Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885

by Various

With most of the men present Elvira was acquainted: they were the patrons of her school, and found time in the midst of eating and general conversation to ask how Johnnie was a-comin' on in his spellin', or if Annie was gettin' along well in her 'rithmetic, adding, "I'll be wantin' her to calkilate interest for me by and by." Bert Mowrer's father inquired about his boy, then added cheerfully, "If he don't behave, lick him,—lick him: that's what I tell every teacher."

Farmer Loper and the engineer fell to discussing how many bushels of wheat to the acre the neighboring farms had produced, and how many this would probably produce, with various comments on the weather and the soil. A little farther down the table a young farmer was telling of the speed made by his brown mare Kitty,—how she passed every team on the road, and that he wouldn't take a hundred and fifty dollars for her; and farther still, two or three were discussing the affairs of an absent neighbor,—how he had bought the Caldwell place, but, not being able to pay for it, had given a mortgage, and hadn't managed the farm very well, had let the interest run behind, they had heard, so there was a prospect of his losing it.

"I guess he won't have to give it up," said one: "the woman that raised his wife has got plenty of money, and if he can't make it, she'll pay for the place and let them live on it. She's helped them several times already. If he wasn't so lazy and shiftless he might have everything in good shape."

But a conversation which was going on at the lower end of the table interested Elvira most of all. It was about birds, including some of her favorites of the woods and fields which she had noticed a great deal in her solitary rides that summer. The principal speaker was a young farmer whom she had never seen before. He seemed to be acquainted with the names and habits of all the birds which lived in that section, besides many which merely passed through it on their way northward every spring and southward every fall.

"I have kept a record of the time of each arrival," he said, "and notes of rare birds. The bluebird came first, and the humming-bird last. And I discovered two birds that were new to me. One is a Northern bunting. A flock stayed one day in our orchard on their way northward to their summer home, and I succeeded in killing and stuffing a pair. The feathers of the male were a beautiful pink-red. The other strange bird seemed to come with the scarlet tanager, and is much like a pee-wee in shape and size, with feathers of a greenish yellow."

"When do you find time to learn so much about birds?" asked George Loper, who knew only a few of the more common ones,—blackbirds, crows, jays, hawks, and robins,—and had no eyes for the variety of feathered life around him.

"I keep my eyes open as I work and as I go along the road," answered young Farmer Worth; "then I look up their names and read something about them in a book on birds which I have. You've no idea how much enjoyment there is in it. I have quite a collection of birds which I have stuffed, and more than a hundred different kinds of eggs, besides my cabinet of mineral specimens. I nailed two ladders together, and climbed thirty feet above these and got a crow's nest; and this spring we found a hawk's nest in a high tree. We tied a stout twine to a small stone, which we threw over the forks of the tree, and with this drew a large rope over. Then I sat in the noose of the rope, and three boys pulled me up sixty feet to the nest. It was rather scary, I can tell you, and I was glad to get down to the ground again; but I got the hawk's nest."

Then Elvira asked him if he could tell her the name of the bird with a yellow head, but otherwise black plumage, which she had noticed not long before in a flock of common blackbirds; and they were soon in an animated conversation on the subject of birds in general. Elvira had noticed many that summer which she could describe, but whose names she did not know.

Soon the men began to leave the table, for it was not the custom to wait till all had done eating, but for each one to go when he was ready. George Loper went away grumbling that he couldn't see any use in learning about birds: all he wanted was for the crows and blackbirds to keep away from the corn when it was first planted. But Elvira and young Worth talked ten minutes longer, finding more and more that they were interested in the same subjects. Then the women began to clear away the plates and cups and knives, and Elvira turned to assist them, while her new acquaintance joined his companions, who were resting in the shade of the trees. There he encountered some good-natured chaff from the younger members, who began by asking him if he was struck with the school-ma'am. The responsibility of the threshers' dinner being over, Mrs. Loper and her assistants sat down to the table, to eat their own dinner at ease, and exchange remarks with each other, complimenting or criticising their cooking.

"This chicken-stuffin' is real good," said one of the neighbors to Mrs. Loper.