Winnie was delighted with a bit of gorge road which played at hide and seek with a wayward brook. "It seems to me," she said, "that the wood is a matter-of-fact business man, and the brook is his sweet but willful little wife. See how he tries to adapt himself to her whims and pranks, keeping as close to her as he can, while the side which she does not touch is stern with rock and shadow! And she, coquettish little thing, wanders away from him into the deepest part of the ravine, where he cannot follow, and hides herself in a tangle of fern and wild-flowers, till, just as the lonely old road, quite in despair at having lost her, crosses the ravine on a bridge of logs, apparently for the sole purpose of seeking her, the merry little brook flies under the mossy bridge and is close beside him on the side which he thought farthest from her."
"That is a very good parable," said father. "You've struck the nail pretty fairly. That's the way it has always been with my wife and me. My daughter, too, is one of the brook kind, but you needn't conclude that the old road doesn't enjoy all the company of blackberry vines and laurel and ferns that the brook attracts to itself, and which never would have come near the road but for the brook. I mean you and Miss Sartoris and the rest."
"And sometimes," Winnie added, "the road has its grains of corn or wheat dropped from a passing cart, you know, to give to the sparrows, and the brook likes that ever so much."
Father always called the boys from the Home "the sparrows," and he was pleased by this allusion to his generosity.
We found ourselves following the circus at one stage of our journey, and we pitched our tent and made camp not far from the fair-grounds. We chose for our camp a site which had once been occupied by a house that had been burned to the ground. The only out-building which had escaped the conflagration was a root-house, or cellar, excavated, cave-like, in the side of a hill. It struck Mr. Stillman as a particularly good "dark-room," and we at once pre-empted it. Miss Sartoris painted a sign-board for the photographic studio, and Winnie and I arranged a bower with a flowery background for Mr. Stillman's sitters. We had a rich harvest that day, Winnie acting as cashier, and Miss Sartoris, as assistant, posing the groups. Mr. Stillman was quite exhausted when evening fell. He said he had never done such a day's work in his life, and his tintype material was nearly used up. We were patronized not only by the country people who came to see the show, sheepish lovers who wished to have their portraits taken together, and parties of merry young people, but also by the showmen themselves. The living skeleton and the fat lady, the strong man supporting a great weight by his teeth, the lion tamer with his pets, and the snake charmer, were all among Mr. Stillman's patrons. When it was understood that he had an instantaneous camera with him, the equestrienne desired him to take a photograph of her while performing her famous feat of riding five horses at once, and the acrobats challenged him to catch their rapid evolutions. He surprised them by his remarkable success in obtaining a perfect negative. It was our most successful day, from a financial point of view, for we realized over twenty dollars.
Father had a rather annoying experience which made him desire to avoid the circus in the future. Among the articles which the tin-peddler had given him was a soldering furnace and irons, for mending old tinware. Father made his first attempt to use these tools on this afternoon. The door-keeper of one of the tents brought him his japanned tin strong-box to mend, and father attacked the task laboriously, succeeding in making it firm by a rather too plentiful application of solder. He was so interested in his task that he did not notice that an organ-grinder, one of the followers of the circus, had pressed quite near and was regarding the coins, which the door-keeper had temporarily turned into his handkerchief, with hungry eyes. Suddenly the monkey, which had been tied to the organ, became loose, and springing straight to the little furnace, seized and brandished the heated soldering-iron. A great excitement ensued, for no one dared to take the formidable weapon from the mischievous creature. The owner of the monkey seemed at his wits' end. He raged, stamped, tore his hair, commanded and entreated the monkey to bring back the iron, all to no avail. The monkey, having burned himself, finally dropped it, but, frightened by the pain or by his master's threats, continued his flight into the woods, followed by the organ-grinder. When the excitement occasioned by this event had subsided, a still greater one ensued on the discovery that the door-keeper's handkerchief and money had disappeared. The man angrily charged father with its theft, but Mr. Stillman came running from his dark-room with a negative which he had just developed. He had been standing at the door, with his detective camera in his hand, and, quite unintentionally, had done real detective work, for, intending only to catch the monkey with the soldering-iron, he had focused upon it at the very first, and the unerring eye of the camera had seen and recorded what every one else had been too preoccupied to discover—the organ-grinder snatching the gate-keeper's money. The negative was a sufficient witness, and the organ-grinder was at once sought for, but the earth seemed to have swallowed him. The monkey was found nursing his burned paw in a tree, but his master and the money were not to be found. There was such a train of beggars and questionable characters in the wake of the circus that it was decided not to pursue our moneyed advantage by following with them; and the next day we stood back from the road to let the heavy, shambling elephants and long train of gaudily decorated wagons pass by. Mr. Stillman had his detective camera out, and took some interesting views of the procession. Father had taken a dislike to the soldering outfit, and congratulated himself that the monkey had lost the iron, but the last in the procession, a gypsy fortune-teller, handed it to him, saying that it was a lodestone, which would bring evil fortune to the person who possessed it, and advising him to give it to his worst enemy. "I am a witch," Winnie laughed, "and can reverse all omens—so we need not fear." Turning from the highway, we now struck across the country, through chestnut woods, where Miss Prillwitz taught us to recognize the song of the thrush, the sweetest of New England songsters, and cousin of the mocking-bird. Mr. Stillman was vexed that he could not obtain a single photograph of a thrush, but she is a shy bird, and keeps hidden in leafy thickets, and though we heard her song frequently, we never saw her. Mr. Stillman became very skillful in photographing other birds, even fixing the agile little fly-catchers in their eccentric movements, the watchful bobolink atilt on a mullein-stalk, the swallows skimming the river's surface, and the sagacious crows, who, having proved that a very natural scarecrow was harmless, were less suspicious of him. The withered limbs on certain old apple-trees were favorite perches for the birds, for there was no foliage here to impede their flight, and outlined against the sky they were capital targets for the camera. Mr. Stillman secured a gentlemanly king-bird in such a position, his white breast and black back and tail feathers reminding Winnie of a dandy in full evening dress.
Miss Prillwitz remarked on the brilliant plumage of the New England birds, and said that it was a mistake to imagine that those of the South were more beautiful. She pointed out the black and gold orioles, the lovely bluebird, the scarlet tanagers, as brilliant as flamingoes, the beautiful rose-breasted grosbeaks, with a rich crimson heart upon their breasts, and the red-winged blackbirds, with their scarlet epaulets, reminding one of brisk artillerymen. It was the last of June—the most perfect of all the months—and as we rode we repeated all of the poets' praises of the month that we could remember. We agreed that Lowell had sung the season best:
"The bobolink has come, and, like the soul
Of the sweet season vocal in a bird,
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what,
Save June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June."
But Margaret Deland pleased us nearly as well in her homage to the queen month:
"The dark laburnum's chains of gold
She twists about her throat;
Perched on her shoulder, blithe and bold,
The brown thrush sounds his note!