Dory

“ Ain’t you bin a fishin’ long enough to know that dory-painters sh’d never be made fast when there’s a man in th’ dory? Consarn me! Ef I hadn’t jest heppened to come on deck jest as that dory capsized an’ gaffed yer dory-mate, there would ’a’ bin a drownin’ scrape on yer hands. Help me git that dory up on th’ tackles while th’ cook sees to Collins. He’s ’most all in. ”

“ I was for goin’ uptown an’ lookin’ around for a dory-mate, but you’re a home-town feller an’ jest th’ man.”
“I’ll go git my clothes-bag an’ tick down an’ see ye later. How many tubs does he rig?”
“Eight to a dory,” replied Westley.
“Humph! American style. Hard fishin’, I reckon,” said Anderson heartily. “Waal, Westley, I cal’late you ’n’ I kin stand the racket aboard these hard-drivin’ market fishermen. I’m a hound for work myself. We’ll git along fine. So long! I’ll be down in a while an’ help ye overhaul some gear.” ”

“ Think I'd let seventy-five hundred dollars' wuth of gilt-edged extravagance go to the bottom? What did you cal'late I was tryin' to save—the clam flat? Give me that dory rope; I'm goin' after them anchors. Sufferin' snakes! Where IS the dory? What have you done with it?'
“He'd been holdin' the bight of the dory rodin'. I handed it to him so's he'd have somethin' to take up his mind. And, by time, he'd forgot all about it and let it drop! And the dory had gone adrift and was out of sight. ”

“ The dory is a proved little craft for serious business in rough water, while none can be better for ladies about rocks and beaches; because it has a flat bottom and there is no keel to catch and leave you tipping about with the lap of the water running ever so far inside. Moreover, the dory has so much shear that very little of the bottom touches at one time ”

“ Collins and Anderson, oilskinned and seabooted, hauled their baited trawl tubs to the rail and overhauled their buoy-lines.
“Cal’late I’ll go below an’ fill th’ dory-jar with fresh water,” said Anderson. “I’ll git a bit grub as well. Ye never know when one o’ them snow squalls is a-comin’ up an’ we’ll take no chances ’case we git astray from th’ vessel. A drink an’ a bite help some ef ye sh’d be a day or two adrift in a dory.” ”

“ He wanted me to rig up in ileskins and a sou'wester and show myself in dime museums. Said he'd buy that dory of Luther's that I went out in, and show that 'long with me. I told him that dory was spread up and down the beach from here to Setuckit, but he said that didn't make no diff'rence, he'd have a dory there and say 'twas the reel one. Offered me a hundred dollars a week, the skate! ”

“ Yes, there was the vessel, and it was Tim Lacy calling. She was coming into the wind. Her jibs were down by the run. Ay, and there was the rattling of her chain-anchor.
"Skipper, oh, skipper," came the hail again, and he heard the hoisting of a dory. To one hand was the mob which meant his destruction; to the other hand by the open water to the vessel if he could make it. He had farther to go than they, but they were mostly in oilskins, and he was a rarely active man. That he knew. Away he went over the little bowlders.
Diagonally he had to go. A straight parallel to the beach it was for them. ”

“ For my little birdies, you know they have none;
When they get older they'll all want to play,
And I've room by my nest to tuck her away."
"Oh, no; Mother Robin, my dolly would cry,
If she lived in a nest that was up so high;
When the wind blew my dolly would fall,
Then down would come birdies, nest, and all.
"So I'll keep my dolly, for I think it is best,
And you keep your birds till they fly from the nest;
They will be happier, I know, to be free,
And my dolly's contented to stay here with me." ”

“ Three times three and nine times nine:
These are only her usual clothes:
Look, there’s a wardrobe! gracious knows
It’s pretty enough, as far as it goes!
So you see the way we dress the Doll:
You might make her a shepherdess, the Doll,
If you gave her a crook with a pastoral hook,
With sheep, and a shed, and a shallow brook,
And all that, out of the poetry-book.
Chorus: Bless the Doll, you may press the Doll,
But do not crumple and mess the Doll!
This is the way we dress the Doll;
If you had not seen, could you guess the Doll? ”

“ Instantly the little comedy changed as the deer whirled in my direction. They had seen men before and knew what it meant. The white flags flew up over the startled backs, and the air fairly bristled with whistling h-e-e-e-yeu, he-u's as deer and fawns rose over the nearest windfalls like a flock of frightened partridges and plunged away into the shelter of the friendly woods.
There are those who claim that the life of an animal is a mere matter of blind instinct and habit. Here on the shore before my eyes was a scene that requires a somewhat different explanation. ”

“ After the hunting of the hornless deer, that leads him to the seashore, and while he is riding over the sea with Niamh, he sees amid the waters—I have not the Gaelic poem by me, and describe it from memory—a young man following a girl who has a golden apple, and afterwards a hound with one red ear following a deer with no horns. This hound and this deer seem plain images of the desire of man ‘which is for the woman,’ and ‘the desire of the woman which is for the desire of the man,’ and of all desires that are as these. ”

“ The latter, when he reached his house, told his wife, saying, “A woodman dreamt he had got a deer, but he did not know where it was. Now I have got the deer; so his dream was a reality.” “It is you,” replied his wife, “who have been dreaming you saw a woodman. Did he get the deer? and is there really such a person? It is you who have got the deer: how, then, can his dream be a reality?” “It is true,” assented the husband, “that I have got the deer. It is therefore of little importance whether the woodman dreamt the deer or I dreamt the woodman.” ”

“ Though timid, and shy as the young of the deer on so many occasions, this right-feeling girl was always intrepid in the cause of humanity; the lessons of her mother, and the impulses of her own heart - perhaps we might say the promptings of that unseen and pure spirit that seemed ever to watch over and direct her actions - uniting to keep down the apprehensions of woman, and to impel her to be bold and resolute. ”

“ For a moment no one of them could believe that they had really seen live animals in the open—a herd of wild deer, and the sight aroused a childlike excitement in them, dissipating their gloom.
"I've never in my life seen anything bigger than a hare!" ”

“ Dozens of times a day the traveller glimpsed the flaunting white flags of deer. Often the creatures would take but a few hasty jumps, and then would wheel, the beautiful embodiments of the picture deer, to snort and paw the leaves. ”

“ The reader, having been promised laughter, is invited to contemplate the spectacle of a young author lying on the edge of a mountain meadow in November, watching for deer at sunset, wrapped in a heavy blanket against the cutting frost—and reading a book until the deer should arrive! ”

“ But be quiet, friendly, peace-possessed in the same place, and the deer, even after discovering you, will draw near and show his curiosity in twenty pretty ways ere he trots away, looking back over his shoulder for your last message. Then be generous—show him the flash of a looking-glass, the flutter of a bright handkerchief, a tin whistle, or any other little kickshaw that the remembrance of a boy's pocket may suggest—and the chances are that he will come back again, finding curiosity so richly rewarded. ”

“ Now, whenever the hunter brings down a deer, the Little Deer, who is swift as the wind and can not be wounded, runs quickly up to the spot and bending over the blood stains asks the spirit of the deer if it has heard the prayer of the hunter for pardon. ”

“ At the suggestion of a doll, the world seemed suddenly and solely peopled with these little creatures, and winking, crying, walking and talking dolls crowded about the bewildered customers,—dolls with flaxen hair, and dolls with no hair at all; dolls of imposing proportions when viewed in front, but of no thickness to speak of, when held sideways; dolls as rigid as mummies, and dolls who exhibited an alarming tendency to double their arms and legs up backward. ”

“ He bobs and thumps just as a deer does when you surprise him in the forest, and flies a white flag in just the same way. Both go jerking away like sturdy but nervous sprites, and though a deer in the forest is supposed to be the epitome of grace, I can never see it. The startled fawn and the startled bunny are both too eager to get on to be graceful. ”

“ An instinctive feeling, such as lines out a herd of deer at the approach of some ambiguous thing, prompted them to turn their horses to the wind, ride forward for a few paces, and stare at that advancing multitude of floating masses. ”

“ And when you run upon a deer at night and hear him go smashing off in the darkness at the same reckless speed, over a tangled blow-down, perhaps, through which you can barely force your way by daylight, then you realize suddenly that the most wonderful part of a deer’s education shows itself, not in keen eyes or trumpet ears, or in his finely trained nose, more sensitive a hundred times than any barometer, but in his forgotten feet, which seem to have eyes and nerves and brains packed into their hard shells instead of the senseless matter you see there. ”

“ I was beginning to wish for a book to while away the long hours which would elapse before the strict rules of custom would permit me to return to the shanty, when I saw a deer jump from the bushes which bordered the shores of the bay nearest the island.
I knew the black hound's peculiarities, and was prepared for the appearance of a deer, unushered by the baying of hounds, but I had not expected the game to come so quickly, for Rufe had hardly had time to start the dogs. ”

“ I am weary and dejected. The air is pleasant, the water bright and blue; heaven also is bright. Does the deer find no peaceful meadows beyond the river of death, where he may rest after the wild chase? ”

“ The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our country, and as yet untouched by our decorative art, is without self-consciousness, and all his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favorite position of the deer—his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, among the lily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at the moment he hears the stealthy breaking of a twig in the forest—is still spirited and graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of him which the artists have put upon canvas. ”

“ We should call it rather a forest, and there are a great many deer, which looked very pretty, but the wild boars, being of a more contemplative, solitary turn, kept themselves concealed, for which want of respect one is ordered to be shot for our table. ”

“ The valley her deer were feeding upon had been written down in his book as her winter range; but when one is many days’ travel from even the fringe of civilization, when one is the herder of but four hundred deer, and only a girl at that, when an overriding owner of ten thousand deer comes driving in his vast herd to lick up one’s little pasture in a week or two, what is there to do? ”

“ This breathing of life into playthings is seen in all its magic force in play with dolls. A doll, broadly conceived, is anything which a child carries about and makes a pet of. The toy horse, dog or what not that a little boy nurses, feeds and takes to bed with him has much of the dignity of a true doll. But adopting conventional distinctions we shall confine the word to those things which are more or less endowed by childish fancy with human form and character. ”

“ As loving hind that (hartless) wants her deer,
Scuds through the woods and fern with hark'ning ear,
Perplext, in every bush and nook doth pry,
Her dearest deer, might answer ear or eye;
So doth my anxious soul, which now doth miss
A dearer dear (far dearer heart) than this. ”

“ Corduroys to make him mad. Then he to describe the Manner of Stalking [58] the Deer, and his Account thereof mighty taking, but, with his broad Scottish Accent and Phrases, droll; and good Lack, to hear him talk of Braes, and Burns, and Cairns, and Corries, rattling the R in every Word! He says that the Deer are the cunningest and the watchfullest, and can see, and hear, and smell at the greatest Distance of any Creature almost living, and do keep Spies to look out, and their Ears and Eyes always open and their Noses to the Wind, and do think and reason in their Minds like human Beings ”

“ The orderly rode away to some outlying stable, and then in a few minutes there came a smart English groom with a cockade in his hat, leading by the bridle a horse—and, oh, my friends, you have never known the perfection to which a horse can attain until you have seen a first-class English hunter. He was superb: tall, broad, strong, and yet as graceful and agile as a deer. ”

“ But the boys enjoyed most the deer in the large park back of the hotel. There were four old deer and two pretty young fawns with glossy, spotted coats, that Sam and Leon thought were the most beautiful [Pg 89] animals they had ever seen, as they ran and played together like lambs, jumping and capering with a perfect grace that only deer possess.
After a nice venison supper the boys went to bed, and in a few minutes both were dreaming of deer, and bears, panthers and hounds, and all the excitements of the chase among the game-covered mountains. ”