TO SCRAGGLES
MY PET SPARROW AND COMPANION
Saint Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order, without whom there would probably have been no missions in California, regarded the birds as his “little brothers and sisters.” Just as I began the actual writing of this book I picked up in the streets a tiny song sparrow, wounded, unable to fly, and that undoubtedly had been thrust out of its nest. In a short time we became close friends and inseparable companions. Hour after hour she sat on my foot, or, better still, perched, with head under her wing, on my left hand, while I wrote with the other. Nothing I did, such as the movement of books, turning of leaves, etc., made her afraid. When I left the room she hopped and fluttered along after me. She died just as the book was receiving its finishing pages. On account of her ragged and unkempt appearance I called her Scraggles; and to her, a tiny morsel of animation, but who had a keen appreciation and reciprocation of a large affection, I dedicate this book.
When I read this to some of my friends they were moved to tears and wanted to know more about Scraggles. As I told the story, others desired to hear it. Then in a lecture on “The Radiant Life” I told it again, and thousands were touched to tears by the simple narrative of the sweet little bird’s beautiful and trustful life.
Fortunately, my familiarity with the camera had made me desire to make some photographs of Scraggles some three weeks before her death. My daughter and I made several, and then a friend came and made two or three others, so that now we feel really blessed in possessing these counterfeit presentments of the little creature.
When our friends saw these photographs they desired copies of them; and when, after the publication of “In and Out of the Old Missions,” strangers began to write both to my publishers and myself for “further particulars about Scraggles,” I felt that I ought to give to others some of the joy and delight and benefit I and mine had in our intercourse with her.
Dear little Scraggles! I little thought when I first saw you struggling to get away from me, as if afraid I might devour you, that we should so soon become such inseparable friends. It was a sudden impulse that led me to pick you up and take you home, and though the loving hearts there welcomed you, they realized better than I did the trouble you would be. But somehow that did not deter us from making you one of us, and you soon recognized the relationship. Our association was short, as men reckon time, but time really has very little to do with life.
“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.”