appear in the least exposed.
+Her eyes became more round with an idea:
+
+"Are you coming back this way?"
+
+"I _will_ come back this way."
+
+Jenny danced away from the fence, laughing excitedly: "Will it be late?"
+
+"I can _make_ it late?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Webster climbed the fence of the forest under the foliage of a big
+tree of some unknown kind and descended waist-deep into the foliage
+of a weed with a leaf as big as an elephant's ear: it had a beautiful
+trumpet-shaped white and purple flower. He wished he knew what it was:
+on the very edge of the forest, at his very first step, he had sunk
+waist-deep into ignorance. Then he waded through the rank nightshade
+and stepped out upon the grass of the woods--the green carpet of thick
+turf, Kentucky bluegrass.
+
+At last he was there under those softly waving trees which summer after
+summer he had watched from the porch and windows: long they had called
+to him and now he had answered their call.
+
+But the disappointment! As he had looked at the forest across the
+distance, the tree-tops had made an unbroken billowy line of green
+along the blue horizon, continuous like the waves of the sea as he
+imagined the sea. Somewhere under that forest roof he had taken it
+for granted that there would be thick undergrowth, wild spots for shy
+singing nesting birds. The disappointment! The trees stood ten or
+twenty or thirty feet apart. The longest boughs barely touched each
+other, their lowest sometimes hung forty or fifty feet in the air. He
+did not see a tree whose branches he could reach with his upstretched
+arm. The sun shone everywhere under them every bright day and the grass
+grew thick up to their trunks.
+
+Another disappointment! The wood was small. He walked to the middle of
+it and from there could see to its edge on each of its four sides. On
+one side was a field of yellow grain--what the grain was he did not
+know--ignorance again. On the side opposite this was a field of green
+grain--what he did not know. Straight ahead of him as he looked through
+the trees, he could see an open paddock on which the sunlight fell in
+a blazing sheen; it turned to silver the white flanks of some calves
+and made soft gold of the coats of grazing thoroughbreds. Beyond the
+paddock he could see stables and sheds and beyond these a farmhouse: he
+could faintly hear the cackle of barnyard poultry.
+
+He stood in bluegrass pasture--once Kentucky wilderness. It was like an
+exquisite natural park. As he had skirmished toward the country along
+turnpikes with school-mates or other friends during his life, often his
+eyes had been drawn toward these world-famous bluegrass pastures. Now
+he was in one; and it was here that he had come to look for the warbler
+which haunts the secret forest solitudes!
+
+He sat down under a big tree with a feeling of how foolish he had
+been. This was again followed by an overwhelming sense of his
+ignorance.
+
+He did not know the kind of tree he sat under nor of any other that
+stood far or near. These were such as sugar maple and red oak and
+white oak and black ash and white ash and black walnut and white
+walnut--rarely white walnut--and hickory and locust and elm and a few
+haws: he did recognise a locust tree but then a locust tree grew in
+Jenny's yard! All around him weeds and wild flowers and other grasses
+sprang up out of the bluegrass: he did not know them.
+
+There was one tree he curiously looked around for, positive that he
+should not be blind to it if fortunate enough to set his eyes on
+one--the coffee tree. That is, he felt sure he'd recognise it if it
+yielded coffee ready to drink, of which never in his life had they
+given him enough. Not once throughout his long troubled experience as
+to being fed had he been allowed as much coffee as he craved. Once,
+when younger, he had heard some one say that the only tree in all the
+American forest that bore the name of Kentucky was the Kentucky coffee
+tree; and he had instantly conceived a desire to pay a visit in secret
+to that corner of the woods. To take his cup and a few lumps of sugar
+and sit under the boughs and catch the coffee as it dripped down.... No
+one to hold him back ... as much as he wanted at last ...! The Kentucky
+coffee tree--his favourite in Nature!
+
+He said to himself, looking all round him, that he had the outdoor
+loneliness and blindness of Silas Marner this wonderful morning.
+
+Propped against the tree he sat still a while, thinking of the long day
+before him and of how he should spend it in this thin empty pasture,
+abandoned by the wild creatures. But as he deliberated, suddenly and
+then more and more he awoke to things going on around him.
+
+A few feet away and on a level with his eyes a little fellow descended
+from high over-head. A little green gymnast trying to reach the ground
+by means of his own rope which he manufactured out of his body as he
+came down. How could he do it? How had he learned the very first time
+to make the rope strong enough to bear his weight instead of its
+giving way and letting him drop? Something seized one of Webster's
+ankles with a pair of small jaws like pincers and reminded him that his
+foot was in the way: it had better move on. A black ant suddenly rushed
+angrily over his knee. A cricket leaped in the grass. One autumn one
+of them had started its song behind the wainscoting, Elinor had pushed
+her toe against the woodwork and silenced it. A few feet away a bunch
+of white clover blossomed: a honey bee was searching it. Webster found
+on the back of one of his hands, which was pressed against the grass, a
+tiny crimson coach--a mere dot of a crimson coach being moved along he
+could not see how. The colour was most gorgeous and the material of the
+finest velvet. He let it go on its way across his hand withersoever it
+might be journeying. Directly opposite his eyes, some forty feet from
+the ground, was a round hole in a rotten tree-trunk. Webster wondered
+whether a bird ever pecked a square hole in anything. Suddenly from
+behind him a red-headed bird flew to the dead tree-trunk and alighted
+near the hole: he recognised the wood-pecker. And he remembered that
+this was the first bird Wilson had killed that first day he entered the
+American forest: he was glad that it was the first _he_ encountered!
+No sooner had the wood-pecker alighted than the head of another bird
+appeared at the hole and the wood-pecker took to his heels--to his
+wings. Webster wished he had known what this other bird was: it had
+a black band across its chest and wore a speckled jacket and a dull
+reddish cap on the back of its head. A disturbance reached him from
+a nearby treetop, a wailing voice, a gulping sound, as if something
+up there were sick and full of suffering and were trying to take its
+medicine. He watched the spot and presently a crow flew out of the
+thick leaves: the crow's family seemed not in good health. A ground
+squirrel jumped to the end of a rotting log some yards away but at
+sight of him shrieked and darted in again. The whole pasture was alive.
+
+Webster had all this time become conscious that another sound had been
+reaching his ear at regular intervals from the high branches of the
+trees, first in one place and then in another. His eyes had followed
+the voice but he could see no bird. The sound was like this:
+
+_Se--u--re?_
+
+That was the first half of the song--a question. A few moments later
+the other half followed, perhaps from another tree--the answer:
+
+_Se--u--u._
+
+Here was a mystery: what was the bird? Could it be the bluebird!--his
+ignorance again, the comicality of his ignorance! Webster had never
+seen or heard a bluebird. He recalled what the professor had told
+them--that Alexander Wilson had written the first poem on the American
+bluebird, perhaps still the best poem; and he had given them the poem
+to memorise if they liked, saying that they might not think it good
+poetry, but at least it was the poetry of a man who thought he could
+criticise Robert Burns! Webster had memorised the verses and as he now
+searched the forest boughs for this invisible bluebird, he repeated to
+himself some of Wilson's lines:
+
+    "When all the gay scenes of summer are o'er
+    And autumn slow enters so silent and sallow
+    And millions of warblers that charmed us before
+    Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow;
+    The bluebird, forsaken, but true to his home
+    Still lingers and looks for a milder tomorrow
+    Till forced by the horrors of winter to roam,
+    He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow."
+
+Again that long fine strain cast far out upon the air like a silken
+reel:
+
+_Se--u--re? Se--u--u._
+
+Or could it be a woodcock?
+
+He got up by and bye and walked toward the field of yellow grain on one
+side of the pasture. Before he was halfway he stopped, arrested by a
+wonderful sound: from the top rail of the fence before him, separating
+the pasture from the grain, came a loud ringing whistle. It was
+Bobwhite! Boys at school sometimes whistled "bobwhite." He knew this
+bird because he had seen him hanging amid snow and ice and holly boughs
+outside meat shops about Christmas time. Here now was the summer song:
+in it the green of the woods, the gold of the grain, the far brave
+clearness of the June sky.
+
+He tipped forward, not because his feet made any noise. Once again,
+nearer, that marvellous music rang past him, echoing on into the woods.
+Then it ceased; and as Webster approached the field fence what he saw
+was a rabbit watching him over the grass tops until with long soft
+leaps it escaped through the fence to the safety of the field.
+
+For a while he remained leaning on this fence and looking out across
+the coming harvest. Twenty yards away a clump of alders was in bloom:
+some bird was singing out there joyously. It made a _che che che_
+sound, also; but its colour was brown.
+
+The idea occurred to Webster that he would recross the pasture to the
+field on the other side and go on to the turnpike: one ran there, for
+he heard vehicles passing. He would make inquiry about some piece of
+forest further from the city. He remembered again what the professor
+told them:
+
+"Some of you this summer during your vacation may go out to some
+nearby strip of woods--what little is left of the old forest--in quest
+of the warbler. Seek the wildest spots you can find. The Kentucky
+bluegrass landscape is thin and tame now, but there are places of thick
+undergrowth where the bird still spends his Kentucky summer. Shall I
+give you my own experience as to where I found him when a boy half a
+century ago? On my father's farm there was a woodland pasture. The
+land dipped there into a marshy hollow. In this hollow was a stock
+pond. Around the edges of the pond grew young cane. It was always low
+because the cattle browsed it. The highest stalks were scarcely five
+feet. On the edge of the canebrake a thicket of papaw and blackberry
+vines added rankness and forest secrecy. It was here I discovered him.
+The pale green and yellow of his plumage blent with the pale green and
+yellow of the leaves and stalks. But it was many years before I knew
+that the bird I had found was the Kentucky warbler. If I had only known
+it when I was a boy!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Webster reached the turnpike and looked up and down, no one was in
+sight. He sat on the fence and waited. By and bye, coming in from the
+country, a spring wagon appeared. Curious projections stuck out from
+the top and sides of boxes in the wagon. When it drew nearer Webster
+saw poultry being taken to market. He looked at the driver but let him
+pass unaccosted: there would be little use in applying for information
+about warblers at headquarters for broilers.
+
+Next from the direction of the city he saw coming a splendid open
+carriage drawn by a splendid horse and driven by a very pompous
+coloured coachman in livery. An aristocratic old lady sat in the
+carriage, shielding her face from the dazzling sunlight with a rich
+parasol. She leaned out and looked curiously at Webster.
+
+"Suydam," she called out to her coachman with a voice that had the
+faded sweetness of faded rose leaves, "did you notice that remarkable
+boy? He looked as though he would have liked to drive with me out into
+the country. I wish I had invited him to do so."
+
+A milk cart followed with a great noise of tin cans. With milk carts
+Webster felt somewhat at home: it was often his business to receive
+the family milk. As the cart was passing, he motioned for the milkman
+to stop. Perhaps all milkmen stop at any sign: there may be an order:
+Webster called out with a good deal of hesitation:
+
+"Do you know of a woods further out full of bushes and thickets?"
+
+The milkman gave a little flap of the rein to his horse:
+
+"What's the matter with _you_?" he said with patient forbearance:
+
+Finally Webster saw creeping down the turnpike toward him an empty
+wagon-bed drawn by a yoke of oxen. A good-natured young negro man sat
+sideways on the wagon-tongue, smoking. Webster halted him by a gesture
+and a voice of command:
+
+"Do you know of a bushy woods further out?"
+
+Any negro enjoys being questioned because he enjoys not answering
+questions. Most of all he enjoys any puzzling exercise of his mother
+wit.
+
+"A bushy woods?"
+
+"Yes, a bushy woods."
+
+"What do you want with a bushy woods?"
+
+"I want to find where there is one."
+
+The negro hesitated: "there's a bushy woods about four miles out."
+
+"Is it on the pike?"
+
+"On the pike! Did you ever see a bushy woods on the pike? It's _beside_
+the pike."
+
+"Right side or left side?"
+
+"Depends which way you're going. Right side if you are going out, left
+side if you're coming in."
+
+"You say it's four miles out?"
+
+"You pass the three mile post and then you go a little further."
+
+"Are there any birds in it?"
+
+"Birds? There's owls in it. There's coons in it."
+
+"Do you know a young canebrake when you see one?"
+
+"I know an old hempbrake when I see one."
+
+Webster enjoyed his new authority in holding up his negro and
+questioning him about a forest. And it seemed to him that the moment
+had come when it was right to use money if you had it, horns or no
+horns. He pulled out a dime. The negro, too surprised to speak,
+came across and received it. He declined to express thanks but felt
+disposed to show that he had earned the money by repeating a piece of
+information:
+
+"It's four miles out."
+
+"Is there much of it?"
+
+"Much of it? Much as you want."
+
+"Do you live in it?"
+
+"No, I don't live in it: I live in a house."
+
+He had retaken his seat on the wagon-tongue.
+
+"What kind of pipe stem is that you are using?"
+
+"What kind? It's a cane pipe stem."
+
+"Where did you get the cane?"
+
+"Where did I get it? I got it in the woods."
+
+"Then there _is_ young cane growing in the woods?"
+
+"Who said there wasn't?"
+
+Webster, beginning this morning to use his eyes, took notice of
+something which greatly interested him as the wagon moved slowly off
+down the pike: strands of hemp clung to it here and there like a dry
+hanging moss. The geologist had told them that his own boyhood lay
+far back in the era of great Kentucky hemp-raising. Much of the hemp
+was broken in March, the month of high winds. As the hemp-breakers
+busily shook out their handfuls while separating the fibre from the
+shard, strands were carried away on the roaring gales, lodging against
+stubble and stumps and fences of the fields or blown further on into
+the pastures. Later when it was baled and hauled in, other filaments
+were caught on the rafters and shingles of hemp-houses and barns. Thus
+when in April the northward migration of birds reached Kentucky, this
+material was everywhere ready and plentiful, and the Baltimore orioles
+on the bluegrass plateau built their long hanging nests of Kentucky
+hemp.
+
+Webster, sitting on the fence and thinking of this, meantime laid his
+plans for the larger adventure of the following day: the clue he sought
+had unexpectedly been found: he would go out to the place where young
+cane grew: there he might have a real chance at the warbler.
+
+This being settled to his satisfaction, he hurried impatiently back to
+his woodland pasture. It had seemed empty of living creatures when he
+entered it; soon it had revealed itself as a whole teeming world. The
+mere green carpet of the woods was one vast birthplace and nursery,
+concert hall, playground, battlefield, slaughter-pen, cemetery.
+
+"But my ignorance!" he complained. "I have good strong eyes, but all
+these years they have been required to look at dead maps, dead books,
+dead pencils and figures, dead everything: not once in all that time
+have they been trained upon the study of a living object."
+
+His ears were as ignorant as his eyes: he had not been educated to hear
+and to know what he heard. Innumerable strange sounds high and low beat
+incessantly on them--wave upon wave of louder and fainter melodies,
+the summer music of the intent and earnest earth. And everywhere what
+fragrances! The tonic woody smells! Each deep breath he drew laved
+his lungs with sun-clean, leaf-sweet atmosphere. Hour after hour of
+this until his whole body and being--sight, smell, hearing, mind and
+spirit--became steeped in the forest joyousness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now it was alone in the June woods that long bright afternoon that
+Webster took final account of the last wonderful things the geologist
+had told them that memorable morning. He pondered those sayings as best
+he could, made out of them what he could:
+
+"_I am not afraid to trust you, the young, with big ideas which will
+lift your minds as on strong wings and carry them swiftly and far
+through time and space. If you are taught to look for great things
+early in life, you will early learn how to find great things; and the
+things you love to find will be the things you will desire and try to
+do. I wish not to give you a single trivial, mean weak thought._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_The Kentucky warbler for over a hundred years has worn the name of
+the State and has carried it all over the world--leading the students
+of bird life to form some image of a far country and to fix their
+thoughts at least for some brief moment on this same beautiful spot
+of the world's surface. As long as he remains in the forests of the
+earth, he will keep the name of Kentucky alive though all else it once
+meant shall have perished and been forgotten. He is thus, as nearly as
+anything in Nature can be, its winged worldwide emblem, ever young as
+each spring is young, as the green of the woods is young._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Study the warbler while you may: how long he will inhabit the
+Kentucky forest no one can tell. As civilisation advances upon the
+forest, the wild species retreat; when the forest falls, the wild
+species are gone. Every human generation during these centuries has a
+last look at many things in Nature. No one will ever see them again:
+Nature can never find what she has once lost: if it is gone, it is
+gone forever. What Wilson records he saw of bird life in Kentucky a
+hundred years ago reads to us now as fables of the marvellous, of the
+incredible. Were he the sole witness, some of us might think him to be
+a lying witness. Let me tell you that I in my boyhood--half a century
+later than Wilson's visit to Kentucky--beheld things that you will
+hardly believe. The vast oak forest of Kentucky was what attracted
+the passenger pigeon. In the autumn when acorns were ripe but not
+yet fallen, the pigeons filled the trees at times and places, eating
+them from the cups. Walking quietly some sunny afternoon through the
+bluegrass pastures, you might approach an oak and see nothing but the
+tree itself, thick boughs with the afternoon sunlight sparkling on the
+leaves along one side. As you drew nearer, all at once, as if some
+violent explosion had taken place within the tree, a blue smoke-like
+cloud burst out all around the treetop--the simultaneous explosive
+flight of the frightened pigeons. Or all night long there might be
+wind and rain and the swishing of boughs and the tapping of loosened
+leaves against the window panes; and when you stepped out of doors
+next morning, it had suddenly become clear and cold. Walking out into
+the open and looking up at the clear sky you might see this: an arch
+of pigeons breast by breast, wing-tip to wing-tip, high up in the air
+as the wild geese fly, slowly moving southward. You could not see the
+end of the arch on one horizon or the other: the whole firmament was
+spanned by that mighty arch of pigeons flying south from the sudden
+cold. Not all the forces in Nature can ever restore that morning sunlit
+arch of pigeons flying south. The distant time may come, or a nearer,
+when the Kentucky warbler will have vanished like the wild pigeon:
+then any story of him will be as one of the ancient fables of bird
+life._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_The rocks of the earth are the one flooring on which every thing
+develops its story, then either disappears upon the stillness of the
+earth's atmosphere or sinks toward the silence of its rocks. Of the
+myriad forms of life on the earth the bird has always been the one
+thing nearest to what we call the higher life of the human species._
+
+"_It is the form and flight of the bird alone that has given man at
+last the mastery of the atmosphere. Without the bird as a living model
+we have not the slightest reason to believe that he could have ever
+learned the mechanism of flight. Now it is the flight of the bird,
+studied under the American sky, that has given the_ nations the war
+engine that will perhaps rule the destiny of the human race henceforth.
+_The form of the bird will fly before our autumn-brown American armies
+as they cross the sea--leading them as the symbol of their victory.
+When they lie along the trenches of France as thick as fallen brown
+autumn leaves in woodland hollows, it will be the flight of bird-like
+emblems of destruction that will guide them like hurricane-rushing
+leaves as they sweep toward their evil enemy._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_Through all ages the flight of the bird alone has been the
+interpreter of the human spirit. The living, standing on the earth and
+seeing the souls of their dead pass beyond their knowledge, have fixed
+upon the bird as the symbol of their faith. When you are old enough,
+if not already, to know your Shakespeare, you will find in one line of
+one of his plays the whole vast human farewell of the living to the
+dead: they are the words of Horatio to Hamlet, his dying prince: 'the
+flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.'_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"_As far as we geologists know, this is the morning of the planet. Not
+its dawn but somewhere near its sunrise. The bird music we hear in
+these human ages are morning songs. Back of that morning stretches the
+earth's long dawn; and the rocks tell us that thrushes were singing
+in the green forests of the earth millions of years before man had
+been moulded of the dust and had awakened and begun to listen to them.
+Thus bird music which seems to us so fresh is the oldest music of the
+earth--millions of years older than man's. And yet all this is still
+but a morning song. The earth is young, the birds are young, man is
+young--all young together at the morning of the earth's geologic day.
+What the evening will be we do not know. It is possible that the birds
+will be singing their evening song to the earth and man already have
+vanished millions of years before._"
+
+"_Many questions vex us: all others lead to one: when man vanishes,
+does he pass into the stillness of the earth's atmosphere and sink
+toward the stillness of its rocks like every other species? He answers
+with his faith: that his spirit is here he knows not why, but takes
+flight from it he knows not how or whither. Only, faith discloses to
+him one picture: the snowy pinion folded and at rest in the Final
+Places._"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That long sunny afternoon in the June woods! The shadows of the trees
+slowly lengthened eastward. The sun sank below the forest boughs and
+shot its long lances against the tree trunks. It made a straight path
+of gold, deeper gold, across the yellow grain. The sounds of life died
+away, the atmosphere grew sweeter with the odours of leaves and grasses
+and blossoms.
+
+Webster recrossed the woods as he had entered it, waded through the
+nightshade and climbed the fence under the dark tree.
+
+It was twilight when he entered the City.
+
+As he passed her yard, Jenny bounded across to him joyous, innocent,
+tender, in a white frock with fresh blue ribbons in her brown hair.
+
+"Did you find him?" she asked, her happiness not depending on his
+answer.
+
+"It was not the right place. Tomorrow I am going out further into the
+country to a better place."
+
+"The humming-bird has been here," Jenny announced with an air of saying
+that she had been more successful as a naturalist.
+
+He made no reply: as the veteran observer of a day, he had somewhat
+outgrown the trumpet-vine arbour and the ruby-throat.
+
+He lingered close to the fence. Jenny lingered. He moved off,
+disappointed but devoid of speech.
+
+"Come back!" Jenny whispered, with reproach and vexation.
+
+It was the first invitation. It was the first acceptance of an
+invitation. There would have been a second acceptance but the
+invitation was not there to accept.
+
+When Webster turned in at his home gate, everything was just as he
+had foreseen: his father sat on one side of the porch, smoking the
+one daily cigar; his mother faced him from the opposite side, slowly
+rocking. Elinor crouched on the top step between them: he would have to
+walk around her or over her.
+
+His father laughed heartily as he sauntered up.
+
+"Well, my son, where is your game bag? What have you brought us for
+breakfast?"
+
+Webster looked crestfallen: he returned empty-handed but not
+empty-minded: he had had a great rich day; they thought it an idle
+wasted one.
+
+"Some of the boys have been here for you," said his mother. "They left
+word you must be certain to meet them, in the morning for the game.
+Freshen yourself up and I'll give you your supper."
+
+Elinor said nothing--a bad sign with her. She sat with her sharp little
+chin resting on her palms and with her eyes on him with calculating
+secrecy. He stepped around her.
+
+His room had never seemed so cramped after those hours in the woods
+under the open sky. The whole cottage seemed so unnatural, everything
+in the City so unnatural, after that day in the forest.
+
+At supper he had not much to say; his mother talked to him:
+
+"I put my berries away to eat with you for company." They ate their
+berries together.
+
+He felt tired and said he would go to bed. His room was darkened when
+he returned to it; he felt sure he had left his lamp burning; someone
+had been in it. He lighted his lamp again.
+
+As he started toward his window to close the shutters, his eye caught
+sight of an object hanging from the window sash. A paper was pinned
+around it. The handwriting was Elinor's. It was a bluejay, brought
+down by a lucky stone from some cottager's hand. Webster read Elinor's
+message for him:
+
+    "Your favourite Kentucky Warbler,
+
+           From your old friend,
+                   Thomas Jefferson."
+
+He sat on the side of his bed. The sights and sounds and fragrances of
+the pasture were all through him; the sunlight warmed his blood still,
+the young blood of perfect health.
+
+He turned in for the night and sleep drew him away at once from
+reality. And some time during the night he awoke out of his sleep to
+the reality of a great dream.
+
+[Illustration: chapter III--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter IV--title decoration]
+
+
+IV
+
+THE BIRD
+
+
+It was in the depths of a wonderful forest, green with summer and hoary
+with age. He was sitting on the ground in a small open space. No path
+led to this or away from it, but all around him grew grasses and plants
+which would be natural coverts for wild creatures. No human tread had
+ever crushed those plants.
+
+The soft vivid light resting on the woods was not morning-light nor
+evening-light: it was clear light without the hours. Yet the time must
+have been near noonday; for as Webster looked straight up toward the
+unseen sky, barred from his eyes by the forest roof of leaves, slender
+beams of sunlight filtered perpendicularly down, growing mistier as
+they descended until they could be traced no longer even as luminous
+vapour; no palest radiance from them reached the grass.
+
+He could not see far in any direction. At the edge of the open
+space where he sat, fallen rotten trees lay amid the standing live
+ones--parents, grandparents, great-grandparents of the rising forest,
+passing back into the soil of the planet toward the rocks.
+
+Strange as was the spot, stranger was Webster to himself and did
+not know what had changed him. It seemed that for the first time
+in his life his eyes were fully opened; never had he seen with such
+vision; and his feeling was so deep, so intense. The whole scene was
+enchantment. It was more than reality. _He_ was more than reality.
+The singing of birds far away--it was so crystal sweet, yet he could
+see none. A few yards from him a rivulet made its way from somewhere
+to somewhere. He could trace its course by the growth of plants which
+crowded its banks and covered it with their leaves.
+
+Expectancy weighed heavily on him. He was there for a purpose but could
+not say what the purpose was.
+
+All at once as his eyes were fixed on the low, green thicket opposite
+him, he saw that it was shaken; something was on its way to him. He
+watched the top of the thicket being parted to the right and to the
+left. With a great leaping of his heart he waited, motionless where
+he sat on the grass. What creature could be coming? Then he saw just
+within the edge of the thicket a curious piece of head-gear--he had no
+knowledge of any such hat. Then he saw a gun barrel. Then the hand and
+forearm of a man was thrust forward and it pushed the underbrush aside;
+and then there stepped forth into the open the figure of a hunter,
+lean, vigorous, tall, athletic. The hunter stepped out with a bold
+stride or two and stopped and glanced eagerly around with an air of
+one in a search; he discovered Webster and with a look of relief stood
+still and smiled.
+
+There could be no mistake. Webster held imprinted on memory from a
+picture those features, those all-seeing eyes; it was Wilson--weaver
+lad of Paisley, wandering peddler youth of the grey Scotch mountains,
+violinist, flutist, the poet who had burned his poem standing in the
+public cross, the exile, the school teacher for whom the boy caught the
+mouse, the failure who sent the drawing to Thomas Jefferson, the bold
+figure in the skiff drifting down the Ohio--the naturalist plunging
+into the Kentucky wilderness and walking to Lexington and shivering in
+White's garret--the great American ornithologist, the immortal man.
+
+There he stood: how could it be? It was reality yet more than reality.
+
+The hunter walked straight toward him with the light of recognition in
+his eyes. He came and stood before Webster and looked down at him with
+a smile:
+
+"Have you found him, Webster?"
+
+Webster strangely heard his own voice:
+
+"I have not found him."
+
+"You have looked long?"
+
+"I have looked everywhere and I cannot find him."
+
+The hunter sat down and laid on the grass beside him his fowling piece,
+his game bag holding new species of birds, and his portfolio of fresh
+drawings. Then he turned upon Webster a searching look as if to draw
+the inmost truth out of him and asked:
+
+"Why do you look for the Kentucky Warbler?"
+
+Webster hesitated long:
+
+"I do not know," he faltered.
+
+"Something in you makes you seek him, but you do not know what that
+something is?"
+
+"No, I do not know what it is: I know I wish to find him."
+
+"Not him alone but many other things?"
+
+"Yes, many other things."
+
+"The whole wild life of the forest?"
+
+"Yes, all the wild things in the forest--and the wild forest itself."
+
+"You wish to know about these things--you wish to know them?"
+
+"I wish to know them."
+
+The hunter searched Webster's countenance more keenly, more severely:
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+There was silence. The forest was becoming more wonderful. The singing
+of the unseen birds more silvery sweet. It was beyond all reality.
+Webster answered:
+
+"I am sure."
+
+The hunter hurled questions now with no pity:
+
+"Would you be afraid to stay here all night alone?"
+
+"I would not."
+
+"If, during the night, a storm should pass over the forest with thunder
+deafening you and lightning flashing close to your eyes and trees
+falling everywhere, you would fear for your life and that would be
+natural and wise; but would you come again?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"If it were winter and the forest were bowed deep with ice and snow
+and you were alone in it, having lost your way, would you cry enough?
+Would you hunt for a fireside and never return?"
+
+"I would not."
+
+"You can stand cold and hunger and danger and fatigue; can you be
+patient and can you be persevering?"
+
+"I can."
+
+"Look long and not find what you look for and still not give up?"
+
+"I can."
+
+There was silence for a little while: the mood of the hunter seemed to
+soften:
+
+"Do you know where you are, Webster?"
+
+"I do not know where I am."
+
+"You did not know then, that this is the wilderness of your
+forefathers--the Kentucky pioneers. You have wandered back to it."
+
+"I did not know."
+
+"Have you read their great story?"
+
+"Not much of it."
+
+"Are you beginning to realise what it means to be sprung from such men
+and women?"
+
+"I cannot say."
+
+"But you want to do great things?"
+
+"If I loved them."
+
+The hunter stood up and gathered his belongings together. His questions
+had become more kind as though he were satisfied. He struck Webster on
+his shoulder.
+
+"_Come_," he said, as with high trust, "_I will show you the Kentucky
+warbler._"
+
+He looked around and his eyes fell upon the forest brook. He walked
+over to it, to discover in what direction it ran and beckoned.
+
+"We'll follow this stream up: the spring may not be far away." He
+glanced at the tree-tops: "It is nearly noon: the bird will come to the
+spring to drink and to bathe."
+
+Webster followed the hunter as he threaded his way through the forest
+toward the source of the brook.
+
+Not many yards off his guide turned:
+
+"There is the spring," he said, pointing to a green bank out of which
+bubbled the cool current.
+
+"Let us sit here. Make no movement and make no noise."
+
+How tense the stillness! They waited and listened. Finally the hunter
+spoke in an undertone:
+
+"Did you hear that?"
+
+Away off in the forest Webster heard the song of a bird. Presently
+it came nearer. Now it was nearer still. It sounded at last within
+the thicket just above the spring, clear, sweet, bold, emphatic notes
+distinctly repeated at short intervals. And then--
+
+_There he was--the Kentucky Warbler!_
+
+Webster could see every mark of identification. The bird had come
+out of the dense growth and showed himself on the bough of a sapling
+about twenty feet from the earth, in his grace and shapeliness and
+manly character. With a swift, gliding flight downward he lighted on
+a sweeping limb of a tree still nearer, within a few inches of the
+ground. Then he dropped to the ground and moved about, turning over
+dead leaves. He was only several yards away and Webster could plainly
+trace the yellow line over his eye, the blackish crown and black sides
+of the throat, the underparts all of solid yellowish gold, the upper
+parts of olive green. An instant later the bird was on the wing again,
+hither, thither, up and down, continually in motion. No white in the
+wings, none in the tail feathers. Once he stopped and poured out his
+loud, musical song--unlike any other warbler's. A moment later he was
+on the ground again, with a manner of self-possession, dignity--as on
+his namesake soil, Kentucky.
+
+Webster had sat bent over toward him, forgetful of everything else. At
+last drawing a deep breath, he looked around gratefully, remembering
+his guide.
+
+No one was near him. Webster saw the hunter on the edge of the thicket
+yards away; he stood looking back, his figure dim, fading. Webster,
+forgetful of the bird, cried out with quick pain:
+
+"Are you going away? Am I never to see you again?"
+
+The voice that reached him seemed scarcely a voice; it was more like an
+echo, close to his ear, of a voice lost forever:
+
+"_If you ever wish to see me, enter the forest of your own heart._"
+
+[Illustration: chapter IV--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: chapter V--title decoration]
+
+
+V
+
+THE ROAD
+
+
+Webster sprang to his feet in the depths of the strange summer-dark
+forest: that is to say, he awoke with a violent start and found himself
+sitting on his bed with his feet hanging over one side.
+
+It was late to be getting up. The sun already soared above the roof of
+the cottage opposite his window and the light slanted in full blaze
+against his shutters. Shafts penetrated some weather-loosened slats and
+fell on his head and shoulders and on the wall behind him. Breakfast
+must be nearly ready. Fresh cooking odours--coffee odour, meat odour,
+bread odour--filled the little bathroom-bedroom. Feet were hurrying,
+scurrying, in the kitchen. Quieter footsteps approached his door along
+the narrow hall outside and there came a tap:
+
+"Breakfast, Webster!"
+
+It was his mother's voice, indulgent, peaceful, sweet. He suddenly
+thought that never before had he fully realised how sweet it was, had
+always been, notwithstanding he disappointed her.
+
+He got up and went across to open his shutters and had taken hold of
+the catch, when he was arrested in his movement. At night he tilted
+the shutters, so that the morning sun might not enter crevices and
+shine in his face and awaken him. Now looking down through the slats,
+he discovered something going on in the yard beneath his window.
+Elinor had come tipping around the corner of the cottage. She held one
+dark little witch-like finger unconsciously pressed against her tense
+lips. Her dark eyes were brimming with a secret, mischievous purpose.
+A ribbon which looked like a huge, crumpled purple morning-glory was
+knotted into the peak of her ravenish hair. Her fresh little gown,
+too, suggested the colours of the purple morning-glory and her whole
+presence, with a freshness as of dew-drops formed amid moonbeams at
+midnight, somehow symbolised that flower which surprises us at dawn as
+having matured its unfolding in the dark: half sinister, half innocent.
+
+With cautious, delicate steps, which could not possibly have made any
+noise in the grass, she approached the window and stopped and lifted
+the notched pole which was used to hold up the clothes-line in the
+back yard. Setting the pole on end and planting herself beside it, she
+pushed it with all her slight but concentrated strength against the
+window shutters. It struck violently and fell over to the grass in one
+direction as Elinor, with the silence of a light wind, fled in the
+other.
+
+Webster stood looking down at it all: he understood now: that was the
+crashing sound which had awakened him.
+
+It had been Elinor who had ended his dream.
+
+But his dream was not ended. It would never end. It was in him to stay
+and it was doing its work. The feeling which had surprised him as to
+the sweetness of his mother's voice but marked the deeper awakening
+that had taken place in his sleep, an unfolding, his natural growth. It
+was this growth that now animated him as he smiled at Elinor's flying
+figure. Her prank had not irritated him: no intrigue of hers would
+ever annoy him again. Instead, the idea struck him that Elinor must
+be thinking of him a great deal, if so much of her life--incessantly
+active as it was with the other children of the cottages--were
+devoted to plans to worry him. She must often have him in mind quite
+to herself, he reflected; and this fresh picture of Elinor's secret
+brooding about him somehow for the first time touched him tenderly and
+finely.
+
+He turned back from the window shutters without opening them and sat
+on the edge of his bed. He could not shake off his dream. How could it
+possibly be true that there was no such forest as he had wandered into
+in his dream--that Kentucky wilderness of the old heroic days? Could
+anything destroy in him the certainty that with wildly beating heart he
+had seen the living colours and heard the actual notes and watched the
+characteristic movements of the warbler? Then, though these things were
+not real, still they were true and would remain true always.
+
+Thus, often and to many of us, between closing the curtains of the
+eyes upon the outer world at night and drawing them wide in the
+morning, within that closed theatre a stage has been erected and we
+have stepped forth and spoken some solitary part or played a role in a
+drama that leaves us changed for the rest of our days. Yesterday an old
+self, today a new self. We have been shifted completely away from our
+last foot-prints and our steps move off in another direction, taking a
+truer course.
+
+Beyond all else a high, solemn sense subdued Webster with the thought,
+that in his sleep he had come near as to unearthly things. The
+long-dead hunter, who had appeared to him, spoke as though he lived
+elsewhere than on the earth and lived more nobly; his accents, the
+majesty of his countenance, were moulded as by higher wisdom and
+goodness. Webster was overwhelmed with the feeling that he had been
+brought near the mystery of life and death and as from an immortal
+spirit had received his consecration to the forest.
+
+... He got down on his knees at his bedside, after a while, though
+little used to prayer....
+
+When he walked into the breakfast-room with a fresh step and freshened
+countenance, probably all were not slow to notice the change. Families
+whose lives run along the groove of familiar routine quickly observe
+the slightest departure from the customary, whether in voice or
+behaviour, of any member. There was response soon after his entrance
+to something in him obviously unusual.
+
+"My son," said his father, who had laid down his paper to help him to
+the slice which had been put aside, "the woods must agree with you";
+and he even scraped the dish for a little extra gravy. Ordinarily, when
+deeply interested in his paper or occasionally when conscious of some
+disappointment as to his son, he forgot, or was indifferent about, the
+gravy.
+
+"They do agree with me!" Webster replied, laughing and in fresh tones.
+He held out his plate hungrily for his slice and he waited for all the
+gravy that might be coming to him.
+
+"One of the boys has already been here this morning," said his mother,
+handing him his cup. "They want you to be sure to meet them this
+afternoon, not to fail. You must have been dead asleep, for I called
+you at three different times."
+
+"Did you knock three times?"
+
+Webster asked his question with a sinking of the heart; what if his
+mother's first knock had awakened him? He might never have finished his
+dream, might never have dreamed at all. How different the morning might
+have been, how different the world--if his mother had awakened him
+before his dream!
+
+He received his cup from her and smiled at her:
+
+"I was dreaming," he said, and he smiled also at the safety of his
+vision.
+
+Elinor, sitting opposite him, had said nothing. She had finished her
+breakfast before he had come in and plainly lingered till he should
+enter. Since his entrance she had sat restless in her chair, toying
+with her fork or her napkin, and humming significantly to herself. She
+had this habit. "You must not sing at the table, Elinor," her mother
+had once said. "I am _not_ singing," Elinor had replied, "I am humming
+to myself, and _no_ one is supposed to listen." Meantime this morning,
+her quickly shifting eyes would sweep his face questioningly; she must
+have been waiting for some sign as to what had been the effect of the
+Thomas Jefferson bluejay the night before and of the repeated attack on
+his window shutters.
+
+Often when out of humour with her he had declined to notice her at
+table; now once, when he caught her searching glance, he smiled.
+Dubiously, half with disbelief and half with amazement, she looked
+steadily back at him for an instant; then she slipped confusedly from
+her seat and was gone. Webster laughed within himself: "what will she
+be up to next?" he thought.
+
+It was quiet now at the table: his father had gone back to his paper,
+his mother was eating the last of her breakfast fruit, and perhaps,
+thinking that out in the country things were getting ripe. After an
+interval Webster broke the silence: he was white with emotion.
+
+"Father," he said quietly, "I have decided what I'd like to do."
+
+Webster's father dropped his paper: Webster's mother's eyes were on
+him. The years had waited for this moment, the future depended upon it.
+
+"If you and mother do not need me for anything else just yet, I'd
+like to work my way through the University. But if there's something
+different you'd rather I'd do, or if you both want me in any other way,
+I am here."
+
+"My son," exclaimed his father, rudely with the back of his hand
+brushing away a tear that rolled down his cheek--a tear perhaps started
+by something in his son's words that brought back his own hard boyhood,
+"your father is here to work for you as long as he is alive and able.
+Your mother and I are glad--!" but he, got no further: his eyes had
+filled and his voice choked him.
+
+Webster's mother stood beside him, her hand on his head, her
+handkerchief pressed to her eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he had made his preparations for the glad day's adventure and
+stepped out on the front porch, his father had gone to the bank, his
+mother was in the kitchen. Elinor was sitting on the top step. Her
+back was turned. Her sharp little elbows rested on her knees and her
+face was propped in her palms. Her figure again suggested a crumpled,
+purple morning-glory--fragile, not threatened by any human violence but
+imperilled by nature.
+
+She did not look around as he stepped out or move as he passed down.
+He felt a new wish to say something pleasant but could not quite so
+conquer himself. As he laid his hand on the yard gate, he was stopped
+by these words, reaching his ears from the porch:
+
+"Take me with you!"
+
+He could not believe his ears. Could this be Elinor, his tease, his
+torment? This wounded appeal, timid pleading--could it proceed from
+Elinor? He was thrown off his balance and too surprised to act. The
+words were repeated more beseechingly, wistfully:
+
+"Take me with you, will you, Webster?"
+
+For now that she had given herself away to him, he might as well see
+everything: that at last she was openly begging that she be admitted to
+a share in his plans and pleasures, that he no longer disdain to play
+with her.
+
+He spoke with rough embarrassment over his shoulder:
+
+"You can't go today. Nobody can go today. I'm going miles out into the
+country to the woods."
+
+"But some day will you take me over into the woods yonder?"
+
+After a while he turned toward her:
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"Thank you very much. Thank you very much, indeed, Webster!"
+
+The tide of feeling began to rush toward her:
+
+"There are some wild violets over there, Elinor, wild blue violets and
+wild white violets--thick beds of them in the shade."
+
+"Oh, how lovely!" She clasped her hands and knotted them tensely under
+her chin and kept her eyes fixed more hopefully on him.
+
+"There is a flock of the funniest little fairies dancing under one of
+the big forest trees, each carrying the queerest little green parasol."
+
+"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!"
+
+"And I found one little cedar tree. If they'll let us, I'll dig it up
+and bring it home and plant it in the front yard. It will be your own
+cedar tree, Elinor."
+
+"Oh, Webster! Could anything be more lovely of you?"
+
+"You and I and Jenny will go some day soon--"
+
+"No, no, no!" cried Elinor, stamping her feet fiercely and wringing her
+hands. "I don't want Jenny to go! I won't have Jenny! Just you and I!
+Not Jenny! Just you and I!"
+
+"Then just you and I," he said, smiling at her and moving away.
+
+"_Wait!_"
+
+She darted down the steps and ran to him and drew his face over and
+laid her cheek against his cheek, clinging to him.
+
+He struggled to get away, laughing with his new happiness: tears welled
+out of her eyes with hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Webster had taken to the turnpike.
+
+The morning was cool, the blue of the sky vast, tender, noble. Rain
+during the night had left the atmosphere fresh and clear and the pike
+dustless. Little knobs of the bluish limestone jutted out. The greyish
+grass and weeds on each side had been washed till they looked green
+again.
+
+The pike climbed a hill and from this hilltop he turned and looked
+back. He could see the packed outskirts of the city and away over in
+the heart of it church spires rising here and there. The heart of it
+had once been the green valley through which a stream of the wilderness
+ran: there Wilson had seen the water mills and the gallows for hanging
+Kentuckians and the thousand hitched horses and folks sitting on the
+public square selling cakes of maple sugar and split squirrels.
+
+Soon he passed the pasture where he had spent yesterday. That had done
+well enough as a beginning: today he would go further. He remembered
+many things he had seen in the park-like bluegrass woods. Sweet to his
+ear sounded the call of bobwhite from the yellow grain. He wondered
+whether the ailing young crows in the tree-tops had at last taken all
+their medicine. The curious bird which had watched him out of a hole in
+the tree-trunk--the chap with the black band across his chest and the
+speckled jacket and the red cap on the back of his head, was he still
+on the lookout? What had become of the gorgeous little velvet coach
+that had travelled across the back of his hand on its unknown road?
+And that mystery of the high leaves--that wandering disembodied voice:
+_Se-u-re? Se-u-u._ Did it still haunt the waving boughs?
+
+But miles on ahead in the country, undergrowth, shade, secrecy for wild
+creatures--his heart leaped forward to these and his feet hastened.
+
+This day with both eyes open, not shut in sleep, he might find the
+warbler.
+
+Whole-heartedly, with a boy's eagerness, Webster suddenly took off his
+hat and ran down the middle of the gleaming white turnpike toward the
+green forest--toward all, whether much or little, that he was ever to
+be.
+
+[Illustration: chapter V--end decoration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: logo--Country Life Press]
+
+                        THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
+                           GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KENTUCKY WARBLER***
+
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