In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

One of the sunniest memories to all of us is the time we spent on the cliff-tops of romantic old Dunbar. There is nothing more calculated to give pleasure to a true Briton, unless he happens to have been born by the beach, than a few days spent at the seaside; that is, if he or she can have thereat some comfort. Here at Dunbar was no noise, no bustle, no stir, and, to us, not the worry inseparable from living in lodgings. Our little homes were all our own: we could go when we liked, do what we liked, and there was no landlady at the week’s end to present us with a bill including extras.

The only noise was the beating of the waves on the black rocks far beneath us, and the scream of sea-birds, mingling perhaps with the happy voices of merry, laughing children.

Stretching far away eastwards was the ever-changing ocean, dotted with many a sail or many a steamer with trailing smoke. Northwards was the sea-girt mountain called the Bass Rock, whilst south-eastwards we could see the coast-line stretching out to Saint Abbé Head.

We were so pleased with our bivouac on the breezy cliff-tops of Dunbar that we made the place our headquarters, journeying therefrom, up the romantic Tweed, visiting all the places and scenery sacred to the memory of Scott and the bard of Ettrick.

We did not forget to make a day’s voyage to the Bass Rock, and well might we wonder at the grandeur of this wild rock, with its feathered thousands of birds, that at times rose about like a vast and fleecy cloud.

It was, however, no part of our ideas of happiness to in any way hamper each other’s movements. No, that would not have been true gipsy fashion.

Sometimes, one of us would be quietly fishing from the rocks, while two more might be out at sea in a boat, a little dark speck on the blue. As for me, it was often my delight to —

“Lie upon the headland height and listen
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
In caverns under me.
And watch the waves that tossed and fled and glistened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
Melted away in mist.”

Often, when she found me all alone, Ida would pounce on me for a story. To this child a tale told all to herself had a peculiar charm. Here is one of our little sketches.

Our “Hoggie.”

One dark, starless night in October, 1883, I had been making a call upon a neighbour of mine in the outskirts of our village. I had a tricycle lamp with me, not so much to show me the way as to show me my dogs, a valuable Newfoundland and a collie. Both are as black as Erebus, and unless I have a light on a dark night, it is impossible to know whether I have them near me or not.

Just by the gate, but on the footpath, as I came out, I found my canine friends both standing over and intently watching something that lay between them.

“It is a kind of a thorny rat,” Eily the collie seemed to say, looking up in my face ever so wisely; “I have kept it in the corner till you should see it; but I wouldn’t put my nose to it again for a whole bushel of bones.”

Eily’s thorny rat was, as you may guess, a hedgehog, and a fine large fellow he was.

Now I should be one of the last people in the world to advise my readers to capture wild creatures and deprive them of their liberty, but I knew well that if the boys of our village found this hedgehog, they would beat it to death with sticks and stones; so for its safety’s sake I went back to my neighbour’s house and borrowed a towel, and in this, much to the dog’s delight, I carried “Hoggie” home with me. The children were not in bed; they were half afraid of it, but very much pleased with the new pet, and set about making a bed for it with hay in an outhouse, and placed cabbage and greens and milk-and-bread sop for it to eat.

When we all went to see Hoggie next morning, he had his head out and took a good look at as with his bright beautiful beads of eyes. He looked as sulky as a badger nevertheless. We offered him nice creamy milk, but he would not touch it; we even put his nose in it.

“No,” he appeared to tell us, “you can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink.”

So we placed a saucerful of bread and milk handy for him, and left the little fellow to his own cogitations, and determined not to go near him till next day. When we did so, we found, much to our joy, that all the bread and milk had disappeared. He was certainly no dainty feeder, for he had had his fore-feet in the saucer, which was black.

We soon discovered that night was the only time he would take food, and that he very much preferred lying all day curled up in his bundle of hay, sound asleep.

It has been said that rats will not come near a place where a hedgehog is. This is all nonsense; we had plenty of conclusive evidence that the rats which swarm about our place kept Hoggie company.

Under one particular tree the earthworms used to swarm, always coming out of their holes at night, and around this tree it occurred to the children to build Hoggie a garden. They fenced it round with wire-work, and put a box and a bundle of hay in it at one corner. Hoggie was now indeed as happy as a king, and he soon grew as tame as a rat, for kindness will conquer almost any wild animal.

We did not interfere with his natural instincts, but in the evenings we used to have him out for a little run, and very much he seemed to enjoy it. He was afraid neither of dogs not cats, and would allow any of us to smooth him just as much as we pleased, and pat his pretty little brow between and above his pert, wee eyes. There was only room for one finger there, so small was his head, but this was quite enough.

“Don’t hedgehogs sleep all winter?” asked little Inez, my eldest daughter, one day; “and isn’t this winter?”

“Yes, baby,” I replied, “this is winter. It is now well into December, and poets and natural historians have always given us to believe that hedgehogs do hibernate.”

“I’m not going to hibernate,” replied Hoggie, or he seemed to reply so, as he gave a kick with one leg and commenced a mad little trot round and round his yard. “The idea of going to sleep in fine weather would be quite preposterous, as long,” he added, swallowing a large garden worm and nearly choking over it, “as the worms hold out, you know.”

But great was our dismay when one morning we missed Hoggie from his yard. It was nearly Christmas now, and frost had set in, and once or twice snow had fallen.

Our gardens and paddock are quite surrounded with hedges, and trees of all kinds abound; so with the dogs we searched high and low for Hoggie, but all in vain. Eily found a rat, Bob found a dormouse, and rudely awaked it, but no dog found poor Hoggie.

“Poor Hoggie!” the children cried.

“Poor Hoggie!” said the youngest; “I hope poor Hoggie has gone to a better place, pa.”

“Has Hoggie gone to heaven, pa?” this same prattler asked me in the evening.

Now let me pause in my narration to say a word about hoggies in general. I have had many such pets; they get exceedingly tame and quite domesticated. They seem to prefer to live with mankind, and can be trusted out of doors quite as much as a cat can. They are sure to come back, and generally come in of an evening, trotting very quickly and in a very comical kind of fashion, and make straight for the kitchen hearthrug.

“It is so dark and cold and damp out of doors,” they appear to say, “and quite a treat to lie down before a cheerful fire like this.”

Well, hedgehogs are the best-natured pets in the world, and so full of confidence, and are not afraid of any other creature when once fairly tame. You know, I daresay, that one hedgehog will keep the house clear of black beetles. But nastier things than beetles come into country kitchens and cellars sometimes – newts, for instance. Well, hoggie will eat these; indeed, hoggie would eat a snake. I saw a hedgehog one evening in the dusk crossing the road with a snake trailing behind her. It was in summer, and I daresay that the snake was being taken home to feed the young ones.

The young are born blind and white and naked, but the bristles soon come, and by-and-by they begin to run about; then the mother hoggie takes them all out for a run in the cool, dewy evenings of May or June. The father hoggie looks very proud on these occasions, and runs on in front for fear of danger, and to guide his little family to spots and places where plenty of food is to be found.

In the domesticated state, a hedgehog will pick up its food in summer out in the garden; but if kept indoors it must have food gathered for it – worms, slugs, a little green food, and roots, chiefly those of the plantain. Besides this, it should have bread and milk, and perhaps a little cabbage and greens, which it may or may not eat.

I may tell my little readers that tame hedgehogs are very cleanly, and of course they do not bite, nor do they put their bristles out when being petted by those they love.

The hedgehog is the gardener’s best friend, and any man or boy who destroys one, is really guilty not only of cruelty, but of folly.

Now to complete my sketch of our Hoggie. I have a wigwam, although I am not a wild Indian. My wigwam is a very beautiful house indeed, built of wood and surrounded with creepers. It stands in the orchard, on the top of a square green mound, with steps leading up to it.

Well, one day in spring, when the gardener was busy cutting the grass around this wigwam, he told the children something that caused them to come whooping up the path, all in a row, just like American savages.

“Oh, pa!” they shouted, emphatically, “Hoggie’s come back. He is underneath the floor of the wigwam!”

I was as glad as any of them, because I am very much of a boy at heart.

I got a candle, though it was broad daylight, and peeped into a hole beneath my wigwam, and there was Hoggie sure enough, smooth little brow, black little eyes, bristles and fur and all.

Hoggie came out that same night.

“I’ve been hibernating,” he seemed to say, “and ain’t I hungry, just! Got any bread and milk? Got any worms, any slugs, any anything?”

You may be sure we fed him well.

And Hoggie goes and comes, and comes and goes, at his own sweet will. But his home is underneath the wigwam floor, where he has one companion, at all events – a pet toad of mine, a very amusing old fellow, whose history I will tell you some day, if our kind friend the editor will give me leave.

The following two stories were told by Frank and me on this same breezy cliff-top at Dunbar, the most interested portion of our audience being apparently Ida, Hurricane Bob, and Mysie, the caravan cat.

Chapter Twelve.