poor me as only an instrument in the hands of the kind Providence, who seeth even the sparrow fall.
“Perhaps even the sparrows are thankful, though music is not much in their line. These gentry are not particular what they eat, and it is surprising how soon they make away with a soaked dog’s biscuit, if one be left in their way, or a pound or two of the boiled liver that Hurricane Bob is so very fond of. The old nests of these birds are still up in the wistaria-trees that cover the front, or one of the fronts, of the cottage. Those nests are crowded with the birds at night. They have used them now for two seasons, simply re-lining them. Memo: to pull them all down as soon as the days get warmer; laziness should not be encouraged even in sparrows.
“December 21. – The weather is still hard and calm. Cock-robin had a sad story to tell me this morning. He looked all wet and draggled and wretched, quite a little mop of a robin.
“‘Whatever have you been doing, Cockie?’ I asked. ‘Have you had an accident?’
“‘Accident, indeed!’ replied Cockie. ‘No, it was no accident, but a daring premeditated attempt at parricide.’
“‘Parricide,’ I cried, ‘you don’t mean to say that your son – ’
“‘O! but I do though,’ interrupted Cockie. ‘You know, sir, that he follows me to the door, and attempts to take the bit out of my mouth, and you’ve seen me fling him a piece of meat.’
“‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and then try to chase him away, and the young rascal runs backwards, and sings defiance in your face.’
“‘True, sir; and to-day, when I tried to reason with him, he flew right at me – at his father, sir – and toppled me heels over head into the water-vat, and I’m sure I’ve caught a frightful cold already.’
“‘There’s a fire in my study, Cockie, if you care to go in.’
“‘No, thank you, sir, I’ll sit in the sun.’
“December 22. – The weather gets colder and colder. I interviewed a speckle-breasted thrush to-day, who had come to the garden-room-door to be fed.
“‘On winter nights,’ I asked, ‘do you not suffer very much from the cold?’
“The bird looked at me for a moment with one big bright eye and said:
“‘No, not as a rule. You see we retire early, always seeking shelter at sunset, and generally going to the self-same spot night after night, for weeks or months; for all the winter through we can do with quite a deal of sleep. Yes, as you say, we make up for it in spring and early summer, when we sing all the livelong day and seldom have more than four hours of rest. We rest in winter under the shelter of a hedge or tree, or eave, away from the prevailing wind.
“‘In winter we are more warmly feathered all over, though our garments are less gay than in summer, when we have to appear on the stage, as it were. Even our heads are well clad, and when perched on a bough our toes are covered, and we hardly feel the cold a bit.
“‘But at times in winter it is bad enough, for when the snow covers the frozen ground we get but little warmth-giving food. This alone prevents us from sleeping soundly; and sometimes the wind gets high and rages through the trees, and we get blown right off our perches. Then, as it is all dark, we are glad to huddle in anywhere, and many of us get snowed up, and never see the glad sunshine any more.
“‘Wet is even worse than snow, and if there is wind as well as wet we are very numbed and wretched. Then the night seems so long, and we are so glad when day breaks at last, and the warm sunshine streams in through the bushes.’”
Our little village was so truly small and so unsophisticated, that with the exception of the clergyman and doctor it could boast of nothing at all in the shape of society, while the families in the country districts were mostly honest farmer-folk, who had seen but little of the outside world, and only heard of it by reading the weekly paper. Their talk was chiefly about growing crops and live stock, so that, interesting though this might be, neither my friend Frank nor myself had much temptation to leave home on winter evenings.
But we had plenty to talk about nevertheless, and I cannot help saying that it would be a blessing to themselves if the thousands of country families, situated as we were, would cultivate the art of instructive conversation and story-telling. Science gossip is infinitely to be preferred to fireside tattle about one’s neighbours, to say nothing of its being free from ill-nature, and elevating to the mind instead of depressing.
About a week before Christmas, my wife was busy one evening trimming an opera-cloak for Maggie May – would she ever wear it, I wonder – with some kind of grebe.
“Is it grebe?”
“Yes, it is the skin of a grebe of some kind,” was the reply; “but there are so many different kinds, in this country find America.”
“A kind of duck, isn’t it?”
“Or a kind of gull?”
“Betwixt and between, one might say. Grebes are nearly allied to the great Northern Diver, but their feet are not, like his, quite webbed. They frequent the seashore and rivers by the sea, and live on fish, frogs, and molluscs of any sort. Their nests are often built to float among the reeds, and to rise and fall with the tide.”
“When I get an opela-cloak,” said Ida, “I’ll have it tlimmed with elmine.”
“Why with ermine, Ida?”
“Because the Queen had elmine on, in the waxwork.”
“Yes; and the ermine is only a weasel after all, and all summer it wears a dress of red-brown fur, which speedily gets bleached to white, when the thermometer stands below zero.”
“No, Frank, I haven’t seen my weasel for some time. He is dozing in some snug corner, you may be sure; and really, Frank, I believe the subject of hibernation is but very imperfectly understood. I don’t want to go into the matter at present physiologically, except to say that it seems to be a provision of Nature for the protection of species; and that a variety of animals and creatures of all kinds that we little wot of, hibernate, more or less completely. We see sometimes, in the dead of winter, a beautiful butterfly – a red Admiral, perhaps – suddenly appear and dance about on a pane of glass. We wonder at it. It is not a butterfly’s ghost at all, but a real butterfly, who had gone to sleep in a snug corner of the room, and has now awakened probably only to die.
“I found an immense knot of garden worms, the other day, deep down in garden mould. They were sleeping away the cold season.
“But, talking about weasels, I’ll tell you a story, Ida.”
“From yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl doth to the moon complain,
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.”
“By what you tell me,” I said, “I can now guess where all my wild rabbits have gone.”
I was talking to a weasel. And indeed the weasel seemed talking to me, for he stood upon his hind-legs, on the balcony, staring in at me through the French window that opens from my study on to the long shady lawn. As I did not move, he had a good look at me, and I think he felt satisfied that I was not likely to harm him.
“Yes,”
