The word seems to describe both their appearance and the sounds they make. As soon as they reached a place of safety they all stopped and began wiggling their tails. Then I saw a great light. Duck language is not expressed with the tongue, but with the tail. There is a sameness about the sounds they utter that would make it impossible for them to carry on a connected conversation. With their tails it is different. They seem able to give an infinite variety to the way in which they wiggle them. They can express joy, satisfaction, contempt, surprise, or any other emotion, by the simple wiggling of their tails. Did you ever see a duck dive into the water in such a way as to leave only its tail exposed? If you have you could never fail to tell when it managed to get a good juicy root or a snail by the happy way it would wiggle its tail. Sometimes when they are very happy they can wiggle their tails so fast that all the eye can catch is a sort of hazy blur. At other times, when they are attending to their toilet and rubbing themselves down with the backs of their heads, they will give their tails a little flirt that is just as proud as proud. I think if I set myself to it I could write a bulletin on the language of duck tails. After I had disturbed them they stood and wiggled their tails at one another in a way that seemed to be entirely disrespectful to me. They seemed to be saying, "Humph! I wonder what he thinks he wants now. Did you ever see such a looking creature? How on earth does he manage to balance himself up on end in that way when every duck knows that the true, graceful position for a creature's body is to be hung between two legs horizontally! I wonder how he manages to convey his ideas, if he has any, without having a gaudy little bunch of feathers to wiggle the same as we have. Those sounds he makes with his mouth when the children are around can't have any more meaning than our quacking. It must be terrible to be a poor dumb creature like that." Then they all said "Quack" and gave their tails a most superior wiggle. At this point an unwary cricket started to move past about ten feet away, and instantly every neck in the flock was stretched out full length and every tail wig-wagged: "My meat!" I don't know which one got it, though I think it must have been the brown drake from the contented way he wiggled his tail for some minutes afterwards.
Now, don't be offended, but there are really lessons to be learned from the ducks. Their faculty for flocking together is something that farmers might study with profit. Whether sleeping or feeding it would be possible almost at any time to cover the whole flock with a tablecloth, and when they make up their minds to travel they move in Indian file behind a chosen leader like a band of Iroquois braves. And yet it is possible for the poison of class distinction to find its way even among ducks. I remember that one day when I was moving a pile of boards I uncovered a fair-sized frog. Instantly the ducks swooped down on it, and before I had time to interfere the frog had gone head-first to his doom. He must have made just about as satisfactory a meal as that duck had ever had. And what was the result? While the other ducks went foraging around for crickets and angleworms, the one that had swallowed the frog squatted on the shady side of the stable and crooned to itself and wiggled its tail as if it were the most superior duck in the country. It was easy to see that it felt itself above all the others. (Wiggle.) It was made of finer clay. (Wiggle—Wiggle—Wiggle.) It was really disgraceful the way those common ducks squattered around after grubs and such refuse as collects in the bottom of puddles. (Wiggle—Wiggle.) All afternoon it lay there meditating and digesting and refusing to associate with common ducks. And yet—and yet—even that superior duck will probably figure at a Christmas dinner just like the others. It is a strange world. Even the most gifted ducks cannot long maintain a superior position.
Oct. 28.—Isn't there an old fable about an ass that wrapped himself in a lion's skin and tried to ramp and roar like the king of beasts, and got himself laughed at and kicked in the diaphragm and otherwise subjected to "grievous bodily harm"? I seem to remember such a fable, but I cannot lay my hands on it, and the children, who are at the fable-reading stage of education, are all in bed and I cannot ask them. Anyway it doesn't matter, for I do not want to quote it. I simply want to have the moral of the thing in the back of my head to keep me on the right track, while I indulge in an old-fashioned grumble. This morning I got a letter from a correspondent that finally brought to a head a number of things that I have been feeling peevish about ever since coming back to the country. Broadly speaking I have been mourning the disappearance of all kinds of country amusements. There is no encouragement for local talent of any kind, either for the intellectual talent for reciting and singing, or the physical talent for jumping or catching the greased pig. If we have an entertainment we import singers and elocutionists, and if we have a fall fair it must be an imitation World's Fair. The lion's skin of city attractions is being stretched out in every direction, and we can see long ears peeping from under every corner of it. Every town and village must be citified in everything it does, and the result is a lot of low-grade attractions entirely lacking in the old-fashioned and forever-artistic merit of sincerity. I do not think I am peculiar in my tastes, but if I cannot see the best I want to see what is honest and sincere. It has been my good fortune to hear some of the world's best entertainers, but when I cannot hear them I prefer the honest sing-song recitations of a schoolboy or school-girl to the conceited caterwauling of some half-baked elocutionist. In the same way if I cannot see a real world's fair I can enjoy myself thoroughly at an old-fashioned country fair where the exhibits are those of honest people who are trying to excel in their own way. But when we have an entertainment nowadays we must import talent, and when we have a fall fair we must have a midway and circus stunts by hamfatters, who would be hooted in the places where such performances really belong. We must be citified at any cost, and the result is tawdry entertainments and fairs, when by employing local talent and encouraging local effort we could have entertainments and fairs that would be wholesome and helpful.
But say, do you remember the old-time country fall fairs before the days of vaudeville turns and hand-painted chickens? Every day when going to the post office, I pass the spreading tree from whose branches I watched my first horse-race. I would climb that tree right now and not care who was looking if I thought I could feel again the thrills and excitement of that bygone day. I not only knew the jockeys, but I knew the horses—all except one. My favourite was a bay mare somewhat given to what the society reporters call "om-bong-pong" on account of living on pasture, and her rider was one of my youthful heroes, perhaps because he was said to be "a leetle wild." But in spite of high hopes and a blue-beech gad our horse didn't win. The stranger took the prize, but I never felt that it was fair, and I leave it to you. For three weeks or a month before the show the stranger kept in his mare and fed her on dry timothy and oats, and had her all "ganted up." And he had a real raw-hide riding whip. Still it was a great race even if we did lose, and never since have I seen a race by which I was so deeply moved. And after the races there was a baseball match, and when the catcher got "het up" and excited he threw his vest on top of the Temperance Hall, and after the game was over had to put up a rail and climb after his vest. And the winning team won by at least twenty runs. And then there was the fat pig—so fat he couldn't stand up and took his meals in bed, like a person of leisure. But I mustn't get started on the exhibits or I'll never know when to stop. It was a few years after this that the "Pride of the Valley" man began coming to our fair. What a wonderful man he was, with that eloquent voice and long flowing hair. They don't make medicine like "Pride of the Valley" any more. It was good for man and beast, and indispensable to fowls. It toned your muscles, stimulated your circulation, and renovated your liver. It brightened your eye, restored your complexion, and stopped your hair from falling out. And all it cost was twenty-five cents, one quarter, or two York shillings a box. One fall I was feeling low and I bought a box. The stuff looked as if it had been culled from the Ontario weed book, but I made a tea from it as instructed, and took a dose. My recovery was instantaneous. I forgot everything except the taste in my mouth. No, they don't make medicines like that any more, and there are no gifted orators like the man who sold the incomparable and universal panacea. Both medicine and vendor belonged to a more robust age. We are living in an age of soft speech, and sugar-coatings, and vaudeville stunts. Ehue! ehue!
Oct. 29.—"Blaa-aa-aa-aa-umph!"
That is something like it, but not exactly. I am afraid it is not possible to express with type the discontent, impatience, and disgust with life that the red calf gets into her bawling. Still, if you went out behind the barn and practised for a while, you might be able to make sounds that would give you an idea of what I mean. Her bawl begins in a tone of savage impatience and ends with a grumble of bitter pessimism. She seems to be saying:
"Where is that skim milk? If you can't let me have anything better, you might at least let me have that on time."
"Blaa-aa-aa-aa-umph!"
I suppose all calves are more or less alike, but this one has certainly had much to sour her on life. Since the day of her birth she has been an Ishmaelite. Even her own mother has been against her. And that brings me to a piece of proverbial wisdom that I haven't seen quoted in the reports of the Dairyman's Association. There is a Gaelic proverb which most people will find about as hard to pronounce as the bawling of the calf:
"Gu dheamhar a gabhais bo ri a laoig na ha gul aiche do ar gamhain."