A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed.

by W. C. Bartlett

Little creepers of yerba buena—the sweetest and most consoling of all herbs—interlace underneath the tree; and within sight the dandelion blooms, and perfects its juices for some torpid liver; while under the fence the wild sage puts forth its gray leaves, gathering subtile influences from earth and air to give increase of wisdom and longevity. If the motherly old prophetess of other days—she who had such faith in God and simples—would come this way, she might gather herbs enough to cure no small part of this disordered world.

Take it all in all, one might go a long way and not find another more perfect landscape. The dim, encircling mountains—one with the ragged edges of an extinct volcano still visible; the warm hill-sides, where vine, and fig, and olive blend; the natural park in the foreground, begirt with clear waters which break through a canyon above—the home of trout, grown too cunning for the hook, except on cloudy days; the line of perpetual green which the rivulet carries a mile farther down, and loses it at the fretting shore line; the village, with its smart obtrusiveness toned by distance; and the infinite reach of the ocean beyond—these all enter into the composition. Well, if one has a "stake in the soil" just here, what is the harm in coming to drive it a little once a year, and to enjoy the luxury of wiping out such scores as are run up on the debit side of the account? Farming for dividends is a prosy business; but farming with a discount may have a world of sentiment in it.

Have you quite answered the question yet, whether the instinct of certain animals is not reason? Here are a dozen quadrupedal friends that can demonstrate the fact that they have something more than instinct. There is that honest old roan horse coming from the side-hill for his lump of sugar. He knows well enough that he is not entitled to it now. He is only coming to try his chances. But give him an hour under the saddle, then turn him out and see if he will not get it. Forgetting once to give him his parting lump, he came back again at midnight from the field, and, thrusting his head into an open window, whinnied such a blast that every inmate of the farm-house bolted from bed. He got his sugar, but with a look of injured innocence; and ever since has been dealt with in good faith. Charley is something of a sportsman, in his way. In the autumn you have only to get on his back with a gun, and he trudges off to places where the quails come out from covert by hundreds into the little openings in the chaparral. The horse will edge up very near to them; when he drops his head, that is his signal to fire. If lithe enough, you will pick them up without leaving the saddle. If you get down to gather up the game he will wait. He will go on in his own way, and discover the birds long before you can, dropping his head as a signal at just the right moment. You may call this horse sense, but it is horse reason—so near akin to human reason that there might be some trouble in tracing the dividing line. So much for this old cob, who smuggles his honest head under your coat for sugar, knowing well enough that he has not earned it.

Another horse, now dead and happy, I hope, in the other world, stopped one dark night, when half-way down a steep and dangerous hill. There was a neighbor, with wife and babies, in the carriage. The horse would not budge an inch (not under the whip), but turned his head around, declaring, as plainly as a horse could, that there was danger. The hold-back straps had broken, and the pressure of the carriage against his haunches, which sustained the entire load from the top of the hill, had started the blood cruelly; yet there he stood, resolutely holding back wife and babies from destruction, choosing even to suffer the indignities of the lash, rather than that injury should come to one of his precious charge. Did that horse have reason? I rather think so; and that he only needed articulation to have made a remonstrance quite as much to the point as that memorable one made by Balaam's ass.

There is that great mastiff, yawning so lazily, with power to hold an ox at his will, or to throttle a man. But no man could abuse him as that little child does every day. He understands well enough that that lump of animated dough has not arrived at years of discretion, and so he submits to all manner of cruelties with perfect patience. How, with mere instinct, does he find out that this child is not yet a "moral agent," and that all these pinchings, and pluckings, and brandings with a hot poker are the irresponsible freaks of the young rascal, who can get off harmless by pleading the Baby Act? This honest dog would die for that little child who abuses him every day. But let a "Greaser" come to take so much as one Brahma pullet from the roost, and he has him by the throat. Does instinct account for this clear perception of right and wrong?

Some clever ways he has, also, of winning favor. He has got it into his head that a certain black cat, that sleeps in any little patch of sunlight on the kitchen floor, is a nuisance, and he has taken a contract to abate it. But, at the same time, he is on such friendly terms with pussy that he would not hurt her for the world. Now a cat knows, by instinct, how to carry her kittens and not hurt them. But how did this dog find out that a cat can be carried safely and comfortably by the nape of her neck? Very gently he takes up pussy thus by her neck, carries her off a quarter of a mile or so from the farm-house, sets her down, and then comes back and balances the account with a crust of bread, or any odd fragment of meat, by way of lunch. On one occasion puss got back to the house before him. It bothered him that the case amounted so nearly to a "breach of contract." Taking puss once more by the neck, he carried her across a creek, and, setting her down on the other side, returned with an air of profound satisfaction. He got an extra lunch that day. But how did the dog know that a cat has a mortal aversion to crossing a stream of water? If that dog had no more than mere instinct, pray, what is reason?

His "predecessor" was a foolish dog, not more than "half-witted." But even his canine idiocy gave way to gleams of reason. He became an expert at driving cattle which trespassed on the farm. If the herd scattered, he singled out the leader, laid hold of his tail, and steered him as well as a yachtman could steer his craft through an intricate channel. After two or three steers had been piloted in this way, the rest would follow the leaders. The dog had hit upon the most economical plan with respect to time and the distance to be traversed. But, one day, in managing a vicious mustang-ox, his patience was sorely tried. Jerking him suddenly into the right path, his tail parted! The whole bovine steering-apparatus had given way, as completely as a ship's rudder in a storm. The dog never could quite comprehend the case. He took himself to his kennel, and would never drive cattle afterward. In fact, he was never the same dog after that catastrophe. Only instinct, you say? But then, if there had been an asylum for canine idiots, that dog would have been entitled to a ticket of admission. His exceptional foolishness confirms our theory.

Years ago, a seven-year-old brought home an insignificant little mongrel—a mere puppy—and pleaded so earnestly for its toleration that the maternal judgment was quite overcome. "Chip" was always a nuisance, but understood more of human speech than any dog "on record." If the plans of the day were discussed in his hearing, he comprehended the principal movements to be made. If the plan excluded his company he knew it, and stole away a half-hour in advance, always selecting the right road, and putting in his mute plea for forbearance in just the nick of time to make it available. Half a dozen times was that dog given away. Yet he always knew the day on which the transfer was to be made, and on that particular day he could never be found. Now, does a dog that understands the significance of human speech, without a motion or gesture—not only interpreting but connecting a series of ideas, so as to comprehend, in advance, plans and movements—find out all these things by mere instinct? You may limit and qualify the term, but it is reason, after all.

Train a fox ever so much, and you cannot develop anything in him but the meanest instincts. He will never be grateful, and never honest, nor can any terms of friendship be established with him. His traditional cunning is a hateful dishonesty. After nearly a year of tuition on a young gray fox, he was never advanced to any respectable degree of intelligence. He would lie at the mouth of his kennel for hours to confiscate any old hen who happened to pass with a brood of chickens, disdaining, the while, to seize any plump young rooster that passed within reach, because his diabolical instinct was to work the greatest possible amount of mischief. After making a hundred young chickens orphans, he broke his chain one night and left for the forest. The thief came back a few nights afterward to make more orphans. That gray pelt tacked up on the rear of the barn is his obituary.

A series of brilliant experiments that were to have been made on a young rattlesnake turned out not a whit more satisfactory. The reptile was not "raised" just here, but was presented by a friend. His teeth were to have been drawn, after which various observations were to have been made concerning his tastes and habits, and particularly his disposition when not provoked. There was a prospect of making an honest reptile of him. He was put in an empty barrel for the night; but next morning two half-breed Shanghaes had him, one by the tail and the other by the head. He parted about midway, each miserable rooster swallowing his half, and that without even the excuse of a morbid appetite. Since that time I have never been able to hate a young rattlesnake half as much as that detestable breed of Shanghaes.