Thursday, October tenth.
It’s raining! All day has been overcast, but sharp and clear. It was for us all a day of hard work. We cleared up the woods between Olson’s cabin and ours carrying one large pile of brush from our door yard to the beach and burning another huge one. That was a wild sight as night came. It had become a great fire of logs burning steadily and lighting up all the woods around. It is still burning in the pouring rain. We sawed a little—always more than keeping pace with our consumption of wood. Rockwell worked almost the whole day and went to bed tired. I read to him an hour. He loves to hear poetry.
We set an elaborate contrivance to catch a magpie; and were humiliated by the bird who walked round and round the snare eying it wisely, then suddenly rushed in only far enough to secure a piece of decoy bait—and fled. Painted to-day making a good little sketch, but, on my first trial of the home-made canvas, finding it to need more priming. Work! work!
ONE OF ROCKWELL’S DRAWINGS
Friday, October eleventh.
This day we should have been in Seward. It was calm although it rained from time to time. Olson offered to tow us across to Caine’s Head; but, the rain coming up as we were about to start in the morning, we waited till afternoon, started, proceeded half a mile, encountered engine trouble, and finally ignominiously rowed home, I pulling Olson and his motor and Rockwell bringing in our own dory. If it had not been so late we would have kept on.
We have a magpie. I saw one hop into Olson’s shed, quickly ran and closed the door, and there he was. Now he’s in a box-trap cage set on a specially constructed shelf on our front gable. He’s a garrulous creature and bites angrily; but he’s a youngster and we hope to teach him to say all sorts of pretty things; Olson says they take naturally to swearing. So Rockwell has at last a pet.