A Kentucky Cardinal | Page 2

I can feel the
prose rising in me as I step along, like hair on the back of a dog, long
before any other dogs are in sights. And, indeed, the case is much that
of a country dog come to town, so that growls are in order at every
corner. The only being in the universe at which I have ever snarled, or
with which I have rolled over in the mud and fought like a common cur,
is Man.
Among my neighbors who furnish me much of the plain prose of life,
the nearest hitherto has been a bachelor named Jacob Mariner. I called

him my rain-cow, because the sound of his voice awoke apprehensions
of falling weather. A visit from him was an endless drizzle. For Jacob
came over to expound his minute symptoms; and had everything that
he gave out on the subject of human ailments been written down, it
must have made a volume as large, as solemn, and as inconvenient as a
family Bible. My other nearest neighbor lives across the road--a widow,
Mrs. Walters. I call Mrs. Walters my mocking-bird, because she
reproduces by what is truly a divine arrangement of the throat the
voices of the town. When she flutters across to the yellow settee under
the grape-vine and balances herself lightly with expectation, I have but
to request that she favor me with a little singing, and soon the air is
vocal with every note of the village songsters. After this, Mrs. Walters
usually begins to flutter in a motherly way around the subject of my
symptoms.
Naturally it has been my wish to bring about between this rain-cow and
mocking-bird the desire to pair with one another. For, if a man always
wanted to tell his symptoms and a woman always wished to hear about
them, surely a marriage compact on the basis of such a passion ought to
open up for them a union of overflowing and indestructible felicity.
They should associate as perfectly as the compensating metals of a
pendulum, of which the one contracts as the other expands. And then I
should be a little happier myself. But the perversity of life! Jacob
would never confide in Mrs. Walter. Mrs. Walters would never inquire
for Jacob.
Now poor Jacob is dead, of no complaint apparently, and with so few
symptoms that even the doctors did not know what was the matter, and
the upshot of this talk is that his place has been sold, and I am to have
new neighbors. What a disturbance to a man living on the edge of a
quiet town!
Tidings of the calamity came to-day from Mrs. Walters, who flew over
and sang--sang even on a January afternoon--in a manner to rival her
most vociferous vernal execution. But the poor creature was so truly
distressed that I followed her to the front gate, and we twittered kindly
at each other over the fence, and ruffled our plumage with common

disapproval. It is marvellous how a member of her sex will conceive
dislike of people that she has never seen; but birds are sensible of heat
or cold long before either arrives, and it may be that this mocking-bird
feels something wrong at the quill end of her feathers.

II
Mrs. Walters this morning with more news touching our incoming
neighbors. Whenever I have faced towards this aggregation of
unwelcome individuals, I have beheld it moving towards me as a thick
gray mist, shutting out nature beyond. Perhaps they are approaching
this part of the earth like comet that carries its tail before it, and I am
already enveloped in a disturbing, befogging nebulosity.
There is still no getting the truth, but it appears that they are a family of
consequence in their way--which, of course, may be a very poor way.
Mrs. Margaret Cobb, mother, lately bereaved of her husband, Joseph
Cobb, who fell among the Kentucky boys at the battle of Buena Vista.
A son, Joseph Cobb, now cadet at West Point, with a desire to die like
his father, but destined to die--who knows?--in a war that may break
out in this country about the negroes.
While not reconciled, I am resigned. The young man when at home
may wish to practise the deadly vocation of an American soldier of the
period over the garden fence at my birds, in which case he and I could
readily fight a duel, and help maintain an honored custom of the
commonwealth. The older daughter will sooner or later turn loose on
my heels one of her pack of blue dogs. If this should befall me in the
spring, and I survive the dog, I could retort with a dish of strawberries
and a copy of "Lalla Rookh"; if in the fall, with