Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

“ He and his dull, olive and yellow mate sing duets, too, in richer, less whistling voices than the Baltimore. If you are not sure of the orchard orioles look for their pretty, sky-blue shoes and stockings.
No blackbird is shy, you may be sure. The orioles always fly about in plain sight, and talk freely of themselves and their affairs. A hot-headed, blustering little fellow is the oriole, noisy, restless, talkative; always whistling gaily like a happy school boy, in sun, wind and rain. He has scolding notes for meddlesome neighbors, too. The orchard oriole is a good policeman. ”

“ This American boy was tall and straight and slender. His eyes were as black as ink, his hair as black as a crow's wing. He could run like a deer, swim like a fish and climb like a squirrel. He was as solemn as a little owl. When he grew to a man he wore a headdress of eagle feathers. His skin was not white like yours. It was nearly the color of an English penny or an American one cent piece. Now you know what he was. He was an American Indian. There are still a good many Indians in our country. They live in houses, on big farms. They dress like white boys, speak English and go to school. ”

“ Both belong to the big, musical family of thrushes.
Pretty Mr. Bluebird comes all alone. His sweet solo is something like this: "Here I am; all alone'. Oh-oh-I-oh, pur-i-ty, cher-ish me!" It is the loveliest melody, a little bit sad, until his mate joins him a week or so later. Mrs. Bluebird has the same colors, but they are not so bright. That is the rule in the bird world. Papa wears the gayest coat and sings the finest song. But every bird thinks he has the dearest, prettiest little mate in the world. He greets her with a song of joy. ”

“ Perhaps, too, that is why the desert people love the many-colored, gaily-patterned rugs. Spread on the sand they look like flower beds.
As soon as the moon is up, the herders take down the big tent. The water is dwindling in the spring, the grass is almost gone. The family must move to a better pasture. They must go at night, when it is cool. Everything is packed on the kneeling camels. ”

“ The finest singers of America are thrushes, blackbirds and finches. The finches all have the canary twittering songs; the blackbirds the whistling, bubbling notes. The songs of the thrushes are pure rich melody, and many of them mock the songs of the warblers, the finches and the blackbirds. Another twittering finch is the snow-white and dead-black, short-billed grosbeak, with the patches of lovely rose color on the breast and under the wings. ”

“ The cat bird is a mocker, too. He is a thrush who can sing a pretty song when he wants to. But he is a saucy fellow. He caws like a crow and meows like a cat, to scare his timid neighbors into spasms, and to waken Rob Roy from his nap. ”

“ Wrecked ships and uprooted trees floated to them from far-away lands. The frame work was covered with sod and moss. Snow fell thick on the house and froze solid.
An Es-qui-mo house had no windows, not even a hole for the smoke to go out. A bench around the wall made a table, a bed, and seats for just as many men, women, babies and dogs as could crowd into the hut. They could hardly see each other for the smoke. The hut was warmed and lighted by earthen lamps that hung from the ceiling. These had moss wicks and burned walrus fat. Over the lamps meat was cooked in earthen pots. ”

“ She builds her nest of moss and mud around dwelling houses, and under low bridge arches. The cedar-bird likes a cherry or a cedar tree. She makes a large nest as neat as her little quaker self, of clover stems, pine needles, grass and shredded bark. ”

“ The orioles are cry-babies, crying to be fed even when they are able to fly. The wren babies make for the nearest holes—a water spout or rat hole, perhaps—and have to be coaxed and scolded to safe perches in bushes. Little speckle-breasted robin babies hop after their parents and soon learn to be quiet. The woodpecker babies are stupid and clumsy, and expect to be fed a long time. The jays are scarcely out of the nest before they begin to scold. The king-birds are the most sensible of all. They mind their parents, stick close together, and learn how to look out for themselves. ”

“ A barn-swallow colony comes back to the old home and looks over the wind and frost battered rows of mud and straw nests under the eaves and along the rafters. They stuff up holes, and put in new linings of straw and chicken feathers. ”

“ In the jin-rik-i-sha you feel like twin baby sisters out with the nurse maid for an airing. You giggle, and your new little friend giggles. Then you ask her name. She says it is Cherry Blossom. That seems too good to be true. Her brother's name is Nogi after a great war hero.
How fast the jin-rik-i-sha man runs—as fast as a horse. He whirls you through the queerest streets. The houses and shops are of gray wood, with heavy, over-hanging roofs of black tiles. They are wide open. The walls are slid back so you can see everything that is going on inside. ”

“ The little people of Norway and Sweden—which together make Scandinavia—get so much night in winter and so much day in summer that it doesn't seem strange to them at all—this getting up by night and going to bed by day. ”

“ There are ever so many more birds in our gardens, woods and fields. Mr. John Burroughs says forty or fifty song birds visit us every summer. Most of them belong to the families of the thrushes, the finches, the blackbirds, the wrens, swallows, woodpeckers, flycatchers and little warblers. It is the small birds that sing. And you can tell what family a bird belongs to by its song and its food habits, more than by its colors or its nest. ”

“ They take up no useful room, and they earn their own living. At the same time they make the world a more beautiful place to live in.
They have so many human ways. They love their mates; they care so tenderly for their babies. They have such skill, such industry, such courage, such devotion to duty, such grace of movement and beauty of plumage and voice. Don't you think, since they help us so much, we should be willing to help them a little? All they want is protection, and a little help in the kind of food they need, where wild fruits and seeds do not grow. ”

“ Great herds of buffalo fed on the high, dry, grassy plains. There were no trees at all except along the few wide rivers. But, oh, the flowers! Millions of them, red and blue and yellow and white, starred the green or brown grass. ”

“ If it had not been for these few, scattered bird-lovers, who protected the little feathered friends that sing to us so sweetly, and work for us so willingly, we would not have as many wild birds as we have today.
This is the story of one of these old-time bird-lovers and his bird-haunted garden. He was a country doctor. He lived in a village in the middle West, in a small white house with green shutters. In his large garden he had many beautiful trees, and the finest flowers and fruits and vegetables in the town, although he never seemed to take any more pains with them than his neighbors. ”

“ In the woods were ever so many curious things. There were the mounds that birds built to hide their eggs. There were tailor-bird nests that were bags of thick leaves, sewed with spider webs. The tailor-bird used his sharp bill for a needle. Bats hung by their wing-hooks, and fanned themselves. Monkeys chattered and quarrelled and ran races through the trees. ”

“ But the French soldiers went back to France long ago, and the forts crumbled. The French farmers and traders stayed in America.
Louis and Jeanne learned to speak English, but they did not forget French. Today, thousands of people in Canada speak both English and French. Our warm, southern city of New Orleans is almost as French as many cities in France. If you should ever go to New Orleans you might come to know some pale, black-eyed, polite French children. When you go away they will kiss you on both cheeks, and say goodby. But sometimes they seem to forget that they are Americans. ”

“ A Chinese house is just as shut up as a Japanese house is wide open. Wung Foo's home had a wall around it. It stood in a garden, with a lily and fish pond, a bridge, and a curly-roofed tea-house. The women's sitting room was very pretty. It had stools and tables of carved black wood, inlaid with pearl flowers. On the walls were hung pictures embroidered on red satin, or painted on rice paper. There were vases and jars of red and gold, and blue and white. The tea trays were of silver with gold birds on them. The ladies opened and shut scented fans. ”

“ Don't you want to stop, on the way, to see some children who live in a desert? They live very differently from any people that you could find anywhere else in the world. They have two things you like very much—no, three. They have sugary dates to eat, and big humpy camels and dromedaries to ride. What is the difference between a camel and a dromedary? And they have Arabian night's stories.
If you want to see Mehemet and Zaidee in their tent home in Arabia, you must call upon them very early in the morning, or after the sun goes down. ”

“ When the tribe stopped to rest, the baby and his cradle were hung from the limb of a tree, and the wind rocked him to sleep.
Someone was always saying "don't" to the Indian boy and girl. "Don't make a noise when you walk. You must not even rustle a leaf, or snap a twig." That might scare away the deer father was trying to kill, and then the family must go hungry. Sometimes, when out hunting, a boy had to lie for an hour, as quiet as a pussy at a mouse hole. ”

“ She is a late builder although she comes early. It is June or July before she lays her four or five clay-colored eggs. The gold-finch doesn't build until there are the softest thistle and dandelion seeds to line her pretty nest of fine grasses. She builds it in the crotch of a tree, not over twenty feet high, and in it lays from four to six pretty bluish-white eggs.
If the orioles are weavers and the swallows masons, the woodpeckers are carpenters. A pair, working together, chisel out a home in hard, clean wood. Old red-head's nest is often a foot deep. ”

“ The only vacations are at New Years, in February; on kite flying day in October, and on the feast of the lanterns day. Then fire-crackers pop and snap and bang all day long, as they do on our Fourth of July. When Wung Foo went to school there were a thousand interesting things in the crowded streets, but he never noticed them. ”

“ The land lies behind the trees and lower than the water. Wouldn't you think the sea would roll in and drown the pretty red and yellow tulips in their beds? It would if the people had not built high banks of earth. ”

“ But her father often talked of going away to the New World of America, that Columbus had found, to live. They were all safe and comfortable in England, but they were not happy. They dressed and lived more soberly than their neighbors. They liked to go to a plain meeting-house, instead of to the King's stone church. For this they were punished. Unkind people mocked them, and called them Puritans. But they were proud of that name because they tried to live pure lives. ”

“ The Dutch men were merchants. They bought furs of the Indians and sent them to Holland to be sold. When the ships came for furs they brought loads of bricks to build houses. A street of neat brick houses was built like the letter U around the blunt nose of the island. The fronts faced a green park; the gardens all ran down to the water. The Dutch called this town New Am-ster-dam. After many years English people came to live with the Dutch, and they named the town New York. Today nearly four million people live in New York. It is one of the biggest cities in the world. ”

“ Crow babies are naked and very tender skinned. Bird babies look to be all mouths. They lie helplessly in the nests, bills wide open, crying every few minutes for food, and what a lot of it they can eat!
Every few minutes one or the other of the robin parents hurries to the nest with a mouthful of worms. The babies just lie there,big yellow bills open, and eat two or three times their own weight of worms every day. From dawn until dark a worm must be found every two minutes to keep a nest full of young robins fed. ”

“ Then come the women and children on the riding dromedaries. The freight camels follow with their drivers; the brown herders and dogs drive the sheep and goats. The moon is a silver crescent in the dark blue sky. ”

“ The dogs live with some good, religious Brothers away up on the mountains, and they go out to find lost people. The dogs were so glad to find the children that they barked and called everybody for a mile around. They stood there by the snow-covered children until men came. The Swiss children love the big dogs.
Victor held Marie Louise on his lap that night, as if he would never let his little sister go, again. ”

“ You can always know the woodpeckers by their drumming, the big black crows by their cawing, the scary-eyed owls by their who-who-ing, the doves by their mourning, the cuckoos and the jays by their calling their own names. ”

“ He said the Spanish people came up from Mexico to live, many, many years before gold was found. The Spanish people made a garden out of the desert. They brought seeds and plants from Mexico, and they coaxed water down from the mountains. Many of the gold seekers did not go back home. They went down the valley five hundred miles to the Spanish towns, and they made more farms and towns near the sea around Los Angeles. The Spanish had built a town there of sun-dried bricks, and called it the City of the Queen of the Angels. Now it was a great, rich American city of three hundred thousand people. ”

“ All the male birds have a love song for their mates. Both birds have call notes, and harsh alarm notes to warn of danger, and to frighten away enemies. And they have talking tones. Mates will often flit about near each other, and exchange remarks. Very likely they are just talking about the weather, or the food supply, or their neighbors. You can spend a whole summe watching and listening to one family of birds, and learn something new and interesting every day.
If ever you do that take a thrush for first choice. The robin, the bluebird, the brown thrasher and the mocking bird are thrushes. ”

“ In French, it was called a chateau (chat-ó) . A noble lord lived there. He owned the farms and the village. Everybody had to pay rent to him. Farmers who went to America could own their own land and houses.
When Louis and Jeanne said goodby to their playmates their little faces were pale, their black eyes filled with tears. They kissed people, first on one cheek and then on the other. And they said: "Adieu, cher ami!" That was French for "goodby, dear friend, we will never see you again." French children were polite. Politeness means both kind feelings and pretty manners. ”

“ The robins clear our lawns; the bluebirds, cat-birds and cedar-birds forage in the orchards. The wood thrushes and flickers feed on the ground in groves. The meadow-larks, bobolinks and red-wings hunt in the pastures and swamps. ”