“I allus did like birds, even way back when I followed the plough, and of course I knew some of them apart,—robins and swallers and phœbes and hawks and all the gamies,—and I jest plumb knew that when crows sat on the fence a-quaverin’, it was interestin’ and worthy conversation, most like, if we could only sense it. But it was after that hell-fire summer in the city that I got the call to treat ’em like my brothers and help ’em out with food in winter like we would neighbouring house folks.
“Soon as it come hot weather there, that time in N’ York, I couldn’t set closed into meetin’ of Sundays (though mother, she sit it out for sake of principle), and I don’t believe the Lord does, either,—stands to reason he’s got too much sense, not havin’ to set an example,—so I uster wander out through that long narrer park o’ theirn, and when onct I cut clean through westward, I strayed into that big museum where they keep the natural relics, and there I come face to face with all the birds that ever wuz together since Eve’s time. When I’d observed all the cockatoos and parrerkeets and such like, I went on a bit further, ’n if there warn’t a partridge a struttin’ on the leaves with his tail all fanned out, and beyond it the brown eggs was nested in a ground holler. I passed that by and next I seen a catbird in a syringa bush and a robin on an apple branch and a highholder on a stump, that set my heart a-bumpin’ so I was all of a tremble and sidled off into a small room to set down. When I looked up next, what was there in a case marked something about ‘seasonable birds’ but a big medder lark. His breast was jest as fresh and yaller as when he sings from a tree-top to yer in plantin’ time, or turns and teeters on a fence to keep you from seein’ him too plain, and it seemed as if I heard him calling fer spring. That broke me all up, and I jest leaned over and cried it out into the white Sunday handkerchief mother got me, ’cause my red ones jarred the boys.
“I think it was the sight of those birds gave me grit to break loose fer home. That next winter a woman we sold eggs to over in Gordon, seein’ my fancy, gave me a book all about their ways and needs, and so ever since I’ve been with ’em in heart. My, but ain’t they company along the lonely road bits and in early mornings when I’m comin’ home! (I go up Tuesdays and Fridays to sleep at Sairy Ann’s, my wife’s sister’s house near Gordon, startin’ fer home next dawn.)