But our soul, whether it was lost or not, is now in our possession. Let us be thankful that the prophets recognize that encouraging fact. And if our mind is also in our possession, we may look forward to a world not entirely different from the one we have known, but unquestionably less likely to play with firearms, and quite certainly one in which the common people will have much greater control of their political destinies, and one in which no War Lord, with chatter about shining swords and shining armor and mailed fists, will be able to hurl his nation against the others in a desperate effort to establish for himself an overlordship of the world. Nor will any nation ever be likely to rhapsodize over carnage, and feed its sordid soul with thoughts of the territories and indemnities to be got by war, or intoxicate itself with the delusion that it is a race of supermen charged by the Almighty with the duty of forcing its harsh language and its brutal habits upon all other nations.
MY FRIEND THE JAY
Every man who comes into the world has need of friends.” What Ursa Major thus profoundly observes of mankind, from China to Peru, might be applied with special force to the blue jay, at least to those jays that come into the world. Of the rest “deponent saith not.” For by common consent the blue jay is a rascal, nay even a villain; and to deepen his turpitude to an infinity of wickedness, I have heard one uncherished female with a disposition slightly acid liken him to a Man. Indeed, were some of his detractors to be believed, there is scarcely a crime in the whole avian calendar that has not been meditated upon and hatched in his nest.
It is true that there are people of such impinging personality that merely mild dislike with respect to them seems impossible. The reactions they produce are violent. Their admirers, when they have any, pursue their loyalty to an O Altitudo! their enemies (and such are usually legion) make of their names a hissing, and spit them out of the mouth. To particularize, I might refer to a gentleman who was vigorously active in the political unpleasantness of 1912. His friends saw in him a Godefroy, come to lead the politically pure against the hordes of the standpat infidels; his enemies, when they had wiped the froth from their lips, turned the vocabulary of prayer to evil uses, and accused him of being in league with the devil.
But these are merely individuals. The cases in which an indictment is drawn up against a whole people are comparatively rare,—the Goths, perhaps, the Turks, and the bloodthirsty Belgians, to bring it down to modern times, will serve as examples. Just such an inclusive indictment is brought against the jay. “I fear,” says one amiable and authoritative writer on bird life, “that the blue jay is a reprobate”; and in this opinion most authorities concur. Are there not, then, three righteous jays in all Israel? No, say his judges. Peradventure one? “Only in the museums of natural history,” they inexorably answer. All living jays are impudent, profane, mischievous, cannibalistic, “the hul cussed tribe of ’em,” as one exasperated gardener wrathfully declared to me.
Dear, dear! This is a terrible situation. Like Fuzzy Wuzzy, the poor blue jay “‘asn’t got no papers of his own.” Nor can he follow the example of those benevolent corporations whose judicious investments in advertising space temper the unshorn lamb to receive the shears in a docile mood, and at the same time protect them from too close scrutiny by the newspapers. He must bear the slings and air-guns of outrageous boyhood with scarcely a voice raised in his behalf. It seems hardly fair.
It is true that the jay is not delicate in his appetite. He cannot, like the ethereal maiden whom Burton mentions, subsist for months on the smell of a rose. I knew one old gentleman, to be sure, who secured a brief respite from care, and achieved a state of mild hilarity, by applying his nose to the mouth of a whiskey jug. But the jay enjoys not these olfactive refections. He needs more substantial food. He is omnivorous; and out of that important characteristic springs his most reprehensible trait: he eats little birds.
One morning last summer I got up rather earlier than usual to transplant some asters before the sun should come out hot. It was a calm, breezeless morning, with scarcely a sound to disturb the cool quietude, except the song of a robin on the top of the old maple. Heaven be praised! we have no trolley cars in our village, and no factories. Suddenly there broke out in the alley, the wildest commotion imaginable. It sounded as though the sparrows from five counties were there, and had eaten of the insane root. The air was filled with shrill cries, chirps, and excited chatterings. I rushed to the fence, my fingers all mud, and looked over. In the midst of a flock of sparrows forty or more in number, all hopping about distractedly but none daring to attack him, stood a big blue jay with his crest militantly erect. From time to time he pecked at something, but what that something was, like Peterkin, I could not well make out. At every stroke of his strong black beak the cries of the sparrows shrilled louder; whenever he paused and looked around in his truculent contempt, their frenzied crescendos somewhat abated.
Curious, I drew nearer and discovered that the object of his unpleasant attention was a young sparrow, a mere fledgeling, scarcely old enough to be out of the nest. He was murderously pecking it in the eye. The wee helpless thing fluttered weakly in its agony and cheeped piteously. I grabbed up an empty fruit jar that had protected a rose cutting from the blasts of winter, and hurled it at the jay. He flew screaming to a sour cherry tree a short distance away, from which safe vantage point he cursed me with every oath and revilement in his scandalous vocabulary. The little sparrow I put out of its misery.
As I went back to my asters, I could not help reflecting on the scene I had witnessed. I seemed to see in it a small counterpart of what had happened in Europe. Here was little Servia in the person of this young sparrow—something of a nuisance, perhaps, yet comparatively defenseless. And here in the arrogant, domineering jay, relentless and powerful, was Austria. A similitude might likewise be made out for Belgium and Germany. And where, I wondered, did my own country come in? With almost sinister significance a sleek bronze grackle, plump and round, his eyes standing out with fatness, emerged leisurely from among the currant bushes and gobbled up a worm. I had been vaguely aware of his presence from the first, and now as I noted his well-fed complacency, and remembered that he had been foraging around utterly oblivious of the little tragedy being enacted in the alley, I lost my patience and let fly a good-sized clod.