Ways of Wood Folk

Ways of Wood Folk

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Title: Ways of Wood Folk
Author: William J. Long
Illustrator: Charles Copeland
Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18193]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration]

WAYS OF WOOD FOLK
BY
WILLIAM J. LONG
FIRST SERIES
[Illustration]
BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS The
Athenæum Press 1902

COPYRIGHT, 1899 BY WILLIAM J. LONG
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO PLATO, the owl, who looks over my shoulder as I write, and who
knows all about the woods.

PREFACE.
"All crows are alike," said a wise man, speaking of politicians. That is
quite true--in the dark. By daylight, however, there is as much
difference, within and without, in the first two crows one meets as in
the first two men or women. I asked a little child once, who was telling
me all about her chicken, how she knew her chicken from twenty others
just like him in the flock. "How do I know my chicken? I know him by
his little face," she said. And sure enough, the face, when you looked at
it closely, was different from all other faces.
This is undoubtedly true of all birds and all animals. They recognize
each other instantly amid multitudes of their kind; and one who
watches them patiently sees quite as many odd ways and individualities

among Wood Folk as among other people. No matter, therefore, how
well you know the habits of crows or the habits of caribou in general,
watch the first one that crosses your path as if he were an entire
stranger; open eyes to see and heart to interpret, and you will surely
find some new thing, some curious unrecorded way, to give delight to
your tramp and bring you home with a new interest.
This individuality of the wild creatures will account, perhaps, for many
of these Ways, which can seem no more curious or startling to the
reader than to the writer when he first discovered them. They are,
almost entirely, the records of personal observation in the woods and
fields. Occasionally, when I know my hunter or woodsman well, I have
taken his testimony, but never without weighing it carefully, and
proving it whenever possible by watching the animal in question for
days or weeks till I found for myself that it was all true.
The sketches are taken almost at random from old note-books and
summer journals. About them gather a host of associations, of
living-over-agains, that have made it a delight to write them;
associations of the winter woods, of apple blossoms and nest-building,
of New England uplands and wilderness rivers, of camps and canoes, of
snowshoes and trout rods, of sunrise on the hills, when one climbed for
the eagle's nest, and twilight on the yellow wind-swept beaches, where
the surf sobbed far away, and wings twanged like reeds in the wind
swooping down to decoys,--all thronging about one, eager to be
remembered if not recorded. Among them, most eager, most intense,
most frequent of all associations, there is a boy with nerves all a-tingle
at the vast sweet mystery that rustled in every wood, following the call
of the winds and the birds, or wandering alone where the spirit moved
him, who never studied nature consciously, but only loved it, and who
found out many of these Ways long ago, guided solely by a boy's
instinct.
If they speak to other boys, as to fellow explorers in the always new
world, if they bring back to older children happy memories of a golden
age when nature and man were not quite so far apart, then there will be
another pleasure in having written them.

My thanks are due, and are given heartily, to the editors of _The
Youth's Companion_ for permission to use several sketches that have
already appeared, and to Mr. Charles Copeland, the artist, for his care
and interest in preparing the illustrations.
WM. J. LONG.
ANDOVER, MASS., June, 1899.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. FOX-WAYS 1 II. MERGANSER 27 III. QUEER WAYS OF BR'ER
RABBIT 41 IV. A WILD DUCK 55 V. AN ORIOLE'S NEST 69 VI.
THE BUILDERS 77 VII. CROW-WAYS 101 VIII. ONE TOUCH OF
NATURE 117 IX. MOOSE CALLING 121 X.
CH'GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS 135 XI. A FELLOW OF EXPEDIENTS 152
XII. A TEMPERANCE LESSON FOR