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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:05:41 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:05:41 -0700 |
| commit | a8cba0dc5a7748e273d49c0f33dd0f2effa6b971 (patch) | |
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See + <a href="https://archive.org/details/kentuckywarb00allerich"> + https://archive.org/details/kentuckywarb00allerich</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </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"> + "<span class="smcap">There He was—The Kentucky Warbler!</span>"</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—repeated in their sayings and<br /> +celebrated in their village songs.</i></p> + +<p class="i10 font09 pmb2"><span class="smcap">—Alexander Wilson</span></p> +</div> + +<p class="center font10 pmb3">WITH A<br /> +FRONTISPIECE IN COLOUR</p> + + +<p class="center font12 pmb3">GARDEN CITY NEW YORK<br /> +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & 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 & 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—should anybody +have tried to find them—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—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—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—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—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—"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—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 + <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—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—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—nobody knew +just what brought forth the question—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—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 + <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—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 + <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—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—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—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—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 + <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +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:</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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—<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—some + <span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> +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.</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—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—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—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."</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—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 + <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—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—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—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."</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—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.</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—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—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—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—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—<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—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—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—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.</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—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—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—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.</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—to its +own wonderment and liberation, to +its amazement and joy.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Thus the Geologist felt a graver responsibility +resting on him—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!—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—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—ten days, mind you!—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—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—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—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.</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—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—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—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—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.</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—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—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.</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—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 + <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—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.</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—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—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.</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—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—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—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>—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—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—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 + <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—?"</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—greatly to his dejection. +A bank officer with a solitary +son, now graduated from high school, +going after bird-nests—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—not to +escape the consequences of his song—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—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—he +had no hair to raise—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—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.</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—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—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 + <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—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—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.</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—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—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—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—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—u—re?</i></p> + +<p>That was the first half of the song—a +question. A few moments later the +other half followed, perhaps from another +tree—the answer:</p> + +<p><i>Se—u—u.</i></p> + +<p>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 + <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—u—re? Se—u—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—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 + <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—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—sight, smell, hearing, +mind and spirit—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—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—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 + <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—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—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.</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—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—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—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—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—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.</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—and +the wild forest itself."</p> + +<p>"You wish to know about these +things—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—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—</p> + +<p><i>There he was—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—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.</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—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:</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—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 + <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—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 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.</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—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—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.</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—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—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—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—"</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—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: +<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—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—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> </p> +<p> </p> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 46905 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/46905-h/images/frontcover.jpg b/46905-h/images/frontcover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..eb45cfd --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/frontcover.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_004.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_004.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..72e741b --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_004.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_005.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_005.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d69a9e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_005.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_013.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_013.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b1e1c66 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_013.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_013__initial.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_013__initial.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b240ec --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_013__initial.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_054.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_054.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a52e86 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_054.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_055.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_055.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b0f313b --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_055.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_055__initial.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_055__initial.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..820dd6a --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_055__initial.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_109.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_109.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a52e86 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_109.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_110.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_110.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc5cd60 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_110.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_110__initial.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_110__initial.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..56d2ccb --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_110__initial.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_170.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_170.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a52e86 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_170.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_171.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_171.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc5cd60 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_171.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_171__initial.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_171__initial.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..df59e84 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_171__initial.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_184.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_184.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a52e86 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_184.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_185.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_185.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc5cd60 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_185.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_185__initial.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_185__initial.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b240ec --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_185__initial.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_205.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_205.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a52e86 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_205.jpg diff --git a/46905-h/images/illo_206.jpg b/46905-h/images/illo_206.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9f45020 --- /dev/null +++ b/46905-h/images/illo_206.jpg |
