Hortus Inclusus Part 19

You know you inserted a letter from Jersey about fish.[50]

A lady there tells me that formerly you might have a bucket of oysters for sixpence and that now you can scarcely get anything but such coa.r.s.e kinds of fish as are not liked; and she has a sister, a sad invalid, to whom fish would be a very pleasant and wholesome change. This is really a sad state of things, and _here_ the railways seem very likely to carry away our b.u.t.ter, and it is now such a price, quite ex[h]orbitant.

Why did I put an _h_ in? Is it to prove the truth of what you say, that ladies do not spell well? A letter which I once wrote when a girl was a wonderful specimen of bad spelling.

[Footnote 49: See "Queen of the Air,"]

[Footnote 50: See "Fors Clavigera," Letter x.x.x.]

_15th May._

I have found such lovely pa.s.sages in Vol. 1 this morning that I am delighted, and have begun to copy one of them. You do float in such beautiful things sometimes that you make me feel I don't know how!

How I thank you for ever having written them, for though late in the day, they were written for _me_, and have at length reached me!

You are so candid about your age that I shall tell you mine! I am astonished to find myself sixty-eight--very near the Psalmist's threescore and ten. Much illness and much sorrow, and then I woke up to find myself _old_, and as if I had lost a great part of my life.

Let us hope it was not all lost.

I think _you_ can understand me when I say that I have a great fund of love, and no one to spend it upon, because there are not any to whom I could give it _fully_, and I love my pets so dearly, but I _dare not_ and cannot enjoy it fully because--they _die_, or get injured, and then my misery is intense. I feel as if I could tell _you_ much, because your sympathy is so refined and so tender and true. Cannot I be a sort of second mother to you? I am sure the first one was often praying for blessings for you, and in this, at least, I resemble her.

Am I tiresome writing all this? It just came, and you said I was to write what did. We have had some nice rain, but followed not by warmth, but a cruel _east_ wind.

ABOUT WRENS.

This year I have seen wrens' nests in three different kinds of places--one built in the angle of a doorway, one under a bank, and a third near the top of a raspberry bush; this last was so large that when our gardener first saw it, he thought it was a swarm of bees. It seems a pleasure to this active bird to build; he will begin to build several nests sometimes before he completes one for Jenny Wren to lay her eggs and make her nursery. Think how busy both he and Jenny are when the sixteen young ones come out of their sh.e.l.ls--little helpless gaping things wanting feeding in their turns the livelong summer day!

What hundreds and thousands of small insects they devour! they catch flies with good-sized wings. I have seen a parent wren with its beak so full that the wings stood out at each side like the whiskers of a cat.

Once in America in the month of June, a mower hung up his coat under a shed near a barn: two or three days pa.s.sed before he had occasion to put it on again. Thrusting his arm up the sleeve he found it completely filled with something, and on pulling out the ma.s.s he found it to be the nest of a wren completely finished and lined with feathers. What a pity that all the labor of the little pair had been in vain!

Great was the distress of the birds, who vehemently and angrily scolded him for destroying their house; happily it was an empty one, without either eggs or young birds.

HISTORY OF A BLACKBIRD.

We had had one of those summer storms which so injure the beautiful flowers and the young leaves of the trees. A blackbird's nest with young ones in it was blown out of the ivy on the wall, and the little ones with the exception of one, were killed! The poor little bird did not escape without a wound upon his head, and when he was brought to me it did not seem very likely that I should ever be able to rear him; but I could not refuse to take in the little helpless stranger, so I put him into a covered basket for a while.

I soon found that I had undertaken what was no easy task, for he required feeding so early in a morning that I was obliged to take him and his bread crumbs into my bedroom, and jump up to feed him as soon as he began to chirp, which he did in very good time.

Then in the daytime I did not dare to have him in the sitting-room with me, because my sleek favorites, the cats, would soon have devoured him, so I carried him up into an attic, and as he required feeding very often in the day, you may imagine that I had quite enough of exercise in running up and down stairs.

But I was not going to neglect the helpless thing after once undertaking to nurse him, and I had the pleasure of seeing him thrive well upon his diet of dry-bread crumbs and a little sc.r.a.p of raw meat occasionally; this last delicacy, you know, was a sort of imitation of worms!

Very soon my birdie knew my step, and though he never exactly said so, I am sure he thought it had "musick in't," for as soon as I touched the handle of the door he set up a shriek of joy!

The bird that we nurse is the bird that we love, and I soon loved d.i.c.k. And the love was not all on one side, for my bonnie bird would sit upon my finger uttering complacent little chirps, and when I sang to him in a low voice he would gently peck my hair.

As he grew on and wanted to use his limbs, I put him into a large wicker bonnet-basket, having taken out the lining; it made him a large cheerful airy cage. Of course I had a perch put across it, and he had plenty of white sand and a pan of water; sometimes I set his bath on the floor of the room, and he delighted in bathing until he looked half-drowned; then what shaking of his feathers, what _preening_ and arranging there was! And how happy and clean and comfortable he looked when his toilet was completed!

You may be sure that I took him some of the first ripe currants and strawberries, for blackbirds like fruit, and so do boys! When he was fledged I let him out in the room, and so he could exercise his wings.

It is a curious fact that if I went up to him with my bonnet on he did not know me at all, but was in a state of great alarm.

Blackbirds are wild birds, and do not bear being kept in a cage, not even so well as some other birds do; and as this bird grew up he was not so tame, and was rather restless. I knew that, though I loved him so much, I ought not to keep him shut up against his will. He was carried down into the garden while the raspberries were ripe, and allowed to fly away; and I have never seen him since. Do you wonder that my eyes filled with tears when he left?