The old town

by Jacob A. Riis

“This box is for starlings, but, by the great horn spoon, not for sparrows.

“JACOB RIIS.”

We did not like sparrows. They were cheeky tramps, good only to eat when there were enough of them. The starling was a friend.

I suppose it was the near approach of the time of his going away, with the stork and the swallow, to leave us in the grip of the long winter, that made me in desperation try to cage him once. How I could, I don’t know. Boys are boys everywhere, I suppose. I made the cage with infinite toil, caught my starling, and put him in it. But when I saw him darting from side to side struggling to get out to the trees and the grass and the clouds, my heart smote me, and I tore the cage apart and threw open the window. It was many days before I could look my friend in the eye, and I was secretly afraid all winter that he would not come back. But he was a generous bird and bore no grudge. Next spring he was there earlier than ever, as if he knew.

Never have I forgotten it; it is to me as vivid as if it were yesterday, that black day when, with the instinct to “kill something” strong in me, I had gone out with my father’s gun, and coming through the willows, met a starling on joyous wing crossing the meadow on the way to his nest. Up went the gun, and before I knew, I had shot him. I can see him folding his wings as he fell at my feet. I did not pick him up. I went home with all the sunlight gone out of the day. I have shot many living things since, more shame to me, but never one that hurt like that. I had slain my friend.

But neither have I forgotten the long peaceful twilights of summer when we drifted down the river in our boat, listening to the small talk of the mother duck with her young, and to the chattering of uncounted thousands of starlings in the reeds where they had settled for the night, settling too, as was proper, the disputes of the day before they went to sleep. If only men were always so wise. In the midst of it we would suddenly get on our feet and shout and clap our hands, and the flock would rise and rise and keep rising, farther and farther down the river, until the sky was darkened and the twilight became night, while the rush of the million wings swelled into rolling thunder. We stood open-mouthed and watched the marvellous sight, while the youngest crowded up close, half afraid.

Ah, well! they were the old days of sweet memories, and here they have come back to me on the wings of the black starling. Who brought him, or how he came, I do not know, but glad am I. And while I am waiting for him to sound his message of cheer and good-will at my window, let me try and hold fast awhile the Old Town we both loved, and from which it must be that he has come straight. Else, why should he seek me out?

Where the northernmost boundary post of the German empire, shaken by the rude blasts of the North Sea, points its black menacing finger toward the little remnant of stricken Denmark, it stood a thousand years, a lonely sentinel with its face toward the southern foe. Kings were born and buried within its portals, proud bishops ruled it, armies fought for it, and over it, but all these things had passed away. Centuries before it had bidden good-by to the pageantry of royalty and courts, and had gone to sleep with its mouldering past. And it had slept ever since save when the tramp of armies stirred uneasy dreams; but they halted no longer at its gates. The snort of the iron horse, hitched to the nineteenth century, had not yet aroused it in my day. No shriek of steam whistle, scarce a ripple from the great world without, disturbed its rest. There was, indeed, a factory in town, always spoken of as the factory, a cotton mill of impossible pretensions, grotesque in its mediæval setting, and discredited by public opinion as a kind of flying in the face of tradition and Providence at once that invited sure disaster. When disaster did come, though it took the power of two empires to bring it about,—it was an immediate result of the war of conquest waged by Germany and Austria against Denmark that drew the boundary line and built custom-houses within sight of the factory windows,—it was accepted as a judgment any one could have foretold. But even that bold intruder had never been guilty of the impropriety of whistling. The drowsy clatter of mill-wheels where blossoming lilacs dipped over garden walls into the loitering stream was the only sound of industry that broke the profound peace. The flour-mills were among the privileged traditions of the town. They had been handed down from father to son in unbroken succession since the exclusive right to grind the flour of the community had been granted to them by the early kings. No one had ever disputed that right. Perhaps it was not worth contending for; anyhow, it would have been useless. Could a clearer title to possession be imagined than that the thing had been there before any one could remember?

“Where blossoming lilacs dip over garden walls.”