Letters from an American Farmer | Page 4

immediately preceding the Revolution is one that
social historians cannot ignore.
Though our Farmer emphasises his plainness, and promises the readers
of his Letters only a matter-of-fact account of his pursuits, he has his
full share of eighteenth-century "sensibility." Since he is, however, at
many removes from the sophistications of London and Paris, he is
moved, not by the fond behaviour of a lap-dog, or the "little
arrangements" carters make with the bridles of their faithful asses (that
they have driven to death, belike), but by such matters as he finds at
home. "When I contemplate my wife, by my fire-side, while she either
spins, knits, darns, or suckles our child, I cannot describe the various
emotions of love, of gratitude, or conscious pride which thrill in my
heart, and often overflow in voluntary tears ..." He is like that old
classmate's of Fitzgerald's, buried deep "in one of the most
out-of-the-way villages in all England," for if he goes abroad, "it is
always involuntary. I never return home without feeling some pleasant
emotion, which I often suppress as useless and foolish." He has his
reveries; but they are pure and generous; their subject is the future of
his children. In midwinter, instead of trapping and "murthering" the
quail, "often in the angles of the fences where the motion of the wind
prevents the snow from settling, I carry them both chaff and grain: the
one to feed them, the other to prevent their tender feet from freezing
fast to the earth as I have frequently observed them to do." His love of
birds is marked: this in those provinces of which a German traveller
wrote: "In the thrush kind America is poor; there is only the

red-breasted robin. ... There are no sparrows. Very few birds nest in the
woods; a solemn stillness prevails through them, interrupted only by
the screaming of the crows." It is good, after such a passage as this has
been quoted, to set down what Crevecoeur says of the bird kingdom.
"In the spring," he writes, "I generally rise from bed about that
indistinct interval which, properly speaking, is neither night nor day:"
for then it is that he enjoys "the universal vocal choir." He
continues--more and more lyrically: "Who can listen unmoved, to the
sweet love-tales of our robins, told from tree to tree? Or to the shrill cat
birds? The sublime accents of the thrush from on high, always retard
my steps, that I may listen to the delicious music." And the Farmer is
no less interested in "the astonishing art which all birds display in the
construction of their nests, ill provided as we may suppose them with
proper tools; their neatness, their convenience." At some time during
his American residence he gathered the materials for an unpublished
study of ants; and his bees proved an unfailing source of entertainment.
"Their government, their industry, their quarrels, their passions, always
present me with something new," he writes; adding that he is most
often to be found, in hours of rest, under the locust tree where his
beehive stands. "By their movements," says he, "I can predict the
weather, and can tell the day of their swarming." When other men go
hunting game, he goes bee-hunting. Such are the matters he tells of in
his Letters.
One difference from the stereotyped "sensibility" of the old world one
may discover in the openness of Crevecoeur's heart; and that is the
completeness of his interest in all the humbler sorts of natural
phenomena. Nature is, for him, no mere bundle of poetic stage-
properties, soiled by much handling, but something fresh and inviting
and full of interest to a man alive. He takes more pleasure in hunting
bees than in expeditions with his dogs and gun; the king- birds destroy
his bees--but, he adds, they drive the crows away. Ordinarily he could
not persuade himself to shoot them. On one occasion, however, he fired
at a more than commonly impertinent specimen, "and immediately
opened his maw, from which I took 171 bees; I laid them all on a
blanket in the sun, and to my great surprise fifty-four returned to life,
licked themselves clean, and joyfully went back to the hive, where they

probably informed their companions of such an adventure and escape,
as I believe had never happened before to American bees." Must one
regard this as a fable? It is by no means as remarkable a yarn as one
may find told by other naturalists of the same century. There is, for
example, that undated letter of John Bartram's, in which he makes
inquiries of his brother William concerning "Ye Wonderful Flower;"
[Footnote: see "A Botanical Marvel," in The Nation (New York),
August 5, 1909.] there is, too, Kalm's report of Bartram's bear: "When a