But what I started to tell about is the persistence the guinea fowl show in adopting the stable as a home. On the first cold night I found the whole twenty of them ranged decoratively on the partitions between the stalls. I couldn't shoo them away like the hens. I had to touch each one, and as I touched it it gave a shrill squeak and flew blindly until it brought up against the wall at the far end of the stable. Usually they fell to the floor, but sometimes they would beat their wings and work their feet and apparently walk up the wall like flies until the roof checked them, and then they would sink to the floor with a final discouraged squeak. Once I caught one of them to see how heavy it was, and it squealed like a rat. I dropped it instinctively, for I felt that anything that could squeal like that would be likely to bite. And they can bite—or at least use their bills. I have noticed that at feeding time they can whip even the rooster away from the choicest bits, and I am told that when there were young chickens about, the old pair of guinea fowl thought nothing of grabbing them in their beaks and shaking them as a terrier shakes a rat. Sometimes, if they were not interrupted in committing these atrocities they even killed the chickens. I do not think the nature and habits of guinea fowl have been studied by the experts, and some time when the rush is over I may prepare a bulletin on the subject. At present, however, I am chiefly interested in making them understand that they are not wanted in the stable at night. But it seems hard to convince them. Every night I find them in exactly the same position as on the first night, and every evening I startle twenty squeaks out of the flock before I get them to move elsewhere. It is getting to be a regular chore.

But it is as fabricators of new and fiendish noises that the guinea fowl are in a class by themselves. They are at it all the time. The mildest noise they make reminds you of the filing of a saw with a bungling mechanic dragging the file on the back stroke. The noises they make when they set to work to show what they can do are beyond description. I have heard noises something like them in sawmills when the circular saw happened to strike a sliver. And they are ready to give an impromptu serenade at any time. I used to think that the ducks were the noisiest thing about the barnyard, but they only squawk when I am trying to talk. The guinea fowl keep at it when I am trying to think so that I cannot bear the thoughts that are trying to whisper their way into my brain. They rasp out wild noises when they are eating and when they are fasting, when they are walking and when they are flying; and their idea of a nice, quiet time seems to be to lie down in some spot where they are sheltered from the wind by a clump of weeds or something of the sort, and try to outdo each other in the range and volume of their cries. When we start eating these guinea fowl I am going to dissect one to find out what its vocal cords are made of. I don't think they could possibly make such noises without metal contrivances of some kind that can be rasped together and banged and thumped on. Perhaps I'll discover a new metal that would be valuable in making phonographs, and be able to organise a company to mine it out of the guinea fowl. Then I'll sell stock to the farmers. Judging by their noises there are great and unknown possibilities in these creatures. And yet I have heard people say they rather liked having them around because they keep up such a constant clatter that they keep one from getting lonesome. It strikes me that the person who would not rather be alone than have a flock of guinea fowl for company must have a bad conscience.

[LXXI.—Thanksgiving Day]

Here is Thanksgiving Day right on top of us, and I am all in a fluster. I am not sure that I am going to be thankful about anything. Isn't that dreadful? But the truth is that in my usual improvident fashion I forgot all about it. While other people were carefully saving up their thankful feelings for the official day, Oct. 20th, I just went along carelessly pouring out my thankfulness whenever it welled up within me. But that is not the way well-conducted people do. They are as methodical about their thanks as the woman in the story was about baths. When she had a stationary tub put in the house she exclaimed to an admiring friend, "It looks so nice I can hardly wait till Saturday night." As nearly as I can judge the world is full of just such careful people, and they never let a speck of thankfulness escape them until the right day comes around. They keep it in through all the long dreary year, and, then on the 20th of October, they will go about expressing it in a careful and business-like way. Since we have a Thanksgiving Day that is naturally the day to be thankful on. People who look at things in that way simplify matters for the Recording Angel. They turn over their thanks in one neat bunch, and the matter is over with for another year. But much as I may admire people who are able to restrain themselves in this way I have no hope of attaining their perfection. Having formed the habit of living each day as I come to it, I may run the whole gamut of moods from boiled down pessimism to overflowing thankfulness between sunup and sundown. And yet—and yet—this way has its compensations. I am not sure that I would change if I could.

I was reminded of the fact that Thanksgiving Day is at hand by seeing some ducks being fed up for the occasion, and by being asked whether the celery will be fit to use on the 20th. As the indications are that both these excellent comestibles will be in prime condition by that time, I find myself bubbling over with thankfulness almost two weeks before the specified time. But I know that is all wrong, and I have set to work to figure out just how to be thankful like other people. To do this I am forced to review the happenings of the year, my hopes, ambitions and enterprises. While at this task I was struck by the thought that if we had a Grumble-giving Day as well as a Thanksgiving Day, it would be much more carefully celebrated. The first thing I thought of was the bugs, blights, pests, weeds and such things that I have been fighting with all summer. As I thought of them Thanksgiving Day seemed very far away. But that mood did not last long. After all they did not injure anything which I was over-poweringly interested in. Life itself is what I am chiefly interested in, and, while we have food, clothing and shelter, it is as good one day as another. I can be just as much alive mentally, physically, spiritually on one day as another. A rainy day is just as good as a sunny day if we manage to get in tune with it. And having got a fairly good hold of the truth that yesterday is dead and to-morrow unborn, I find that I really can not go away from the present day and the present moment to seek the sources of thankfulness. It will be the same on the 20th of October, I must find in it all that I shall be thankful for. I do not think I shall be disappointed.