The Little Children of Cybele

I.

AMONG the individuals of one’s human environment, some live in a world of wonder, of daily phenomenon, of hourly revelation of beauty, of momentary sensation, of novelty and delight. Others, whose paths are seen to intersect theirs, live, on the contrary, in a world of seamy conditions, of most unlovely commonplace, of jaded interest, of livelong irksomeness. Each sort of person is liable to infect with his own view of Cosmos any “ sensitive " who may come within range. It is well, then, for the “ sensitive ” to consort with those whose world yet bears the stamp of a wonderful creation, and has not suffered from that familiarity which breeds contempt. Moreover, this caution is well observed, whether it is the world of men and women, or of nature and the humbler creatures. Only the other morning, a friend of mine, who has not yet encountered tedium vitœ, but lives “surrounded by beauty and wonder,”was sitting at the breakfast-table, and greatly enjoying a traveler’s tale of staging adventure in the Rocky Mountain and grizzly-bear West. I wish I could see a bear crossing the road ! ” exclaimed this enthusiastic listener. Immediately, as though in response to the utterance of this desire, a mouse glided across the dining-room floor, and out of sight again. “ Why, that is a bear ! ” was the involuntary ejaculation of my friend, who recognizes the monitions of the universal delivered through the particular, the great in the little, and the Queen of Faëry disguised as withered eld. “That is a bear, or as good as a bear, for it is just as admirable a piece of creation, and to me, at this moment, looks as unusual and astonishing.”

I cannot say that I am as easily gratified, or as content to take my Natural History thus epitomized, and yet at times some least pensioner of Fauna has appeared to me invested with a like glamourish interest; as on that remembered day in the woods, when suddenly the genius of Candlemas-tide, Sir Marmot, and I stood face to face, he erect on his haunches, with forepaws held up in timid deprecation, — each of us in rustling the dead leaves having alarmed the other. I cannot say but that this little encounter was as entertaining, in its way, as a visit to the menagerie or a page of Æsop. Of the same order of halfsupernatural wonder are childhood’s occasional discoveries of any new and curious though obscure denizen of the world in which it lives. So shall I always remember the summer afternoon made notable by the following circumstance. There had been a brisk shower. There was a fading rainbow in the eastern sky. The owner of bare feet, trudging along the country road, delighted in making the drenched sand " lighten,” which was accomplished by quick, forcible spats of the bare feet upon the wet ground. But, in so doing, a wonderful, diminutive crocodilian creature, red as a glowing coal (unquenched for all the torrent of rain), was started out from the shelter of a loose stone, when it burned its way across the soaked and yellow sand ! A salamander issuing from the fireplace would scarcely prove so exciting now as did the sudden vision of the little eft on that distant summer day. No less of mystery attended another and similar discovery at about the same period. In a disused porch on the sunny side of the house, sparsely shaded by a straggling grapevine, I used to watch the evolutions of certain singular creatures, as deservedly earning the qualification of “swifts” as the chimney-swallows themselves. Half admired, half feared, these phenomenal apparitions darted back and forth, — rapid lines in darkest blue, cutting through the golden sunlight. Their name I did not learn until long afterward ; and in a much later time, the mystery of their quick and furtive movements, with the entire pictorial setting, gave a vivid objective character to the lines in Shelley’s Song : —

II.

Along the bank of a little stream, whose gently sloping margin of umber sand and its inverted reflection in the water take on the guise of a closed mussel-shell, I used frequently to find, after the loosening of the ground in early spring, an osseous fragment, of a peculiar appearance. Some two or three inches in length, the breadth much less; oblong, the edges minutely serrate ; furnished with a plainly marked midrib, and with a stem proceeding from the under-surface, this fragment strikingly suggested a leaf carved out of ivory. I am yet ignorant what intimate of the stream or of its pleasant banks had there laid down with its life this foliaceous souvenir which I so often found, and found increasingly invested with a certain pathos. Abstract Natural History allows little for sentiment in its student; but as I was not so much a student of Natural History as of Natural Romance in Nature, in my ignorant content I was permitted full enjoyment of the suggestion the bone leaf offered to my fancy. It seemed to speak of a subtle consent existing between animal and vegetable Structures. Last year’s outworn skeleton of a leaf and this leaf-resembling remnant of a more vital organism, found in the same spot, appeared to be there together not without intention to furnish some hint as to a coörigin of types. I thought, at least, that a student of Natural Romance has some privileges of construction as well as has the true savant who can rehabilitate the mastodon from the evidence of a tooth !

Deeply or lightly read in Nature’s lore, the observer loses no opportunity, nor suggestion of opportunity, for gathering up any possible “ connecting link that may be lying about in those fields of fancy which border most closely upon fact. For instance, not long ago I was desirous of establishing some claim of kinship for the lowly children of the earth with the lovely broods of the air. Soon after, this claim was allowed in a most unexpected manner, and confirmed by a most creditable eye-witness. A rambler in Staten Island, in the month of November, wishing to possess himself of a fine bird’s-nest which he observed in a young tree, easily climbed to the limb on which the nest rested. Reaching up for it, he was surprised to find the top covered over, and, further, that his hand came in contact with something warm and mobile. The next instant several mice ran down the tree, showing that if there are no birds in last year’s nest, it is not, always, practically deserted on that account. On descending, the rambler made another interesting discovery. At the foot of the tree lay a snake awaiting its opportunity for a substantial meal. — too sagacious, it appeared, to accept implicitly the proverb just cited! While certain families of wild mice thus passively approve of the bird’s architectural methods by occupying its abandoned home, the domestic mouse, in the cunabula which it constructs for its young, actually emulates the bird’s beautiful ingenuity. Such a snuggery I found not long ago : exactly circular in shape, composed of fine bits of nibbled paper, with here and there a string or a straw intertwined, and with the addition of an occasional feather and scrap of bright cloth. An excellent bird’s-nest, save that it was overspread by the same marvelously light covering of paper. This covering, touched by my finger, fell off, and revealed five blind nestlings, at first uneasily stirring, but soon motionless, as though recognizing an alien touch, or as though they had received some sign of warning from the timid mother who had deserted them on the approach of danger. The chief wonder of this nest was that the surrounding spherical mass of light and loose paper could have remained intact, and not fallen away at the least motion of the inmates. If there could be any interchange of experience and wisdom between these two nest-builders, the bird, in this particular, might learn something of the mouse.

Is it not suggestive that while the rodent, who insists upon occupying our house and feeding from its stores, is looked upon with something akin to disgust, the wild cousin, who is capable of quite as much mischief, encounters no such shuddering aversion ? The cinnamon-colored furry little colonists that run every way when, preparatory to husking, the corn-shocks are pulled down in the November fields, excite only one’s tenderest sympathy, and an anxiety lest they become the victims of canine sport. Held in the hollow of the hand or laid against the cheek, the warm, throbbing little creatures make their mute appeal most forcibly. They have taken their quantum of corn, as the waste upon the ground testifies ; yet somehow I am inclined to view the tearing down of the shock as a wanton sacking of a peaceful and happy village, whose charter has been destroyed or disregarded. The same spirit of protective sympathy for the wild is uppermost when I find my young neighbor, a good amateur “ shot,” turning an honest enough penny by defending a field of springing corn from the blackbirds : I am sorry or glad according as his aim hits or misses. Or rather, the case is one of mixed sympathies : on the one hand, solicitude for the Indian Ceres and the interests of her farmer guardian ; and, on the other, anxiety that the black freebooters, who would carry her away, shall not forfeit their jovial lives. One can perfectly well understand the mood in which Thoreau pursued his solitary fox-hunt, when, to use his own words. “ it seemed the woods rang with the hunter’s horn, and Diana and all the satyrs joined in the chase and cheered me on.” And yet the advantage of the fox was the paramount interest; for, adds the amateur huntsman, after duly practicing the vulpine neophyte up hill and down dale, “ hoping this experience would prove a useful lesson to him, I returned to the village by the highway of the river.”

It was but lately, and in a manner not to be anticipated, that the sense of compassion was stirred in behalf of one of Nature’s dumb pensioners. Passing through Washington market, in New York, noting the kaleidoscopic coloring displayed by the stalls of fruits, foreign and domestic, of vegetables, of garnished meats, of birds of lustrous plumage, of fish, checkered or wave-marked, as becomes the herds of Proteus, I made a discovery that interested me more than aught else. This was a group of turtles, of great size, helpless, supine, showing the golden plastron : perhaps the only yet living victims in that place of sacrifice; perhaps, also, of a venerability exceeding the years of the eldest and gnarliest of the marketmen. The discomfort and ignominy to which these old autochthones were subjected should have moved any country heart; and I longed for the exercise of some necromancy which would have released and marshaled them all in slow saturnine procession, to take their way to freedom and the leisurely drawing out of another secular period.

In speaking of the tortoise, it seems to deserve mention as among the most filial of the rude sons of the earth herein considered. Was it not a giant of his kind, a cosmical tortoise, that, Æneaslike, bore on his broad and steady back our common parent, until groping Science, by finding an effective substitute, released him from such service ? Even yet, unless Botany errs and tells a mere fairy tale, the tortoise is the stable foundation whereon rests a minute portion of the vegetable world.

As to the great age which this most deliberate of animals is said to attain, I can add no testimony except of the slight character contained in the incident subjoined : —

SAGES DISAGREE.

The ancient Crow bespake the Tortoise thus:
“ What, human generations born with us
Have we seen rise, and flourish for a while,
Then sink into a narrow dim defile, —
And all because so tardy is their pace,
Death can but overtake them in the race! ”

III.

A lady of my acquaintance has her summer study in a breezy old barn, with wide doors opening upon the morning and the evening. She keeps a bribe for certain cunning genii of the place. Thus induced, the genii come and go, noiselessly, while she reads or writes, or pauses to observe their movements. They hastily fill the pouches they have brought with them with the nuts or grains of corn that form the bribe, and quickly disappear to add an increment to supplies subterraneously stored against the coming winter. Often there is sharp but mainly silent contention between two of these excellent “ providers ; ” and sometimes the human umpire withholds the scattered harvest, and places a condition which insists upon more amenity of behavior. The genii are then compelled to search for the stores thus withdrawn from easy possession, at last finding that the treasured nut or kernel of corn lies on the palm of the gentle disciplinarian’s hand; then, whichever is, at once, more tame or more courageous secures the coveted food. To this end there is a quick spring from the floor to a bench, from the bench to the tantalizing hand that holds the nut, an instantaneous seizure of the nut, and an immediate retreat, while the glance of the bright eye and every movement of the body are eloquent of desire, anxious speculation, resolve, desperate venture, triumphant possession. When more than one nut is to be disposed of, the adjustment to suit the capacity of the cheek-pouch becomes a matter of patient and almost ludicrously grave experiment. These chipmunks are in reality the genii of the place, abiding over winter, and on the return of their friend in the spring making it evident that they have not forgotten the bounty which lightened their labors. Very different, if we consider the accounts given in Natural History, is the disposition of the chipmunk’s arboreal cousin, the gray squirrel. Like the ancient Gauls, who were desirous of new things, whole communities of gray squirrels have been observed in migration from one part of the country to the other. That they expedite the crossing of rivers by each extemporizing a raft in the shape of a chip, which has, for that purpose, been brought from the débris of some wood-lot. reads like a story from Herodotus! Yet the latter authority is constantly gaining in credit; and why should not the traveling squirrel look out for his safety and comfort? However, no conclusive theory has yet been offered in explanation of these migrations, which take place in the autumn, and at a somewhat regular interval of years. What pied piper goes in advance, invisible and inaudible except to the marching legions that follow, must be left to conjecture.

A Natural Romance sketch such as this, independent in its classification, may be permitted to range through genera and species widely dissimilar, so that it does not go far forth from the arms of the great mother whose home-staying children it celebrates.

The other day, opening the window, I put out my hand to pick up a bit of lichen-covered bark, grizzly-gray as the weather-beaten sill on which it rested. In so doing I involuntarily recoiled, for the supposed bark was soft, yielding, and unpleasantly cold,— in fact was a tree-toad, arrayed in what modern Science terms “ protective coloring.” A yard distant from my eyes, I yet could not see this creature’s actual contours! This the voice, birdlike, shrill, heard chiefly at morning and evening, seemingly near, but the owner safely concealed in his cloak of chameleon magic! Ihe hyla scarcely winced at my touch, scarcely twitched a diminutive eyelid; and so I made the acquaintance of the more ambitious member of an order whose other representatives I already knew: one in the uncouth but grateful individual whom I had pampered with impaled flies by the doorstep, and another in the musician of the pool, whose nocturne none dares to praise, although to me it suggests that Some mighty sea-shell lost among the hills The ear of Night with dim reverberance fills.

In the winter one comes across, near or within any woodland, what might be regarded as a vast leaf from the castaway Sibylline books. But the parchment is of the purest white; the cryptic characters are of recent inscribing, in which many and various individuals have joined to leave a record, telling you, in spite of the sheer silence of the woods, that the winter inhabitants thereof are not all house-bound. Social considerations, as well as concern for the table, induce activity. The many-tracked snow-carpet overlaying the broad level surface of some old chestnut stump bears suggestion of mysterious revelry but recently indulged in by the squirrel and his congeners. There is also a more serious view of the matter. As a cruelty superadded to the rigor of the winter, this same soft, white, echoless carpet of snow serves to betray the wild travelers that pass over it. The fox cannot “ take a turn ” for his health, the rabbit cannot visit our young fruit-trees to steal a lenten repast of bark therefrom, but the enemies of each are duly advised. Every step is a fatal index of the direction taken. Some gentle, oblivious spirit there should be who, with white eraser, should follow and blot out the telltale detective legend. Meantime friendly speculation endeavors to decide as to which wild foot this or that trail may belong; this, like the etching of a fine necklace in which the beads are strung at most regular intervals ; or this, which, sharp in the inception, concludes with a blur, as though the traveler who made it had worn snowshoes. To Thoreau these hasty vestiges were themselves a sort of game, which he hunted with eager assiduity, and described often with minute precision. But not to go so far as the wild, — indeed, to go no farther than the lane leading from barn to pasture, — some curious, half-symbolic specimens in footmarks are to be observed.

CLASSIC GROUND.

IV.

These small four - footed children of the earth should b endeared to us for their all-the-year-round constancy, — a sort of poor we have with us always. The birds have wings, and, like riches, betake themselves away. Fitted for long and rapid journeys, they can easily pursue and find again the Summer who brought them hither, and who, departing, threw them a subtle clue whereby to follow her. But these poor filii terrœ have no such recourse. Yet are they not altogether forgotten of Nature. Something is done for them, — very like what would happen should the patrons of a foundling asylum, finding supplies exhausted and the treasury low, cosily put to sleep all its young charges, waking them only when the prospect was improved.

CYBELE AND HER CHILDREN.

No ravin-cry, no hunger-call;
These do not fear, and those forbear.

The trance which these passive creatures keep is a sort of equivalent tropics, one might say, reached without migration. It would not seem strange if these organizations that thus sleep the winter away, taking up their lives as though de novo each spring, should be found to be, on this account, somewhat less sensible of the actual stroke of death. When this comes, such semblance of thought as they possess may tell them that what they experience is only the old numbness and recession of force, so many times before undergone, and emerged from as many, in the mysterious reawakening of the spring. How can they guess that a spring will come which is unable to restore them ?

Apropos of our much ignorance concerning most of the h umbler Faun a, and of their probably overlooked wit and sagacity in many particulars, the Mole shall have the epilogue.

Edith M. Thomas.