A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed.

"Then he was demented?"

"Yes; he was as mad as a March hare, and in a strait-jacket at that."

"That clears up one or two mysteries. But you might have made the revelation before."

"When are you going to start that hilarious institution which you and Hooker called a sanitarium?"

Just then, the summit of the mountain road had been gained, and the long perspective of the Napa Valley opened at the base of St. Helena, and melted away toward the south into the soft, dreamy atmosphere of an autumnal noonday.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

A country without grandmothers and old houses needs a great many balancing compensations. Everywhere one is confronted with staring new houses, which require an external ripening in the wind and sun for half a century. If the motherly wisdom of seventy-five years is lodged therein, it is something of recent importation. I have walked two miles to see an old lady, who not only bears this transplanting well, but is as fresh and winsome in thought as a girl of sixteen. If only there had been an old house, a stone fire-place – wide at the jambs – and a low, receding roof in the rear, with a bulging second story and oaken beams, nothing more would have been wanting.

When, therefore, it was whispered, one day, that there was an old house in the middle of a large lot on a hill, overlooking the Golden Gate, there was a strong and unaccountable desire to take possession of it immediately. But when the fact was stated that the house was ten years old, that there was moss upon the shingles, low ceilings within, and a low roof without, the destiny of that house was well nigh settled. The owner wanted money much more than old houses. In fact, a Californian who refuses to sell anything, except his wife, is only found after long intervals. The transfer of ownership was natural enough. It followed that one evening there was a dreamy consciousness that we were the owner of a small, rusty-looking cottage, set down in the middle of an acre lot, defined by dilapidated fences, and further ornamented by such stumps of trees as had been left after all the stray cattle of the neighborhood had browsed them at will. As incidents of the transfer, there was the Golden Gate, with the sun dropping into the ocean beyond; the purple hills; the sweep of the bay for fifteen miles, on which a white sail could be seen, here and there; and, later, the long rows of flickering street lamps, revealing the cleft avenues of the great city dipping toward the water on the opposite side of the bay.

Consider what an investment accompanies these muniments of title. It is not an acre lot and an old house merely, with several last year's birds' nests and a vagrant cat, but the ownership extends ninety-five millions of miles toward the zenith, and indefinitely toward the nadir. No one can, in miners' parlance, get an extension above or below. It is a square acre, bounded by heaven and hades.

If my neighbor builds an ugly house, why should I find fault with it, since it is the expression of his wants, and not of mine. If these are honestly expressed, he has compassed the main end of house-building. He may have produced something that nobody in the wide world will be suited with, or will ever want but himself. But if it is adapted to his wants, it is only in some remote and æsthetic way that his neighbors have anything to do with the matter. They may wish that he had not made it externally as ugly as original sin; that he had laid a heavy hand on the antics of architect and carpenter; that lightning would some day strike the "pilot-house," or some other excrescence which has been glued on to the top; and that a certain smart obtrusiveness were toned down a little to harmonize with a more correct taste. But one could not formulate these defects and send them to his neighbor without running a risk quite unwarranted by any good that might be effected.

Taking possession of an old house, its ugliness is to be redeemed, not rashly, but considerately, and in the spirit of gentleness. Its homeliness has been consecrated; its doors may have been the portals both of life and death. Possibly, some one has gone out whose memory of it in the ends of the earth will transform it into something of comeliness and beauty.

Investing an old house, the first process is to become thoroughly acquainted with it, and then, if it is to be enlarged, push it out from the center with such angles as will catch the sun, and will bring the best view within range from the windows. It will grow by expansions and accretions. You want a bed-room on the eastern side, because of the morning sun. By all means, put it there. The morning benediction which comes in at the window may temper one to better ways all the day.

No man will build a house to suit his inmost necessities, unless he proceeds independently of all modern rules of construction. Some of these are good enough, but they nearly all culminate in an ambitious externalism. The better class of dwellings erected seventy-five years ago contained broad staircases, spacious sleeping-rooms, and a living-room, where the whole family and the guests, withal, might gather at the fire-side. The house was an expression of hospitality. The host had room for friendships in his heart, and room at his hearthstone. The modern house, with its stiff angularities, narrow halls, and smart reception-rooms, expresses no idea of hospitality. It warns the stranger to deliver his message quickly, and be off. It is well adapted to small conventional hypocrisies, but you will never count the stars there by looking up the chimney.

One may search long to find the man who has not missed his aim in the matter of house-building. It is generally needful that two houses should be built as a sacrifice to sentiment, and then the third experiment may be reasonably successful. The owner will probably wander through the first two, seeking rest and finding none. His ideal dwelling is more remote than ever. There may be a wealth of gilt and stucco, and an excess of marble, which ought to be piled up in the cemetery for future use. But the house which receives one as into the very heaven – which is, from the beginning, invested with the ministries of rest, of hospitality, of peace, of that indefinable comfort which seems to converge all the goodness of the life that now is with the converging sunbeams – such a dwelling does not grow out of the first crude experiment. It will never be secured until one knows better what he really wants than an architect or carpenter can tell him.

"Did you bring the old house up to this ideal standard?" Just about as near as that pear tree, at the lower end of the garden, has been brought up to a perfect standard of fruiting. You perceive that where half of the top was cut away, and new scions inserted, the pears hung in groups and blushed in the autumnal sun. As you let one of them melt on your palate, turn to the other side of the tree, and note that, if ever a premium were offered for puckering, acrid fruit, these pears from the original stock ought to take it.

Now, if you graft your ideas on to another's, premising that his views were crude and primitive, the result will be somewhat mixed. We should say that the grafts put into that old house were tolerably satisfactory. But we counsel no friend to build over an old house, unless he owns a productive gold mine, and the bill of particulars at the end of his exploit is more interesting and gratifying to him than any modern novel.

There was, however, a shade of regret when it was announced that nothing more remained to be done. For three months there had been a series of gentle transitions, and an undercurrent of pleasurable excitement as a door appeared in a new place, a window opened here and there, stairways were cut, and old pieces pushed off and new took their places. It seemed as if these transitions ought to be always going on, and therefore the most natural thing in the world that the carpenters should always be cutting or hammering that house. They might grow old and another set take their places, but there would always be some room to enlarge, or some want growing out of the exigencies of a new day. Moreover, the first part taken in hand would in time decay or become antiquated, and why not associate builders and house together, since all the jars, wrenching of timbers, sawing and hammering had become musical, and seemed to be incorporated as the law of the house? Nothing but financial considerations prevented a contract for life with the builders, and the life-long luxury of changing an old house into a new one. There came a day at last of oppressive silence. Painters came down from their ladders; the carpenters packed up their tools and walked thoughtfully around, taking an honest view on all sides of a structure which had grown under their hands until, outwardly, there was not the slightest semblance of the old house which they took in hand some months before. There was a shade akin to sadness on the face of the master workman. Evidently the idea of ever leaving that house had overtaken him for the first time that day. He had grown with the house; or, at any rate, his children had been growing. Why should he not come back on the morrow, and plumb, hammer and saw; creeping up the ladder with every new day, and sliding down with every descending sun?

The loftiest house, and the most perfect, in the matter of architecture, I have ever seen, was that which a wood-chopper occupied with his family one winter in the forests of Santa Cruz County. It was the cavity of a redwood tree two hundred and forty feet in height. Fire had eaten away the trunk at the base, until a circular room had been formed, sixteen feet in diameter. At twenty feet or more from the ground was a knot-hole, which afforded egress for the smoke. With hammocks hung from pegs, and a few cooking utensils hung upon other pegs, that house lacked no essential thing. This woodman was in possession of a house which had been a thousand years in process of building. Perhaps on the very day it was finished he came along and entered it. How did all jack-knife and hand-saw architecture sink into insignificance in contrast with this house in the solitudes of the great forest! Moreover, the tenant fared like a prince; within thirty yards of his coniferous house a mountain stream went rushing past to the sea. In the swirls and eddies under the shelving rocks, if one could not land half a dozen trout within an hour, he deserved to go hungry as a penalty for his awkwardness. Now and then a deer came out into the openings, and, at no great distance, quail, rabbits and pigeons could be found. What did this man want more than Nature furnished him? He had a house with a "cupola" two hundred and forty feet high, and game at the cost of taking it.

It was a good omen, that the chimneys of the house on the hill had not been topped out more than a week, before two white doves alighted on them, glancing curiously down into the flues, and then toward the heavens. Nothing but the peace which they brought could have insured the serenity of that house against an untoward event which occurred a week afterward. Late one evening the expressman delivered a sack at the rear door, with a note from a friend in the city, stating that the writer, well knowing our liking for thoroughbred stock, had sent over one of the choicest game-chickens in San Francisco. The qualities of that bird were not overstated. Such a clean and delicately-shaped head! The long feathers on his neck shaded from black to green and gold. His spurs were as slender and sharp as lances; and his carriage was that of a prince, treading daintily the earth, as if it were not quite good enough for him. There was a world of poetry about that chicken, and he could also be made to serve some important uses. It is essential that every one dwelling on a hill, in the suburbs, should be notified of the dawn of a new day. Three Government fortifications in the bay let off as many heavy guns at daybreak; and, as the sound comes rolling in from seaward, the window casements rattle responsively. But these guns do not explode concurrently; frequently more than ten minutes intervene from the first report to the last one. There is ever a lingering uncertainty as to which is making a truthful report, or whether they are not all shooting wide of the mark. Then, there is a military school close by, which stirs up the youngsters with a reveille, a gong and a bell, at short intervals. With so many announcements, and none of them concurrent, there would still remain a painful uncertainty as to whether the day had dawned; but when that game bird lifted up his voice, and sounded his clarion notes high over the hill, the guns of Alcatraz and the roll of the drums over the way, there could be no doubt that the day was at the dawn.

For a week did this mettlesome bird lift up his voice above all the meaner roosters on the hill; but one morning there was an ominous silence about the precincts where he was quartered. The Alcatraz gun had been let off; but the more certain assurance of the new day had failed. Something had surely happened, for a neighbor was seen hurrying up the walk in the gray of the morning, red, puffy, and short of wind, at that unseasonable hour.

"Come with me, and take a look in my yard… There, is that your blasted game chicken?"

"Why, yes – no – he was sent over as a present from a friend."

Just then the whole mischief was apparent; a great Cochin rooster was sneaking off toward the hedge, bloody and blind; two Houdans lay on their backs, jerking their feet convulsively – in short, that hen-yard had been swept as with the besom of destruction.

"Do you call that a poetical or sentimental bird, such as a Christian man ought to worship?"

"No, not exactly."

Just then that game chicken arched his beautiful neck and sent his clear notes high over the hill and into the very heavens. We hinted, in a mollifying way, that he had escaped over a fence ten feet high, but that blood would tell.

"Yes, I think it has told this morning. Never mind the damages; but I think you had better cut his wings," said our neighbor, already placated.

That bird was given away before the next sunset. But O! friend; by the guns of Alcatraz, and the white doves that alighted on the chimney-tops, emblems of war and peace, send us no more game chickens, to disturb the peace of the hill, or to finish the work of destruction begun on that unlucky morning.

From the hill one may look out of the Golden Gate, as through the tube of a telescope, and see all the watery waste and eternal scene-shifting beyond. When the dull, undulating hummocks look like a drove of camels in the desert, you may be sure that the newly-married couple just embarking on the outward-bound steamer, on a bridal tour to Los Angeles or the Hawaiian Islands, will cease their caroling and chirping within an hour. Half an hour after sunset, if the atmosphere is clear, one may see the wide-off light of the Farallones; the nearer lights of Point Bonita and Alcatraz, almost in line, dwarfed to mere fire-flies now; but when the Gate has lost the glow of its burnished gold, these great sea-lamps, hung over this royal avenue, tell an honest home story for the battered ships low down on the horizon.

The little tugs which round under the quarters of the great wheat ships and rush them out to sea, know how to overcome the inertia of the great hulks. They tug spitefully, but the ship has to move, and you see the white sails already beginning to fall down from the yards, for the work where the blue water begins. It may be a grotesque association, but have you never seen a small woman, with a wonderful concentration of energy, tug her great lazy hulk of a husband out into the broad field of earnest endeavor in much the same way? Once there, his inertia overcome, the feminine tow-line cast off, he did brave and honest work, making the race quite abreast of average men. But the woman, who tugged him from his lazy anchorage out into a good offing, did as much for that man as he ever did for himself. Nothing more fortunate can happen to a great many men than that they be towed out to sea early. And in not a few instances, nothing more unfortunate could happen than that they should ever return. This last remark would have been softened a little, had it not been repeated with emphasis by a tender-hearted woman.

Just after a winter rain, there are occasionally realistic views of the great city in the foreground, which are so ugly that one never forgets them. The hills are brought nigh; all the houses seem to rise out of the desert, and along the water front the spars of shipping look like a forest which has been blasted by some devouring flame. It is certain that these forests will never sprout again; and there is such a dead look that, were it not for the little tugs going back and forth, one might imagine that all men had hastened away, and left the city to silence and the desert. But after nightfall the thousand lamps glorify the city; the blackened forest along the water front has faded out; and a mild sort of charity steals over one, suggesting that, after all, it is a goodly city set upon a hill, and that its peculiar beauty is not alone in appearing to the best advantage by gaslight. The background of hills is more angular and jerky than ever before, because all the softening effect has been taken out of the atmosphere. There is no distance, no dreamy haze to spread like a gossamer veil over these hard outlines. Nature is wonderfully honest and self-revealing. Evidently these hills were never finished. They lack all the rounded beauty, all the gentle curves and slopes, and all the fine touches of a perfected work. They look as if, when in a plastic state, they had been set by the jerk of an earthquake. Who knows but another jerk might take these kinks out and tone down all these stiff angles, and otherwise put on the finishing touches? If it must be done in this way, let the softening undulations be as gentle as possible. It is very inconvenient to get up in the morning and find that the chimney-top is either on the garden walk, or that it has been turned three-quarters round, in the very wantonness and devilment of Nature.

Some day there will be a closer recognized relation between landscape gardening and landscape painting. If the work is done badly in either department, it will make little difference whether an acre of canvas is hung upon the wall, or whether lines have been badly drawn and colors crudely laid on to an acre of earth. The style of trimming trees so that they are a libel on Nature, and the geometrical diagrams worked up in a garden, can hardly be referred to any very high standard of art. But if my neighbor is delighted with trees representing spindles, ramrods, paint brushes, cylinders, cones, and what not, I would no more quarrel with him than with the man who is under the pleasing delusion that he is an artist, because, in a more remote way, he has been traducing Nature with certain grotesque figures laid on to canvas.

A hedge will bear cutting into line, because it is to be treated as nothing more than the frame of the landscape to be worked up. The former may be as stiff and artificial in its way, as a gilt or mahogany frame, and do no violence to good taste; if it hides an ugly fence, a point has been gained. One cannot expect much diversity of surface on a single acre. A large lawn will give the effect of greater flatness. If you find the hired gardener, bred in some noted school in Europe, setting out trees in straight lines, exhort him to penitence at once. If he remain obdurate, cut the trees down with your little hatchet and pitch them over the fence, but keep your temper as sweet as a June morning. He will see by that time that you have ideas to be respected. Grouping the trees, on the lawn and elsewhere, neutralizes, in part, the effect of a flat surface; it is better than the poor apology of a little hillock, which suggests an ant's nest, or that a coyote may be burrowing in that vicinity. Something may be done in the way of massing colors with annuals to produce good effects. But ribbon gardening, according to the patterns laid down by florists, has no nearer relation to art in landscape gardening than crochet work has to landscape painting. It is a fantastic trick, which may very well please rural clowns, but is in some sort an offense to good taste.

Neither is it necessary that all the trees and shrubs which a florist has for sale should be admitted to the private garden. More than one-half of them have no merit; they neither set off the grounds, nor have any peculiarity worth a moment's attention. They figure in the florist's list under very attractive names, but if taken home they will probably prove but scrubby little bushes, fit only to be dedicated to the rubbish-heap and the annual bon-fire in the Spring. A plant or a shrub which gives no pleasure either in its form or the color of its flower, and has no suggestive associations, may do well enough for a botanical garden. Many of us may like occasionally to look at a hippopotamus or an elephant in the menagerie, or at the zoological gardens, but we don't want these specimens brought home to our private grounds. Some of the sequoia gigantea family do very well in the forest. Once in a lifetime we can afford to make a journey to look at them. But why undertake to bring home one of these vegetable elephants as a specimen, when we know that it will require a thousand years for its growth, and that most of us will come a little short of that measure of time? Some trees may be planted for posterity, and others may be safely left to take their chances. If any one wishes to contemplate upon his grounds a shrub of the future dimensions of one of the Calaveras group, let him plant it at once. Most of the vegetable monsters went out with the ichthyosaurus, and as for the few that remain, they will yet be an affront to the pigmies who are swarming on the earth.

"Why did we plant cherry trees along the rear fence?" To make friends with the birds and the children. You can get more songs from the birds, and more of song and glee from the children, on a small investment in cherry trees than in any other way. Those last year's birds' nests tell the story. The robin, thrush, oriole and linnet will come early and stay late. Groups of children will come in the front way, and will never be so happy as when invited to go down the rear garden walk, unless in the supremest moments when they step from your shoulders into the trees, and never come back until they have closed their fingers on the last cherry. The man who is not satisfied to divide all his cherries with the birds and the children is a curmudgeon; notably so is he who plants cherry trees in front of his lot, and gets into a white heat of rage because boys of average Sunday school antecedents could not resist the temptation to borrow the fruit. Besides, the eclectic judgment of children, the sparrow, the yellow-jacket and the honey-bee will always tell you where the best nectarines and plums may be found.

It is well to reserve a nook for little experiments in horticulture or floriculture which one wishes to make. A great many theories may be brought home and decently buried, or be made to sprout in such a corner. The larger the spaces, the more one will be tempted to use the spade at odd hours; and none of us has yet found out all the remedial qualities of dry earth freshly turned over day after day. A hard day's work, taxing brain more than hands, brings on a degree of nervous irritability. There is a dry electrical atmosphere; the attrition of trade winds and sand half the year; and the rushing to and fro of busy and excited men, charged as full of electricity as they can hold, and bent upon charging everybody else, so that at nightfall the sparks will snap at the finger-ends, and the air will crackle like a brush-heap just set on fire. Now, the earth is a very good conductor. It is better to let this surplus electricity run down the fingers on to the spade, and along its shining steel blade into the ground, than to blow up your best friend. An hour of honest battle with the weeds is better than any domestic thunder storm. By that time the sun will have dropped down into the ocean, just beyond the Golden Gate, glorifying garden and hill-top, and setting, for a moment, its lamp of flame in the western windows. Every plant and shrub will have some part in a subtile and soothing ministry; and then, if ever, it will occur to you that this is a mellow old world after all.

THE GARDEN ON THE HILL

It was a plausible theory, and given out in a demure and confiding way by a feminine oracle, that honeysuckle cuttings should each be inserted in a potato, and so planted. As the scion had no root and needed moisture, it would be supplied by the potato. It seemed the very thing to do. The wonder was that so simple an expedient had not been suggested before. That theory was honestly tested, and it has since been laid on the top shelf with a great many other feminine theories about floriculture. Twenty honeysuckle scions were each planted with one end in an enormous red potato. Never did one of those honeysuckles grow; but there sprang up such a growth of potatoes as never had been seen on the hill. They were under the doorstep, under the foundation of the house; they shot up everywhere. Was that the last of the misadventure? By no manner of means. In the very porch of the church that daughter of Eve inquired slily, "How are your honeysuckles?" And then she glided in as if she had done nothing for which she needed forgiveness.

Certain grafting experiments came out a shade better. But every graft put in on the south side of a tree died, while those on the north side nearly all lived. These were protected by some degree of shade, while the hot sun melted the wax on the south side, which ran down in liquid streams of resin and poisoned the bark around the cleft. All this might have been known in advance. But a little modicum of knowledge learned by costly experience will stick to one through life, while that which costs nothing is rarely laid up as worth having. It ought to be known, also, that there is no better plan of grafting a tree than that which our ancestors followed a hundred years ago, when, with a little moist clay and top-tow, every scion inserted lived. Then the cider mill was an orthodox institution in every neighborhood. It is not worth your while to dissent from that proposition, when you have probably played truant from a summer school to ride around on the sweep of a cider mill, and suck the new cider through a straw, being stung the meanwhile occasionally by a "yellow-jacket." Even now a cider mill by the roadside, with the sour pomace scattered about, is a humanizing institution. It will send you back to the old orchard, the great branching elm, and the wide-spreading roof slanting down in the rear, quicker than any other sign or symbol to be found along the dusty way of middle life. For one hour's ride on that sweep, and a nibble at the spice-apples sliding down the hopper, one might still be consoled for the dreadful frown of the school mistress, and for that feminine refinement on purgatorial cruelty which compelled the truant to stand for an hour on one leg, and to hold out a bible at arm's length in his dexter hand. An acidulated school mistress, who had been losing her sweetness for forty years, never was a desirable object to meet, after having tasted the sweets on a summer day at a cider mill. The hornets were well enough in their way, but the sting of that school mistress was not.

Note, too, that this grafting process reaches over beyond your apple trees. The best races, or sub-divisions of people, come of the best stocks which are continually grafted on. Your blue blood is mixed with more not so blue, or the stock runs out. Down at the root of those apple trees yonder you may find traces of the woolly aphis. It is a sign that the constitution of such trees has been weakened. Digging down you remove the aphis, put fresh soil around the tree, scrape the rusty trunk, cut off the top, and put in two or three grafts from a stock that has vitality; and very soon this rejuvenated tree, bending under its weight of fruit in early Autumn, is something of which no amateur horticulturist need be ashamed. A thoroughbred people will impress language, law, and custom, as none other can upon the world. It is not isolation which secures this result, but the taking of many stocks upon the original trunk. If pulmonary New England is to be physically resuscitated, it will not come of boasting of revolutionary sires, but rather because Germans, Irish, Danes and Swedes are thronging all the avenues of her busy life.

The transition from grafting to budding is natural enough. Those twenty white stakes stand as so many monuments of another horticultural disaster. On a September day, twenty buds, so rare that the original stock could not be bought at any price, had been deftly slipped into as many "suckers," which had come out from the roots of as many rose bushes. The next Spring they were set and staked, and each was about as precious as the right eye of any amateur horticulturist. The small buds had developed into branches a foot long; great double peerless roses had been hanging pendent from the original stocks – roses with regal names and titles. There would have been twenty glorified specimens of floriculture to-day, but for that foreign gardener who had been "educated in the best schools in Europe," who knew everything, and could not be told anything. Roses must be cut in to make new wood. Before night he had clipped those twenty standards each below the bud, and had taken himself off with his diabolical shears, his insufferable conceit, and his rustic innocence. He never came back to look at the work of his hands, nor to hear the wish (mildly expressed) that a pair of shears might be invented which would shorten the stature of that gardener at least a foot. There was a special aggravation of the case, because we had been nursing a theory for years, that by splitting two rose-germs of different kinds, and putting the odd halves together, if growth could then be induced, there would be a hybrid rose – either the color of the one would be distinct on one side, and the other on the opposite side, or the rose would be mottled, having red and white spots on each leaf. This Siamese bud had started finely. Bad luck to the gardener's shears which had abbreviated that experiment and enveloped the vexed question again in darkness. But here is a bed of mottled pinks, and these could have all been the result of crosses. It may be that the humming birds, going from one blossom to another, have mixed the pollen, or some hidden law may be active which cannot be traced. Note, too, that besides this promiscuous fleck of red and white, in not a few instances a single flower will have the red on one-half and the white on the other. The florists call this sporting. The same class of facts may be observed in the double petunias, all of which are hybrids, or nearly so – a purple, white, and red leaf being found in a single flower. There are apples, too (or there were twenty years ago), one-half of which were sour and the other half sweet. The qualities were not interblended, and even the colors were separate.

It was a pretty conceit, and mollifying withal, that a feminine florist connected with pansies: "When you go past them they will turn their heads toward you, greeting you so lovingly." That little myth might be strung on the same string with the buttercup, which only reflects its golden hue upon the chins of those who love June butter.

That alfalfa experiment is only admitted by special grace under the head of floriculture, although the lucerne has no lack of handsome blossoms. A little seed was sprinkled on the ground after the spring rains and forgotten. When the winter rains came again, that alfalfa reached out for both the zenith and nadir. Three times a year it is cut to keep it from falling down. The details are suppressed here, with only an intimation that they are sufficient for several agricultural addresses. If that man is a benefactor who has made two blades of grass grow in the place of one, what is he who has made alfalfa shoot up at the rate of seven tons to the acre, in the place of miserable sorrel-top? But there was a discount upon that experiment. The alfalfa drew to it all the gophers in the neighborhood. They mined and countermined, until the whole area had been honeycombed. They multiplied by scores and hundreds. These rodents drew together all the vagrant cats in the neighborhood, which made this corner of the garden a common hunting ground. Here upon this small area was a crop of alfalfa, a crop of gophers – which no man has numbered to this day – and a crop of cats, as fiercely predatory and as unrelenting in a skirmish as were ever put in battle array. But somehow this experiment has not been satisfactory. It has branched out in too many ways. Two empty arnica bottles suggest the muscular strains which came from moderating those cats with an occasional volley of rocks. And at this writing, half a dozen felines are on the fence looking solemnly down at the sapping and mining which is going on below.

There are no birds in this region which domesticate so readily as the linnets, and which improve more on an intimate acquaintance. They are not so obstreperous as the wren, nor so shy as the lark and the robin. The latter is a migratory bird, coming down to this latitude only in the Winter, and going north for a nesting in the Spring. A single robin has lived in the garden all Winter, becoming nearly as tame as a chicken, following the man with the spading-fork, and snapping up the worms in a sharp competition with his cousin, the brown thrush. The former, in place of any song, has a lonesome and fugitive call, as though waiting for his mate. He is probably a bachelor, who has not yet set up an establishment of his own. A little girl, having gravely considered the case, suggests that he ought to send a letter inviting a mate to come. O, my little friend! oral communication is much more interesting; at least, it was so in our time. Neither was it considered cowardice if the heart came up into the throat.

The linnets are model birds in their domestic life. A pair built a nest last year under the porch, and, having brought up one family of four and dismissed them, the pair furbished up the nest again and brought up a family of four more the same season. They have held secret conferences over the nest recently, and it evidently falls in with their views of domestic economy to use it again. It is possible that they appreciated a little device which we had to adopt for their safety. As the nest was at the extremity of a festoon of vines, there was nothing to hinder the house-cat from going up and feasting on callow birds. An odd lot of trout hooks, fastened to the lower vines, operated as a powerful non-conductor.

Some years ago, a pair of linnets having made their nest in the porch of another house, everything went well until the young had just appeared; then the mother disappeared one night, and the displaced vines in the morning told the whole story. Four orphan birds appealed to the sympathies of the young folk. The nest was taken into the house, the birds carefully covered with cotton, and every effort was made to save them. They would eat nothing, and, as a last resort, the nest was replaced in the vines. The father came back soon, talked with his children, brooded them, fed them day after day, brought them up to maturity, and turned out as prosperous a family of young linnets as there was in that neighborhood. Mr. Linnet can have the most positive certificate of rare domestic virtues. There is the slight drawback that he paints, does all the singing, and is rather vain; while Mrs. Linnet is a plain, unassuming bird, always clad in gray, and is not up in music. All through the realm of ornithology the male bird has the brightest colors and does the singing. But analogy is all at fault when you come to men and women. Who puts on all the bright colors here, paints, and carols upon the topmost bough of the domestic tree? By what law has this order been reversed? And yet the sum of your political economy is, that a woman who can dress more, use pigments more cunningly, and talk faster, and sing better than a man, shall not vote! Is that the way to set up your ideal republic?

One may learn secrets of ornithology in the garden which the books will not yield up. That boy coming up the rear garden walk, who has swung himself into a pear tree to look into the nest of a finch, has done the same thing consecutively on a dozen mornings. He will be able to tell just how many days are required for incubation, and how many days intervene before the birds are full-fledged. I should have had more hope for him as a future ornithologist, had not the young heathen asked for the eggs to put upon his string. There is not such a great difference, after all, between an Apache with a string of scalps at his belt, and a school boy with his string of birds' eggs. If it were not for that infernal cruelty which has been inbred by false teaching, or no teaching, our relations with all the lower forms of life would be intimate and confidential, instead of suspicious and oftentimes revolting. One can match the worst specimens of cannibalism by pointing out strings of larks hung up by their bills any day in the market. I know of no cannibal who ever became ferocious enough to eat singing birds, or to find pleasure in killing them.

There are two or three notes in the song of the lark which are not surpassed in sweetness by any of the oriole or finch family. If one will take a dash into the country some bright morning, on horseback, and note how this joyous bird goes before him, alighting on the fence and calling down a benediction from the heavens, either he will come back filled with gladness, or his liver trouble has got the best of him. All the song birds of much note in this State may be assigned to the three families of thrushes, orioles and finches. In the first of these we have the robin; in the second, the lark; and in the third, the linnet. The sub-families will reach nearly a hundred, and there is not one of them which will not pay in songs and in the destruction of insects for all the mischief he does. Now, a bird that pays his bills in advance, has a right to protection. Observe, too, how soon they recognize any attempt to establish friendly relations with them. Last year a finch had her feet entangled by a string with which she had lined her nest. A little help rendered to set her free, made her an intimate friend, and a shallow pan of water in the grass drew daily dividends of fresh songs. A box with a few holes in it, set on a post, will not remain empty a year; either the blue-birds or the martins will take possession of it.

A garden ought to be planned as much for the birds as for lawns and flowers. The hedges will afford hiding-places for timid birds, and shade on hot days. The tall trees will furnish perches when they want to sing; and a well-fed bird, that has no family trouble on hand, wants to sing nearly all his leisure time. As for the cherries and small fruits, the birds are only gentle communists. If we cannot tolerate a division made with all the inspiration of song, and which leaves us at least one side of the cherry, how are we to tolerate that division predicted by some of the labor prophets, if made with the music of paving-stones and much fragile crockery?

One cannot go far into the woods in any direction without observing what a protest all the birds utter at first. There are harsh screams, sharp notes of warning, and general scolding. Now, every bird has a great deal of curiosity to take a look at strangers. For a time they flit about in the tall tree-tops, and afterward begin to hop down to lower limbs, and, gradually descending, come to the ground, or on to low bushes. By remaining quiet an hour or two, a dozen or more will circle around within a few feet, turning their heads on one side occasionally, and quizzing in a saucy, merry way. In a little while one may be on intimate terms with the very birds which protested so loudly at his coming. They will tell him a great many secrets. The leaves of his book on ornithology may be a quarter of a mile square, but what can not be read on one day may be read on some other. Even an owl burrowing with a ground-squirrel, and both agreeing very well as tenants in common with a rattlesnake, may suggest questions of affinity and community which it might be inconvenient to answer at once. If you prefer to have some readings in a book of nature, you can turn down a leaf and go back the next day with the certainty that no one has lugged off the volume. And if your finger-mark is a tree 250 feet high, there will be no great difficulty in finding the place.