“What a nice dinner this is, Sally! you do make the best bread, and such nice butter!” Not a word about the fish-hawk. But as dinner was most over, Ben began to unfold his purpose. “Sally,” said he, “do you love that little creature?” pointing to the baby.
“How can you ask such a question?”
“Haven’t you taken a great deal of comfort in making his little dresses? and wouldn’t you feel bad if some one should come and tear down this house, break the furniture, and destroy all that we’ve worked, scrubbed, and contrived so long to collect around us, for these little ones?”
“Why, Ben, how you talk! Of course I should. But what makes you talk so? Who’s going to hurt us?”
“Nobody, I hope; but suppose somebody had taken some little thing from us,—an axe, a shovel, or a milk pan,—would you want their house torn down over their heads for it?”
“No; I’d say the worst is their own.”
“But you want me to cut down that tree, and break that poor fish-hawk’s nest to pieces, that she has built stick by stick, lugging them miles through the air in her claws, just because she took two skeins of yarn to line her nest with, it’s so much better than eel-grass, and which we shall hardly miss; besides, she don’t know any better than to take what she wants, wherever she can find it.”
At this appeal Sally cast down her eyes and colored; at length she said,—
“You are right, Ben, I know; but it was so provoking, after I had worked so hard to spin and scour that yarn, the first, too, that we have ever had, of our own raising, to see it going off in the claws of a fish-hawk!”
“Well,” continued Ben, “this fish-hawk came and built here the first spring we lived here, and kind of put herself under our protection, building her nest so near the house, where we pass under it every day; they are harmless creatures, and never pull up corn, like the crows or blue jays; nor carry off lambs, like the eagles; nor pick out their eyes when they get mired or cast, as the ravens do. There’s a noble disposition in a fish-hawk: they are industrious, work hard for a living, and maintain their families by their own labor; they won’t pick up a dead fish, or eel, or feed on a dead horse or cow, like an eagle or carrion crow, but will have a live fish, that they have taken fresh from the sea; they won’t be beholden to chance, nor anybody, for their living, but earn it, as every honest person should, in the sweat of their face. Once when I was a boy, just for fun, I put the eggs of two fish-hawk’s nests into one. I was over here with father after they were all hatched out, and there was the nest, heaping full, the little hawks screaming, and the old ones springing to it, working like good ones to bring up such a family. There were some great lazy eagles sitting in the tops of the pines, and every once in the while, when the hawks would get a good large flounder, they would give chase and take it away from them. O, how mad I was! Two or three times I got up my gun to shoot; but father wouldn’t let me, because he said that to shoot an eagle was bad luck.” As he concluded, he looked at his watch, and said, “We’ve been only an hour and a half at dinner; and what of it?” he continued, putting his great brawny arms on the table, that creaked under the weight. “This is the comfort of the farmer’s life—he is his own employer. Now, if I was a sailor, the mate would come forward, and sing out, ‘Turn to there, men;’ if I was a fisherman, and the fish didn’t bite, there’d be my expenses going on; if I was a shipmaster, I must hurry into port, and then hurry just as fast out, and if I made a bad voyage or a long passage, the owners would look sour; but now, if I am sick, or happen to feel lazy, the grain will grow, the cows give milk, and the sheep make wool, all the same.”