He would often rout up his son Fletcher at a provokingly early hour to go out and hold a lantern while he fed the oxen with nubs of corn; and, noticing a decided lack of enthusiasm in Fletcher, would say: “You do not enjoy this society, my son; it’s better than I find in the Senate.” It was a touching scene when on the last day, when he sat in his loved library, he longed to look once more into the kindly faces of his honest oxen, and had them driven up to the window to say good-bye. Speaking of Choate recalls a comical story about his finding in his path, during a summer morning’s walk, a dozen or more dorbeetles sprawling on their backs in the highway enjoying the warm sunshine. With great care he tipped them all over into a normal position, when a friend coming along asked curiously, “What are you doing, Mr. Choate?” “Why, these poor creatures got overturned, and I am helping them to take a fresh start.” “But,” said the other, “they do that on purpose; they are sunning themselves, and will go right back as they were.” This was a new idea to the puzzled pleader, but with one of those rare smiles which lit up his sad, dark face so wonderfully, he said: “Never mind, I’ve put them right; if they go back, it is at their own risk.” And an interesting anecdote is told in his biography of his touch of human sympathy for inanimate objects: “When as a boy he drove his father’s cows, he says, more than once when he had thrown away his switch, he has returned to find it, and has carried it back and thrown it under the tree from which he took it, for he thought, ‘Perhaps there is, after all, some yearning of Nature between them still.’”
There are enough anecdotes about birds as pets to fill another big book. One of Dickens’s most delightful characters was ponderous, impetuous Lawrence Boythorn, with his pet bird lovingly circling about him. In Washington, in Salmon P. Chase’s home, when he was Secretary of the Treasury, lived a pet canary, one of the tamest, which had a special liking for the grave, reserved statesman. It was allowed to fly about the room freely, and had an invariable habit of calmly waiting beside the secretary at dinner until he had used his finger-bowl; then Master Canary would take possession of it for a bath. In Jean Paul Richter’s study stood a table with a cage of canaries. Between this and his writing table ran a little ladder, on which the birds could hop their way to the poet’s shoulder, where they frequently perched.
Celia Thaxter loved birds. She writes: “I can not express to you my distress at the destruction of the birds. You know how I love them; every other poem I have written has some bird for its subject, and I look at the ghastly horror of women’s headgear with absolute suffering. I remonstrate with every wearer of birds. No woman worthy of the name would wish to be instrumental in destroying the dear, beautiful creatures, and for such idle folly—to deck their heads like squaws—who are supposed to know no better—when a ribbon or a flower would serve their purpose just as well, and not involve this fearful sacrifice.” In a letter she describes a night visit from birds.
“Two or three of the earlier were down in the big bay window, and between two and three o’clock in the morning it began softly to rain, and all at once the room filled with birds: song sparrows, flycatchers, wrens, nuthatches, yellow birds, thrushes, all kinds of lovely feathered creatures fluttered in and sat on picture frames and gas fixtures, or whirled, agitated, in mid air, while troops of others beat their heads against the glass outside, vainly striving to get in. The light seemed to attract them as it does the moths. We had no peace, there was such a crowd, such cries and chirps and flutterings. I never heard of such a thing; did you?
“Oh, the birds! I do believe few people enjoy them as you and I do. The song sparrows and white-throats follow after me like chickens when they see me planting. The martins almost light on my head; the humming birds do, and tangle their little claws in my hair; so do the sparrows. I wish somebody were here to tell me the different birds, and recognise these different voices. There are more birds than usual this year, I am happy to say. The women have not assassinated them all for the funeral pyres they carry on their heads.... What between the shrikes and owls and cats and weasels and women—worst of all—I wonder there’s a bird left on this planet.
“In the yard of the house at Newton, where we used to live, I was in the habit of fastening bones (from cooked meat) to a cherry tree which grew close to my sitting-room window; and when the snow lay thick upon the ground that tree would be alive with blue jays and chickadees, and woodpeckers, red-headed and others, and sparrows (not English), and various other delightful creatures. I was never tired watching them and listening to them. The sweet housekeeping of the martins in the little boxes on my piazza roof is more enchanting to me than the most fascinating opera, and I worship music. I think I must have begun a conscious existence as some kind of a bird in æons past. I love them so! I am always up at four, and I hear everything every bird has to say on any subject whatever. Tell me, have you ever tied mutton and beef bones to the trees immediately around the house where you live for the birds?”
Matthew Arnold wrote of his canary and cat in a most loving way.
Poor Matthias.
Poor Matthias! Found him lying
Fallen beneath his perch and dying?