American mockingbird

“ I love the mocking-bird; not because he is a wonderful musician, for—as I have heard him—that he is not; nor because he has a sweet disposition, for that he certainly has not, but because of his mysterious habit of singing at night, which seems to differentiate him from his kind, and approach him to the human; because of his rapturous manner of song, his joy of living; because he shows so much character, and so much intelligence.
OLIVE THORNE MILLER.
The lift of every man's heart is upward ”

“ There are thousands who admire the Mocking-bird, because, after pouring forth a continued stream of ridiculous and disagreeable sounds, or a series of two or three notes repeated more than a hundred times in uninterrupted and monotonous succession, he condescends to utter a single delightfully modulated strain. He often brings his tiresome extravaganzas to a magnificent climax of melody, and just as often concludes an inimitable chant with a most contemptible bathos. ”

“ The mocking-bird seldom fails to kill the snake single-handed, instantly afterwards mounting the bush, to pour forth a torrent of song in token of victory. These birds mount and descend as their song swells or dies away; at times darting up with the celerity of an arrow, as if to recover or recall the last strain of expiring melody. While the mocking-bird thus exerts himself, a bystander, destitute of sight, would suppose that the whole of the feathered tribes had assembled to vie with each other in singing and in deceiving the sportsman, by imitating the birds of which he was in pursuit. ”

“ It might be thought that the revivalist himself took his stand as an exceptional individual. Not at all: he is only a type. American public opinion does not allow a man to stand out as superior. It is surprising the dearth of noble men in the popular estimate of to-day. Mockery follows on the heels of noble action or individual action, and reduces it to type. That is a great function of the American Press of to-day, the defaming of men of originality and the [Pg 113] explaining away of noble action. I remember a conversation I heard at Cleveland. ”

“ If we take the quality of melody as the test, the wood-thrush, hermit-thrush, and the veery-thrush, stand at the head of our list of songsters. [32]
The mocking-bird undoubtedly possesses the greatest range of mere talent, the most varied executive ability, and never fails to surprise and delight one anew at each hearing; but being mostly an imitator, he never approaches the serene beauty and sublimity of the hermit-thrush. The word that best expresses my feelings, on hearing the mocking-bird, is admiration, though the first emotion is one of surprise and incredulity. ”

“ The Mocking-bird gives up the attempt in despair, and refuses to sing at all when confined near one in a cage. I cannot look upon him as ever in a very serious humor. He seems to be a lively, jocular little fellow, who is always jesting and bantering, and when half a dozen different individuals are sporting about in the same orchard, I often imagine that they might represent the persons dramatized in some comic opera. These birds never remain stationary upon the bough of a tree, singing apparently for their own solitary amusement ”

“ Can't I be an American, even if I was born elsewhere?"
"You can never be president," he said gravely.
"I don't want to be president!" She snuggled closer to him. "All I want to be is a good man's wife; to watch the kitchen to see that he gets good things to eat; to guard his comforts; to laugh when he laughs; to be gentle when he is sad; to nurse him when he is ill; to be all and everything to him in adversity as well as in prosperity: a true wife." ”

“ No one is more charming, more admirable, than a charming American. I know Americans whom the children of no other nation can excel. If patriotism consists in praising the shrilly cackling, over-diamonded women, and the ill-educated, shallow, opinionated men of our hoi polloi—why then I am not patriotic. They, beyond everything else human, set my teeth on edge, do Americans the vulgar. But because I cry out at them with genuine American acrimony, it does not follow that I am stupid enough to think them the only Americans. ”

“ Ordinarily their song and their plumage, the bird's two principal attributes, preoccupy us, and prevent us from observing their lively and original pantomime. One bird, the American mocking-bird, has a comedian's genius, distinguishing all his songs by a mimicry strictly appropriate to their character, and often very ironical. Our birds do not possess this singular art; but, without skill, and unknown to themselves, they express, by significant and frequently pathetic movements, the thoughts which traverse their brain. ”

“ That is the very secret of the American sense of humor: the conviction that something is going to save us at the last. Otherwise there would be no joke! It is no accident, surely, [Pg 208] that the man who is increasingly idolized as the most representative of all Americans, the burden-bearer of his people, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, should be our most inveterate humorist. Let Lincoln have his story and his joke, for he had faith in the saving of the nation ”

“ The Mocking Bird has a habit of singing and fluttering in the middle of the night, and in different individuals the song varies, as is noted of many birds, particularly canaries. The song is a natural love song, a rich dreamy melody. The mocking song is imitative of the notes of all the birds of field, forest, and garden, broken into fragments.
The Mocker’s nest is loosely made of leaves and grass, rags, feathers, etc., plain and comfortable. It is never far from the ground. The eggs are four to six, bluish green, spattered with shades of brown. ”

“ This may be an odd contention from me, but to me one of the most distinctive traits of the American girl is her gift for being unserious. It is not always a sense of humor, either; if it is, it is a sense entirely her own, for it [81] certainly is not associated with traits which we ascribe to a sense of humor in men. In any case it is a saving sense, a sense that keeps her from taking things so tragically as the unknowing or unsympathetic spectator might expect. The American has a genius for radicalism, a creative defiance of logic and tradition. ”

“ He was just a hale, clean, young American with a sense of humour and a deep capacity for sweet, unselfish love; a young American who had been a miserable failure in the past, who was making good now, and who had a splendid, solid future before him. ”

“ In his early manhood, his striking power as a stump speaker, his readiness at repartee, and his never-failing good humor, made him a giant in politics, to which he was literally forced to give attention. But with all these extraordinary gifts, he could launch the thunderbolts of invective against wrong and stir the profoundest depths of emotion by his appeals. He loved liberty and hated oppression, and has always believed that the United States of America is the happiest and greatest country upon which the sun ever shone. His patriotic speeches are models of eloquence and power. ”

“ Now, I have seen enough of American politics to know that while our people admire talent, and sometimes go into spasms of enthusiasm over men who have emotional qualities which appeal to the masses, and which make them personally popular, yet, after all, there is an abiding faith in sincerity, fidelity, and character which compels the American masses to choose the man who has these qualities rather than that one who has brilliant talents ”

“ Hay just before and just after the Prince had made some political request. They would hardly look, if our view of the American temperament is correct, like the faces of the same persons. The infinitely courteous hosts will in a moment become hard business men, thinking not of the pleasantest sentences to say, but of the permanent interests of the United States. Only the humour might linger a little in the eyes. ”

“ It is one of the forfeits we are bound to pay when we play the great absorbing game of democracy.
We are now ready to ask once more whether there is a truly national type of American humor. Viewed exclusively from the standpoint of racial characteristics, we have seen that this question as to a national type of humor is difficult to answer. But we have seen with equal clearness that the United States has offered a singularly rich field for the development of the sense of humor; and furthermore that there are certain specialized forms of humor which have flourished luxuriantly upon our soil. ”

“ Says I, “Americans make perfect fools of themselves in my mind, a runnin’ after a parcel of boys, whose only merit is, they happened to be born before thier brothers and sisters was.” Says I, “If a baby is born in a meetin’ house, it don’t make out that he is born a preacher. A good smart American boy like Thomas Jefferson, looks as good to me as any of your Princes.” ”

“ Besides, the Americans, as a hard-working race, need a refreshing humour to relieve the strain upon their mental and physical energies. Emerson remarked of Abraham Lincoln, that humour refreshed him like sleep or wine; and a nation so eager in all kinds of work deserves the innocent relaxation that comes from literature in its most sparkling and pleasing form. ”

“ It is his contention that Americans take their politics on the whole more good-humouredly than has always been found possible by their English cousins, and that when the campaign is over, there is more readiness in the United States than in England to let pass into oblivion any bitterness that may have found expression during the fighting. ”

“ It has its value, sentimental as well as practical, for the American people likes to set up its own political idols. The politicians who for the moment guide the destinies of the nation are so misdrawn, so illuminated with virtues and endowed with vices quite foreign to them, that they frequently achieve a personality quite fictitious, but which, none the less, passes current in the popular mind as genuine. ”

“ The young mocker is a spirited fellow, who can't endure to stay in the nest till his wings are strong enough to bear him. He usually tries to fly too soon, and so comes to the ground. Coming to the ground is a great misfortune to the bird, for he is easily caught and put in a cage.
Being fine singers, mockingbirds are often kept in cages. In the late summer, the bird [36] stores in New York have hundreds of them for sale, birds so young that they still wear the speckled bibs of baby-days. Many of them die, and so every year they are growing more rare. ”

“ I trust I may never again be guilty of such arrant stupidity as to think that an American-born citizen can become a feudal baron by virtue of his dollars and cents, any more than an American-born girl can hope to be a real, dyed-in-the-wool countess or duchess because some one needs the money more than she does. It would be quite as impossible, contrariwise, to transform a noble duke into a plain American citizen, so there you are, even up.
My plans were made. After a fortnight in Vienna, I expected to go west to London for the autumn, and then back to New York. ”

“ The world has now, without a single dissenting voice, elevated Lincoln to the highest pedestal a statesman can attain; but the world has a short memory, and it forgets that at the first it strove with equal unanimity, East and West, on the continent of America no less than on the continent of Europe, to place the label "clown" on his back. I saw the other day a book of cartoons on the great President, taken from American and European sources, which strike the modern eye as little short of blasphemous. However, the paste never got time to dry, and the label did not stick. ”

“ The paragraphers joke about the wheel-barrow, the hen, the mule, the mother-in-law, the President of the United States. There is no ascending or descending scale of importance. Any of the topics can raise a laugh. If one examines a collection of American parodies, one will find that the happy national talent for fun-making finds full scope in the parody [Pg 204] and burlesque of the dearest national sentiments. But no one minds; everybody believes that the sentiments endure while the jokes will pass. The jokes, intended as they are for an immense audience, necessarily lack subtlety. ”

“ But the ultra-delicacy, the squeamishness of an age which is by no means purer or more virtuous than its ruder predecessors, has ended in trenching upon the ridiculous. Let us see what the modern English woman and her Anglo-American sister have become under the working of a mock-modesty which too often acts cloak to real dévergondage ”

“ Although not afflicted with "the fatal gift of beauty," at least not the gaudy kind, like the cardinal's and scarlet tanager's, the mocking-bird's wonderful voice has brought upon him an equal quantity of troubles. Keenly intelligent though he is, he does not know enough to mope and refuse to sing in a cage, but whiles away the tedious hours of his captivity by all manner of amusing and delightful sounds. Indeed it has been found that the household pet is apt to be a better mocker than the wild bird—a {49} most unfortunate discovery. ”

“ Mockingbirds, also, though singing little, are beginning to manifest symptoms of jealousy. If all the mockers and all the cardinals should break into voice at once, the air itself would hardly contain the music.
Two pileated woodpeckers that I see every few days at a particular spot in the hammock have already come to an understanding, or so I fancy from certain bits of conduct that I have been privileged to witness. This morning I stood watching the female as she hammered to pieces a decayed branch close by me, when all at once her mate called in the distance. ”