Riverby

by John Burroughs

"It is a disappointment to me, but I decided long ago that the wisest plan is to make the best of things; to take what is given you, and make the most of it. To gather up the fragments, that nothing may be lost, applies to one's life as well as to other things. Though I cannot walk, I can think

and read and write; probably I get my share of pleasure from sources that well people are apt to neglect. I have learned that the way to be happy is to keep so busy that thoughts of self are forced out of sight; and to live for others, not for ourselves.

"Sometimes, when I think over the matter, I am half sorry for well people, because, you see, I have so much better company than they can have, for I have so much more time to go all over the world and meet all the best and wisest people in it. Some of them died long ago to the most of people, but to me they are just as much alive as they ever were; they give me their best and wisest thoughts, without the disagreeable accompaniments others must endure. Other people use their eyes and ears and pens for me; all I have to do is to sit still and enjoy the results. Dear friends I have everywhere, though I am unknown to them; what right have I to wish for more privileges than I have?"

There is philosophy for you,—philosophy which looks fate out of countenance. It seems that if we only have the fortitude to take the ills of life cheerfully and say to fortune, "Thy worst is good enough for me," behold the worst is already repentant and fast changing to the best. Love softens the heart of the inevitable. The magic phrase which turns the evil spirits into good angels is, "I am contented." Happiness is always at one's elbow, it seems, in one disguise or another; all one has to do is to stop seeking it afar, or stop seeking it at all, and say to this unwelcome attendant, "Be thou my

friend," when, lo! the mask falls, and the angel is disclosed. Certain rare spirits in this world have accepted poverty with such love and pride that riches at once became contemptible.

My correspondent has the gift of observation. In renouncing self, she has opened the door for many other things to enter. In cultivating the present moment, she cultivates the present incident. The power to see things comes of that mental attitude which is directed to the now and the here: keen, alert perceptions, those faculties that lead the mind and take the incident as it flies. Most people fail to see things, because the print is too small for their vision; they read only the large-lettered events like the newspaper headings, and are apt to miss a part of these, unless they see in some way their own initials there.

The small type of the lives of bird and beast about her is easily read by this cheerful invalid. "To understand that the sky is everywhere blue," says Goethe, "we need not go around the world;" and it would seem that this woman has got all the good and pleasure there is in natural history from the pets in her room, and the birds that build before her window. I had been for a long time trying to determine whether or not the blue jay hoarded up nuts for winter use, but had not been able to settle the point. I applied to her, and, sitting by her window, she discovered that jays do indeed hoard food in a tentative, childish kind of way, but not with the cunning and provident foresight of the squirrels and

native mice. She saw a jay fly to the ground with what proved to be a peanut in its beak, and carefully cover it up with leaves and grass. "The next fall, looking out of my own window, I saw two jays hiding chestnuts with the same blind instinct. They brought them from a near tree, and covered them up in the grass, putting but one in a place. Subsequently, in another locality, I saw jays similarly employed. It appears to be simply the crow instinct to steal, or to carry away and hide any superfluous morsel of food." The jays were really planting chestnuts instead of hoarding them. There was no possibility of such supplies being available in winter, and in spring a young tree might spring from each nut. This fact doubtless furnishes a key to the problem why a forest of pine is usually succeeded by a forest of oak. The acorns are planted by the jays. Their instinct for hiding things prompts them to seek the more dark and secluded pine woods with their booty, and the thick layer of needles furnishes an admirable material with which to cover the nut. The germ sprouts and remains a low slender shoot for years, or until the pine woods are cut away, when it rapidly becomes a tree.

My correspondent thinks the birds possess some of the frailties of human beings; among other things, ficklemindedness. "I believe they build nests just for the fun of it, to pass away the time, to have something to chatter about and dispute over." (I myself have seen a robin play at nest-building late in October, and have seen two young bluebirds

ensconce themselves in an old thrush's nest in the fall and appear to amuse themselves like children, while the wind made the branch sway to and fro.) "Now my wrens' nest is so situated that nothing can disturb them, and where I can see it at any time. They have often made a nest and left it. A year ago, during the latter part of May, they built a nest, and in a few days they kicked everything out of the box and did the work all over again, repeating the operation all July, then left the country without accomplishing anything further. This season they reared one brood, built another nest, and, I think, laid one or more eggs, idled around a few weeks, and then went away." (This last was probably a "cock-nest," built by the male as a roosting-place.) "I have noticed, too, that blue jays build their apology for a nest, and abandon it for another place in the same tree." Her jays and wrens do not live together on the most amicable terms. "I had much amusement while the jay was on the nest, watching the actions of the wrens, whose nest was under the porch close by the oak. Perched on a limb over the jay, the male wren sat flirting his tail and scolding, evidently saying all the insulting things he could think of; for, after enduring it for some time, the jay would fly off its nest in a rage, and, with the evident intention of impaling Mr. Wren with his bill, strike down vengefully and—find his bill fast in the bark, while his enemy was somewhere else, squeaking in derision. They kept that up day after day; but the wren is too lively to be caught by a large bird.