There was something else so very characteristic of old Philadelphia that I will not pass it by. In the fall of the year the reed-bird, which is quite as good as the ortolan of Italy, and very much like it (I prefer the reed-bird), came in large flocks to the marshes and shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill. Then might be seen a quaint and marvellous sight of men and boys of all ages and conditions, with firearms of every faculty and form, followed by dogs of every degree of badness, in all kinds of boats, among which the bateau of boards predominated, intermingled with an occasional Maryland dug-out or poplar canoe. Many, however, crept on foot along the shore, and this could be seen below the Navy Yard even within the city limits. Then, as flock after flock of once bobolinks and now reed-birds rose or fell in flurried flight, there would be such a banging, cracking, and barking as to suggest a South American revolution aided by blood-hounds. That somebody in the mêlée now and then got a charge of shot in his face, or that angry parties in dispute over a bird sometimes blazed away at one another and fought à l’outrance in every way, “goes without saying.” Truly they were inspiriting sights, and kept up the martial valour, aided by frequent firemen’s fights, which made Philadelphians so indomitable in the Rebellion, when, to the amazement of everybody, our Quaker city manifested a genius or love for hard fighting never surpassed by mortals.
There were, of course, some odd episodes among the infantry or gunners on foot, and one of these was so well
described by my brother Henry in a poem, that I venture to give it place.
REED-BIRDING.
Two men and a bull-dog ugly,
Two guns and a terrier lame;
They’d better stick out in the marsh there,
And set themselves up for game.But no; I mark by the cocking
Of that red-haired Paddy’s eye,
He’s been “reeding” too much for you, sir,
Any such game to try.“Now, Jamie, ye divil, kape dark there,
And hould the big bull-dog in;
There’s a bloody big crowd of rade-birds,
That nade a pepperin’!”Ker-rack! goes the single barrel,
Flip-boong! roars the old Queen Anne;
There’s a Paddy stretched out in the mud-hole,
A kicked-over, knocked-down man.“Och, Jamie, ye shtupid crature,
Sure ye’re the divil’s son;
How many fingers’ load, thin,
Did ye putt in this d---d ould gun?”“How many fingers, be jabers?
I nivir putt in a wan;
Did ye think I’d be afther jammin’
Me fingers into a gun?”“Well, give me the powder, Jamie.”
“The powder! as sure as I’m born,
I put it all into yer musket,
For I’d nivir a powder-horn!”
Then we all had reed-bird suppers or lunches, eked out perhaps with terrapins and soft-shell crabs, gumbo, “snapper,” or pepper-pot soup, peaches, venison, bear-meat, salon la saison—for both bear and deer roamed wild within fifty or sixty miles—so that, all things considered, if Philadelphians,
and Baltimoreans did run somewhat over-much to eating up their intellects—as Dr. Holmes declares they do—they had at least the excuse of terrible temptation, which the men of my “grandfather-land” (New England), as he once termed it in a letter to me, very seldom had at any time.
Once it befell, though a few years later, that one winter there was a broad fair field of ice just above Fairmount dam, which is about ten feet high, that about a hundred and fifty men and maidens were merrily skating by moonlight. I know not whether Colonel James Page, our great champion skater, was there cutting High Dutch; but this I know, that all at once, by some strange rising of the stream, the whole flake of ice and its occupants went over the dam. Strangely enough, no one was killed, but very few escaped without injury, and for some time the surgeons were busy. It would make a strange wild picture that of the people struggling in the broken floes of ice among the roaring waters.
And again, during a week on the same spot, some practical joker amused himself with a magic-lantern by making a spirit form flit over the fall, against its face, or in the misty air. The whole city turned out to see it, and great was their marvelling, and greater the fear among the negroes at the apparition.
Sears C. Walker, who was an intimate friend, kept a school in Sansom Street, to which I was transferred. I was only seven years old at the time, and being the youngest, he made, when I was introduced, a speech of apology to his pupils. He was a good kind man, who also, like Jacob, gave us lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry. There I studied French, and began to learn to draw, but made little progress, though I worked hard. I have literally never met in all my life any person with so little natural gift or aptitude for learning languages or drawing as I have; and if I have since made an advance in both, it has been at the cost of such extreme labour as would seem almost incredible. I was greatly interested in chemistry, as a child would be,