Virginia Sharpe Patterson - Dickey Downy

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"You don't mean you foot it through these bushes and among these
wildcats to preach to the mountaineers!" exclaimed Growler in
astonishment.

"Certainly I do. These poor people would never hear the sound of the
gospel if some one did not take it to them. They have souls to be
saved, my friend. I feel it is my duty to carry the word to them. As
for the wildcats," he continued, smiling, "I have my rifle. Besides
the government offers a small bounty for every wildcat."

"Oh, yes, I see. You combine business with pleasure and have your
wildcat bounty to pay expenses as you go along--or else keep it for
pin-money," and Growler laughed good-humoredly at his own fun.

"You're the parson from St. Thomas, I judge," said Cheery.

The gentleman bowed, and said he was the pastor of that little church.

"I've heard of your mission work, and I understand you've done a great
deal of good among the mountain whites."

"How many churches have you in these mountains?" interrupted Growler.

"I have but the one church organization, for outside through the
mountains there are no churches--no buildings, no organizations.
People ten and fifteen miles apart can't very well have churches. I
visit the families. I have three on this mountain side. I am well
repaid for all the sacrifice of comfort I make, in knowing how glad
they are to have me come. To many of them I am the connecting link
with the rest of mankind. Ah! the world knows nothing of the
privations and sorrows and ignorance of many of these poor creatures!
Through the winter I am obliged to stop my visitations, but I generally
leave a few books and papers for those who can read, and pictures for
the children."

"Well, parson, I didn't know there was enough goodness in any man in
the United States to make him willing to tramp right into the wildest
part of the Allegheny. Mountains to preach the gospel to half a dozen
poor people!" exclaimed Growler, still more astonished.

"My friend," responded the gentleman earnestly, "the world is full of
Christian men and women who are trying to help others."

Just then my mother said to me, "When I hear the beautiful words that
minister speaks and see what he is doing, then indeed do I believe that
human beings have hearts."

As we resumed our journey I wondered if Growler would profit by the
sunshiny example of Cheery and the devotion of the parson of St. Thomas.

Later in our travels we came upon some old acquaintances. Our
stopping-place was near an ancient house on a mountain side. The
outlook was the grandest I had ever seen, and though I have traveled
much since then I have never found anything to exceed it in beauty. A
glistening river wound its way in a big loop at the foot of the
mountain, and beyond it lay stretched out a busy city.

A good many years before a battle had been fought on these heights,
which people still remembered and talked about. I heard them speak of
it as the "Battle above the clouds." There was still a part of a
cannon wagon in the yard which visitors came to see and examined with
much interest. They also often requested the landlady to let them look
at the walls of an old stone dairy adjoining the house, because the
soldiers had carved their names there.

To me it seemed strange that the guests would sit for hours on the long
gallery of this hotel, and go over and over the incidents of the
battle, telling where this regiment stood, or where that officer fell,
as if war and the taking of life were the most pleasant rather than the
most distressful subjects in the world. In the distance was a mammoth
field of graves, miles of graves, beautifully kept mounds under which
lay the dead heroes of that sad time.

The days up here were beautiful, but it was at night that this was a
scene of surpassing loveliness. Far below the lights of the city
glowed like spangles in the darkness. Above us was the star-encrusted
sky. It was like being suspended between a floor and a ceiling of
glittering jewels.

On this plateau grew the biggest cherry trees I ever saw, and they bore
the biggest and sweetest cherries, though I could not taste any at that
time, as the season was past. I heard the landlady complaining one day
to some of her guests that the rascally birds had hardly left her a
cherry to put up.

"The saucy little thieves! they must have eaten bushels of the finest
fruit," she said.

"And didn't you get any?" inquired a childish voice. There was
something familiar in the voice and I flew to the porch railing to see
who it was. And who should it be but dear little Marion. And there
too was her aunty, Miss Dorothy, and the professor, and in the parlor I
caught a glimpse of Miss Katie and the colonel. They were having a
pleasant vacation together.

Marion looked inquiringly into the landlady's face. No doubt she was
thinking the mountain birds were very greedy to eat up all the cherries
and not leave one for the poor woman to can.

"Our birds always eat some of our cherries too," she said, "but they
always leave us plenty."

"There were bushels left on our trees," observed the landlady's
daughter. "We had all we wanted, mother. We couldn't possibly have
used the rest if the birds had not eaten them. We had a cellar full of
canned cherries left over from the year before, you remember, and that
is the way it is nearly every year."

"Yes, yes, I know," answered her mother impatiently; "but for all that
I don't believe in letting the birds have everything."

"I never begrudge a bird what it eats," commented the professor. "Of
course you can discourage the birds, drive them off, break up their
nests, starve them out, and have a crop of caterpillars instead of
cherries. But, beg pardon, madam, maybe you don't object to
caterpillars," and he bowed low to the landlady.

The laugh was against her and I was glad of it, for I didn't consider
it either kind or polite to call us "saucy little thieves."

We were amused one morning when, flying over a piece of pretty country,
we saw a lady moving rapidly along on the red sandy path below. She
seemed to be neither exactly riding nor walking, as she was not on foot
nor had she a horse. On closer inspection it was seen that she was
propelling a strange-looking vehicle. Two of her carriage wheels were
gone, and between the remaining two the lady was perched. At sight of
it I was immediately reminded of the queer thing that Johnny Morris
rode which the admiral had described to us and called a "wheel." I
felt sure that this was the same kind of a machine. The lady looked
neither to the right nor to the left, but her glance was fixed intently
on the road before her.

Farther along another lady leaned against the fence awaiting her
approach. As she bowled along the friend asked enthusiastically: "Is
it not splendid?"

The rider called back to her: "It is grand! It is almost as if I were
flying. I know now how a bird feels."

Think of comparing the sensation produced by moving that heavy iron
machine, with the rider but three feet from the ground, to the
exhilaration felt by a bird spurning the earth and soaring on delicate
wing through the fields of heaven! It was truly laughable!

Our amusement was cut short, however, when we noticed that the lady's
hat was decorated with a dead dove.

"Can we never get away from this millinery exhibition of death?" I
exclaimed in horror.

"No," said my mother sorrowfully. "The god, Fashion, I told you of has
his slaves all over the land. We will find them wherever we go, north,
south, east, and west. No town is too small, no neighborhood too
remote, but there will be found women ready to carry out his cruel
laws."

Had we not been haunted by this vision of death which we were
constantly meeting wherever women were congregated, we might have been
happy in the fair land of rose blossoms and magnolias where we now
sojourned. The air was soft and balmy, and the atmosphere filled us
with a serene, restful languor quite new to those who had been
accustomed to the brisker habits of a colder clime. Besides the birds
there were many human visitors from the North spending the winter
months here. Some sought this warmer climate for their health, others
for pleasure, and these also soon fell into the easy-going,
happy-go-lucky ways induced by the sluggish climate.

Among the birds the waxwings most readily acquired this delightful
Southern habit of taking life easy. In fact the waxwings are inclined
to be lazy, except when they are nesting; they are the most deliberate
creatures one can find, but very foppish and neat in their dress.
Never will you find a particle of dust on their silky plumage, and the
pretty red dots on their wings and tails look always as bright as if
kept in a bandbox. They have, indeed, just reason to be proud of
themselves, for they are very beautiful.

Hunters by scores were after them with bag and gun mercilessly killing
them for the New York millinery houses. The slaughter was terrible,
and made more easy for the hunters by reason of the poor birds flocking
together so closely in such large numbers when they alighted in circles
as is their habit. As they came down in dense droves to get their
food, the red dots on their wing tips almost overlapping those of their
fellows, dozens were slain by a single shot. They were very fond of
the berries of the cedar trees, and after the other foods were gone
they hovered there in great numbers. Here too, the hunters followed
them and made awful havoc in their ranks. One man made the cruel boast
that the winter previous he had killed one thousand cedar-birds for hat
trimmings.

Many of our family had located for a time near the coast, but here too,
on these sunny plains, the death messengers followed us and slew us by
the thousands.

We learned that one bird man handled thirty thousand bird skins that
season. Another firm shipped seventy thousand to the city, and still
the market called for more and yet more. The appetite of the god could
not be appeased.

I am sure this account of the loss of bird life must have seemed
appalling to my mother, for I heard her moan sadly when it was talked
about.

It was during my stay in the Southern islands that I first saw the
white egret, whose beautiful sweeping plumes, like the silken train of
a court lady, have so long been the spoils of woman, that the bird is
almost extinct. As these magnificent feathers appear upon the bird
only through the mating and nesting season, the cruelty of the act is
still more dastardly. The attachment of the parent birds for their
young is very beautiful to witness, yet this devotion, which should be
their safeguard, is seized upon for their destruction, for so great is
the instinct of protecting love they refuse to leave their young when
danger is near, and are absolutely indifferent to their own safety.

Never shall I forget one sad incident which occurred while I was there.
Overhanging the water was an ancestral nest belonging to a family of
egrets which had occupied it for some seasons. Unlike the American
human species, in whom local attachment is not largely developed, and
who take a new house every moving day, the egret repairs and fixes over
the old house year after year, putting in a new brace there, adding
another stick here, to make it firm enough to bear the weight of the
mother and the three young birds which always comprise the brood.

The three pale-blue eggs in this nest had been duly hatched, and the
fond mother was now brooding over her darlings with every demonstration
of maternal affection. She was a beautiful creature with her graceful
movement, her train of plumes, and her long neck gracefully curved.

The quick sharp boom, boom of the guns had been echoing through the
swamp for some time, and the men were now coming nearer. The efforts
of the poor mother to shield her babies were piteous, but the hunters
did not want them. Their scant plumage is worthless for millinery
purposes. Possibly the mother might have escaped had she been willing
to leave her dear ones; but she would not desert them, and was shot in
the breast as the reward of her devotion. The nestlings were left to
starve.

Would you think the woman who wore that bunch of feathers on her bonnet
could take much pleasure in it?

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRISON

Like a long-caged bird
Thou beat'st thy bars with broken wing
And flutterest, feebly echoing
The far-off music thou hast heard,
--_Arthur Eaton._

This was my last day of liberty for many, many months. The very next
evening I was stunned by a stone thrown by a small boy who accompanied
a hunter. Picking me up he ran toward his father, who was coming back
from the neighboring swamp with his loaded gamebag.

"This bird isn't dead," said the boy, holding me up to view, "and I'm
going to put it in a cage and train it to talk."

"Crows are the kind that talk. That's no crow nor no starling
neither," answered the man. "Better give it to me to kill. I'll pay
you a penny for it."

"Naw, you don't," and the boy drew back, at the same time closing his
hand over me so tightly that I feared I would be crushed. "I'm going
to keep him, I tell ye. He's mine to do what I please with, and I
ain't agoing to sell him for a penny, neither."

So saying he ran along in front of his father till we reached the mule
cart. Into this clumsy vehicle they climbed and soon we were jogging
over the sandy road to their home. As we drove along the man computed,
partly to himself, partly aloud, how much money the contents of his
game-bag would bring him. The result must have been satisfactory, for
presently he observed:

"Purty fair day's wages, but I believe I could make more killing terns
and gulls than these birds. Bill Jones and the hunters up on Cobb's
Island last year got ten cents apiece for all the gulls they killed.
Forty thousand were killed right there. Oh, it's bound to be a mighty
good business for us fellows as long as the wimmen are in the notion,
that is, if the birds ain't all killed off."

"Air they getting scarce?" questioned the boy. The man ejected a
mouthful of dark, offensive juice from between his grizzled whiskers
before replying.

"Yes, purty tol'ble scarce. So much demand for 'em is bound to clean
the birds out. There used to be heaps of orioles an' robins an' larks
an' blackbirds an' waxwings through the country, but they're getting
played out too, since the wimmen tuk to wearin' 'em on their bunnets."

"Well, no woman sha'n't have my bird for her bunnet," and the boy gave
me another friendly pinch that nearly broke my bones. "I'm a going to
put it in that old cage that's out in the shed and give it to Betty, if
she wants it."

"Humph! she won't keer for it. You'd better kill it. Betty won't be
bothered with it."

"She may give it away, or let it loose, or do what she pleases with it,
then," was the boy's reply.

I learned from their further conversation that the hunter sold his game
to another man who cured the skins for shipment to the city. To this
dealer the bag which held my dead companions was taken and I saw them
no more. Arriving at the hunter's home I was put under a bucket that I
might not escape, while my captor prepared my prison for me. It was an
almost needless precaution for I had been so cramped between his
fingers that I feared I could never again use my legs or wings. Just
before putting me in my rude prison house he brought a pair of shears
and bade Betty clip my wings.

"Oh, I'm afraid it will hurt it!" she exclaimed, pushing away the
extended scissors.

"Nonsense, you ninny! What if it does hurt it?" and he roughly knocked
my bill with his hand.

"Now that's real mean, Joe. You're a scaring it to pieces. Here,
Dickey Downy, I'm going to give you a pretty name if you belong to me;
let me hold you. Why, its little heart is a thumping as if 'twould
burst through its body."

Joe was reluctant to loosen his grasp, and between being pulled first
one way and then the other by the two children, I was badly bruised.
Finally I was permitted by my young captor to enter the cage, where I
sank, trembling and exhausted, to the floor, and remained there all
night, being too sore to ascend the perch.

As may be imagined I was very sorrowful and unhappy. The separation
from my mother and my dear companions, coupled with the fear that I
might never again wing my blithesome flight through the bright blue
sky, but spend the balance of my life in this miserable cell, filled me
with despair. Frantic but useless were my efforts to escape. In vain
I beat my head against the hard steel bars; in vain I endeavored to
crowd my body between them. My prison was too secure.

At length I found that fluttering back and forth buffeting my wings
against the sides of my cell only injured me and availed nothing. Then
it was I wisely made the resolution to endure my imprisonment as
cheerfully as possible. I soon began to regain my strength and spirits
and, save that I was deprived of my liberty, I had no special fault to
find for some days with my treatment from Betty, who was now regarded
as my owner and keeper.

I was always glad when Joe was absent from home, for he was vicious as
well as rough. One of his favorite tricks was to dash my cage hard
against the wall, laughing boisterously as he did so to see how it
frightened me. The concussion was frequently so great that my claws
could not hold to the perch, and I would be tossed helplessly from side
to side with my feathers ruffled and broken. There was but one thing
Joe liked better than this cruel sport, and that was gingerbread; and
my tortures were often stopped by Betty's producing a slice of this
delicacy which she had saved from her own luncheon for this particular
purpose. When I discovered that Joe could be bought off with
gingerbread it can be imagined that I was always glad on the days when
the pungent odors of cinnamon, ginger, and molasses issued from the
cook-stove. It was a surety of peace, of a cessation of hostilities as
long as the cake lasted.

All went fairly well for a little while, but as the novelty of
possession gradually wore off, my little jailer grew negligent and left
me much of the time without water or food. Frequently my throat was so
parched from thirst that I could not utter a protesting chirp. I knew
no other way to attract attention to my wants than to flutter to the
bars and thrust out my head; unfortunately this action was attributed
to wildness and a desire to escape, and I was allowed to suffer on.

"That bird is the most annoying, restless thing I ever saw," complained
Betty's mother one evening when I was thus trying to tell them my cup
was empty. "It spends all its time poking its head through the wires
or thrashing around in the cage, instead of getting up on its perch and
behaving itself quietly as a decent bird should."

"Do you reckon it's sick?" suggested Betty, and she came to my cage and
looked at me attentively.

"Reckon it's hungry, you mean," growled her father, who was in one
corner of the kitchen cleaning his gun.

"She never feeds it any more," commented the mother. "What's the use
of keeping it? I'd wring its neck and be done with it. Betty don't
keer a straw for it."

"Yes, I do," cried the little girl. "I'll get it something to eat this
very minute."

These spasms of attention only lasted a day or two, however, when my
young keeper would lapse into carelessness, and again I would be
allowed to go with an empty crop and a dry throat. My beautiful
plumage grew rusty from this irregularity and continual neglect, and
although I am not a vain bird, my dingy appearance was a source of
daily grief and mortification to me. When Betty was not too busy
playing she sometimes hung my cage outside the door of the cottage, but
often for days together through the pleasant summer I was left hanging
in the kitchen, sometimes half-choked with smoke or dampened with
steam. No wonder I drooped and ceased my cheerful song.

The days when I was put out of doors were indeed gala days to me. Many
families of young chickens lived in the back yard, and the pipings of
the little ones and the scoldings of the mothers when their children
ran too far away from them, were always amusing to listen to and gave
me something to think about which kept my mind off my own troubles.

I liked to watch the hens with their fuzzy broods tumbling about them,
or with the older chicks when they scratched the ground and ceaselessly
clucked for them to come to get their share of what was turned up in
the soil; meanwhile they kept a sharp lookout with their bright eyes to
see that no outsider shared in the feast. And how angrily did they
drive it away should a chick from another brood heedlessly rush in
among them to get a taste.

One old hen in particular interested me very much. I noticed her first
because of her pretty bluish color and the dark markings around her
neck, but I soon came to pity her, for she made herself quite unhappy
and seemed to take no comfort in anything. She was usually tied to a
tree by the leg, and although her string was long it seemed always just
a little too short to reach the thing she wanted. To make matters
worse she had a bad fashion of rushing wildly around the tree and
getting her string wound up shorter and shorter until at last she could
not stir a step, but would hang by one foot foolishly pulling as hard
as she could. It always seemed to me that her chickens were more
disobedient than the rest, because they knew she could not get to them
nor follow them.

Joe sometimes slyly threw pebbles at this blue hen to scare her and
make her jump and pull at the string, when he thought his mother was
not looking. As pay for his sport he often got his ears cuffed, for
though his mother did not seem to notice how cruelly he teased me, she
would not allow him to frighten her fowls.

"Don't you know that a hen that's all the time skeered won't lay?" was
the lesson she tried to impress on him as she punished him.

But the thing I liked best of all was to see Betty's seven white ducks
crowd up to the kitchen door every time any one appeared with a pan of
scraps. Such gabbling and quacking, such pushing and such stepping on
each other and on the chickens, in their eagerness to get there first,
was almost laughable. In fact, the pink-toed pigeons that walked up
and down the ridge of the barn roof, did make fun of them openly. Had
I not known the ducks were well fed and so fat they could scarcely
waddle, I might have thought they were really hungry, but I soon
discovered that they were simply greedy.

Standing on tiptoe and stretching up their long necks they often seized
the food before it had a chance to fall to the ground. By this good
management they usually got more than the chickens. Joe accused Betty
of being partial to the ducks.

"You allus give 'em the best of everything, and twice as much as you do
the chickens," he complained.

"They get the most because they've got the most confidence in me," said
Betty, putting on a very wise look. "They come close up to me, while a
chicken shies off and misses the goodies coz she's silly enough to be
afraid. Besides, the ducks are mine. I raised 'em. I paid twenty
cents a setting for the eggs out of my own money, and when you raise a
thing you generally like it the best. Ducks are a heap smarter'n
chickens, anyway," she asserted. "I never can get one of the chickens
to feed out of a spoon, and the ducks like it the best kind." To
convince him she held toward them a large baking spoon of soured milk.
This milk was thickened into a paste or ball by being put on the stove
and separated from the whey, or watery part, by the action of the heat.

It was a favorite dish with the fowls, and they all smacked their lips
when they saw it coming.

As fast as Betty could fill the spoon it was emptied by the ducks, who
stuck their big yellow bills into it and devoured the contents, letting
the chickens below scramble and push and pick each other for any stray
bits that fell to the ground.

"Didn't I tell you?" said Betty triumphantly. "Them chickens had just
as good a chance as the ducks, but they wouldn't take it."

"Huh!" answered Joe. "Their necks ain't long enough, is what's the
matter."

There were several trees in the yard, and often when the fowls were
fed, birds flew down from their leafy recesses to pick up the crumbs
left lying about. How I used to wish they would come near enough to my
cage that I might converse with them, but it always happened that just
at the time when one of them would settle close to the house, either
Joe's little dog, Colly, would run across the yard, or Betty or her
mother would appear at the door and frighten my feathered friend away.
Only once did I exchange a word with any of these birds, and that for
but a few short minutes.

The bird did not belong to our family, nor had I ever met any of his
relatives before, but that made but little difference. He was a bird,
and that was enough. We did not wait for any formal introduction; but
as he balanced himself on the edge of my cage he hurriedly told me news
of the woods, and how he wished I might get free and come to live
there. He told of the lovely dragon flies, with purple, burnished
wings that floated in the forest, mingling their drowsy hum with the
chirping of the birds. He told of the great mossy carpet spread under
the trees; how at set of day the owls came out, and the moles rustled
in the fallen leaves, and the frogs raised their evening hymn to the
sinking sun.

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