Part 8 (2/2)

Leaves for the pig, and arbutus for us! We make a clean sweep down the hillside, ”jumping” a rabbit from its form, or bed, under a brush-pile; discovering where a partridge roosts in a low-spreading hemlock; coming upon a snail cemetery, in a hollow hickory stump; turning up a yellow-jacket's nest, built two-thirds underground; tracing the tunnel of a bobtailed mouse in its purposeless windings in the leaf mould; digging into a woodchuck's--

”But come, boys, get after those bags! It is leaves in the hay-rig that we want, not woodchucks at the bottom of woodchuck holes.” Two small boys catch up a bag and hold it open, while the third boy stuffs in the crackling leaves. Then I come along with my big feet and pack the leaves in tight, and onto the rig goes the bulging thing!

Exciting? If you can't believe it exciting, hop up on the load and let us jog you home. Swis.h.!.+ bang! thump! tip! turn! joggle! jolt!--Hold on to your ribs! Look out for the stump! Isn't it fun to go leafing?

Isn't it fun to do anything that your heart does with you--even though you do it for a pig?

Just watch the pig as we shake out the bags of leaves. See him caper, spin on his toes, shake himself, and curl his tail. That curl is his laugh. We double up and weep when we laugh hard; but the pig can't weep, and he can't double himself up, so he doubles up his tail. There is where his laugh comes off, curling and kinking in little spasms of pure pig joy!

_Boos.h.!.+ Boos.h.!.+_ he snorts, and darts around the pen like a whirlwind, scattering the leaves in forty ways, to stop short--the shortest stop!--and fall to rooting for acorns.

He was once a long-tusked boar of the forest,--this snow-white, sawed-off, pug-faced little porker of mine--ages and ages ago. But he still remembers the smell of the forest leaves; he still knows the taste of the acorn-mast; he is still wild pig in his soul.

And we were once long-haired, strong-limbed savages who roamed the forest hunting him--ages and ages ago. And we, too, like him, remember the smell of the fallen leaves, and the taste of the forest fruits--and of pig, _roast_ pig! And if the pig in his heart is still a wild boar, no less are we, at times, wild savages in our hearts.

Anyhow, for one day in the fall I want to go ”leafing.” I want to give my pig a taste of acorns, and a big pile of leaves to dive so deep into that he cannot see his pen. I can feel the joy of it myself. No, I do not live in a pen; but then, I might, if once in a while I did not go leafing, did not escape now and then from my little daily round into the wide, wild woods--my ancestral home.

CHAPTER XII

A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS FALL

I

You ought to hear the scream of the hen-hawks circling high in the air. In August and September and late into October, if you listen in the open country, you will hear their piercing whistle,--shrill, exultant _scream_ comes nearer to describing it,--as they sail and sail a mile away in the sky.

II

You ought to go out upon some mowing hill or field of stubble and hear the crickets, then into the apple orchard and hear the katydids, then into the high gra.s.s and bushes along the fence and hear the whole stringed chorus of green gra.s.shoppers, katydids, and crickets. You have heard them all your life; but the trouble is that, because you have heard them so constantly in the autumn, and because one player after another has come gradually into the orchestra, you have taken them as part of the natural course of things and have never really heard them individually, to know what parts they play. Now anybody can hear a lion roar, or a mule bray, or a loon laugh his wild crazy laugh over a silent mountain lake, and know what sound it is; but who can hear a cricket out of doors, or a gra.s.shopper, and know which is which?

III

Did you ever hear a loon laugh? You ought to. I would go a hundred miles to hear that weird, meaningless, melancholy, maniacal laughter of the loon, or great northern diver, as the dusk comes down over some lonely lake in the wilderness of the far North. From Maine westward to northern Illinois you may listen for him in early autumn; then, when the migration begins, anywhere south to the Gulf of Mexico. You may never hear the call of the bull moose in the northern woods, nor the howl of a coyote on the western prairies, nor the wild _cac_, _cac_, _cac_ of the soaring eagles, nor the husky _yap_, _yap_, _yap_ of the fox. But, if you do, ”make a note of it,” as Captain Cuttle would say; for the tongues that utter this wild language are fast ceasing to speak to us.

IV

One strangely sweet, strangely wild voice that you still may hear in our old apple orchards, is the whimpering, whinnying voice of the little screech owl. ”When night comes,” says the bird book, ”one may hear the screech owl's tremulous, wailing whistle. It is a weird, melancholy call, welcomed only by those who love Nature's voice, whatever be the medium through which she speaks.” Now listen this autumn for the screech owl; listen until the weird, melancholy call _is_ welcomed by you, until the s.h.i.+ver that creeps up your back turns off through your hair, as you hear the low plaintive voice speaking to you out of the hollow darkness, out of the softness and the silence of night.

V

You ought to hear the brown leaves rustling under your feet.

”Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.”

And they should rustle to your tread as well. Scuff along in them where they lie in deep windrows by the side of the road; and hear them also, as the wind gathers them into a whirling flurry and sends them rattling over the fields.

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