A Kentucky Cardinal | Page 7

whip. They could not
have bought my little woodland pasture, where for a generation has
been picnic and muster and Fourth-of-July ground, and where the brave
fellows met to volunteer for the Mexican war. They could not have
bought even the heap of brush back of my wood-pile, where the brown
thrashers build.

V
In May I am of the earth earthy. The soul loses its wild white pinions;
the heart puts forth its short, powerful wings, heavy with heat and color,
that flutter, but do not lift it off the ground. The month comes and goes,
and not once do I think of lifting my eyes to the stars. The very
sunbeams fall on the body as a warm golden net, and keep thought and
feeling from escape. Nature uses beauty now not to uplift, but to entice.
I find her intent upon the one general business of seeing that no type of
her creatures gets left out of the generations. Studied in my yard full of
birds, as with a condensing-glass of the world, she can be seen enacting
among them the dramas of history. Yesterday, in the secret recess of a
walnut, I saw the beginning of the Trojan war. Last week I witnessed
the battle of Actium fought out in mid-air. And down among my

hedges--indeed, openly in my very barn-yard--there is a perfectly
scandalous Salt Lake City.
And while I am watching the birds, they are watching me. Not a little
fop among them, having proposed and been accepted, but perches on a
limb, and has the air of putting his hands mannishly under his coattails
and crying out at me, "Hello! Adam, what were you made for?" "You
attend to your business, and I'll attend to mine," I answer. "You have
one May; I have twenty-five!" He didn't wait to hear. He caught sight
of a pair of clear brown eyes peeping at him out of a near tuft of leaves,
and sprang thither with open arms and the sound of a kiss.
But if I have twenty-five Mays remaining, are not some Mays gone?
Ah, well! Better a single May with the right mate than the full number
with the wrong. And where is she--the right one? If she ever comes
near my yard and answers my whistle, I'll know it; and then I'll teach
these popinjays in blue coats and white pantaloons what Adam was
made for.
But the wrong one--there's the terror! Only think of so composite a
phenomenon as Mrs. Walters, for instance, adorned with limp nightcap
and stiff curl-papers, like garnishes around a leg of roast mutton,
waking up beside me at four o'clock in the morning as some
gray-headed love-bird of Madagascar, and beginning to chirp and trill
in an ecstasy!
The new neighbors have come--mother, younger daughter, and servants.
The son is at West Point; and the other daughter lingers a few days,
unable, no doubt, to tear herself away from her beloved pennyroyal and
dearest Green River. They are quiet; have borrowed nothing from any
one in the neighborhood; have well-dressed, well-trained servants; and
one begins to be a little impressed. The curtains they have put up at the
windows suggest that the whole nest is being lined with soft, cool
spotless loveliness, that is very restful and beguiling.
No one has called yet, since they are no at home till June; but Mrs.
Walters has done some tall wading lately, and declares that people do
not know what to think. They will know when the elder daughter

arrives; for it is the worst member of the family that settles what the
world shall think of the others.
If only she were not the worst! If only as I sat here beside my large new
window, around which the old rose-bush has been trained and now is
blooming, I could look across to her window where the white curtains
hang, and feel that behind them sat, shy and gentle, the wood-pigeon
for whom through Mays gone by I have been vaguely waiting!
And yet I do not believe that I could live a single year with only the
sound of cooing in the house. A wood-pigeon would be the death of
me.

VI
This morning, the 3d of June, the Undine from Green River rose above
the waves.
The strawberry bed is almost under their windows. I had gone out to
pick the first dish of the season for breakfast; for while I do not care to
eat except to live, I never miss an opportunity of living upon
strawberries.
I was stooping down and bending the wet leaves over, so as not to miss
any, when a voice at the window above said, timidly and playfully,
"Are you the gardener?"
I picked on, turning as