The Fall of the Year Part 5

Hanging with one arm, I twisted round until the other arm was free, then seized the branches and swung under, but not before the eagles had given me another raking dab.

Here beneath the branches, close up to the bottom of the nest, I was quite out of the reach of the birds; and through the channel I had cut in my ascent, I climbed quickly down into the tree.

It was now a mere matter of sliding to the ground. But I was so battered and faint that I nearly tumbled. I was a sorry-looking boy--my clothing torn, my hands bleeding, my head and neck clawed in a dozen places.

But what did I do with the eagles' eggs? Why, I allowed the old eagles to hatch them. What else could I do? or what better?

CHAPTER VI

THANKSGIVING AT GRANDFATHER'S FARM

Thanksgiving at Grandfather's farm was more than a holiday. It was a great date on the calendar, for it divided the year in halves as no other single day of the three hundred and sixty-five did. It marked the end of the outdoors, and the beginning of the indoors--the day when everybody came home; when along with them into the house came all the outdoors, too, as if the whole farm were brought in to toast its toes before the great hearth fire!

For the hearth fire was big enough and cheery enough. And so was the farmhouse--that is, if you added the big barn and the crib-house and the wagon-house and the dog-house and the hen-house and the "spring-house!"

Oh, there was plenty of room inside for everybody and for everything!

And there needed to be; for did not everybody come home to Grandfather's for Thanksgiving? And did not everything that anybody could need for the winter, grow on Grandfather's farm?

And it all had to be brought in by Thanksgiving Day--everything brought in, everything housed and stored and battened down tight. The preparations began along in late October, continuing with more speed as the days shortened and darkened and hurried us into November. And they continued with still more speed as the gray lowering clouds thickened in the sky, and the wind began to whistle through the oak grove. Then, with the first real cold snap, the first swift flurry of snow, how the husking and the stacking and the chopping went on!

Thanksgiving must find us ready for winter indoors and out.

The hay-mows were full to the beams where the swallows built; the north and west sides of the barnyard were flanked with a deep wind-break of corn-fodder that ran on down the old worm-fence each side of the lane in yellow zigzag walls; the big wooden pump under the turn-o'-lane tree by the barn was bundled up and b.u.t.toned to the tip of its dripping nose; the bees by the currant bushes were doubled-hived, the strawberries covered with hay, the wood all split and piled, the cellar windows packed, and the storm-doors put on.

The very cows had put on an extra coat, and turned their collars up about their ears; the turkeys had changed their roost from the ridge-pole of the corn-crib to the pearmain tree on the sunny side of the wagon-house; the squirrels had finished their bulky nests in the oaks; the muskrats of the lower pasture had completed their lodges; the whole farm--house, barn, fields, and wood-lot--had shuffled into its greatcoat and m.u.f.fler and settled comfortably down for the winter.

The old farmhouse was an invitation to winter. It looked its joy at the prospect of the coming cold. Low, weather-worn, mossy-shingled, secluded in its wayward garden of box and bleeding-hearts, sheltered by its tall pines, grape-vined, hop-vined, clung to by creeper and honeysuckle, it stood where the roads divided, halfway between everywhere, unpainted, unpretentious, as much a part of the landscape as the muskrat-lodge, and, like the lodge, roomy, warm, and hospitable.

Round at the back, under the wide, open shed, a door led into the kitchen; another led into the living-room; another, into the store-room; and two big, slanting double-doors, scoured and slippery with four generations of sliders, covered the cavernous way into the cellar. But they let the smell of apples up, as the garret door let the smell of sage and thyme come down; while from the door of the store-room, mingling with the odor of apples and herbs, filling the whole house and all my early memories, came the smell of broom-corn, came the sound of Grandfather's loom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE LANTERN FLICKERS, THE MILK FOAMS, THE STORIES FLOW"]

For Grandfather in the winter made brooms--the best brooms, I think, that ever were made. The tall broom-corn was grown on the farm in the summer, ripened and cut and seeded, and then, as soon as winter set in, was loomed and wired and sewed into brooms.

But the cured and seeded broom-corn was not the main thing, after all, that was brought in for the winter. Behind the stove in the kitchen, stood the sweet-potato box (a sweet potato, you know, must be kept dry and warm). An ample, ten-barrel box it was, fresh-papered like the walls, full of Jersey sweets that _were_ sweet--long, golden, syrupy potatoes, such as grow only in the warm sandy soil of southern New Jersey.

Against that big box in Grandmother's kitchen stood the sea-chest, fresh with the same kitchen paper and piled with wood. There was another such chest in the living-room near the old fireplace, and still another in Grandfather's work-room behind the "template" stove.

But wood and warmth and sweet smells were not all. There was music also, the music of life, of young life and of old life--grandparents, grandchildren (about twenty-eight of the latter). There were seven of us alone--a girl at each end of the seven and one in the middle.

Thanksgiving always found us all at Grandfather's and br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of thanks.

That, of course, was long, long ago. Things are different nowadays.

There are as many grandfathers, I suppose, as ever; but they don't make brooms in the winter and live on farms.

They live in flats. The old farm with its open acres has become a city street; the generous old farmhouse has become a speaking-tube, kitchenette, and bath--all the "modern conveniences"; the cows have evaporated into convenient cans of condensed "milk"; the ten-barrel box of potatoes has changed into a convenient ten-pound bag, the wood-pile into a convenient five-cent bundle of blocks tied up with a tarred string, the fireplace into a convenient gas log, the seven children into one or none, or into a little bull-terrier pup.

But is it so? No, it is not so--not so of a million homes. For there is many an old-fashioned farmhouse still in the country, and many a new-fashioned city house where there are more human children than little bull-terrier pups.

And it is not so in my home, which is neither a real farm nor yet a city home. For here are some small boys who live very much as I did when I was a boy. No, they are not farmer's boys; for I am not a farmer, but only a "commuter"--if you know what that is. I go into a great city for my work; and when the day's work is done, I turn homeward here to Mullein Hill--far out in the country. And when the dark November nights come, I hang the lantern high in the stable, as my father used to do, while four shining faces gather round, as four small boys seat themselves on upturned buckets behind the cow. The lantern flickers, the milk foams, the stories flow--"Bucksy" stories of the n.o.ble red-man; and stories of the heroes of old; and marvelous stories of that greatest hero of all--their father, far away yonder when he was a boy, when there were so many interesting things to do on Grandfather's farm just before Thanksgiving Day.

CHAPTER VII

A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO DO THIS FALL

I

You ought to go out into the fields and woods as many as six times this fall, even though you have to take a long street-car ride to get out of the city. Let me give you just six bits of sound advice about going afield:--

First, go often to the same place, so that you can travel over and over the same ground and become very familiar with it. The first trip you will not see much but woods and fields. But after that, each succeeding walk will show you _particular_ things--this dead tree with the flicker's hole, that old rail-pile with its rabbit-hole--until, by and by, you will know every turn and dip, every pile of stones, every hole and nest; and you will find a thousand things that on the first trip you didn't dream were there.

Secondly, when you go into the woods, go _expecting_ to see something in particular--always looking for some particular nest, bird, beast, or plant. You may not find that particular thing, but your eyes will be sharpened by your expectation and purpose, and you will be pretty sure therefore to see something. At worst you will come back with a disappointment, and that is better than coming back without a thing!

Thirdly, go off when you can alone. Don't be selfish, unsociable, offish--by no means that. But you must learn to use your own eyes and ears, think your own thoughts, make your own discoveries, and follow the hints and hopes that you alone can have. Go with the school cla.s.s for a picnic, but for woodcraft go alone.

Fourthly, learn first of all in the woods to be as silent as an Indian and as patient as a granite rock. Practice standing still when the mosquitoes sing, and fixing your mind on the hole under the stump instead of the hole the mosquito is boring between your eyes.

Fifthly, go out in every variety of weather, and at night, as well as during the day. There are three scenes to every day--morning, noon, and early evening--when the very actors themselves are changed. To one who has never been in the fields at daybreak, the world is so new, so fresh and strange, as to seem like a different planet. And then the evening--the hour of dusk and the deeper, darker night! Go once this autumn into the woods at night.

And lastly, don't go into the woods as if they were a kind of Noah's Ark; for you cannot enter the door and find all the animals standing in a row. You will go a great many times before seeing them all. Don't be disappointed if they are not so plentiful there as they are in your books. Nature books are like menageries--the animals are caught and caged for you. The woods are better than books and just as full of things, as soon as you learn to take a hint, to read the signs, to put two and two together and get--four--four paws--black paws, with a long black snout, a big ringed and bushy tail--a c.o.o.n!

II

Whether you live in the heart of a great city or in the open country, you ought to begin this fall to learn the names and habits of the birds and beasts (snakes, lizards, turtles, toads!) that live wild in your region. Even when all the summer birds have gone south for the winter, there will remain in your woods and fields crows, jays, juncos, tree sparrows, chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, screech owls, barred owls,--perhaps even snowy owls,--quails, partridges, goldfinches, with now and then a flock of crossbills, snow buntings, and other northern visitors, and even a flicker, robin, and bluebird left over from the fall migrations. These are plenty to begin on; and yet, as they are so few, compared with the numbers of the summer, the beginner's work is thus all the easier in the autumn.

III

You should go out one of these frosty mornings for chestnuts, if they grow in your woods; or for "s.h.a.gbarks," if you live in New England; for black walnuts, if you live in the Middle States; for pecan nuts, if you live in the Gulf States; for b.u.t.ternuts, if you live in the states of the Middle West; for--what kind of nuts can you not go for, if you live in California where they make everything grow! It matters little whether you go for paper-sh.e.l.led English walnuts or for plate-armored pignuts so long as you _go_. It is the going that is worth while.

IV

You ought to go "coc.o.o.ning" this fall--to sharpen your eyes. But do not go often; for once you begin to look for coc.o.o.ns, you are in danger of seeing nothing else--except brown leaves. And how many brown leaves, that look like coc.o.o.ns, there are! They tease you to vexation.

But a day now and then "coc.o.o.ning" will do you no harm; indeed, it will cultivate your habit of concentration and close seeing as will no other kind of hunting I know.

Bring home with you the big brown silky coc.o.o.ns of cecropia--the largest coc.o.o.n you will find, lashed all along its length to its twig, and usually near the ground. Look on the black cherry, the barberry, sa.s.safras, and roadside and garden trees for the harder, whiter coc.o.o.n of the promethea moth. This hangs by its tip, because the caterpillar has begun his house by using the leaf, spinning it into the coc.o.o.n as part of its walls, much as does the wretched "brown-tail." The gray coc.o.o.ns, or rather nests, of this "brown-tail" moth you must bring home to burn, for they are one of our greatest pests. You will find them full of tiny caterpillars as you tear them open.

Bring home your collection and, with the help of such a book as "Moths and b.u.t.terflies" by Mary C. d.i.c.kerson, identify them and hang them up for their "coming out" in the spring.