“WHILE ALL THE GODS ...”
“While all the gods Olympus’ summit crowned,
Looking from high to see the wondrous sight.”
Iliad, xxii.
I was spading up the earth in the dahlia-bed, when the children came up, a shouting band of them, just out of school, and noticed that the angleworms were “out.” This first, indubitable sign of spring in Vermont always suggests to adolescent Vermonters the first fishing expedition. But ten-year-olds and under think of the early brood of first-hatched chicks.
“Hey, Jimmy, angleworms!”
“Carl, run get a can!”
“Here’s a fat one!”
They swooped down on me and squatted along the edge of the spaded earth, pecking and snatching and chattering like a flock of sparrows. As I spaded on, I heard bits of their talk, “Won’t the chicks just love them!” “First worms those chicks ever saw.” “No, Carl, that’s too few, let’s wait till we get a lot. It’s such fun to drop in a whole bunch.” “They love angleworms so!”
Then I heard the inevitable fanciful suggestion from the imaginative one of the group, “I bet we seem to the chicks just like giants ... no, giants are always mean ... like gods.”
They fell on this idea, chattering and snatching, as they had at the worms: “Let’s be gods! I’ll be Jupiter.”
“I want to be Mars.”
“Loki! Loki!”
“I want to be Thor!”
“No, I want to be Thor!”
“I was just going to be Thor, myself!”
Everybody wanted to be Thor, it seemed. They trooped off to the poultry-yard, still disputing the question.
When I passed the brooder-house a little later, a group of exasperated gods hung over the low wire-netting, gesticulating and crying out on the idiocy of chicks. They fell on me for sympathy, and from their babbling account I made out that the chicks had acted just as chicks always act and always have acted from the beginning of time.
The gods had proudly put down in the midst of the little world of their beneficiaries the mass of angleworm wealth which they had gathered with such good intentions of giving pleasure.
“All they had to do was to pitch right in and enjoy themselves,” cried Jupiter, wrathfully.
And what had they done? Well, first of all they had been afraid, running to look at the squirming heap of treasure, peeping shrilly in agitation, and running frantically away with fluttering wings and hearts.
The circle of omnipotents, hanging over the wire-netting had been able to endure this foolishness with an approach to the necessary god-like toleration of the limitations of a lesser race. One of the Thors, it seemed, the six-year-old-one, had tried to hurry up the progress of the race, by catching one of his pin-headed charges and holding him firmly in a benevolent small hand, directly in front of the delicious food, “where he couldn’t help seeing how good it was, seems ’s if,” explained Thor Number Three, to me.
But the chick had, it appeared, been perfectly capable of not seeing how good it was, because his mind was entirely taken up With his terror at being held. He had merely emitted one frenzied screech of horror after another till the other chicks began to run about and screech too, and the older, more experienced gods had sharply told young Thor that he didn’t know so much about this god-business as he thought he did, and that experience had told them the only thing to do was to let the chicks alone till they got used to a new idea. That always took forever, they informed their young colleague.
So after this they had waited and waited and waited, while the chicks fluttered, and peeped and ran away from what they really wanted above everything; from what the gods had so kindly put there for them to enjoy.
“Gee whiz!” said Mars disdainfully. “Wouldn’t you think they’d know enough for that! There was room for every last one of them to stand around the pile, and eat all they wanted, without stirring a toe.”
Finally, one bold adventurer had struck his beak experimentally into the pile, pulled out a tasty piece of meat, and turned aside to gobble it down.
And then what?
Did the other chicks follow his sensible example and begin at last to profit by their opportunity.
“No! no! no!” A chorus of all the gods assured me that nothing like that had happened. Instead, with shrill twitters of excitement, all the twenty or more chicks had thrown themselves on that one, to wrest his bit from him.
“Honest to goodness, they did!” Loki affirmed to me, passionately, as if feeling that I could not possibly believe in such unreason if I had not seen it.
The chick with the worm had taken to his heels, unable to swallow his prize because of the hunt against him. Up and down the little world of their yard, he had run frantically, wildly, and silently (because of his mouth being full). And up and down, wildly, frantically and vociferously (their mouths being empty) his fellow-chicks had pursued him, bent on catching him and taking away from him whatever it was he prized enough to try to possess. As he turned and doubled to escape them, they turned and doubled in a pack, slipping, falling, and trampling on each other in their blind fury.
Presently, “What do you think!” cried the oldest of the Thors. “He got so rattled that he lost his piece of worm out of his mouth, but the others didn’t give him time to tell them that. Anyhow, they’d yelled and carried on so, they had him up in the air. He didn’t know by that time what he was doing; and he kept on legging it as hard as ever, and they after him.”
By and by, this insane flight and agitation had so exhausted them all that they were staggering feebly on their tiny legs, and unable to emit more than hoarse squawks as they ran. Then, apparently by chance, as he darted zigzag to and fro, he had run under a corner of the brooder. Instantly ... ah-h-h, the grateful warmth and darkness had suggested rest to his weary soul; with a long murmured “che-e-eep” of utter relief, he had settled down against the wall of the brooder to close his eyes. And each of his pursuers, as they dashed in after him, had seized on the Heaven-sent opportunity for rest after the terrible tension of the struggle for existence, imposed on them by a cruel fate, and had with a sigh and a relieved, whispered twitter, given himself over to sleep and dreams.
At the time when I came up, every chick was sound asleep in the brooder, while outside in the middle of their world, lay the untouched pile of angleworms, bare and open to view under the bright spring sky.
“Can you beat it!” said Mars contemptuously.
He turned away from such unimaginable imbecility to a new idea, “Say, kids!” he bellowed, although they were all within touching distance of him, “let's be cops and robbers!”
They flared up like tinder to a spark, “All right! I’ll be Chief of Police!”
“I’ll be a detective!”
“I’ll be the robber captain ... cave’s under the hay, as usual.”
“No, I wanted to be robber captain!”
“No, me, me!”
They all wanted to be robber captain, it seemed. They streamed away to the barn, wrangling over this.
All but one. The youngest Thor, newer than the others to the god-business, still hung over the wire-netting, grieving, “Seems ’s if ... if we could only tell them! They love angleworms so!” he said pityingly. “If I could only think of some way to teach them how to stand around quietly, and each one get all he wanted to. They’d have such a good time!” he yearned over them.
As I said nothing, he asked of the world in general, “Why won’t they? Oh, why won’t they?”
I let fall insidiously, “I wonder how the angleworms like it?” The little god stared at me with startled eyes; and then at the worms. He looked at them as though he saw them for the first time. His tender young face was fairly vacant with his surprise before a new idea.
Then he began slowly to climb over the wire-netting.
When I went back to the dahlia-bed, he was carefully burying the angleworms again.
His young face wore an expression of puzzled bewilderment.