Woodside | Page 3

Is giving his two old notes; And the pet doves hung by the
wicket Are talking with ruffled throats. The honey-bee hums as he
lingers Where shadows on clover heads fall; And the wind with
leaf-tipped fingers, Is playing in concert with all."
ELIZA COOK.
Now grandpapa's house, Woodside, stood on the side of a wood; in fact
there was only a grassy road between the gates and the wood itself.

Such a wood! with large old elms and oaks and other trees. In the more
open spaces were trees and bushes of hawthorn, now completely
covered with white blossom, the pretty May-bloom. There too grew
primroses, violets, wild hyacinths, besides a long list of other wild
flowers, ferns, and feathery green moss.
One fine day grandmamma took the children herself across the road
into the wood. She sat down in one of the open spaces upon the trunk
of a fallen tree, while the children played at hide-and-seek among the
bushes or picked the wild flowers.
By-and-by they came back to grandmamma, who was reading while
they were playing about, and said, "Grandmamma, will you tell us
about papa when he was a little boy?"
Grandmamma took off her spectacles, shut her book, and the children
sat down quite close to her, on the grass at her feet.
Then she began:--"When your father and your uncle and aunts, were
about as old as you are now, they came with me into this very place one
summer day.
"After they had played awhile they came to me, and I said to them,
'Children, what do you hear?'
"'Hear, mother?' they said; 'why, nothing in particular. What is there to
hear?'
"'Well,' I said, 'now all of you shut your eyes and listen, and don't speak
till I tell you.'
"After a short time I told them to open their eyes; and I asked John,
who was the eldest, what he had heard.
"'First of all I heard the birds singing, then I noticed that there were
different sorts of birds singing: I heard the blackbird, the thrush, the
little finches, and the warblers--I could not tell you how many; some of
them singing as if they could not make sound enough, and others sung

a low song, with twitterings and chatterings all to themselves. Some
seemed calling to birds a long way off; then I heard those other birds
answer, but the sound was so faint that I should not have heard it at all
if we had not been so still. I was trying to catch a faint sound of a bird
some distance down the wood, which sounded like the coo of the
wood-pigeon, when you said, "Open your eyes."'
"Then I turned to Harry--your father, children--and he said, 'Of course I
heard the birds, but I thought, I can hear them any day; I shall listen for
all sorts of odd sounds. I heard the distant rumble of a farmer's waggon,
and the cows lowing at Brown's farm; every now and again I heard the
sound of the village blacksmith's hammer, the faint puffing of a train, a
man's footsteps coming through the wood, and the voices of boys--after
birds' nests, I suppose.'
"'Well, Lizzie, what did you hear?' I asked, turning to one of the girls.
"'I heard the wind moving very gently among the trees, making a soft
rustling noise. I could scarcely believe in the difference there is
between this quiet sound and the roaring of the wind in a storm. Then I
heard the wild bee's hum, and the little tiny noises made by the small
creatures that live in the wood. I heard our gardener sharpening his
scythe, and the trickling of the brook in the hollow.'
"'Now, little Fanny, tell us what you heard.'
"'I heard the hens cackling and calling to their chickens. I thought I
heard our dog bark; but all was so warm, and still, and sleepy, that I felt
as if I should go to sleep too if I kept my eyes shut much longer. I heard
the birds though, and a great bumble-bee that flew by when our eyes
were shut.'
"'Now, children,' I said, 'you have all heard something, and yet a little
while ago you told me there was nothing particular to hear; nor is there,
if you hear without listening.'"
Here grandmamma stopped awhile, then, looking at the grandchildren
at her feet, said there was a poet once who wrote about a little girl

called Lucy. She lived among all the beautiful things that are to be seen
in the country, and she loved them dearly. The poet thought how, as she
grew up, she would be yet more and more charmed by them, and that
loving all grand and beautiful natural objects would make her