Margaret Warner Morley

“ Indeed, it could hardly be called a trail at all, it was so little used, and one had to know the mountain very well indeed to get safely to the top.
Such a wild and lovely forest as they found now, you never were in. I do not believe such balsam firs grow anywhere else in the world. Their dark green tops make the mountains look black, excepting when the air is hazy and makes them look faint and blue in the distance. But when the air is clear the mountains look black because of the fir trees that grow all the way up to their tops. ”

“ You see now what was happening,—Little Mitchell was no longer a baby. He was fast getting to be a handsome grown-up squirrel, with all the stripes and markings of one. His face seemed to shorten up and change in expression,—just as people change when they grow out of childhood into grown-up [220] men and women. Only their faces grow longer instead of shorter.
It was very pretty to watch these changes come over Little Mitchell; but one thing troubled his lady,—as time went on he did not get well. He would seem pretty well for a long time, but the poor little hind legs got weaker and weaker. ”

“ He was very fond of playing with his tail, and when he was on the floor he would often chase it just as a kitten does. It was a fine tail by this time, long and bushy; and when he got excited he would fluff it out until it looked like a real grown-up squirrel’s tail.
But talking of tails, the most outrageously funny thing Little Mitchell ever did was to roll himself up into a ball, with his tail hugged in his arms and held between his teeth, then go over and over, like a ball, from one end of the platform to the other. ”

“ Little Mitchell and his lady were too late for the berries, but [116] they went along under the pretty service trees.
Well, you go on down the path into the deep, deep forest, with the big old oaks and beeches and other trees about you, and the sunbeams dancing in and out, making the forest all motley like the skin of a leopard.
You go down steeper and steeper, until you come to the end of the path and enter a road that runs at right angles to it.
It is a fearful road, full of loose stones and great rocks, such as you find in the bed of a stream. ”

“ Yes, nuts; little shiny brown nuts, like baby chestnuts. The mountain children often string them for beads, they are so pretty. They grow in little burrs, like tiny chestnut burrs; but there is only one nut in a burr instead of two or three, and they grow on bushes or little trees, with leaves like chestnut leaves, only smaller.
No, chinkapins are not shaped quite like chestnuts; they are not flat anywhere. ”

“ What he got from his little nose was very clean and watery, just as clean as what puss gets on her paws when she licks them. Yes, it does seem strange to you, but that is the way the squirrel-folk all do. If you were a squirrel, you would think it queer to do any other way.
Well, Little Mitchell, out there in the corn-field, sat up on his lady’s shoulder and washed his face until he was satisfied; then he climbed all over her, up and down and around, clear down to the hem of her dress. ”

“ The people who live down below call the mountain people “mountain boomers,”—why, I do not know, unless perhaps they think they live in the mountains like squirrels.
Well, the guide began to look around to find the boomer, and the lady looked around too, and at last they spied a little squirrel clinging to the bark of a tall chestnut tree, twenty feet from the ground, and crying very hard. ”

“ MARGARET WARNER MORLEY has written in “Life and Love” a book which should be placed in the hands of every young man and woman. It is a fearless yet clean-minded study of the development of life and the relations thereof from the protoplasm to mankind. The work is logical, instructive, impressive. It should result in the innocence of knowledge, which is better than the innocence of ignorance. It is a pleasure to see a woman handling so delicate a topic so well. Miss Morley deserves thanks for doing it so impeccably. ”

“ Some people would say paws; but if a squirrel has not hands, then nobody has. Just watch one take a nut and turn it over and over with those hands, and finally hold it firmly between those ridiculous little nubbins that are his thumbs, while he gnaws it. And then watch him comb his tail with his fingers, and wash his face with his hands, and catch your watch-chain when you dangle it in front of him. Only, you see, he always uses both hands at once. At least Little Mitchell [177] did, for the lady never saw him take anything in one hand alone. ”

“ And everywhere were the rhododendrons. It was too late for them to be in bloom; so they were not as lovely as they are sometimes. When you get into the rhododendrons, you cannot see up into the tree branches, because the rhododendron branches are tangled about you and above you with their stiff green leaves. They make the woods seem dreadfully black and gloomy; but when they are in bloom it is another matter.
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The lady and the guide went on and on under the twisted rhododendrons, and Baby Mitchell lay fast asleep under the lady’s belt. ”

“ But Little Mitchell slept on,—he was so very, very tired, you see, and then the lady had managed somehow to keep him dry and warm.
You can see the whole world from the top of Mount Mitchell,—well, no, not really the whole world, but you know what I mean,—you can see so much it seems as if it must be the whole world; and that is why the lady had wanted to go there. ”

“ Little Mitchell’s lady used to like to watch the thunder-storms, but Little Mitchell did not care anything about them. He preferred going with the lady to the big rock from which the little village of Blowing Rock gets its name. The Indians named it long ago, because when the wind is in the right quarter it blows so hard you cannot throw anything over the rock. If you try to throw your handkerchief or your hat over, you cannot do it, because the wind flings it back to you. Sometimes it blows so strong you couldn’t even jump over,—so people say. ”

“ He kept on at this trick until finally she put him in his box and fastened the cover down,—which, after all, was just what he wanted, for he was tired, and he curled right up and went fast asleep and gave her no more trouble.
Away they went, down the mountain, across the valley, up another mountain, and down into the Watauga valley, where the river is larger and where the chinkapins grow.
It is the same valley where stands the house on the strawberry slope,—only the Watauga River is not a tinkling trout-brook down here, but quite a proud stream, though it still has trout in its pools. ”

“ She dipped the end of her finger in the milk and put it in Little Mitchell’s mouth. Perhaps you think he wouldn’t eat condensed milk. You should have seen him! He licked every bit from the lady’s finger, and then cried for more.
She fed him all she dared,—for when you are almost starved it is dangerous to eat too much at a time, you know. When she would give him no more, he cried very hard,—he was such a hungry baby, and the milk tasted so good. But pretty soon he quieted down and went fast asleep again, and was tucked back under the soft belt. ”

“ They grow on little low trees, so little you would hardly expect to find any nuts on them; but their tops are just covered with big, round, splendid burrs full of big, plump, brown nuts that are as sweet as any nuts can be. The lady took some of these nuts home, but she did not give them to Little Mitchell until she had roasted them in the hot ashes and made them quite soft. Then she gave him one, and the baby took it in his hands, and sat up as well as he could, and looked very wise indeed. But he was just making believe, for he didn’t know in the least what to do with that nut. ”

“ It was a very hot night, although rather late in the season for such warm weather in Hartford. It was so warm that the lady did not like to shut Little Mitchell up in his box, even though it had so many holes in it. So she left the cover off, and just before going to bed she looked in to see how he was getting along.
Well, there he lay, on his back, with his head resting on the edge of the box and his arms up over his head, for [153] all the world like a hot, tired, human little baby. ”

“ The lady is very tired, remember,—or at least as tired as anybody can be in that enchanted forest; and she is hungry, and must have her supper.
When the mother of the little children saw the lady coming, she was glad as well as astonished, and ran to meet her.
“Law me! You must be plumb tired out,” she said. “Come right along in, and set down and rest yourself. We hain’t got much, but what we have got you’re welcome to.”
That is the way the mountain people always talk. Their grammar is all wrong, but their hearts are all right,—and a good heart is worth a great deal more than good grammar ”

“ On went the lady, slowly climbing up the steep mountain; and the wonder is that Little Mitchell was not squeezed to death under her belt. But he slept on.
On through the great chestnut forest went the lady and her guide,—on past the handsome tulip trees, the [40] great oaks, and all kinds of beautiful forest trees.
The sun grew hot on the mountain side, and the air became soft and hazy,—a little too soft and hazy for safety on that wild mountain, where storms ride swiftly up like witches from nowhere. ”

“ Do you want to know about his bed?
Well, you see, the mountain people use feather-beds, and they have two or three beds in one room. That is the way they like to live,—a great many people together in one room.
But the lady did not like this way, so she had a room to herself, with two big beds in it, and there was a thick feather-bed on each of them. She [61] punched her fists down into one of the feather-beds until she had made quite a deep hole, and in this she buried Little Mitchell in his blanket.
You see, young squirrels, like other babies, need to be kept warm. ”

“ You don’t think you ever ate any birch-oil in your life? Oh, but I know you have eaten it. I am perfectly sure you sometimes eat wintergreen candy and other things flavored with wintergreen. That is, you call it wintergreen; but it is not that at all, it is birch. You see the flavor is the same, and it is much easier to get it out of the birch.
The way they do is to strip the bark from the young black-birch trees,—which of course kills the trees, and that is too bad; but they do it, and chop the bark into little pieces, which they put into a long wooden box with a zinc bottom. ”

“ As Little Mitchell became weaker, he would often lie in his little hammock in the closet half a day at a time. And when, finally, he got to be too weak to climb even the woolly wrapper, the lady would lift him up and put him into the sleeve, and he would stay there until he wanted to come out, when he would get up on the hook from which the wrapper hung, and wait for the lady to take him down. ”

“ To the bees more than to any other portion of the animal kingdom has attention been devoted by poets and thinkers seeking inspiration, and from this wealth of allusion and anecdote Miss Morley has culled the choicest and most striking parts. ”

“ No,—he wouldn’t look at peanuts. But he would eat beech-nuts until you wondered where in the world he put them all. And pecan nuts he liked almost as well, only of course the lady had to crack them for him.
He knew a good nut from a bad one, too, before opening it. You could be very sure that if he threw down a beech-nut or an almond without trying to open it, there was nothing fit to eat inside. How he knew, I cannot tell; but the rascal did know. I suppose it was some of that squirrel wisdom that kept coming to him as he grew older.
He used to drink from a tumbler in those days ”

“ While he was sick, the lady let him sleep under the corner of her travelling rug instead of in his cage; and [210] when he got better he still wanted to sleep in the rug. He would creep in to take a nap in the daytime, and at night he teased so to stay that the lady yielded at last, and fixed him a bed on the floor, at the head of her own couch. She doubled a towel in between two folds of the rug, for sheets, as it were; but Little Mitchell did not like the towel, and would creep in on top of it or under it. ”

“ Indeed, it is the dry bed of a stream, and the stream itself, in another bed near by, is the very beginning of the Linville River, and you keep having to cross over the river any way you can, by jumping from stone to stone, and sometimes slipping off and getting wet.
Sometimes this queer road runs right [117] up the river bed; and then you walk along the edge of it, along a winding path through the rhododendrons.
There were some mountain people going along the road when Little Mitchell and the lady got to it that day. There were a man, a boy, a horse and wagon, and two young girls ”

“ You see, phosphorus is the stuff on the ends of matches that makes them light; and it is poison,—and a mean, horrible poison too.
Little Mitchell played about as usual for a few days, rolling like a ball on the platform, racing over the screen, and tormenting the lady when she wanted to work. Then one morning he was frightfully sick and he stayed sick all day. He sat hunched up on [209] the couch, making queer, mournful little noises, and eating nothing. ”

“ He took them in his little hands, [127] one at a time, and looked up at his lady out of his bright eyes with such a wise air! He turned the kernel of corn over, and sniffed at it until he found the germ that lies in one side,—the little thing that sprouts when you plant the corn,—and he pulled this out with his sharp front teeth, and ate it very fast; but the rest of the kernel he threw away. Not a bit of it would he eat but that! You see the germ was soft and sweet, and pleased the little chap. ”

“ Every day, all winter long, the man came with fresh milk, night and morning, and called “P-ooo-s, p-ooo-s, p-ooo-s.” And two or three times a week they had fresh meat, or, best of all, canned salmon. The gentleman left a whole case of salmon for them every year, and they loved it better than anything else,—for you know cats are very fond of fish. Some cats will even go fishing for themselves if they live near the water.
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Little Mitchell Likes Chinkapins
“He sat on the Lady’s knee and cracked chinkapins, and would give the shells a toss that sent them far away.” ”