MRS. SPARROWGRASS and I have concluded to try it once more: we are going to give the country another chance. After all, birds in the spring are lovely. First, come little snow birds, avant-couriers of the feathered army; then, blue-birds, in national uniforms, just graduated, perhaps, from the ornithological corps of cadets, with high honors in the topographical class; then follows a detachment of flying artillery — swallows; sand-martens, sappers, and miners, begin their mines and countermines under the sandy parapets; then cedar birds, in trim jackets faced with yellow — aha, dragoons! And then the great rank and file of infantry, robins, wrens, sparrows, chipping-birds; and lastly — the band!
20Hush! he begins again with a low, liquid monotone, mounting by degrees and swelling into an infinitude of melody — the whole grove dilating, as it were, with the exquisite epithalamium.
Silence now — and how still!
Hush! the musical monologue begins anew; up, up, into the tree-tops it mounts, fairly lifting the leaves with its passionate effluence, it trills through the upper branches — and then dripping down the listening foliage, in a cadenza of matchless beauty, subsides into silence again.
“That’s a cat-bird,” says my carpenter.
A cat-bird? Then Shakespeare and Shelly have wasted powder upon the sky-lark; for never such “profuse strains of unpremeditated art” issued from living bird before. Sky-lark! pooh! who 21 would rise at dawn to hear the sky-lark, if a cat-bird were about, after breakfast?
I have bought me a boat. A boat is a good thing to have in the country, especially if there be any water near. There is a fine beach in front of my house. When visitors come, I usually propose to give them a row. I go down — and find the boat full of water; then I send to the house for a dipper; and prepare to bail; and, what with bailing and swabbing her with a mop, and plugging up the cracks in her sides, and struggling to get the rudder in its place, and unlocking the rusty padlock, my strength is so much exhausted that it is almost impossible for me to handle the oars. Meanwhile, the poor guests sit on stones around the beach, with woe-begone faces. “My dear,” said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, “why don’t you sell that boat?”
“Sell it? ha! ha!”
One day, a Quaker lady from Philadelphia paid us a visit. She was uncommonly dignified, and walked down to the water in the most stately manner, as is customary with Friends. It was just twilight, deepening into darkness, when I set about preparing the boat. Meanwhile our Friend seated herself upon something on the beach. While 22 I was engaged in bailing, the wind shifted, and I became sensible of an unpleasant odor; afraid that our Friend would perceive it too, I whispered Mrs. Sparrowgrass to coax her off, and get her further up the beach.
“Thank thee no, Susan, I feel a smell hereabout, and I am better where I am.”
Mrs. S. came back, and whispered mysteriously that our Friend was sitting on a dead dog, at which I redoubled the bailing, and got her out in deep water as soon as possible.
Dogs have a remarkable scent. A dead setter one morning found his way to our beach, and I towed him out in the middle of the river; but the faithful creature came back in less than an hour — that dog’s smell was remarkable, indeed.
I have bought me a fyke! A fyke is a good thing to have in the country. A fyke is a fish-net, with long wings on each side; in shape like a night-cap with ear-lappets; in mechanism like a rat-trap. You put a stake at the tip end of the night-cap, a stake at each end of the outspread lappets; there are large hoops to keep the night-cap distended, sinkers to keep the lower sides of the lappets under water, and floats, as large as 23 musk-melons, to keep the upper sides above the water. The stupid fish come down stream, and rubbing their noses against the wings, follow the curve towards the fyke, and swim into the trap. When they get in they cannot get out. That is the philosophy of a fyke. I bought one of Conroy. “Now,” said I to Mrs. Sparrowgrass, “we shall have fresh fish, to-morrow, for breakfast;” and went out to set it. I drove the stakes in the mud, spread the fyke in the boat, tied the end of one wing to the stake, and cast the whole into the water. The tide carried it out in a straight line. I got the loose end fastened to the boat, and found it impossible to row back against the tide with the fyke. I then untied it, and it went down stream, stake and all. I got it into the boat, rowed up, and set the stake again. Then I tied one end, to the stake, and got out of the boat myself, in shoal water. Then the boat got away in deep water; then I had to swim for the boat. Then I rowed back and untied the fyke. Then the fyke got away. Then I jumped out of the boat to save the fyke, and the boat got away. Then I had to swim again after the boat, and row after the fyke, and finally was glad to get my net on dry land, where I left it for 24 a week in the sun. Then I hired a man to set it, and he did: but he said it was “rotted.” Nevertheless, in it I caught two small flounders and an eel. At last, a brace of Irishmen came down to my beach for a swim, at high tide. One of them, a stout, athletic fellow, after performing sundry aquatic gymnastics, dived under and disappeared for a fearful length of time. The truth is, he had dived into my net. After much turmoil in the water, he rose to the surface with the filaments hanging over his head, and cried out, as if he had found a bird’s nest: “I say, Jimmy! be gorra here’s a foike?” That unfeeling exclamation to Jimmy, who was not the owner of the net, made me almost wish that it had not been “rotted.”
We are worried about our cucumbers. Mrs. S. is fond of cucumbers, so I planted enough for ten families. The more they are picked, the faster they grow; and if you do not pick them, they turn yellow, and look ugly. Our neighbor has plenty, too. He sent us some one morning, by way of a present. What to do with them we did not know, with so many of our own. To give them away was not polite; to throw them away was sinful; to eat them was impossible. Mrs. S. said, “Save 25 them for seed.” So we did. Next day, our neighbor sent us a dozen more. We thanked the messenger grimly, and took them in. Next morning, another dozen came. It was getting to be a serious matter; so I rose betimes the following morning, and when my neighbor’s cucumbers came, I filled his man’s basket with some of my own, by way of exchange. This bit of pleasantry was resented by my neighbor, who told his man to throw them to the hogs. His man told our girl, and our girl told Mrs. S., and, in consequence, all intimacy between the two families has ceased; the ladies do not speak even, at church.
We have another neighbor, whose name is Bates; he keeps cows. This year our gate has been fixed; but my young peach-trees, near the fences, are accessible from the road; and Bates’s cows walk along that road, morning and evening. The sound of a cow bell is pleasant in the twilight. Sometimes, after dark, we hear the mysterious curfew tolling along the road, and then, with a louder peal, it stops before our fence, and again tolls itself off in the distance. The result is, my peach-trees are as bare as bean-poles. One day, I saw Mr. Bates walking along, and I hailed him: “Bates, 26 those are your cows there, I believe.” “Yes, sir — nice ones, ain’t they?” “Yes,” I replied, “they are nice ones. Do you see that tree there?” — and I pointed to a thrifty peach, with about as many leaves as an exploded sky-rocket. “Yes, sir.” “Well, Bates, that red-and-white cow of yours, yonder, ate the top off that tree: I saw her do it.” Then I thought I had made Bates ashamed of himself, and had wounded his feelings, perhaps too much. I was afraid he would offer me money for the tree, which I made up my mind to decline, at once. “Sparrowgrass,” said he, “it don’t hurt a tree a single mossel to chaw it, ef it’s a young tree. For my part, I’d rather have my young trees chawed than not. I thing it makes ’em grow a leetle better. I can’t do it with mine, but you can, because you can wait to have good trees, and the only way to have good trees is to have ’em chawed.”
I think Mrs. Sparrowgrasss is much improved by living in the country. The air has done her good. The roses again bloom in her cheeks, as well as freckles, big as butter-cups. When I come home in the evening from town, and see her with a dress of white dimity, set off by a dark silk apron, with 27 tasteful pockets, and a little fly-away cap, on the back of her head, she does look bewitching. “My dear,” said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, one evening, at tea, “what am I?”
The question took me at an unguarded moment, and I almost answered, “A beauty,” but we had company, so I said, with a blush, “A female, I believe.”
“Nonesense,” she replied, with a toss of the “know-nothing” cap; “nonsense; I mean this: — when I was in Philadelphia, I was a Philadelphian; when in New York, a New-Yorker; now we live in Yonkers, and what am I.”
That,” said I, “is a question more easily asked than answered. Now, ‘Yonker,’ in its primary significance, means the eldest son, the heir of the estate, and ‘Yonker’s’ is used in the possessive sense, meaning ‘the Yonker’s,’ or the heir’s estate. If, for instance, you were the owner of the town, you might, with propriety, be called the Yonkeress.”
Mrs. Sparrowgrass said she would as soon be called a tigress!
“Take,” said I, “the names of the places on the Hudson, and your sex makes no difference in 28 regard to the designation you would derive from a locality. If, for instance, you lived at Spuyten Devil, you would be called a Spuyten-Deviller!”
Mrs. Sparrowgrass said nothing would tempt her to live at Spuyten Devil.
“Then,” I continued, “there is Tillietudlem — you’d be a Tillietudlemer.”
Mrs. Sparrowgrass said, that, in her present frame of mind, she didn’t think she would submit to it.
“At Sing Sing, you would be a Sing Singer; at Sleepy Hollow, a Sleepy Hollower.” ——
Mrs. Sparrowgrass said this was worse than any of the others.
“At Nyack, a Nyackian; at Dobb’s Ferry, a Dobb’s Ferryer.” ——
Mrs. Sparrowgrass said that any person who would call her a “Dobb’s Ferryer,” was destitute of a proper sense of respect.
“You might be a Weehawkite, and Carmansvillan, a Tubby Hooker.” ——
Mrs. Sparrowgrass, quite warm and indignant, denied it.
“A Tarrytownian — a Riverdalean.”
Mrs. Sparrowgrass said she thought a village on 29 the tip-top of a hill could not be called River-dale with any show of reason.
“A Simpson’s Pointer — a Fordhammer.”
“A what?”
“A Fordhammer,”
Mrs. Sparrowgrass said she thought, at first, I was getting profane. “But,” she added, “you do not answer my question. I live at Yonkers, and what am I?”
“That,” said I, “Mrs. Sparrowgrass, is a question I cannot answer, but I will make it a public matter through these pages.”
“What is the proper, local, or geographical appellation by which an inhabitant of Yonkers should be known?”