Walther von der Vogelweide

“ The same summer he became one of the principal masters in the Friedrichs-Gymnasium of Königsberg, where he assisted his colleague, the Germanist Friedrich Karl Köpke (1785–1865) with his edition of Rudolf von Ems’ Barlaam und Josaphat (1818) , and also assisted his friend in a contemplated edition of the works of Walther von der Vogelweide. ”

“ A TIMID OBSERVER.The poor always love birds. This love is often the sole grace and poetry of their lives. Old-time German folk treasured the rhymes of Walter von der Vogelweide. Norman peasants, in forgotten centuries, invented a quaint and touching story to tell their children why the robin's breast is red; and ages have only nurtured this affection till it has become a fixed fondness—a sort of gentle reverence even, which has made a constant alliance between the needy of this earth and the "careless children of the air." ”

“ Little accidents marred the harmony of life in the fowl-run. On one occasion a hen—not Aunt Elizabeth, I am sorry to say,—fell into a pot of tar, and came out an unspeakable object. Ukridge put his spare pair of tennis shoes in the incubator to dry them, and permanently spoiled the future of half-a-dozen eggs which happened to have got there first. Chickens kept straying into the wrong coops, where they got badly pecked by the residents. ”

“ Some men would have gone on letting a good door be ruined."
"And spoiled the dog for a ha'porth of water," I said.
At this moment Mrs. Ukridge announced that the kettle was boiling. Over a cup of tea Ukridge became the man of business.
"I wonder when those fowls are going to arrive. They should have been here to-day. It's a little hard. Here am I, all eagerness and anxiety, waiting to start an up-to-date chicken farm, and no fowls! I can't run a chicken farm without fowls. If they don't come to-morrow, I shall get after those people with a hatchet. There must be no slackness. ”

“ Tom Chase allowed the vinegar to trickle on to the cloth, missing the salad-bowl by a clear two inches.
"You don't mean to tell us," he said, "that you really come from the one and only chicken farm? Why, you're the man we've all been praying to meet for days past. You're the talk of the town. If you can call Combe Regis a town. Everybody is discussing you. Your methods are new and original, aren't they?"
"Probably. Ukridge knows nothing about fowls. I know less. He considers it an advantage. He says our minds ought to be unbiassed."
"Ukridge!" said the professor. ”

“ It was no wonder, he reflected, in that almost womanless land, that many a cowpuncher rode the range by night, seeing her image in every star. The thought that each single man, and many a married one, in Crawling Water, would ride into the Pit itself to win one of her smiles, had been Wade's comfort, even when he was thinking of the possibility of bloodshed between the two hostile factions. ”

“ It was the disagreeable, sardonic-looking bird which Ukridge, on the strength of an alleged similarity of profile to his wife's nearest relative, had christened Aunt Elizabeth. A Bolshevist hen, always at the bottom of any disturbance in the fowl-run, a bird which ate its head off daily at our expense and bit the hands which fed it by resolutely declining to lay a single egg. Behind this fowl ran Bob, doing, as usual, the thing that he ought not to have done. Bob's wrong-headedness in the matter of our hens was a constant source of inconvenience. ”

“ Vogelstein looked at her askance, but he smiled and said, "I should understand your information—for which I am so much obliged—a little better if I knew what you mean by an impediment."
"Oh, I mean she's always engaged to some young man who belongs to her earlier phase." ”

“ They ordered the young wolves not to devour men in future, but to confine themselves to buffaloes, deer, and other wild animals. They threw the old wolves into the north ocean, where they became putrid, and their hair swam on the surface of the water, from which the white men originated. The lord of life also told the Numangkake, that when they had boiled their maize they should keep up only a small fire for the rest of the day ”

“ I said, "and made an excellent lunch off one of our best fowls. He also killed another, and only just escaped death himself at the hands of Ukridge."
"Mr. Ukridge doesn't like him, does he?"
"If he does, he dissembles his love. Edwin is Mrs. Ukridge's pet. He is the only subject on which they disagree. Edwin is certainly in the way on a chicken farm. He has got over his fear of Bob, and is now perfectly lawless. We have to keep a constant eye on him."
"And have you had any success with the incubator? I love incubators. I have always wanted to have one of my own, but we have never kept fowls." ”

“ I never saw a more bored-looking lot of birds."
"Oh, do look at that poor little brown one by the coop," said Mrs. Ukridge sympathetically; "I'm sure it's not well. See, it's lying down. What can be the matter with it?"
"I tell you what we'll do," said Ukridge. "We'll ask Beale. He once lived with an aunt who kept fowls. He'll know all about it. Beale!"
No answer.
"Beale!!"
A sturdy form in shirt-sleeves appeared through the bushes, carrying a boot. We seemed to have interrupted him in the act of cleaning it.
"Beale, you know all about fowls. What's the matter with these chickens?" ”

“ I said, "the fowls arrive before we're ready for them?"
"Why, then they must wait."
"But you can't keep fowls cooped up indefinitely in a crate."
"Oh, that'll be all right. There's a basement to this house. We'll let 'em run about there till we're ready for them. There's always a way of doing things if you look for it. Organisation, my boy. That's the watchword. Quiet efficiency."
"I hope you are going to let the hens hatch some of the eggs, dear," said Mrs. Ukridge. "I should love to have some little chickens."
"Of course. By all means. My idea," said Ukridge, "was this. ”

“ Harrod—or Whiteley—comes into his store in the morning, rubbing his hands expectantly. 'Well,' he says, 'how many eggs from Combe Regis to-day?' And instead of leading him off to a corner piled up with bursting crates, they show him a four-page letter telling him it'll all come right in the future. I've never run a store myself, but I should think that would jar a chap. Anyhow, the blighters seem to be getting tired of waiting."
"The last letter from Harrod's was quite pathetic," said Mrs. Ukridge sadly. ”

“ The first represent the sunflower, and the latter the maize. "These badges," said he, "you are to carry before you when you go against the enemy; plant them in the ground, and fight to the last man, that is to say, never abandon them." He next founded the band of "the little foolish dogs," and assembled many young men, whom he ordered to paint their faces of a black colour, and gave them a song of their own, with the war whoop at the end, and said he would call them "the blackbirds." He afterwards went to war with his people against the Chayennes. ”

“ To the west, in the direction of Stapleton, the woods and hedges were thick with nests. But then, so they were to the east along the Badgwick road. He wavered, but a recollection that there was water in the Badgwick direction, and that he might with luck beard a water-wagtail in its lair, decided him. What is life without a water-wagtail's egg? A mere mockery. He turned east.
'Hullo, Barrett, where are you off to?' Grey, of Prater's House, intercepted him as he was passing.
'Going to see if I can get some eggs. ”

“ This farmer happened to be out working among his bees when the boy who had stolen the Woolly Dog ran past. And when the boy, to get rid of the Dog, threw the toy over the fence, why, Donald’s plaything fell right into an open hive of the honey-making and stinging insects.
For bees can sting as well as make honey, you know.
“Yes, this certainly is the worst of all my adventures!” thought the Woolly Dog, [Pg 87] as he found himself among the crawling bees. “It is even worse than when Jane cut me open with the scissors and I was sewed up again. Oh, what a tickling feeling!” ”

“ In the lower parts of Virginia, and the other states where the weevil is common, they always thresh out the grain as soon as the crops are brought in, and leave it in the chaff, which creates a degree of heat sufficient to destroy the insect. According to the general opinion, the weevil originated on the eastern shore of Maryland, where a person, in expectation of a great rise in the price of wheat, kept over all his crops for the space of six years, when they were found full of these insects. ”

“ When the fact is recalled that the crop of one dove, recently killed in Tennessee, contained over 7,000 weed seeds, and when it is understood that a healthy dove will destroy each feeding day at least 5,000 prospective weeds, more than two negroes, working at $1.50 per day each, could uproot in double the time, it is easy to see, from the tons upon tons of weed seed (besides insects) that this bird would destroy each year, that our cheapest, most efficient hoe hand proves in the end to be the Alabama dove.
As an insect devourer, the bullbat is equally serviceable. ”

“ The girls were not allowed to take any eggs from the nests, and were taught not to frighten a sitting bird or to interfere with the fledge-lings. After several years of such consideration The Woodlands had become a kind of bird sanctuary, where the little songsters appeared to know they were free from molestation. That the fruit in the garden suffered rather a heavy toll was true; but, as Miss Bowes remarked: "One can't have everything. We must remember how many insects they clear away, and not grudge them a few currants and gooseberries. ”

“ When I said we meant to keep fowls, I didn't mean in a small sort of way—two cocks and a couple of hens and a ping-pong ball for a nest egg. We are going to do it on a large scale. We are [25] going to keep," he concluded impressively, "a chicken farm!"
"A chicken farm," echoed Mrs. Ukridge with an affectionate and admiring glance at her husband.
"Ah," said Garnet, who felt his responsibilities as chorus.
"I've thought it all out," continued Ukridge, "and it's as clear as mud. No expenses, large profits, quick returns. Chickens, eggs, and no work. By Jove, old man, it's the idea of a lifetime. ”

“ It may be an easy matter to exterminate the birds in an orchard or grain field, but it is an extremely difficult one to control the insect pests. It is certain, too, that the value of our native sparrows as weed destroyers is not appreciated. Weed seed forms an important item of the winter food of many of these birds, and it is impossible to estimate the immense numbers of noxious weeds which are thus annually destroyed. If birds are protected and encouraged to nest about the farm and garden, they will do their share in destroying noxious insects and weeds ”

“ They distinguish the report of a gun so well, that they hasten to the spot almost immediately after the shot has been fired. The same is the case with the ravens; and the Indian hunters affirm that the wolves watch these birds, in order to ascertain the direction in which the prey is to be found: if a poor animal has only been wounded, they are on the alert, and instantly pursue it, and it inevitably becomes their prey. In cold winters they are often so bold that they come into the villages, and approach the people's dwellings. ”

“ We do assert, however, that if robins are slaughtered as F.L. Crow, the former Atlantan asserts, all robin shooting should be forever stopped; that the pinnated grouse should be given a seven-year close season, and that doves should be taken off the list of game birds and perpetually protected, both for economic and sentimental reasons, and also because the too weak and confiding dove is not a "game" bird for red-blooded men. ”

“ They all pick up feathers or grass, and hop from side to side of their mates, as if saying, 'Come, let us play at making little houses.' The wagtail has shaken her young quite off, and has a new nest. She warbles prettily, very much like a canary, and is extremely active in catching flies, but eats crumbs of bread-and-milk too. Sun-birds visit the pomegranate flowers, and eat insects therein too, as well as nectar. The young whydah birds crouch closely together at night for heat. ”

“ Ukridge. "He was so sorry after he had killed those other two."
"Yes," said Ukridge, "I saw to that."
"As far as I can see," I continued, "we're going strong. Chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a shade monotonous, perhaps, but look at the business we're doing. We sold a whole heap of eggs last week."
"But not enough, Garny old man. We aren't making our presence felt. England isn't ringing with our name. We sell a dozen eggs where we ought to be selling them by the hundred, carting them off in trucks for the London market and congesting the traffic. ”

“ Was he to be sacrificed on the altar of the American girl, an altar at which those other poor fellows had poured out some of the bluest blood in Germany and he had declared, himself, that he would never seriously worship? He decided that he was not in real danger,—that he had taken his precautions too well. It was true that a young person who had succeeded so well for herself might be a great help to her husband; but Vogelstein on the whole preferred that his success should be his own ”

“ I said, "what you propose to do is deliberately to remove from this excellent lady's life the one remaining element of poetry. You mustn't do it. Give Mrs. Beale her omelettes, and let's hope for a larger supply of eggs."
"Another thing," said Ukridge. "It isn't only that there's a shortage of eggs. That wouldn't matter so much if only we kept hatching out fresh squads of chickens. I'm not saying the hens aren't doing their best. I take off my hat to the hens. As nice a hard-working lot as I ever want to meet, full of vigour and earnestness. ”