"Doubtful," I replied.
"Well, now," said Venison, "I've tried that. Down to where I live, the blackbirds and robins are thick as spatter. They make it all ring round me. I caught a dozen or more of each in a net one fall, cut off one toe all round, and let 'em go. Jim Spikes bet they wouldn't come back; I bet they would. I wanted to try it, you see. When spring came on again there the fellers were, sure enough, or most on 'em, on hand, ready for summer's business again. Jim gin in—he did."
"I should think they would stray away, Venison," said I.
"Don't you believe in a God!" broke out Venison, in an animated tone. "When He made 'em, He put a compass inter their heads that can't get out of fix, and they run jest as straight by it as my dog does by his nose—and a dog's nose is his compass, you know."
This was a quaint, but a very pointed way, of illustrating a law of nature. Venison was a quaint man, and drove at a conclusion frequently cross lots, by some startling figure of speech.
"And I've got an idee," continued Venison, "an idee—I don't put it down as fact—that birds know one another, jest as we do—remember each other from y'ar to y'ar—how they sang together last y'ar and every y'ar in the shadows and sunshine of this old wood, and nested and raised their young 'uns together—and they kinder bid good by to one 'nother when they go off in the fall, and say How are you? when spring comes on—and may be they have their likes and dislikes, and old grudges to bring up agin—for there is a world of human natur' in 'em—a world on't—it is only an idee—can't say—but I believe it—but,"—and the old hunter turned round with a sad look,—"they won't roam round here much longer; the big trees are tumblin'; the old seventy-sixers are enymost gone; morn'er twenty y'ars ago they were mighty noisy up in that ar oak (he pointed to an enormous oak stump), but the varmints heeved it down, and made it inter lumber—the old tree that liv'd and rock'd in the storms five hundred years, I reckon; the bees and birds all knew it, and jest hung around it 'cause they lov'd it. I have had many a good shot from it. I heerd it crash when it came down—felt it, I did—feel it yet—the varmints."
"But," said I, with an effort to turn the current of the old man's thoughts, "you really believe that birds have their captains and colonels, and all that, do you?"
"Yes, sir! and mor'n that; kings and queens, for aught I know. It's a king that leads the ducks in their flight, ain't it? Hain't you heer'd him blow his horn, away in the sky, as he led 'em on up the rivers and takes? Don't the bees have their queen?"
Venison launched forth in his peculiar style on the theory of government, despotic and republican—maintained that God "hadn't any republics" in his kingdom—"all on 'em kings and queens—nobody was 'lected there—all on 'em were made from the beginning to rule and reign over their subjects." He maintained that as God was almighty, so he put almighty power in the rulers of the kingdoms under him. Therefore—such was his argument—"man orter be governed by man"—not by the voice of the people, but by a sovereign higher than himself. His arguments and language were home-made, but his ideas were brought out with great point and force.
I had long known that Venison was well posted on the trees and shrubs, flowers, and even the weeds. Nothing that he had ever observed had failed him. Probably he never read a book on the subject in his life, that is, if he could read. The familiar names of all creation were understood by him, and he had his own theories about everything animate and inanimate. I started him off on this subject. I called his attention to the oak over which he shed a tear, and by degrees drew him along to the time when the axe and the plough would change the whole face of the country around us into hamlets, green pastures, and waving fields of grain. The old man looked solemn. The subject was not pleasant to him—he heaved a sigh, and said, finally, "'Tis all the same! 'tis all the same with me! I shall be under the ground then! I don't wanter live to see it."