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Title: An Explorer Comes Home.
   Further Adventures of Roy Chapman Andrews.
Author: Andrews, Roy Chapman (1884-1960)
Date of first publication: 1947
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1947
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 7 January 2011
Date last updated: 7 January 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #902

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, Ross Cooling
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

This ebook omits the drawings by Thomas W. Voter.






  _An Explorer Comes Home_

  FURTHER ADVENTURES OF
  ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS


[Illustration]

  _With drawings by Thomas W. Voter_

  _1947_

  DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

  _Garden City, New York_




  COPYRIGHT, 1939, 1940, 1945, 1946, 1947, BY ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
  AT
  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

  FIRST EDITION




  _Billie and I dedicate this book with much affection to
  GEORGE and MARY NANCY_




  _Foreword_


_An Explorer Comes Home_ is a continuation of my autobiography begun in
_Under a Lucky Star_. It is not a chronicle of high adventure at the
ends of the earth as was the earlier book; these adventures took place
on a farm in Connecticut. It is a tale of how, after thirty-five years
of sailing all the oceans of the world, my personal ship came to anchor
in the quiet waters of Pondwood Farm; of why it anchored there and the
kind of life we made for ourselves in the Berkshire Hills. It is also a
part of my wife's biography, for our existence is so closely interwoven
that there could be no separate story.

There was deep satisfaction in cutting our own home out of the ruin and
devouring underbrush, somewhat as did the Connecticut pioneers when they
came to this virgin Green Woods country. It was the personal effort and
labor that made them cling so passionately to their log cabins and
little fields, even when they rose each morning to face the possibility
of an Indian massacre. Like them, every foot of ground we cleared, every
rock we moved, every bush we planted, sunk our roots deeper into
Pondwood soil.

Mere existence in impossibly crowded cities becomes more difficult and
more unpleasant every day. It is a major operation to find a place to
lay one's head at night, food to eat, and clothes to wear. One takes
what one can get, not what one wants. The advantages that once made city
life delightful have vanished into the limbo of the past; I doubt if
they will return in our generation. Even diversions are so fraught with
difficulties that they seem hardly worth the effort. Going deeper
underground or higher in the air and double-decking streets will only
make it possible for more humans to exist, but not to live, in the same
area. The saturation point has almost been reached. Census statistics
show that a large part of our population is rural but non-farm, and that
the percentage is increasing every year. Those wise ones, who have seen
the writing on the wall and abandoned cities for the country, know how
interesting and satisfying such a life can be, whether it is lived on
one acre or a thousand, whether one is rich or poor.

This book, however, is in no sense propaganda for country living or
subsistence farming. Pondwood is a farm in name only. It is merely the
story of how one explorer solved the problem of what to do when he
stopped exploring and of two people who are enjoying themselves hugely
in rural Connecticut.

I have written the narrative more or less chronologically as our life
moved and expanded at Pondwood Farm. Its unpremeditated beginning was
motivated by a rather blind confidence that that highroad would lead to
happiness; its development has been a complete justification of our
intuition.

The surroundings of Pondwood are redolent of New England's early
history. Some of the houses were built by the first settlers and are
still occupied by families whose ancestors came here when America was
young. A century and a half seems only yesterday to them for they live
with the furniture brought to Connecticut on oxcarts and maintain many
of the customs of pre-Revolutionary days. Thus it is inevitable that
sketches of Colebrook history should invade this book because it is the
background against which we live. The interest, however, is more than
local, for Colebrook typifies many other New England villages and its
story is part of the heritage and tradition of the pioneer stock that
constitutes the greatest stability of our national life.

My information about Colebrook's past has been largely derived from
Irving E. Manchester's excellent _The History of Colebrook_ and from
those gentlemen who are mentioned in the book. To them I extend my
thanks. I am grateful, also, to Mrs. Dorothy Byers of Groton,
Massachusetts, who has read the manuscript and has offered much
constructive criticism.

    Roy Chapman Andrews

  Pondwood Farm
    Colebrook, Conn.




  _Contents_


     _I  Discovery_                       1
    _II  Local History_                  12
   _III  Lord Jitters_                   28
    _IV  A Forest Interlude_             54
     _V  Two Anglers Are Born_           81
    _VI  The Lord and the Queen_        102
   _VII  Rebirth_                       123
  _VIII  Spring Comes to Pondwood_      145
    _IX  The Great Pig Derby_           169
     _X  Prisoners in Pondwood_         198
    _XI  The Hunter's Moon_             217
   _XII  Pondwood Queen_                237
  _XIII  Glamor Girl with Wings_        249
   _XIV  Making Movies_                 263




[Illustration]

  I

  _Discovery_


My wife and I were driving over a Connecticut road, each absorbed in
thought. Suddenly Billie looked up. "Have you," she asked, "the remotest
idea where the farm we have just bought is located?"

"No, I haven't," I answered. "You're the navigator. Don't you know?"

Billie giggled. "Only vaguely. Were there ever two such complete idiots?
We've purchased a hundred and fifty acres of land, a house, a pond, and
a forest, and neither of us knows where it is. I only followed the route
numbers Louise gave me. Let's stop at the next filling station and get a
map."

We did. Parking beside the road, we traced our expedition from New York
and discovered that our newly acquired property was in the extreme
northwest corner of Connecticut, bordering the Massachusetts line.

"We're idiots all right," I said, "but I wouldn't have cared whether it
was in Connecticut or Canada after I saw that pond. By the way, the
owner said she called it Seven Hills Farm. That's silly. There are lots
of hills and it doesn't mean a thing."

Billie had an inspiration. "Let's name it Pondwood. We've got a pond and
it's _in_ the woods."

So our farm was discovered, bought, and christened in one day. It all
came about because of a sign we saw on a Long Island wood lot the Monday
after Memorial Day, 1937.

"Acre for sale." Just those three little words on a white wooden board.
The man who nailed that sign to a tree probably never imagined it would
vitally affect two human lives. Of course he might have been a
psychologist. Even as we passed, he may have been sitting behind a bush
charting the effect of his startling announcement on the traveling
public. Probably he was an unimaginative individual who had an acre of
woodland for sale. He hoped to get a good price for his acre. Just that.
Because it happened to be the detour sign that turned my wife and me off
the low road of cities into the highroad of the Berkshire Hills would
not have interested him in the slightest, for we didn't buy his acre. We
often wonder who did.

For four years I had been Director of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York. I loved the Museum, but after more than a quarter
of a century of exploration I felt like an animal in the zoo which,
captured late in life, could not adjust itself to crowds and people. In
spite of interesting work, the longing for woods and fields, the smell
of fresh grass, and the songs of birds, instead of carbon monoxide and
the blare of motor horns, was an insistent call.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful," I said, "to buy an acre, put up a
prefabricated house, and go there week ends? Not let a soul know where
we were. Just disappear from Friday to Monday and roam the woods."

Billie thought a moment.

"Yes, it's a good idea, but not Long Island--Connecticut. I've heard
there are abandoned farms one can buy very cheap. We might get a little
one."

My wife lets no grass grow under her feet once she has made up her mind.
The next day she called a friend, Louise Lundy, of New Canaan,
Connecticut, who deals in real estate.

"I think," Louise said, "I know just the kind of a place you want. It's
in Colebrook. It has a lovely pond and a trout stream. But it's more
than one acre and there's a house. I'm coming to town tomorrow. Let's
lunch together and I'll tell you about it."

Lunch they did, and Billie came home excited. The fact that instead of
the one acre we had visualized there were one hundred and fifty acres
didn't disturb her in the least. We are both accustomed to having an
idea expand in our minds like the proverbial oak tree growing from a
tiny acorn. Billie had a pencil sketch of the house drawn by Louise on
the back of a menu card. Letting her imagination run riot, she spent a
delightful two hours deciding how she would furnish the cottage. That we
might not like it never entered her mind.

As I look back upon our nave enthusiasm I realize that we had a
cardinal advantage over all country-place hunters I have ever known. Our
salvation lay in the fact that no preconceived ideas cluttered our
brains. It required no mental struggle to fit what we were about to see
to what we believed we wanted. The idea had been born too suddenly for
us to create an image of our future home. As a matter of fact, we were
not looking for a home; only some spot where there was water, trees,
birds, and flowers, to which we could escape for week ends. Had anyone
prophesied, at that time, that I would retire and settle on a
Connecticut farm I would have said he needed immediate examination by a
brain specialist.

It makes me shudder now, when I realize that had our search been
conducted in the orthodox manner, we probably never would have purchased
Pondwood Farm. But we seldom do anything in the orthodox manner and were
blissfully unaware that finding a satisfactory place in the country may
become almost a lifetime job; that the pathway is beset by thorns and
often ends in disillusionment. We were exposed to none of the insidious
propaganda of realtors, ready to addle the minds of prospective clients,
induce a state of hypnosis, and sell them something they don't want.
Our only real-estate agent was Louise Lundy, and she happened to be a
friend. She did not try to sell us anything. She merely said:

"I know a place I think you'd like. You'd better go and see it."

In that wholly delightful book _A Home in the Country_, Frederick Van de
Water tells pathetically of the trials and tribulations he and his wife,
Althea, experienced in finding a place to suit them. Real-estate agents
became their _bte noir_. They knew the patter by heart and began to
shudder when the familiar phrases dripped from fluent tongues. The Van
de Waters saw house after house, only to reap bitter disappointment. For
two long years they traveled the highways and byways of Connecticut,
Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and eastern New York. Their minds
became so confused that when, at last, they found their place, Mr. Van
de Water frankly admits they didn't know it. Only by degrees was it
borne in upon their weary brains that this was the spot where they were
destined to end their journey. Unlike us, they had pictured the home of
their dreams and deliberately set out to find it.

When Billie lunched with Louise Lundy on Wednesday she made arrangements
for us to visit the place on Saturday and listed the automobile route
numbers to Colebrook. Louise said it was a hundred and twenty-five miles
from New York--about three hours' drive. Carried away by our enthusiasm,
we never thought to ask where Colebrook was located. It was in
Connecticut--whether east or west didn't seem important.

So off we went Saturday morning up the Saw Mill River Parkway and by
devious paths reached the Housatonic River. It was a brilliant day, the
trees had donned their new dresses of variegated green, and the scent of
flowers drifted into the car window as we sped along winding roads
beside the stream. The Housatonic foams over great boulders between
steep wooded banks or widens into placid stretches, like secluded ponds,
where the hills roll back, wide and gracious, under the sky. I was
enjoying the drive with an indefinable sense of pleasure. The day was
lovely, to be sure, and the scenery superb, yet it was not only
that--there was something else. Suddenly I knew.

"Billie, do you realize we haven't seen a roadside advertisement for
miles and miles? Not a single one!"

What a blessing! We had not been apprised of the merits of a particular
shaving cream; no flaring atrocity had urged us to stop at Dad's Dandy
Diner for a super-duper hamburger; neither had we been informed that
Jones's Clothing Emporium would be delighted to outfit us from top to
toe at an amazingly low figure. Lord, how I hate those road placards! I
don't know why they irritate me so unduly, but it seems like an
intrusion on my personal privacy. To be exhorted to buy some mundane
product right in the middle of beautiful natural scenery is like a blob
of mud on a lovely painting. I can't avoid reading the darned things and
this mental weakness makes me furious. My only satisfaction is to vow
that I will never use the shave cream; neither will I eat one of Dad's
hamburgers if I starve by the wayside, or visit Jones's Clothing
Emporium were I to walk naked through the streets. The extraordinary
psychology of advertising by irritation certainly backfires with me. I
am sure there is no Connecticut law prohibiting road signs. It is a
matter of sentiment in each particular community.

Just before one o'clock we reached a tiny village. We were not certain
it was Colebrook, but we hoped so, for it couldn't have been more
charming. A farmer of whom I inquired said laconically, "You're here."
It amused us immensely, for we thought of the answer given a couple
driving through Maine who propounded a similar question to a man in a
rocking chair on a hotel porch. "Can you tell us how to get to Twin
Pines?" The rockee spat. "Don't you move one god-damned inch," he
replied.

Colebrook might be the picture of a village out of a Revolutionary
chronicle. On a triangle of green lawn, surrounded by a white wooden
fence, stands the church--a colonial church with pillars and steeple
complete. At one side is an inn built in 1790; opposite it rises a
pillared general store and post office with a wide porch. Four or five
houses, all dating from the late seventeen hundreds, rest sleepily under
immense trees. Wrapped in their mantles of history, they placidly watch
the ebb and flow of life about their doors as they have done for almost
two centuries.

"Billie," I said, "it doesn't seem possible there could be anything
like this left in America. Isn't it delightful?"

Doubtless there are many other villages in New England just as
unspoiled, but I had not seen them. So finding this living image of the
past was for me like discovering a lost civilization.

After luncheon at the inn we drove away with the lady who owned the
property we had come to see. Three miles from Colebrook Center, at the
entrance to a dirt road rising steeply up a hill, stood a lovely little
white church in a grove of magnificent pines. "First Baptist Church
established 1790," read a small sign. Nearly a mile up the road the
owner exclaimed:

"There's the house; there's Seven Hills Farm."

I looked eagerly, and Billie looked eagerly, and then we looked at each
other. Billie managed a sick little "Oh," but I didn't even attempt
that. Nothing could be less charming, less colonial, or less inviting
than what we saw. I suppose each of us had unconsciously formed some
sort of a mind picture of the house. I know mine was a nebulous vision
of a salt-box cottage set among rosebushes. Whatever Billie had
envisioned couldn't have resembled, even remotely, what sat there so
forlornly in the June sunshine, like a displaced person in a shabby
dress trying her best to put on a good face. The house was tiny, badly
in need of paint, and sagged distressingly in spots. Moreover, a recent
chimney fire had left ugly black scars on the roof. It was, the owner
said, a replacement built by the insurance company when the original
building burned. It looked just that. My envisioned rosebushes were
there but they were not pretty. Scraggly shrubs, adorned with
sick-looking blossoms, swarmed over the front porch, which seemed to be
the only redeeming feature of the place. What had obviously been a
meadow years ago was a well-nigh impenetrable jungle of birch and poplar
sapling and blueberry bushes that pressed in upon the uncut lawn. An
unsightly hole filled with tin cans and garbage proved to be the cellar
of the old colonial house. The owner sensed our disappointment. "Now
we'll look at the land," she said brightly. "That's the real charm of
the place."

From the front porch I had caught the gleam of water just across the
road. We pushed through a screen of scrub birch and alder to a
revelation. There was a perfect jewel of a pond. It was completely
surrounded by heavy forest. Great pines towered above the shore and
white birches, maples, and oak trees brushed the surface with their
lower branches. I had visualized the usual sheet of water in an open
meadow--just a pond--but nothing so lovely as this. A path carpeted with
thick green moss led down an avenue of white birches along the shore;
all through the woods were masses of laurel.

"A little later," said the owner, "when the blossoms are out, it will
look as though the bushes were covered with pink and white snow. It is
really beautiful."

Billie and I were entranced. From utter depression we leaped in one
moment to the heights of excitement. It was simply too good to be true.
Behind the house a wood road drifted down a gentle slope through a
gorgeous mixed forest, as untouched as the wilderness of Canada. White,
gray, black, and golden birches, maples, oak, beech, ash, hemlock, and
pine. The place was alive with birds. Five wood thrushes were singing at
one moment.

Back on the porch I whispered to Billie, "The place is heavenly. We've
got to buy it. Of course the house is impossible but we'll pull it down
and build a new one. What do you think?"

"You know what I think! We'd never find anything else as perfect for us.
Of course we'll buy it. But about the house. I could do a lot with paper
and paint and country furniture. It isn't so impossible as you imagine.
We can't afford to put a lot of money into a place for week ends. The
thing to do is to fix it up and live in it for a while. Then we will
know what we want if we ever do rebuild. It would be just plain stupid
to tear it down."

I had no answer to that. She was right, as usual.

In a decorator's trance, my wife prowled about the rooms. The owner and
I talked. Half an hour later Billie returned and I left the two alone
for a conference on price. I've learned that when it comes to discussing
business I am best out of the way. I went down to the pond and prayed
fervently that all was going well. I'd have paid the asking figure and
more rather than lose the place. Pretty soon a toot of the auto horn
called me back. Billie didn't say anything specific but I knew the
answer from the satisfied look on her face.

I give you my word it all happened just as I have written it. On Sunday
we had never even thought of buying a place in the country; by Saturday
we owned a farm. At the bottom of the hill bordering our property was
Sandy Brook--not just a trickle of water, but a rushing stream that
foamed over rocks, slipped through bowers of dipping branches, and
spread into quiet meadow pools--one of the best pieces of trout water in
Connecticut.

Billie asked the owner to have a local lawyer, Mr. Manchester, draw up
the necessary papers and "search the title." I wouldn't know what he was
searching for but apparently he didn't find it. Billie spoke learnedly
of "clouds on the title" when I asked her, but did not elaborate. It is
my private opinion she was just repeating something she had heard.
Anyway, when we drove up the following week to sign the papers, he said
there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We certainly couldn't see any, even
when we visited the place again and realized how completely overgrown
and down at heel it was. But the pond was there and the glorious forest.
What could be made of it was up to us.




[Illustration]

  II

  _Local History_


When sensible people buy a place in the country they inquire about the
neighbors. Good neighbors are important. But we never thought of that.
There was only one house nearer than three quarters of a mile. We were
told it belonged to Louis Guerin.

"What does he do?" I asked. "Is he a farmer?"

"Oh no. He raises guinea pigs and sells them to scientific laboratories
for experiments."

That sounded interesting. He must be just the sort of neighbor we would
like. I suspected that Lou Guerin and his guinea pigs would mean much to
us before long. He did and he does.

The possibility that any of our friends lived near Colebrook never
entered our beclouded minds. It was a long way from New York and our
only Connecticut acquaintances were commuters. They traveled back and
forth every day to their offices but still maintained that they lived in
the country. The Tuesday after we bought Pondwood I saw William Chenery,
publisher of _Collier's_ magazine, at the Dutch Treat Club in New York.

"Bill," I said, "you see before you an embryonic farmer."

Bill was nice and pretended interest. "That's exciting. Where are you
going to farm?"

"Oh, way up in Connecticut. A little village of which you probably never
heard. Colebrook."

"What do you mean I've never heard of it? I've got a place there. Also
Charlie Colebaugh and Walter Davenport. It's a _Collier's_ community."

Wasn't I surprised! Over luncheon Bill told me more. Ex-Senator Fred
Walcott, one of my oldest friends, lived at Norfolk, six miles away. So
did Frederick Barbour and Reginald Rowland, both sportsmen of note. John
van A. MacMurray, formerly United States Minister to China, and later
Ambassador to Turkey, spent his summers at Doolittle Lake two miles from
Pondwood. For twenty-five years Jack and Lois MacMurray had been among
my most intimate friends in China and Japan. Often in Peking we had
dined in the Legation gardens, with soft-footed Chinese servants
ministering to our wants, while we talked of this and that. Norfolk
sometimes crept into the conversation, for Lois was born there, but then
it was only a name to me. With no conscious effort of our own, Fate, or
whatever you wish to call it, had brought us together again on the other
side of the world.

Colebrook, Bill said, was a mixture of residents whose families had
lived there for more than a century and city dwellers. Most of the
latter came for week ends or a month or two in the summer.

"By the way," he asked, "what are your political affiliations? I hope
you are a Republican. If not, you'd better become one pronto. Otherwise,
you'll be out of luck. You won't get any work done. Democrats are about
as welcome as a skunk at a tea party."

I assured him we were dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. He said that filled
all the requirements.

Before operations to repair the house began Billie and I spent a week
end at Pondwood. That first evening was a high spot in our lives. Not a
breath of wind; the pond like a mirror; golden shafts of light from the
setting sun flooding the woods. We walked along a path bordering the
water, silent from the spell of sheer beauty. All through the forest
pink and white snow seemed to have drifted over the bushes. Because the
laurel was early that year, it had overtaken the last of the wild
azaleas, which filled the air with spicy fragrance. The solemn bell-like
notes of hermit thrushes changed the forest into a vast cathedral.
Across the pond a blue heron fished majestically against a background of
emerald green. We sat down on a thick carpet of moss. At last Billie
said, "Just suppose we had missed all this! Suppose we had never found
Pondwood Farm!" But we had found it, and we owned its good earth, its
rocks and rills, its trees and water.

That night and the next day we began to plan our new domain. Billie had
already conferred with Uno Stenman, a local contractor, about the house.
She knew exactly what she wanted and his job was to tell her how much of
it could be done. It seemed like attacking a mountain. We didn't know
where to begin on the outside--smothering vegetation, fallen stone
walls, the garbage dump in the old foundation. Something had to be done
about them and soon. As we surveyed the problem we agreed on the two
things of first importance. The view to the pond must be opened and the
meadow cleared.

My son George came up with us the week after he had finished his
freshman year in Princeton. That he would fall in love with Pondwood was
a foregone conclusion, for I know George. In many respects his reactions
are exactly like my own. I asked him how he wanted to spend his summer
vacation. Without a moment's hesitation he replied: "Working on the
farm. I could take the place of one man."

Carpenters and painters had already made the house unlivable, so he
pitched a tent--one I had used in Asia--in the orchard, and I produced
my sleeping bag, cooking equipment, and rifle. One side of the tent had
been ripped from top to bottom and neatly mended. That happened in the
Gobi while we were exploring the Valley of the Jewels. I remember waking
in the middle of the night with a feeling of deadly oppression.
Breathless stillness bore down almost like a physical weight. Gradually
I became conscious of a subdued hum, increasing in tempo every second.
It was the voice of the Gobi's marching sands, warning of approaching
destruction. Before I could wake the men the gale struck like a bursting
bomb. Every tent went down; clothes, pots, pans, and food vanished into
the air, to be dropped half a mile away; our caravan of sleeping camels
was half buried in sand. For two days we collected equipment and
repaired the tents. I told the story to George as we set the poles
beneath our apple trees.

The sleeping bag of Mongol sheepskins had kept me warm even on
below-zero nights. I remembered how I used to wriggle my cold toes in
the soft wool and bless the fat-tailed sheep who had sacrificed their
hides for my comfort. It had been spread beneath the stars on the
summits of unnamed peaks in the Altai Mountains and the red sands of the
Flaming Cliffs, where dinosaurs laid their eggs a hundred million years
ago. Now it was doing its duty again for George in the orchard of a
Connecticut farm.

For his protection he had the Mannlicher rifle that was my constant
companion during more than a quarter of a century. To its bullets had
fallen game in almost every country of the world. Two notches on the
stock were reminders of how it had saved my life from Chinese brigands.
In Arctic snows or tropic jungles it never failed. Whether or not George
felt a thrill from using these things I could only guess, for youth is
not sentimental. Nevertheless, it gave me a very happy feeling about the
heart.

Hardly had George's tent been pitched when a charming boy about fourteen
years old arrived on his bicycle.

"I am the society reporter of the Winsted _Citizen_," he said. "I'd like
an interview. What are your plans?"

I have been interviewed by reporters for many papers, but never did I
have less to say that could be put in print. Society was the one thing
we wished to avoid at the moment. He was nice and I told him about the
sleeping bag, the rifle, and the tent. He "oh'd" and "ah'd" and seemed
properly impressed. What he wrote about our society plans I never knew.

People did make friendly calls, but we seldom saw them in those early
days, even though we appreciated their neighborly interest. It was not
because we were being anti-social. We had very definite reasons. First,
there was so much to do, and only week ends in which to make the house
livable, that every hour counted and we hated to be interrupted. Second,
there was no place to receive visitors except to seat them on a pile of
lumber, at the eminent risk of getting a nail in their pants. Moreover,
both of us were usually hot, dirty, and disheveled. We could not appear
to advantage for the judgment of a new community in that condition. So,
if a motor sounded on the road, we took to the woods. From behind a bush
I whispered bulletins to Billie, lying in the tall grass. When the
visitors departed we sneaked out and returned to work.

Once we nearly got caught. A car arrived while we were working on the
second floor of the house. Billie peeked from the window and saw a
couple, dressed in their best, climb up the half-planked porch. They
"yoo-hooed" but we kept still. Finally we heard the woman say:

"They aren't home, but I'd like to see what they are doing to the house.
I'm going to look around."

After a tour of the lower regions she started up the stairs. Her husband
protested.

"You can't go up there. It isn't decent."

"I can too. Nobody's home and anyway they aren't living in it."

By that time Billie and I had retreated to a newly plastered closet
which smelled to high heaven. We were for it, and no mistake, if they
inspected the bedrooms as thoroughly as the downstairs. Of course Billie
whispered, "I'm going to sneeze."

"If you do, I'll strangle you where you stand," I hissed, in the best
melodramatic tradition. She didn't sneeze and the woman came only to the
top of the stairs; her husband absolutely refused to let her go farther.
This was lucky for us as we wouldn't have had a chance to remain
undiscovered.

As a matter of fact the residents of Colebrook and Norfolk were
remarkably understanding of our situation in those first weeks and we
are eternally grateful. After a hard day's work we were dead tired and
only wanted to enjoy the peace and quiet of the farm. When at last we
were reasonably settled, and began to see people, it was evident the
neighbors had not held our early seclusion against us. Not all
communities would be as tolerant.

Billie's prediction about the house was completely fulfilled. The
ministrations of Uno Stenman, paint, paper, and country furniture had
done wonders. It was small, to be sure, but fresh, bright, and
attractive. Outside, the work progressed. All the scrub trees had been
pulled out by the roots along the edge of the pond, opening a beautiful
view from the house. The meadow was almost cleared, but it had cost much
more than we expected. That was true about everything.

The garbage dump is a good example. The old cellar brimmed with debris
of all sorts; also it smelled distressingly on hot days. Clearing it
became a "must," and, moreover, a surprising archaeological
investigation in early American history. Here, right in our own front
yard at Pondwood Farm, lay a kitchen midden such as I had traveled to
the ends of the earth to find. It revealed, in a remarkable state of
preservation, successive strata of primitive human cultures. Never have
I watched the story of prehistoric man unfold with greater excitement.

After the recent upper layer of auto tires, springs, tin cans, bottles,
broken plates, cups, and rusted knives had been removed, rare and
unusual specimens appeared with startling frequency. The workmen's
shovels exhumed a corset. I examined it with breathless interest.
Whalebone stays! Yes, it certainly was from the almost extinct Arctic
bowhead whale, probably harpooned by one of the Nantucket or New Bedford
ships. What beautiful maiden had pinched her ribs in that rigid
framework to fit the size of a man's two hands! If only the corset could
tell its story. When a wire hoopskirt was exposed I kneeled reverently
and excavated it with my own hands. In Grandmother's attic I had once
seen a similar ghastly contrivance and, even as a boy, marveled at
feminine vanity.

The middle stratum produced a shattered whalebone carriage whip, the
remains of a double sleigh, and a horse collar. The people of this
period undoubtedly knew, and used, horses. Obviously we were dealing
with an advanced culture, when animals had been domesticated.

Carefully removing the upper layer of the lowest stratum, we uncovered
evidences of a still older, and more primitive, civilization. A broken
oxbow, beautifully preserved and capable of reconstruction, lay beside a
rimless wooden wheel, with hickory spokes, showing no signs of
fossilization.

By the time hardpan was reached and the deposit exhausted, I had
accumulated a voluminous sheaf of notes and several trays of specimens
arranged on cotton. Each had been carefully measured, photographed _in
situ_, and recorded, so there could be no possible doubt as to the
cultural horizon it represented. This research material was sufficient
to occupy my leisure hours for many days. Although I was pleased at the
unexpected good fortune in discovering this highly productive kitchen
midden at our very door, the yawning chasm which confronted us appalled
me. Not so my wife. I saw her prowling about with the speculative gleam
in her eyes which I have learned to fear; inevitably, it means some new
project with which I shall have to cope.

"There are," she said, "definite possibilities in this place."

"The only one I can see is to fill it up and that's going to cost
plenty," I retorted gloomily.

"Not at all. We could put the foundation stones back in position, get a
few loads of topsoil for inside, and have nice grass. I'd slope the
outside down to the lawn and make a rock garden."

I thought we could meet the estimated cost. After the walls were
restored and the topsoil purchased and graded, Billie said, "If only we
had an open fireplace at the end we could use it for barbecues and
picnics. Let's do it."

I visualized a small brick camp-fire sort of thing that I Could build
myself. That wasn't Billie's idea at all. So a real tailor-made stone
fireplace with a chimney had to be constructed. Then we discovered that
the inside lawn became a morass after every rain, for water from the
meadow continually seeped into the depression. Without drains it was
useless. Eventually the rock garden became a beautiful spot. We use it
constantly, but it almost ruined my bank account.

Although we avoided society, rehabilitation of the farm brought us in
daily contact with some Colebrook residents, for they did the work. We
soon discovered that, as in all New England villages, community life
revolves about the church. Voting in national and local elections is
conducted in the basement; civic gatherings and social events of every
description are held there. It is the meetinghouse in the most literal
sense of the word. Our association with the church began immediately.
When we first arrived as property owners, Mr. Cooper, one of the
deacons, asked:

"Are you coming up for the Fourth of July celebration? There's going to
be a sociable on the lawn and lunch. There'll be a speaker too. We don't
know who he'll be yet but he'll be good--you can be sure of that--he'll
be _good_!"

A few days later I was asked to be the speaker!

My theme was the Fourth of Julys I had spent in various parts of the
world. None of the audience could have enjoyed it half as much as I did.
Looking into the faces of the people who were to be our neighbors and
friends, I felt that we were being accepted into the community. From
that time on we were a part of Colebrook.

After my talk we ate a New England luncheon at small tables on the lawn.
Women of the neighborhood produced the food. One baked a pie, another a
cake, others furnished salad or brought a ham. Dozens of articles made
by the women during the long winter evenings were sold from little
booths: aprons, pot holders, baskets--things not only useful, but
necessary to any country household. The church reaped the rewards of
their virtuous labor.

I feel a particular pride in our church, for I helped to pay for the
steeple. Shortly after we came to Colebrook a donation was requested to
help liquidate the debt of six hundred dollars, incurred in constructing
a new steeple. Why, I thought, should I not offer to give a lecture on
my Gobi explorations with motion pictures? That same lecture had helped
bring polo clubs out of the red in Shanghai, Tientsin, Peking, and the
Fairfield Hunt Club in Connecticut. Steeplechasing and steeple building
seemed definitely related. My suggestion was accepted with enthusiasm by
the church committee. They drummed up patronage in the surrounding towns
and charged a dollar admission. The performance, which took place in the
Congregational church of Winsted, netted almost enough to clear the
debt.

I learned something of the history of the church from Clarence Stotts.
He is not only one of the oldest residents, the storekeeper, local
historian, and general information bureau, but has represented the town
in the State Legislature. I never tire of talking with Mr. Stotts. The
back room of his store is a veritable museum of Colebrookiana. I was
particularly interested in an old woodcut of the village, made long
before the days of photography. (It might have been done yesterday
except for an unobtrusive gasoline pump near the store.) Then, as now,
the church dominated the center.

"Have you heard of the church war?" he asked.

I hadn't, but I did have time and interest, for I was keen to learn
Colebrook's colonial history. I am recording the story, since it is
typical of what happened in many other New England villages during
colonial days. The bitter disputes as to the location of the churches
almost amounted to civil strife.

The Colebrook quarrel began in 1781. Until ten years earlier the village
was minus both church and preacher. For spiritual consolation the
settlers repaired to Norfolk, six miles away. Attending divine service
became a real expedition during the winter, when bitter gales piled snow
waist high. Moreover, no decent New England community, however small or
remote, could be without its meetinghouse. Something had to be done.
Locating a place of worship was a momentous question for reasons far
removed from religion. The business and residential center would grow up
around the church, thus vitally affecting property values. The shrewd
Yankee farmers were not ones to overlook such a bet.

"Setting the stake" for the meetinghouse became the all-absorbing topic
of that day and many days to come. Some of the settlers wanted it north
of the Mill Brook; others vehemently demanded that it be south of the
unoffending stream. The "Northerners" and "Southerners" campaigned with
all the energy of major political parties. The Northerners won by two
votes.

In spite of a revival meeting in Norfolk, where many Colebrook residents
were inspired, bitterness still smoldered in the hearts of the
Southerners. Efforts to build the meetinghouse were frustrated until
1784. In that year timbers were cut and a foundation laid. But the house
of worship was never raised, for the Southerners hung grimly to their
slogan, "South of the brook or not at all."

In the meantime counter-activities started in the once-peaceful
community. Would you believe it, the Baptists seized the opportunity to
descend upon the town and proselyte the inhabitants! The Congregational
fold began to slip badly. The Northerners were especially susceptible to
the invaders, and thus began the Baptist Society in North Colebrook.

The Baptists held their first meeting not far from Pondwood Farm on
September 29, 1794, under the leadership of Elder Rufus Babcock. The
elder seems to have been an exceedingly stout fellow and a man of many
parts. For thirty-seven years he served the church and finally directed
its destinies to the foot of our hill. It might be a church in a stage
setting. Diminutive, but exquisite in every detail, it stands against a
somber backdrop of magnificent pines. Many years ago it ceased to be a
"working" church, but the tiny lawn is always mowed and its paint is
fresh and white--evidence of the loving care bestowed by the few
parishioners, now widely scattered over the hills and valleys of
Colebrook town.

The conditions in the church war had become well-nigh intolerable.
Everyone was thoroughly disgusted with a controversy which set neighbor
against neighbor, family against family. The Mill Brook was a Rubicon
which no one dared to cross. An unknown person eventually proposed a
brilliant solution. Why, he said, should the dispute not be settled by
the flip of a coin--heads, north of the Mill Brook, tails, to the south?
Cheers from both factions greeted the courageous diplomat's suggestion.
The lot was cast and drawn. Lady Luck favored the Southerners. The
timbers for the original building, parked north of the brook, were duly
transported south of the brook, and the stake was set at a spot almost
opposite the present site. The sacred timbers were raised and put in
place. A church was actually born, roofed, floored, and lighted, ready
for an occupant to thunder against sin and expound upon the virtue of
religious unity.

But the Northerners were poor sports; no worse, be it said, than the
Southerners had been a few years earlier. They rejected offers to join
in procuring a preacher, or in building up the society. More than half
even refused to enter the portals of the new edifice. Worship they would
in Norfolk or Winsted but not in Colebrook! Called upon to explain their
intolerant attitude, the Northerners contended they had been cheated by
a game of chance, assented to in a moment of weakness. They had
consulted their consciences in the stilly night and said consciences
made it clear that they could not possibly go to church south of the
Mill Brook.

Persistency is its own reward. The Southerners were worn down and
eventually voted to transfer the church north of the brook, the expenses
to be defrayed by a tax on society. The month of February 1794 was
selected as a propitious time for the "Great Removal." One hundred and
fifty pairs of oxen were harnessed to the church, "gees" and "haws"
shouted, and the edifice moved majestically forward. But when a slight
decline was encountered the church seemed to forget its dignity and slid
downhill in a most unchurchly manner. After two days of "exceeding
labor" it had been moved only five hundred feet and a greater descent, a
veritable precipice compared to the other, lay immediately ahead.
Obviously the building would be wrecked long before it could be towed to
its designated resting place. So there it sat for upward of a year, mute
but accusing evidence of human obstinacy.

Whether or not buildings have personal preferences I will not argue, but
this particular house of worship evidently had decided not to go north
of the brook. Another attempt with ropes and pulleys demonstrated that
if the edifice moved forward at all it would do so only at breakneck
speed. The church won out. The Northerners and Southerners sat down to
ponder on whether or not it was all worth while. That it was not became
the unanimous verdict. The church, they agreed, would be put on a
suitable spot. There it stands today, after fourteen years of wrangling
and controversy. The record says, "Measures were immediately adopted to
procure preaching." The preaching they got was Dr. Jonathan Edwards,
Jr., one of the most distinguished men of his times. He was the son of
the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards, a former president of Princeton
University, and perhaps the greatest theological writer in colonial
history. Dr. Edwards came to Colebrook as so many of us have done, to
obtain peace, quiet, and fresh inspiration from its immortal hills. Thus
ended Colebrook's civil war.




[Illustration]

  III

  _Lord Jitters_


Could Lord Jitters read, he would never forgive me for having neglected
to mention him thus far in any chronicle of Pondwood Farm. That he is
not the most important personage in the narrative would never enter his
mind. It is fitting, therefore, that I introduce him properly, as
becomes his dignity.

"Lord Jitters, may I present your readers?"

Lord Jitters bows gravely. He is delighted to meet you, he assures me in
"catonese," a language which we both understand. I forgot to say that
Lord Jitters is a white Persian cat. The last part of his name was
bestowed upon him when he was only a fluffy ball of fur because he was
never still. He finds it most undignified. He prefers always to be
referred to by his full title. Elevation to the peerage came by divine
right at the age of four months. At that time he assumed his seat in the
House of Lords. His inheritance included my wife, me, George, an
automobile, an apartment in New York, and Pondwood Farm. For a cat one
might think he has done very well for himself. He, however, does not
consider that to be so. There are certain annoyances in his life which
he bears as a cross; to wit, other lesser domestic animals that have
tried unsuccessfully to encroach upon his sovereignty. These have been
dealt with firmly but justly as each one appeared.

Lord Jitters has an infirmity which he endeavors to conceal from the
public. He is stone deaf. Not a sound can penetrate his eardrums. Were
he consulted on the subject by a psychoanalyst, however, I am sure he
would maintain that deafness is an asset. His thoughts are not disturbed
by conversation which could hardly fail to be of less importance. It
enables him to live in a world completely his own.

In order that His Lordship's character may be properly understood it is
necessary that I present a short account of his early life and
education. Lord Jitters was a precocious child--I might even say an
infant prodigy. Still, he could not entirely escape the intrusion of
certain inherited instincts which, at his early age, it was impossible
to understand or analyze. One of these was the desire to watch a hole.
His New York apartment did not abound in holes. After diligent search
the only one he could discover was the drainpipe in the bathtub. Very
shortly he made it evident that it displeased him to have the stopper
left in the pipe. Then he settled down to prolonged concentration upon
the hole. I do not think it was clear in his mind as to what might
possibly emerge from the cavity. Nevertheless, this was a place to be
watched and a duty to be done.

Being pure white, Lord Jitters accumulated a vast amount of soot during
his excursions on the roof garden of his New York domicile. He had to be
washed with soap and water. Talcum and brushing only changed the black
to dirty gray. In regard to baths, his position has been made quite
clear. He likes to be clean. Being scrubbed and soaked is not his idea
of pleasure; still, he will not object if we put bath salts in the water
and use sandalwood soap. "Ferdinand the Bull" had nothing on Lord
Jitters in appreciating pleasant odors. When it is all over, and he has
been dried with a Turkish towel and sprayed with perfume, he spends
hours admiring himself.

Of Billie's flower arrangements he is often critical. After sniffing
delicately at each of the blossoms he stands off to pass judgment on
their arrangement.

"Not so good, if you ask me. Much too massed. A little more separation
would make them easier to smell. Now these on the piano--much better.
You see I have no difficulty in inhaling the odor from each separate
flower without disarranging my hair. Yes, this is quite satisfactory. I
shall remain here and let the perfume drift over me."

To be honest, I must report that Lord Jitters is exceedingly vain and
laps up admiration with more avidity than he does cream. When we have
guests he waits for the proper moment to make a stage entrance. Stalking
into the room, his white plume waving, he greets each individual in
turn. With gentle dignity he will allow himself to be stroked, purring
in response. Then he selects a stool or a yellow satin lama coat on the
piano, where he can pose in full view of the room. Although he will
court the attention of strangers, Billie and I are not allowed to pick
him up except when it suits his mood. We have often discussed this
matter with him. His viewpoint is logical.

"I have a lovely house," he says. "I am decorative, as everyone admits.
I also am host. Therefore, it is my duty to be gracious to my guests and
to enhance the beauty of our surroundings by showing myself to the best
advantage. This, however, does not mean that I must submit to being
pawed after the guests have gone. When I wish to be fondled I will let
you know. I do not like to be touched at all times, as you are very well
aware."

Once we made a great mistake of agreeing to care for a tiny monkey
belonging to one of our friends. Its body was about eight inches long.
The little beast, which rejoiced in the name of "Spooky," was as near
perpetual motion and chain lightning as any living thing I have ever
seen. Even Elsa Maxwell had been unable to cope with it after a week's
trial. Lord Jitters was absolutely outraged. He tried to ignore it, but
the limit of his endurance was passed one day when Spooky made a flying
leap, landed on Jitters's back, tweaked his tail, and disappeared behind
a chair. The Lord delivered an ultimatum to Billie and me.

"I have endured the presence in my house of this distasteful creature,"
it ran. "I have endeavored to overlook your undignified conduct in the
traffic you have had with it. I will not, however, be subjected to such
personal attacks as that which you have just witnessed. I intend to
retire to the rock garden and I refuse to enter this house again until
that objectionable creature has been permanently removed."

Out in the garden he went, there to remain for two days. Even though it
rained Lord Jitters preferred to crouch under a bush (where we could
witness his misery, of course) rather than capitulate. That broke us
down, and the monkey was sent away.

At the age of seven months Lord Jitters was taken to inspect his newly
acquired country estate, Pondwood Farm. Not being entirely sure of his
reactions to motorcar transport, his guardians, Billie and me, deemed it
advisable to insure his safety by purchasing a beautiful green leather
harness for him. Lord Jitters, however would have none of it. He simply
lay down. Obviously he considered it _infra dig_ to be trussed up like a
street dog and led about on a leash. If we persisted in fostering this
indignity upon him he would not get to his feet. His deportment in the
car was exemplary, as we should have known it would be. Stretching out
on the back of the driver's seat, he watched the passing show
interestedly until such time as he deemed it had received enough of his
attention. Then he settled in Billie's lap to sleep away the hours
before our arrival at his country seat.

Pondwood Farm, however, offered so much that was new and unexpected that
for the first time we saw his composure shaken. Never before had he left
the monastic seclusion of his apartment. The world of outdoors was as
strange to him as it would be to one of us had we suddenly been
transported in a rocket ship to the planet Mars. Every sight and smell
was unknown and exciting. Grass in the orchard was three feet high
interspersed with daisies, black-eyed Susans, and other flowers. Each
one must be sniffed and investigated. Before he knew it, he had ventured
far into what, to him, was a grotesque jungle. Great stems of grass
stretched far above his head; enormous branching weeds cut off his view
of the sky; a tangle of creeping vines made it well-nigh impossible to
walk. He could see nothing. He was lost--hopelessly lost. For the first
time in his life fear descended upon him like an enveloping cloud.
Gathering all the breath his lungs would hold, he wailed in terror.
Billie and I heard the first shriek and waded through the grass to his
assistance. We found him crouching at the base of a huge milkweed, his
little face contorted with fright. Into Billie's arms he came with a
soft croon of happiness, clasping both paws tightly about her neck.
Then in a series of rapid "pur-r-ups" he related the harrowing
experience through which he had passed.

The maple trees in the yard offered the next adventure. Clinging to the
trunk, he looked about excitedly. This was infinitely better than the
scratching post in his New York apartment. It was wonderful to spread
his toes and sink their sharp claws into the soft bark. Ascending
experimentally step by step, in a few moments he was sitting in a crotch
twelve feet from the ground. It was delightful up there among the leaves
and swaying branches. He had a feeling of exhilaration and achievement
such as he had never known before. He remained until a certain
discomfort in the region of his stomach told him it was dinnertime. All
right, he'd descend. But how? It was easy enough going up head first,
but that didn't work on the down trip. Finally he sent an SOS. Billie
came on the run, as he knew she would, and stretched up her arms. That
must mean she wanted him to jump, so jump he did. Lord Jitters landed on
the top of her head, clung desperately to her thick hair, and slid to
her shoulder, leaving several small scratches on her face. I had viewed
the performance with disapproval. "No cat of mine," I said, "shall go
for another hour without learning how to come down a tree."

Therefore, after his heart had regained its normal rate, we gave him the
first lesson. In a few minutes he had learned to switch his rear about
while hanging on with his front claws, and to come down backward. This
was a turning point in Jitters's life, for it opened to him the World of
Trees.

Lord Jitters never had seen a dog until he went into residence at
Pondwood Farm. Our neighbor, Lou Guerin, came on the lawn followed by
his Irish setter, Cobb. Jitters was busy sniffing roses when he looked
up and saw us patting the big red animal. Every hair on his body stood
erect. His plume swelled to twice its size. He crept toward us, eyes
blazing, and suddenly flew at Cobb like a white demon. The setter yelped
in fright and legged it for the road. Lord Jitters followed to the gate.
There he stopped, glaring. Then he paraded along the stone wall to make
sure the dog did not venture again upon his property. Moreover, we got a
lecture upon what would happen if he ever saw us touching that red
animal again. The ease with which he had defeated his first dog
engendered in his mind a complete disdain for the canine world. He
scrupulously attends to his own business, but let a stray dog so much as
cross his property line, and Jitters launches a furious attack. The
bigger they come the faster they run. From every encounter he has
emerged the victor, but we are in mortal terror that someday courage
will be his downfall.

Strangely enough he does not at all object to water as do most cats.
Only a drenching rain will drive him indoors. I believe the baths to
which he has been subjected since infancy are responsible. One day he
was with us in a canoe on the pond. We landed but he remained playing
with a bug. The canoe floated off ten feet or more before Jitters
discovered that he was adrift alone. Without the slightest hesitation he
jumped overboard, swam to shore, shook himself, and continued about his
affairs. He will splash through mud in swamps and refuses to be carried
even when the water is inches deep.

Almost immediately he became a country cat. Silk and soft raiment were
discarded when he arrived at the farm, and, figuratively, he donned
overalls just as I did. From short excursions into the woods he learned
to take care of himself on an expedition. At first he was often lost in
the underbrush and tall ferns but soon that problem was solved. Since he
cannot hear, he must depend entirely upon sight. When we disappear he
climbs the nearest tree, looks about until he locates us, sets his
mental compass, and makes a beeline through the bushes, yowling for us
to wait. He is certain we never will go far without knowing where he is.

Shortly after we bought the farm Billie and I started one cloudy morning
to explore the more distant parts of our domain. Lord Jitters was with
us. On this particular day, I must admit, frankly, that I got lost. It
is the cause of deep humiliation to me and of never-ending teasing by my
wife. I would much prefer to let the distressing incident remain dead
and buried, but that she will not do.

"You, an explorer," she gibes, "getting lost on our own property!"

I quote Daniel Boone. Someone asked if he were ever lost in the woods.
"Well," he said, "I was never actually lost, but I was _confused_ for
three or four days."

Of course with a compass, or had there been sun, I would not have been
confused. I will cite only a few examples from my past to demonstrate
that my contention is true. I have traveled the unexplored forests of
northern Korea, up to the Long White Mountain, and down the headwaters
of the Yalu River, with only a compass as guide. On the trackless desert
of Outer Mongolia, where the plains roll away in great waves and every
wave looks like every other wave, I wandered hither and yon, returning
unerringly to that little dot in the vast land-sea that was our camp.
Through the jungles of Borneo, amid trees stretching up and up until
their summits seemed to touch the sky, walled by creepers and ropes of
vines like a barbed-wire entanglement, and hedged about with oozing
swamps, never for an hour was I confused. Modesty forbids more details
of my exploits, but I think the picture is clear; always I had a
compass.

On that unfortunate morning we plunged into the forest behind the pond.
Lord Jitters trotted along at our heels, now and then investigating a
hole or sitting on a log purring contentedly when we stopped to rest.
Finally an enormous thicket of laurel confronted us. I took a deer trail
which began beautifully but petered out in a tangled maze after we were
far into an almost impenetrable growth. It was tough going. Sometimes we
had to crawl on hands and knees. We could not see twenty feet in any
direction. Billie and Jitters stayed close at my heels. Our hands and
faces were scratched, clothes torn, tempers worn thin. When, finally, we
emerged from the infernal place, after twisting and turning a hundred
times, I did not know north from south. Clouds hung low and the tall
trees obscured every possible landmark. Poor Billie hadn't uttered a
word of complaint--in fact she hadn't uttered a word, which was ominous.
Lord Jitters dragged a bit. He was panting visibly and his little pink
tongue hung out. We stopped often--silent--and he just sat there
regarding me with accusing eyes. I was definitely on the spot but tried
to present a front of confidence and lighthearted abandon.

"Darling," I said, "you and Jitters rest while I prowl a bit. I want to
have a look at those pine trees on the hill. Aren't they magnificent?
Probably we own them. Isn't that exciting?"

Billie looked at me through narrowed eyes.

"You're lost," said she. "Why don't you admit it?"

"Lost! How absurd. Of course I'm not lost. That laurel was hard to take
but now we're out of it and I'll pick a short way home."

"I don't believe it," was all she answered.

Up to the summit of the hill I plodded. Emulating Lord Jitters's
procedure, I swung into the lowest branches of a tall pine, climbed
almost to the top, and gazed hopefully about. No soap. Only trees and
more trees. Not a vestige of a landmark that I could recognize. If only
I could discover which way was north! When we left home a light south
breeze was blowing; that might give a clue. So I tossed dry leaves into
the air. They dropped back lifelessly, straight down. I wet a finger and
held it aloft like a torch. One side was just as cool as the other. I
examined the trees carefully. Moss is supposed to grow thickest on the
north side, though I don't believe it. On these darned pines, where
there was any moss at all, it had distributed itself about the trunks in
the most impartial manner. I was utterly defeated. North could be any
one of four directions. A single alternative was left. The slope we were
on indicated a valley. Probably in its bottom would be a stream, which
must eventually reach Sandy Brook at the foot of our hill. That was the
drainage of the land. In any event it meant a long trek.

Returning to Billie and Jitters, I forced a smile and said brightly, "We
don't want to return the way we came. We're out to see the country.
Let's go down through this lovely pine grove until we find a stream and
follow it to Sandy Brook. Won't that be fun?"

"No, it won't be fun," my wife said in a flat voice. "You're lost."

Without reply I started pushing through the undergrowth down the hill.
Billie and Jitters followed listlessly. Sure enough in the bottom of the
ravine we did find a stream. Slipping and sliding along its bank, it led
us through a god-awful alder swamp into a wide valley and eventually to
the state road where it crosses Sandy Brook. We trudged along saying
nothing. Lord Jitters plodded behind us, his beautiful white fur a mass
of mud and briars, but game to the end. I tried to get him to ride on
my shoulder but he indignantly refused. He was determined to finish it
the hard way.

We arrived wearily at Pondwood Farm. My stock was very low, but at least
I knew what to do. First, I ran a hot bath for Billie and mixed her a
cocktail. Jitters rated a large dish of cream and a place on the bed.
While he stretched luxuriously, I combed out his fur, restoring a
semblance of his immaculate self. Before an hour passed both my wife and
my cat were speaking to me again.

At that, I need not have been so crestfallen at being lost in our own
woods which were unknown to me. Mile after mile of unbroken forest
sweeps over the mountains and down into wild, rugged ravines. On some
hillsides one can glimpse a farmhouse, but farm lands are few and far
between. The forest is nearly a duplicate of what it was when, in 1633,
that great explorer and Indian trader, John Oldham, made his way through
the trackless wilderness from the Massachusetts Bay Colony into the
beautiful Connecticut River Valley. Like Daniel Boone and his vision of
Kentucky, Oldham was inspired by this New England paradise with an
almost religious zeal. His enthusiasm for the green hills, tall trees,
and fertile vales brought settlers from Salem and Boston to establish a
colony at Wethersfield, not more than fifty miles from Pondwood Farm.
The Dutch had already sailed up the river from Saybrook and erected
trading posts at Hartford and Windsor.

Some of the Wethersfield settlers were massacred by raiding Pequot
Indians. Oldham himself lost his life and scalp at the hands of these
same savages. But the English colonists stuck to their guns and the
homes they had cut out of the wilderness with such infinite labor. They
found the river tribes peaceful Indians and in 1635 were buying land by
the square mile from the redmen. The "big chief," Sequassin, set the
style for others and went into the real-estate business like a modern
tycoon.

"How about a nice home up in the Green Woods country? Very cheap. Just a
few bottles of rum and it's yours."

Of course he did not mention the fact that the same parcel had already
been sold half-a-dozen times. A small cloud on the title meant nothing
in those days. Nevertheless, these friendly transactions with their red
brethren possibly were the basis for the later claims of Windsor and
Hartford to these "Western Lands." Be that as it may, after a bitter
dispute, which lasted forty years, our particular region, comprising
18,199 acres, was eventually allotted to seventy-nine proprietors. "In
1732 the General Assembly enacted that it should forever be called
'Colebrook,' named for Colebrook in Devonshire, England."

It was all very well to have a parcel of land in the Green Woods, but
how to get there! It might as well be located on Mars unless a road were
built. There were Indian trails, to be sure, but that was all. One could
not take one's wife, family, and household furniture over an Indian
trail. Roads lose their significance to modern city dwellers. We take
them as a matter of course, driving over them in high-powered cars,
criticizing every tiny bump. But I have firsthand knowledge of what
roads mean to a new country. As a matter of fact, I have made them
myself. In Mongolia the trails which we broke through the desert are now
the highways of civilization.

Never will I forget one night in the Gobi when we were camped near a
caravan trail, old before Marco Polo was born. For thousands of years it
had been used to transport silk from Cathay to India. Darkness was
creeping in, but a faint trace of sunset glow still lingered in the
western sky. Out of the east sounded the melodious tones of camel bells,
and a long line of grotesque two-humped forms, with curving necks and
swinging legs, materialized like silent ghosts. The swish, swish, swish
of great flat feet and the creak of swaying loads were the only sounds.
A Chinese driver plodded beside the lead camel. He spoke in the soft,
slurring dialect of the Shansi district, which I understand. "For six
moons we have been on the road," he said, "carrying tea, cloth, and
tobacco. The geese will fly north again before we return." Curiously he
gazed at the motorcars beside the tents. "_Chi chur_ [wind carts]," he
remarked laconically. "You go very fast in them."

That line of camels disappearing silently into the night made me sad.
We, with our automobiles, were destroying the sanctity of the age-old
desert. Never after our passage would it be the same again, for others
would follow in our tracks.

The first road to Colebrook built in 1760, is still called the Old North
Road. "According to tradition," writes the Hon. John Boyd, "it was a
wonder of the age that a direct and practicable route could be found and
opened through the jungles and over the succession of steep, rocky hills
and mountains of the Green Woods, for travel and the movement of troops
and munitions between Hartford and Albany. It soon became, and continued
until 1800, the great and almost the sole thoroughfare of the colony in
the direction of Albany. Continental troops passed over it for frontier
service. Detachments of Burgoyne's army, as prisoners of war, marched
over it to the quarters assigned them. 'It should not be inferred from
the amount of travel that this road was an Appian Way,' said Mr. Boyd.
'On the contrary, direct as it was, it went up and down the highest
hills, on uneven beds of rocks and stones, and passed marshy valleys on
corduroy of the coarsest hemlock structure.' . . . This historic road is
still open for travel over most of its course."

A few days after our unfortunate initial experience Billie and I made
another exploration to the southwest toward Nap Hill, which we could see
from the house, rising in a great sweep of green. Lord Jitters trotted
along behind us as usual. The object was to discover the limits of our
property. Most of the old deeds delineate the holdings by such marks as
"a stone wall running east and west" or "from a crooked pine tree on
the top of a knoll ten rods from a glacial boulder."

This time we had a compass. Billie's confidence in my ability to
navigate the woods was still somewhat shaken but I persuaded her to give
me another trial. We took a line from the house and followed it through
the forest, skirting the great thicket of laurel which had been our
Waterloo on the first expedition. Eventually we found a stone wall that
probably marks the limits of Pondwood Farm. It appeared so from the map
given us by the former owner, but I am not sure of it even to this day.
Beyond the wall a magnificent grove of pines sweeps up to the edge of a
great ravine that drops away in a sheer precipice for a hundred feet.

We climbed down one side to a mountain stream which tumbles over rocks
through close walls of green. It was the upper reaches of Brummagem, the
brook we had found when I got lost. Trout lay in the pools and a mink
spat at us from a fallen log like an angry cat. Lord Jitters gazed at
the slim brown ball of living fire with every hair erect. This "Thing"
was something new in his life and he didn't like it.

"She has a litter somewhere near," I told Billie. Her feminine instincts
immediately saw something more interesting than natural history.

"That's wonderful," she said. "This fall you can catch the whole family
and make me a mink scarf."

On the other side of the brook an overgrown abandoned wood road which we
had missed on the first expedition led down the valley. While we rested,
Lord Jitters made a historical discovery. He had wandered off on a
personal exploration and soon we heard the peculiar yowl that means we
must drop everything and come at once. He was sitting on the edge of
what evidently was an old house foundation with a white-footed mouse
under one paw. Presently he deposited it at Billie's feet, flirting his
somewhat bedraggled tail with the greatest pride and waiting to be
praised for his prowess.

It seemed a strange place for the remains of a house, but nearby were
several others and a slag pile. Then it became clear. This was the site
of a forge built by Capt. Ezekiel Phelps more than a century and a half
ago. I had learned that, during the Revolutionary War, Colebrook forges
played an important part in furnishing cannon, mortars, swivels, shot,
hand grenades, camp kettles, and other army necessities. Most of the
iron was mined at Salisbury on the eastern slope of the Taconic
Mountains, twenty-five miles away. Ethan Allen, afterward the hero of
Ticonderoga, with three other gentlemen, erected the first blast furnace
at nearby Lakeville. Allen, a rip-roaring adventurer who took the law
into his own hands, feared neither God, man, nor the devil. He rejoiced
in the price on his head, which the governor of New York never could
collect, and became one of the Iron Kings of Connecticut. His
concessions reached as far as Norfolk, but eventually his interests
centered in the New Hampshire Grants, and he sold the property to
Richard Smith, a Boston merchant of doubtful colonial sympathies.

Smith had originated a process of making high-quality iron instead of
ore from pig metal, and probably chose Colebrook for the erection of
forges because of its abundant water power and wood for charcoal. The
pigs were brought over the rough, hilly country in oxcarts and
saddlebags. The Colebrook region became the site of a dozen or more
forges. Part of the immense chain that was stretched across the Hudson
River near West Point, to prevent the British from sailing up the river,
was made at Norfolk. The iron industry continued at Colebrook until well
into the nineteenth century. I am glad it is ended. It would seem a
desecration to me, who am not industrially minded, that these beautiful
hills and forest should echo to the sound of clanking metal.

Billie and I poked about among these ruins of colonial history which
Lord Jitters had discovered, trying to reconstruct, in imagination, what
had happened here so long ago. Probably the workmen were from England,
for "Brummagem" is a corruption of Birmingham in the local speech of
that great wrought-iron center. Captain Phelps doubtless imported them
to operate his forge. The overgrown trail, I learned later, was the
ancient road to the forge and led us down to the state highway. The
valley east of the stream through which we had floundered was once a
pasture, but is now a jungle of scrub birch and alder where we shoot
woodcock and grouse. Stone walls are everywhere in the woods--mute
evidence of a land that has returned to its virgin state. A century ago
they separated pasture from pasture, home from home. Who built the
walls, and what happiness or tragedy went on behind them, no one knows.
Even tradition has lost their names.

But some of the stories of these stout-hearted, strong-willed men have
been set down in records of the town. We know that Benjamin Horton was
the first settler. He came in December 1765. Captain Samuel Rockwell was
the fifth pioneer to build a house in Colebrook. It stands on a
tree-shaded knoll overlooking the center. He, too, was a winter traveler
and chose February, the coldest and stormiest month of the year, to do
his trek. With Hepzibah, his wife, and four sons, aged eight, not quite
seven, barely three, and Reuben in his mother's arms, to say nothing of
another on the way, who became Alpha, first baby born in the town, the
doughty captain set out for Colebrook from East Windsor.

Bag and baggage were piled on an oxcart. Hepzibah rode on horseback with
the baby; that is recorded. Presumably the remainder of the flock took
their chances on the oxcart driven by Sam, or ran about in the bushes
beside the trail like rabbits. I am glad to state that Hepzibah issued
an ultimatum to the captain: "Not one foot will I move without my
Windsor chairs, my chest of drawers, and my desk."

Captain Sam had already done a spot of work in Colebrook before he
brought Hepzibah and the family. The frame of his house was up, and
while Hepzibah and the children stayed with his brother Joseph, two
miles away, Sam finished the dwelling. It was a one-story room with a
large chimney in the center and a big attic.

The Rockwells, I assume, did the usual. They girdled the trees, cleared
the dead timber in the third year, and sowed the land to rye, herd
grass, and white clover. Later oats, potatoes, and turnips gave the
family their vitamins and kept them up to snuff. It is well that Sam was
a powerful man. He had need of all his muscles to do the job.

Captain Samuel Rockwell became one of the pillars of Colebrook and
remained so until his death. It was in his house that the little band of
settlers met on December 3, 1779, for the first town meeting and "took
the action necessary to start business as a body politic." For years
almost every meeting of consequence, political or social, was held at
the Rockwells'. After the battle of Saratoga a hundred and twenty-four
Hessian prisoners spent the night there on their way to Boston. Could
the walls speak, what a fascinating story they would tell! Only a few
weeks ago Billie and I were shown over the house from ground to attic by
the lovely Mrs. Edward Hinchliff. We sat before the great stone
fireplace in the "keeping room" where town meetings were held, saw the
furniture, read the original land grant, reverently handled Hepzibah's
wooden mortar for grinding corn, and tipped the cradle in which the baby
Alpha was rocked.

Digressing for a moment, here is a problem for psychologists, or those
who believe in the "Wheel of Life," to ponder. With absolutely no
premeditation, or knowledge at that time, of where my father's family
tree began, I have returned to my ancestral soil. John Andrus, or
Andrews, came to America from Essex County, England, in 1640. He settled
in the pioneer town of Tunxis, now Farmington, twenty-nine miles from
Colebrook, and became one of its eighty-four proprietors. A grandson,
John Andrews, moved to John Oldham's town of Weathersfield, thirty-eight
miles from Colebrook. All of my father's family continued to live in
Farmington, Weathersfield, or New Britain, except my great-grandfather,
Noah Andrews, who migrated to Worthington, Ohio. His son, my
grandfather, moved to Worthington, Indiana, where my father was born. He
married my mother, Cora Chapman, in Beloit, Wisconsin, and there I first
saw the light of day. Thus the wandering swallow has flown back to the
ancestral roost.

There is also an interesting and rather strange association between
Colebrook and Beloit by way of the Rockwells. Eliza Rockwell,
granddaughter of Captain Samuel, married Ralph Emerson in 1817. He had a
divine call to preach in Rockford, Illinois, twelve miles from my home
town of Beloit. His brother, Joseph Emerson, followed him westward and
became one of the revered professors of Beloit College. Emerson Hall,
the women's dormitory at which I was a constant visitor in undergraduate
days, was built and named for him. I used to see the white-haired
professor, a frail little man, on the campus, although I never attended
his classes. The Rockwell house is now in possession of Edward C.
Hinchliff, great-great-great-grandson of Captain Samuel. He lives at
Rockford, Illinois, but summers in Colebrook. From him I obtain Beloit
College news.

    *    *    *    *    *

It was from the Rockwell house that town edicts were issued and records
kept. Many of them concern the small things that are of importance to us
who live in a country village today. It is comforting to know that in
1778 the council stretched their legs before the fire, drank a beaker or
two of rum, and voted that "the rams found within the bounds of this
town running at large and unrestricted from the first of September to
the middle of November next ensuing should be forfeited to him or them
who secure and take them up." Of course we know what rams are up to at
that season of the year and I highly commend the foresight of the town
statesmen. At the same meeting pigs were given a better break, for it
was decided that swine could run at large on the highway and common for
another year.

I was distressed to learn that, even in the days of its infancy,
Colebrook had a relief problem. At the town meeting, held on February
23, 1789, which was adjourned from the church to Captain Rockwell's
house (doubtless for refreshment), it was voted that Samuel Phillips be
permitted to sell his land in Colebrook on condition that the purchaser
transport said Phillips up the Mohawk as far as Fort Herkimer. But "said
Phillips" seems to have evaded transport for at a subsequent meeting the
selectmen were directed to make provision for the Phillips and Martin
families "now on the town cost."

Phelps is another name that carries back to earliest Colebrook history.
Carrington Phelps is the last male of the family which has had
possession of the property continuously for one hundred and eighty
years. Cary was middleweight wrestling champion at Yale and, even today,
though I am younger than he is, I should hate to tangle with him.
Half-a-dozen buildings are of Revolutionary time or earlier, and the
tavern, just at the bottom of our hill, is one of the most romantic
houses in all New England.

The tavern seems as much a part of the living present as of the past.
Whenever I go to our mailbox I half expect to see a stagecoach drawn up
at the door, men in ruffled shirts, long coats, and high hats, helping
the women alight on the stone horse block. Ladies, front to the parlor;
men, right, to the taproom entrance in the rear. Captain Phelps, behind
the corner bar, filling beakers of rum and hard cider for the passengers
gathered about the great fireplace.

Nothing is much changed outside, except that the sign "Phelps Tavern" no
longer hangs over the door. One side bears a painting of the British
lion; the other flaunts an eagle, symbol of the Colonies. English
travelers could look at the lion if that made them happy, while
colonists gazed upon the eagle. Captain Phelps was concerned only with
their physical needs, not their political faiths. He was an innkeeper
and in business; then, as now, "the customer is always right." But the
Phelps family were no lukewarm patriots. They typified the "Spirit of
'76." Captain Josiah, sixty-seven years of age, his two sons and
grandson, little Josiah, a trumpeter only fifteen years old, fought in
George Washington's army.

The tavern was more than just a stopping place for stages from Hartford
to Albany. The ballroom on the second floor was the gathering place for
social events and dances of the neighborhood. Its pine paneling has
become a lovely olive green with a patina as soft as satin. Of course
the tavern isn't operating any more. Its doors were closed about 1840,
when railroads ended stagecoach travel. But Cary has preserved it as a
part of family history.

Colebrook's contribution to the Revolutionary War in man power was in
proportion to its population which, at that time, was only thirty-nine
families and one hundred and fifty individuals. Probably the village got
the news of Lexington two days after the event by courier over the Old
North Road. Six Colebrook men responded and fifty or more did their bit
in the struggle before the war ended. Some went to the siege of Boston;
others to hold the forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and at least
four were with Benedict Arnold on the disastrous expedition to Quebec.

We do have a most enviable record of substantial people. Colebrook was
the home of several governors, preachers of distinction, college
professors, and statesmen. Aaron Burr came with his bride, the beautiful
Madame Jumel, to stay with the Hoyts. It is even recorded that when
Governor Henry Edwards visited his cousins, the same Hoyts, he arrived
"with all the pomp and fine livery of those days." So impressive was he
that the butler stubbed his toe and spilled the soup!




[Illustration]

  IV

  _A Forest Interlude_


All during my summer vacation Billie and I worked early and late on the
farm. We could talk, or think, of nothing but the projects planned for
the next day. By the end of August the meadow had sprouted young grass
to cover the unsightly scars left by the tractor; flowers made the rock
garden a riot of color, and red swamp maples gazed at themselves in the
pond's mirror like Narcissus at the pool. The house, we were sure,
rejoiced in its new white paint and green blinds. Its stark nakedness
was a thing of the past, for transplanted junipers and laurel bushes
clustered about its feet.

It was only the beginning. Our immediate concern was to make the
surroundings presentable, but every improvement called for something
else. Before we knew it we were involved in a vicious circle, yet it was
difficult to deny our land what it needed. Gratitude for its
renaissance was so obvious that it possessed us like a child being
brought back to health after a long illness, basking in the love and
care of devoted parents. Nothing was ever demanded. It just sat there,
smiling wistfully, mute, happy for what we gave, but hoping for just a
little more. It seemed to know we would take pity on its helplessness.

The farm absorbed every cent we had. Long ago the money allotted for
improvements had been spent. We began to deny ourselves accustomed
pleasures.

"What about the theater?" I'd say when we were in New York.

"Yes, it would be nice," Billie invariably answered. "But we need
quantities of topsoil for the garden and a load of manure. Let's go to
the movies and put the money into the farm."

So we'd go to the movies and feel exceedingly virtuous.

At last Billie made a thorough study of our financial situation.

"We are," she said, "about to become a charge on the community. Either
we stop spending money on the farm, or you've got to make some. The
answer is, write."

When she speaks in that tone I've learned not to argue. I was having a
wonderful time fussing about the place, leaving practical details to
her, and hated to stop. Nevertheless, I had to admit that a period of
mental concentration would do me no real harm. I was the picture of
health, and brown as an Indian. So I thought of an article for a
magazine, telephoned the editor, and sat down to write. The only
comfortable place in which to work appeared to be the living room, and
that turned out to be about as private as the corner of Fifth Avenue and
Forty-second Street. Things happened all about me. People came to the
door, thousands of them, it seemed. I'd glare ferociously, snarl like a
saber-toothed tiger, and they'd beat a hasty retreat. Most were workmen
whom Billie had summoned. Having been shooed off the porch, they would
slink furtively about the place until they discovered her. Usually I
read my stuff aloud to myself. The first time our colored cook, Florina,
who was new, sought out my wife.

"The doctor," she said, "is talking out loud and there's nobody there. I
looked. Nobody. I think you ought to know about it."

Billie assured her that I was reasonably normal; that it was merely the
birth of an idea; that when those spells came she was to ignore what
went on and continue about her work. She did, and started to clean the
dining room. Why she had to do it just then, God only knows. At last I
could stick it no longer and, muttering curses, retired to our bedroom.
No sooner was I settled and just about to capture a beautiful but
elusive thought, than Billie appeared with a man from the Winsted
Furniture Company to lay a rug.

"Oh, you're here," she said. "I thought you were working downstairs. For
goodness' sake, why can't you stay put? I got everything fixed for you
and now you won't use it."

What I actually thought would not bear repeating. The oral edition ran
something like this: "How in the name of Tophet can a man work in a
traffic jam? You've told me to write and make some money. I want to
write. I'll write till hell freezes over and then I'll write on the ice.
But I cannot and will not write downstairs."

"Poor thing," she said soothingly, "you really are put upon. I'll bring
up a card table and fix you a nice place in the guest room."

It was hot, the room was stuffy, and, in addition, just to annoy me, I
was sure, the lawn mower hummed like a swarm of bees right under the
window. "Oh, damn it all! Me for the woods," I said. "Maybe I can get a
little peace and quiet there."

I discovered a spot under a great beech tree, deep in the forest, where
the birds twittered, the woodpeckers pecked, and I was alone. Blessed
silence, except for the subdued voices of wild things. There I could
write and "list to nature's teachings."

I spent three days under my tree. Not only did I finish the article but
a great idea was born. Why shouldn't we build a studio here in the
woods? A log cabin where I could have my books and my thoughts all
undisturbed by maids, visitors, workmen, or rug layers.

Billie favored the plan. In fact she embraced it, for even her angelic
disposition was strained by having me under foot during the throes of
composition. Moreover, she knew someday it would rain, I couldn't take
to the woods, and she'd have the problem in her lap again. "But," she
said, "you will have to write a lot more if we are going to build the
cabin."

Heaven favors the poor workingman! In the next mail came a suggestion
from a magazine that I do an article for them on dinosaurs. Would I do
an article on dinosaurs! Would I! It solved my studio problem if I could
satisfy the editor. Dinosaurs were right down my alley. Of course the
blessed editor didn't know it, but dinosaurs were practically sitting on
our doorstep. He visualized the thousands upon thousands of miles I had
traveled in quest of dinosaurs; he remembered that I had dug up some
eggs, which I am never allowed to forget, in the Gobi Desert. To him I
was the "big egg man."

But Pondwood Farm is all things to a naturalist. Was there not a kitchen
midden of extraordinary archaeological interest in our own front yard?
The editor had asked for dinosaurs. Certainly. I had only to travel a
few miles to be in the ancestral home of dinosaurs. Even Connecticut
folklore has tales of the footprints of "Noah's Raven." They happen to
be fossilized tracks of a birdlike dinosaur, but what is that to
folklore?

The first dinosaur bones ever discovered in the world, or at least
recorded, were found at East Windsor in 1818, only about thirty miles
from Pondwood. No one knew what creature the bones represented, for
even the word dinosaur had not been coined at that time. So our local
fossils remained incognito until six years later, when part of a
skeleton was unearthed near Oxford, England. Then the impressive name,
_Anchisaurus colurus_, was bestowed upon our poor reptile by Professor
Marsh. (Its bones rest in peace in the Yale Museum, Catalog No. 2125, in
case you wish to view the remains.)

The Connecticut dinosaurs have a further distinction--they are very,
very old. While I was frantically scrambling about Asia searching for
dinosaurs, the best we could do was to dig up virtual children so far as
age is concerned. Ours could boast only a paltry one hundred million
years--mere infants when compared to the _two_-hundred-million-year-old
reptiles that wandered over Pondwood Farm.

The face of our state has changed since those dim, dark days of the
Triassic period. It wasn't very attractive then--a sub-arid climate and
a dull, drab landscape of somber green, for the vegetation was only
conifers, ferns, and cycads. Not a single flower to give color to the
forests; no brilliant tints of autumn leaves in October. Neither were
there birds. Even the ancient _Archaeopteryx_, with his startling array
of teeth, had not yet been born. Turtles swam in the ponds, lizards
basked on the rocks, and dinosaurs skipped about the uplands in
incredible millions. The record is baffling in the paucity of its
remains. Bones are amazingly scarce. Why, no one seems to know. The
story is told by "footprints on the sands of time," for our state
produces the finest and the greatest number of dinosaur tracks in all
the world.

Some two hundred million years ago, when the dinosaurs disported
themselves in the Connecticut River estuary, they used to travel across
the exposed mudflats. Eventually high water again covered the expanse,
filled in the footprints with soft mud, and left perfect casts.
Thousands upon thousands of them show that the reptiles had a regular
thoroughfare from west to east; some, even, are imprints of dinosaur
posteriors where they squatted down to rest. Years ago I had studied the
Connecticut bones; thus, with my Gobi experience, I was well equipped to
write a treatise on dinosaurs.

Retiring to my sanctuary under the beech tree, I sat early and late. A
chipmunk became very friendly. I always brought some peanuts in my
pocket. Within a few hours he was sitting on my knee and taking them
from my fingers until his cheek pouches would hold no more. Then he
scurried off to a hole under a root where he was storing his winter's
provender.

One day I had an experience that made me forget all about dinosaurs. I
was writing comfortably when a great black-and-white woodpecker, as big
as a crow, with a red topknot, swung to the side of an oak tree and
began pounding industriously at a rotten branch. Being a naturalist, I
knew him to be the pileated woodpecker, second largest of all
woodpeckers. Never had I seen one before on his native heath. He is
primarily a bird of the northern forests, but individuals who find our
climate congenial and discover wild woodlands will remain here during
the summer. I sat very still until he swooped away into the lower
forest. Then I ran to the house, got a chunk of suet, and pounded it
into crevices of the bark. I was too excited to write more about
dinosaurs that morning. Returning to my tree with a pair of field
glasses, I sat down to watch. In half an hour the magnificent bird was
back again. He discovered the suet immediately and devoured every smitch
in great gulps as his long beak dug it out from beneath the bark. I
replenished the supply and he returned each day for his accustomed meal.
Once I fooled him by putting in some salt pork which he didn't like. I
could see the expression of disgust as he spat out the distasteful
mouthful. As if to vent his annoyance, he began attacking a dead tree
with vicious blows of his pile-driver bill. Finally I called out:

"Hey, woodpecker, if you keep on you'll give yourself a splitting
headache and go blind and deaf. No brain can stand that pounding."

Apparently he didn't understand English, for he continued throwing out
chips as big as my hand. Then I remembered that all woodpeckers not only
have very strong neck muscles but special compensation for absorbing
shock. I need not have worried about his brain. With the field glasses I
could see every detail of his operations. He was sitting comfortably on
the stiff spikes of his tail, just as a telephone repairman rests on the
spurs strapped to his legs when he climbs a pole. Whenever the
woodpecker excavated a beetle or a grub in the dead wood, his barbed
tongue shot out, impaling the food on the hard spearlike tip.
Apparently my friend liked our forest, for he brought his wife and they
remained all summer.

"Dinosaurs" progressed slowly because I had another visitor of the
feminine persuasion. A beautiful doe came up the hill through the forest
as I sat under the beech. Her dainty feet sounded like raindrops on the
leaves and I snuggled tightly against the trunk of my tree. Fortunately,
I was wearing a dark blue shirt and she came within twenty feet,
nuzzling the moss for beechnuts. Suddenly a breath of vagrant wind
brought the scent of me to her nostrils. With a "wo-o-osh" she threw up
her head, gazed intently for a second, and then leaped off into the
forest. But she did not go far. Something, some instinct unfathomable by
human minds, told her she need have no fear. In ten minutes she came
stepping lightly back, head up, exploring the wind with distended
nostrils. She saw me this time, but because I remained absolutely
motionless she began to feed on the scattered beechnuts, continually
stopping to gaze at me, with a curious mixture of suspicion and
confidence. For half an hour I sat perfectly still, but aching muscles
at last made me move only an inch or two. Instantly she was off, her
white flag waving in the air.

The dinosaur article was half finished when, one morning, I heard a
peculiar sound off in the forest. I thought it might be another doe and
stalked it silently, slipping from tree to tree like an Indian. On a
fallen log, below the entrance to a hollow tree, sat a mother raccoon
with two babies, playing just as kittens do. I watched them for a few
moments when some movement sent them scurrying into the door of their
home and out of sight.

I had a pet coon when a boy. It followed me like a dog and was as
mischievous as a monkey. Although he had the run of the house I kept him
in a cage at night, for no one could predict what devilish trick he
would devise while we were sleeping. One day I gave him a lump of sugar.
He sniffed it eagerly, for coons are passionately fond of sweets, then
carried it to his basin. Clasped daintily in his little humanlike hand,
he swished it in the water. Suddenly it disappeared right before his
eyes. Completely mystified, he ran back to me. I gave him another lump,
and the same performance was repeated. There it was, and then it wasn't!
Never have I seen an expression of such complete bewilderment on an
animal's face. Dumping the water out of his basin, he turned it over,
searching the floor cracks and the corners of the room. Defeated, he sat
on his hunkers in front of me as much as to say, "Please explain what
happened."

I refilled his basin and gave him another lump. Again he washed it and
again it disappeared. At last his patience was exhausted. He refused to
come near me or touch more sugar. Obviously he thought I was trying to
make a fool of him. No animal will stand for that. It is surprising that
he could not connect the disappearance of his sugar lump with water, but
the inherited instinct of washing food was too strong to be denied.
Eventually I think he would have discovered it by "trial and error."

Young raccoons, as a rule, are easy to tame, but one George caught in
the pine grove above Brummagem Brook utterly defeated us. After a
fortnight of patient effort the little fellow was still as savage as a
tiger. Finally we gave up and turned him loose at the edge of the pond
where he could find frogs for himself.

Our woods are full of birds and animals because they have remained
undisturbed for so many years. It has become a veritable sanctuary. Most
of the original Connecticut fauna, except wolves, bears, panthers, and
wild turkeys, live here today. It is doubtful whether moose and wapiti
(elk) were ever in Connecticut--at least in historical times. But even
as late as 1934 a black bear wandered into Litchfield County, probably
from the Adirondacks, where bears have been increasing during recent
years. Others may come. I should not be surprised any day to see one
rooting in our garbage pile at the edge of the woods. The last wolf was
killed in 1842 and there seems to be no record of panthers later than
that same year. Wild cats are not rare. We saw one from the porch; and I
disturbed what I am sure was a Canada lynx while shooting grouse on Lou
Guerin's place. Beaver have recently taken up residence on Brummagem
Brook and Benedict Pond, and an otter visits us at infrequent intervals.

We have one animal that was not here during colonial times--the
opossum--which is extending its range northward year by year. Opossum,
of course, are the only marsupials found in the United States and, not
long ago, appeared no farther north than parts of New York State. During
our ten years at Pondwood Farm we have seen them more and more
frequently. Unfortunately for them, they seem to like paved roads. At
night Billie and I often catch a glimpse of two greenish spots and know
it is an opossum. The color is unlike that of any other animal. The eyes
themselves do not shine. It is a reflection of the light from the car's
headlamps on a layer of crystalline substance in the back wall of the
eye, called the _tapetum lucidum_. Animals vary in the amount of this
crystalline substance. Man has virtually none--so little that it does
not reflect light and our eyes do not glow. The eyes of alligators show
distinctly red in the dark, because the light is reflected by passing
through the blood vessels of the eye. A cow has fewer blood vessels and
the glow is white. Of course animals see better than humans at night.
There is some light in what is usually called "the dark" and, because
the _tapetum_ acts as a reflector, it causes the rays of light to
traverse the lens a second time. This, with the ability of some animals
like cats to greatly enlarge the pupils, affords a larger reflecting
surface.

Due to the interruptions of animal friends and my natural-history
investigations, it was two weeks before "Dinosaurs" was completed and
accepted by the magazine. Now the cabin was assured. Within a fortnight
I solemnly took out the first shovelful of earth for the foundations of
my woodland studio. After such strenuous literary exertions, I felt
impelled to exercise my muscles. Across the road lay a tangle of
untouched jungle, where blueberry bushes were laden with ripe fruit.
That had been a great surprise to both Billie and me. We were accustomed
to the low-growing shrubs of the Adirondacks, hardly more than two feet
high. Here the bushes reached ten feet, with berries as large as the end
of my finger. We found them everywhere through the woods. There was
enough fruit on the place to supply fifty families.

We began an ambitious undertaking. Our object was to clear the tangle of
vines and bushes and make a park opposite the house where the
blueberries grew in greatest profusion. It was hot in those first days
of September, and while I swung the brush scythe my body dripped as from
a shower bath. So I stripped off my shirt and reveled in the sun on my
bare back. Billie followed behind with her sickle, cleaning up where I
had cut the heavier growth. We were working close to the road one day
when a gentleman in impeccable attire drove up to call. Never will I
forget the expression of amazement and disgust on his face when he found
the Director of the American Museum of Natural History naked to the
waist, dripping with sweat. His pride would not allow him to alight, for
which we were duly thankful. A few days later he drove by again, only, I
am sure, to see whether I had been shamed into donning proper garments.
Fortunately, I was doing the same thing in exactly the same state of
undress. He waved his hand and passed on. Some days later I saw him
downtown.

"I went past your house the other day," he said, "but you were in
your--ah--usual raiment, so I did not stop."

"Well," I replied, "just as long as this weather continues I shall be
working without my shirt. If it gets any warmer I expect to wear only
bathing trunks."

He is a very nice man, really, and I should not judge him too harshly.
Doubtless he had expected to find me dressed to the teeth in blue serge
coat and white flannels. It was a grievous disappointment to his sense
of propriety that I did not live up to his expectations of what the head
of a world-famed institution should be like.

Billie and I pecked at the jungle across the road every day. Clearing
becomes a fascinating job. Each stroke of the scythe offers something
new. You get tired and think you will stop, but not until the patch in
front has been laid low. That exposes another and your goal advances a
few yards. There is still another beyond that, and so you are
continually enticed to do just a little more. When you finally cease, it
is always with reluctance, and you can hardly wait to get back next
morning.

Billie enjoyed it as much as I did. She and Lord Jitters were the
clean-up squad. At first her arms and back ached distressingly but she
was soon doing a full day's work and asking for more. Jitters took his
part very seriously. He learned that my scythe disturbed field mice,
crickets, and grasshoppers. Obviously these pests must be eliminated or
the job could not be considered well done. He worked continuously, as
busy as a bird dog. Sometimes, in sheer exhaustion, he would rest on a
log or a stone with his little pink mouth half open, but soon was back
at his self-appointed task. Just before sunset we would go to the house
to luxuriate in a cool bath. Dressed in clean clothes, we often returned
to the "workings." Sitting on a stump, with Lord Jitters purring
contentedly beside us, we planned our next day's project and tried to
visualize what it would be like when the clearing was ended. That day
came in early October. We stood beside a huge glacial boulder looking
over the lovely park filled with pine trees, white birches, blueberry
bushes, and laurel. In a month we had cleared more than two acres. At
first it had seemed an impossible task, but steady pecking away defeated
the jungle, just as rain and frost and wind wear down the highest
mountain.

That little park is peculiarly our own. It will remain so as long as we
live at Pondwood Farm, for it is redolent of memories shared by no one
else--memories of happy labor and pride in accomplishment. It was, of
course, because we were beautifying our own land and had done it with
our own hands.

One morning when we went out to the clearing we were amazed to see a
brown bush that had been green the night before. No bush could have died
and turned brown in a single night. Then we noticed that the bush seemed
to be in gentle motion, even though there was not a breath of wind. It
was covered with great brown Monarch butterflies from top to bottom.
They clustered like festoons of grapes on every leaf and
twig--thousands of them. I had seen a similar phenomenon some years
before on the Connecticut shore and knew this was the migration of the
Monarchs. But these were off their course. The flight usually starts
from the Hudson Bay region in August, follows a coastwise highway, and
reaches the Gulf states in November. Most butterflies have only a few
days of life which centers about the spot where they were hatched, but
the Monarchs are an exception. They travel thousands of miles before
reaching their winter home. Sometimes they move southward in small
flocks; more often the flight numbers millions, which requires days to
pass a given point.

When they reach their destination in the Gulf states, exhausted from
days and weeks of flying, they settle in vast swarms on trees and bushes
there to sleep away the winter in a state of semi-hibernation. Often
Monarchs use the same trees year after year in their southern home,
although the same individuals never return a second time. The great
flocks break up in the spring and the Monarchs go northward, stopping to
lay their eggs on the leaves of milkweed over almost all of North
America from California to Alaska, and from the Gulf states to Hudson
Bay. The larvae have greenish-white bodies banded with black and white
and bear on their backs two pairs of slender filaments. Because this
butterfly secretes an acrid fluid distasteful to birds it is immune from
their attacks.

The Monarchs rested in our little park all day. We counted them
carefully and found two thousand and twenty-three on that single bush.
The next morning they had gone; whether in the night or with the first
light of day we never knew.

During the first week of October the curtain rose on the Berkshire
pageant. Golden days in a golden world. Gradually, hour by hour, rainbow
colors crept over the forest like shifting sunlight through a cathedral
window. The birch and beech leaves changed to burnished yellow; oaks,
sugar maples, and blueberry bushes blazed with tongues of slow-burning
fire. In the pond, softened by the water, the reflections were as
exquisite as a pastel painting.

My vacation had ended and I was back at the Museum. But we spent each
week end at the farm even though it was becoming really cold. We had
given little thought to heating problems because at first we did not
expect to use the house during the winter. But all that had changed, at
least in my mind. To test Billie's reactions, one evening while we were
sitting in front of the living-room fire I remarked casually:

"I'll call the plumber next week and have him drain the pipes. Then we
can close the house for the winter."

"What do you mean, 'close the house'? Do you think we are going to let
it sit here all by itself during the whole winter and not come near the
farm? It will be wonderful when the snow comes."

"Well, we come, but there isn't any heat. You'll be awfully
uncomfortable."

"I won't either. We can get oil stoves and be perfectly warm."

That was what I had hoped, but I wanted her to propose it. So we
proceeded to buy oil heaters for every room. Since electricity did not
come nearer than four miles we already had a kerosene stove in the
kitchen, the refrigerator ran by oil, and our only light was from lamps.
I loathe kerosene. It took me an hour every day to fill the damned lamps
and trim the wicks and another hour to get the smell off my hands and
clothes, for a few drops of oil always managed to lodge on my pants. I
used candles exclusively on my expeditions in the Gobi, for the taste
and odor of kerosene inevitably found its way into food, sleeping bags,
and every item of equipment. Still, it seemed to be the only answer to
the problem of the farm. Our experience was no happier than I feared.
The smell of kerosene permeated the house like cheap perfume, and one
day the caretaker lighted a heater in our bedroom while we were away. He
left it turned too high. Greasy black soot covered the fresh blue paper,
the filmy white curtains appeared to have been dragged through mud, and
the rug was a sight to behold. Of course the room had to be redecorated
from floor to ceiling. Nevertheless Pondwood Farm was not deserted
during a single week end.

Having decided to make a winter of it, we filled the cellar with wood,
put down beets and carrots in sand, bought half-a-dozen pumpkins for
Thanksgiving, and made ourselves snug. Nature did likewise. The leopard
frogs and old bull croakers ceased to entertain us during the day; no
longer did box turtles sun themselves on the rocks or break the mirror
surface of the water with tiny ripples. They had dug far into the mud at
the bottom of the pond, there to sleep away the cold months in a state
of half-life. Chipmunks and white-footed mice disappeared from the stone
walls and woodchucks, which had sunned themselves in lazy abandon on the
rim of the rock garden, went far underground. I discovered a burrow with
tracks leading inward but none coming out.

"Let's see what he is like when he goes to sleep," I said to Billie.
"I'll get a pickax and a shovel and we'll dig him out."

It was a bigger job than we anticipated, for he had dug much more than a
foxhole. We followed his corridor ten feet until it widened into a snug
chamber lined with grass. There was Mister Woodchuck, curled up in a
ball, sound asleep, his tail wrapped about his head. Not a sign of life
could we find even when we moved him. Because I am a curious sort of
fellow and spent two years in medical college studying comparative
anatomy, I have a stethoscope in the house. Billie ran to get it while I
let the cold wind of winter play over the body of Mister Woodchuck. With
the instrument clamped to his chest, I could get only fourteen or
fifteen faint heartbeats a minute instead of almost a hundred. At first
I thought he was not breathing at all. Then I discovered he would not
have a single respiration for about ten minutes, followed by ten or
fifteen breaths. Normally he would breathe eighty or ninety times a
minute. He seemed to be out like a light, but I knew he wasn't.

"Why don't we take him into the house and warm him up before the fire?"
I said. "Then he'll think spring has come. We can say the woodchuck has
come out of his hole and create a sensation."

Billie was outraged. "You wouldn't be so mean! And anyway we'd have a
woodchuck on our hands all winter and what on earth would we do with
him? When we were away he'd probably go to sleep under my dressing table
as soon as the house got cold. I'm not going to have woodchucks lying
about all over the place. We'll cover him up and let him sleep."

And so we did. He came out next spring as happy as a lark and never knew
we had invaded his bedroom during the winter.

The gray squirrels did not hibernate. All through the winter we saw
their little tracks in the snow, and some rabbit footprints, but for
weeks in the coldest weather there might not be a sign of life in the
woods. The rabbits had buried themselves deep in the snow under brush
heaps and gone into a state of semi-hibernation.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we humans could avoid food shortages and fox
John L. Lewis's perennial coal strikes by just hibernating? As a matter
of fact it is reported that some Russian peasants who suffer from a
chronic state of famine, retire into a somnolent condition four or five
months of the winter. They sleep almost constantly, eat sparingly, and
move only to replenish a fire or to drink a swallow of water. They
endeavor to keep down the body metabolism and to waste as little animal
heat as possible. Of course this is exactly what other animals do. The
condition resembles hibernation.

Until mid-December the weather was superb. I remember one bright
windless day when Billie and I were clearing a grove in the pine forest.
Dressed in a wool shirt and flannel trousers, I swung the ax while she
beavered away with her hatchet. It was really hot. I stripped to a
lightweight undershirt and was perfectly comfortable. To our intense
surprise, the thermometer registered only ten degrees above zero. The
days were often like that.

We looked forward immensely to the first snow. Snow in the country! How
lovely that would be! I said as much to Deacon Cooper.

"Well, we don't like it. We don't like it at all. Can't get about.
You'll find out. See if you don't."

Willys Smith, the First Selectman, echoed the same sentiments when I
asked if he would keep our road open.

"I'll do my part if you really do come. Winters up here are pretty hard.
I don't think you'll like it." Still we were unconvinced.

The first snow arrived just before Christmas. Sitting in the window, we
watched the great cottony flakes transform Pondwood Farm into a world of
incredible beauty. Stone walls lost shape and became only rounded
ridges; the road disappeared; the lawn was an unbroken expanse of purest
white, level with the porch. All day and all night the snow drifted
down. By morning we were prisoners in a white-walled castle. Delight
changed to consternation. How on earth would we get out? I had important
engagements at the Museum on Monday and a radio program. Frantic
telephone calls eventually brought our caretaker and Willys Smith with a
snowplow. We were evacuated just in time.

Of course then we were not real country dwellers. Five days of the week
our bodies were committed to New York while our hearts remained at
Pondwood Farm. Had there been no necessity to reach the city on a
definite day we could have sat comfortably at home until normal
procedure cleared the roads. Nevertheless, we definitely do not like
snow. Winds pile drifts eight and ten feet high and thaws often form a
crust. One cannot walk in the woods; travel anywhere is fraught with
difficulties. It obstructs our particular style of living. Our skiing
friends hoot with derision.

"Why don't you learn to ski? Then you would look forward to snow."

Billie and I were heedful of their advice that first winter. We
purchased two pairs of superior skis; two pairs of poles, or whatever
they are called; two pairs of boots; skiing jackets and pants. We looked
very professional. Any sporting-goods store would have been proud to
have us model what the well-dressed couple should wear when about to
ski. But there the similarity to professionals ended.

We were able to shuffle along on level ground or a slight decline,
awkwardly, to be sure, but still we shuffled. Even the gentle slope of
the meadow produced no evil results. Thus encouraged, we laboriously
climbed to the summit of a steep hill. I had been told that real skiers
waxed their skis. So we waxed ours. That was a great mistake. We would
have moved quite fast enough without the wax.

"I'll go first and show you how to do it," I said to Billie.

For a hundred yards all was well. I felt a thrill of pride and mounting
exhilaration in mastering a new art. But speed increased alarmingly, in
spite of frantic prods with the steel-shod poles. I was no longer
Captain of my Ship or Master of my Fate. Suddenly the skis spread apart
in front and crossed behind. Motion ceased so abruptly that I pitched
forward on my head. How it was possible to assume the position in which
I eventually found myself I shall never know. Folded like a jackknife,
head between my legs, an ostrich in the snow! By no possible effort on
my part could I move an inch. My skis were locked as securely as in a
vise. To my everlasting humiliation I yelled lustily for Billie. She did
not hear the cries muffled as they were by snow, but saw my predicament.
Down the hill she came, intent only on rescuing her husband from what
was not only an extremely undignified position but one of apparent
danger. She met her Waterloo just above my location. An unpredicted
wobble of the left ski precipitated her on her back. Although unable to
rise, she could unbuckle her skis, which was accomplished in record
time. She waded over to me. I regret to report that she could not
refrain from a bit of wifely gloating, once it was apparent that I was
uninjured and only mad. I never got in that position again--it is
doubtful if anyone ever could--but our skiing progressed virtually not
at all. We made tentative dates with ourselves to obtain instruction but
nothing ever materialized. Eventually we agreed that skiing was not for
us--that we didn't like it. Of course that was only sour grapes, for it
must be one of the most thrilling sports in the world and I wish
devoutly that we were able to enjoy it.

Even though snow locked us in we never feared privation, for "Benny, the
Traveling Butcher," became our steadfast friend. Every Saturday morning
he arrived on schedule with meat or left it in the mailbox at the foot
of the hill if the road was impassable for his truck. Not only does he
provide our sustenance but he is the purveyor of neighborhood news.
Billie seldom misses a visit in the kitchen with Benny. Moreover, he is
her source for information of every conceivable kind. Whenever there is
an emergency in household economy Billie says; "I'll talk to Benny."

His conversational idioms are typically New England. One day Billie was
talking with him at the wagon when I stepped off the porch, slipped, and
fell heavily. She leaped to my assistance and herself did an Imperial
Purler. For a few moments she was half-unconscious.

"Benny," I called, "is she all right? Do you think she's hurt?"

"No, Doctor, not bad. But it ain't done her no real _good_."

    *    *    *    *    *

So the winter passed, but spring came slowly up our way. Mentally,
Billie and I rushed the season. Whenever a bit of green showed on a
bush, or the willow stems blushed a brighter red, we were sure that
spring was just around the corner. Eventually the snow disappeared, warm
sun started the buds, and by the middle of April the pond was entirely
free of ice. Frogs croaked and peepers called in the swamp. My cabin had
been built and furnished. There could be no excuse, so far as privacy
was concerned, if I did not produce a masterpiece of literature.

At the far end of the pond, just inside the margin of the woods, a
depression intrigued Billie. Several times I found her seated on its
edge in deep thought. She said nothing to me until one day at luncheon.
Then, with an air of finality and great satisfaction, she announced:

"I've figured it all out. We can dig as far as that tree and it will
make it twenty-five feet long and put in a pipe from the pond and change
the outlet of the dam and let the water run in through the pipe and out
over the lip."

"What in the name of common sense," I asked, "is this gibberish?"

"Why, the swimming pool, of course. What else?"

"How should I know? You've never mentioned it to me."

"Don't be silly. I must have. I've been thinking of it for days." (In
parentheses I may say that Billie always believes I know exactly of what
she is thinking and often considers it superfluous to use the English
language.)

"You know," she said, "that the pond has a mud bottom. Even if we put in
a lot of sand it isn't deep enough. We've got to have a swimming pool.
And I want one right in the woods. An 'ole-swimmin'-hole' sort of
thing."

I didn't argue. After luncheon we walked along the edge of the pond to
the appointed spot. She demonstrated that the surface of the pool would
be several feet below the level of the pond; therefore a ten-foot pipe
through the bank would give us a continual flow of water into the pool
and out at the other end.

I was completely sold on the idea. How much? That was the question. We
consulted a well-known contractor. He gave us a price. Another so-called
contractor pooh-poohed that figure.

"I'll do it for less. I've made dozens of pools."

Well, everyone learns by experience. We were lured by the lower estimate
but discovered later that the man had never constructed a pool in his
life. The hole was dug, walled with stones set in cement, and the outlet
and inlet pipes installed. The great day came when the pool was to be
filled for the first time. Our contractor brought his mother, brother,
and fiance. We provided a bottle of wine. Everyone drank a toast as the
pipe was opened. The water gushed in--and right out again! A sieve
would have been about as useful.

I will not enlarge on the remainder of the story. It was too sad a
chronicle. Our contractor tried cement in spots. It didn't work. After I
had consulted the chief engineer at the Museum, who understood water
pressures, it was evident that the inside must be completely cemented.
It taught us a lesson we won't forget.

The pool, however, was entirely successful in giving us pleasure. To lie
on one's back in the cool water gazing up at a canopy of green leaves,
with flowers, moss, and ferns making a colorful margin, is a Berkshire
paradise. In later summers it became the center of our social activities
on hot days. We have pool parties when friends spend hours loafing in
the hammock and garden chairs, taking a dip now and then, and devouring
the luncheon which Walter brings over in the boat. Our pool gave ideas
to several neighbors who had brooks running through their woods. By
merely digging out a basin they discovered it was possible to make an
"ole swimmin' hole" at little expense. But if any of you try it, take a
leaf out of our book and use cement.




[Illustration]

  V

  _Two Anglers Are Born_


"Billie," I said one day at the pool, "there are pickerel and perch and
probably bullheads in that thar pond. With mine own eyes have I seen
them."

"What about it? Don't expect me to believe you are going to catch them.
I've heard you scoff at fishermen too many times."

"True. But we've worked on the farm exclusively for a year. It's time we
looked about and appraised some of our other assets."

"Well, if by 'other assets' you mean fishing, I'm not interested. I
never caught a fish in my life and haven't the slightest desire to do
so."

That was that, so we took a dip in the pool and discussed the matter no
further. But I am not one to be easily dissuaded once an idea is born in
my mind. That same afternoon I betook myself to the Highland Hardware
Shop in Winsted to consult our friend Harry. I had seen fishing
equipment in the store.

"Harry," I asked, "have you ever heard of fish in our pond?"

"Why, Dr. Andrews, of course. It's a famous place for pickerel and
perch. I'm no fisherman, but I've heard others talk."

"Give me two casting rods and an assortment of your best lures. I'm
about to find out what is in our piece of water."

That afternoon, when the sun was beginning to dip behind the trees, I
suggested we go for a row on the pond. A rod with a spoon hook attached
was concealed in the boat. Once away from shore, I remarked casually:

"Why don't you just drop this thing in the water and pay out the line?
We're not fishing, just rowing. I'm curious to see what will happen."

Billie did as I suggested, albeit with a bored expression on her face.
We had not gone fifty yards when a vicious jerk almost pulled the rod
out of her hands.

"A fish! I've got a fish! Quit rowing. Do something. For goodness' sake,
don't just sit there. Do something!"

"Do something yourself," I retorted. "Reel him in."

She reeled. The fish leaped two feet clear of the water in a spectacular
arching dive.

"Oh, he's gone. Why did you let him get away? No, he isn't. I feel him
pulling. I'll die if he gets off."

He didn't get off, and in due time I lifted out a beautiful pickerel
twenty-five inches long that weighed two and one half pounds.

That was not the only one. Before the shades of night had fallen nine
pickerel lay in the kitchen sink, not one less than eighteen inches in
length. The pond had not been fished in years and swarmed with pickerel.
Billie admitted she had had a wonderful time. It needed no persuasion on
my part to convince her that fishing was fun.

The next week we trolled every day. I have forgotten how many pickerel
and perch we took, but it was about thirty or forty. Some we ate; others
were given to the neighbors. But a time came when the fish were no
longer interested in our lures. Perch were rising all over the pond to a
hatch of flies. So I bought some artificial flies; just any flies, for I
did not know one from the other. I remember there was a Royal Coachman
and a Pink Lady, but that meant nothing to us. The only Pink Lady of our
acquaintance was a kind of gin drink. I tied a fly to a casting line
without benefit of leader, and we sallied forth. But we could not get
the darned thing out with the steel rod. The measure of our ignorance
was that we even tried. Finally Billie deposited her fly on the water
and I paddled gently away while she payed out line. Believe it or not, a
big perch grabbed the fly. He must have been hungry or felt that he had
a mission to perform. Anyway he demonstrated that fish really could be
caught on flies and stimulated us to advance further in the piscatorial
art. That night I telephoned a neighbor, Frederick Barbour, one of the
most expert anglers I know.

"Frederick," I said, "would you be willing to give a couple of amateurs
a bit of instruction?"

He agreed, and arrived the next day with his fly rod. First, he fished
us on the lawn. He tried to instill in our minds only the mechanics of
the job--the wrist action, basic principle of all casting, which brings
the tip of the rod into play. As he flicked out forty or fifty feet of
line it was so graceful and looked so easy that Billie and I were
entranced. This was art. Whether or not we caught a fish it would be fun
to cast a fly. We would learn to do it or darned well know the reason
why.

Frederick extolled the trout streams in the neighborhood and the bass to
be caught in Doolittle Lake and Benedict Pond, almost adjoining our own
property. Before night had fallen a letter was in the mail requesting
Mr. L. L. Bean of Freeport, Maine, to send us two fly rods, lines, and
reels. Fortunately I ordered cheap ones. I had sense enough to know that
any decent equipment would be ruined before we learned the rudiments of
fly casting. The new rods were seven feet long and weighed three ounces.

Our first experience nearly brought disaster. Frederick emphasized that
we must learn to cast with a gut leader and fly complete. I affixed a
tiny bit of cork over the point of the hook and began to practice on
the lawn while Billie watched. Lord Jitters was in attendance, of
course, and tried to catch the line. It was a new game, he thought,
especially devised for his enjoyment. To my delight I made a passable
twenty-foot cast but the cork flew off. The hook snagged Jitters firmly
in the back. Yowling, he raced for the nearest maple tree. My reel sang
and kept on singing as the Lord climbed higher. With every twitch of the
line he went up a notch or two. I could not extricate the hook and
Jitters was nearing the topmost branches of the tree. We tried to entice
him with a dish of milk, but nothing would bring him down. He was
outraged that such an indignity should have happened to him, of all
people, and prepared to spend the day, or even the night, in the tree.
At last, aided by a ladder, I climbed to within a few feet of his roost
and cut the line. After an hour he descended and Billie removed the hook
and soothed his injured feelings.

Both Billie and I became fascinated with casting. We practiced hours on
the lawn, each criticizing the other. It was the blind leading the
blind; nevertheless, competition was involved and we made progress. One
day Frederick invited us to the Hollenbeck Club near Canaan. There we
both took a trout on a wet fly--a bucktail, to be exact--and our pride
matched the weight of the fish.

The season ended before we could present a dry fly well enough to fool
even the most stupid trout. But bass fishing began on July 1. That was
something else again. One of our friends had given us a dry fly
designed by Dr. Jack Hartranft of New Rochelle. An extraordinary
creation it is, three inches long, of white and brown deer hair with a
red wool body. The Museum's entomologist assures me it bears not the
slightest resemblance to any known insect. Nevertheless, it takes bass
when everything else fails to bring a rise. Billie and I almost
despaired of learning to cast the thing. We called it the "Stuffed
Albatross." Wind resistance makes timing very difficult, and with our
little seven-foot rods we were lucky to get out even twenty feet of
line. But in the evening of opening day we sallied forth to Benedict
Pond hopefully, although without conviction.

Benedict Pond is a beautiful place. Only a hundred and twenty-five miles
from New York, it remains as lovely and remote as though it were in the
depths of the Canadian wilderness. One might well expect to see a bear
amble out from the surrounding forest or a moose champing lily pads in
the marsh along the northern shore. It is only fifteen or twenty feet
deep and a mile long by half as wide, but it could have been designed by
a bass architect for his fellow fish. The interlocking roots of water
plants and low shrubs form floating islands, some of which have anchored
themselves in deep water. The bushes swarm with insects, frogs, and
mice. So at feeding time, in the evening and early morning, largemouthed
bass lie close under the rim of the vegetation, waiting for food to drop
into the water before their very noses.

Billie and I were alone on the pond that evening of the opening day. We
agreed she was to fish first while I paddled. The pond was "working" and
the water far from clear. That suited our lack of skill, for the fish
could not see so well. Billie caught a small bass and I got another--the
first fish either of us had ever taken on a dry fly. We were thrilled.
It was Billie's turn again. Indicating a tiny cove in the marginal
bushes, she said:

"Right there is where I am going to hook a real fish. If I can only get
the darned fly out!"

After a couple of false casts to judge the distance, she dropped the
Stuffed Albatross in a really professional manner right at the entrance
to the little inlet. Hardly had it touched the water when a submarine
volcano erupted. A great bronze body shot into the air in a welter of
spray. Instinctively Billie set the hook. The bass jumped again, this
time so close to the bushes that he almost landed on a projecting
branch. She gave the little rod everything it would stand and turned the
fish toward the open pond. In a wild rush it dashed for a weed bed.
There it sulked on the bottom. She might have been hooked to a stone so
far as any sign of life was concerned. Neither of us knew how to meet
such a situation.

"If you pull hard you'll break the leader," I said. "Why don't you just
twitch the rod? Perhaps the prick of the hook will make him move."

Billie thought it a sound idea. She twitched and twitched for what
seemed hours. Actually it was only about ten minutes. Slowly the line
began to cut the water upward.

"Get ready," I yelled. "He is going to jump. Pull him down."

Jump he did, breaking the surface like a leaping salmon, shaking his
great head as a bulldog worries a rat. Then the bass headed for open
water. I paddled frantically to keep pace as he stripped line off the
reel. The rush ended well out in the pond. This way and that he dashed,
but the pressure of the rod at last wore him down. The fight suddenly
ended and the huge fish drifted to the surface on his side. We had no
landing net, so as Billie drew him in I slipped my fingers under his
distended gills and lifted him into the boat.

"I want a cigarette," Billie said weakly. "I'm glad that's ended."

"I do too. But look at that fish if you're strong enough."

In my box was a tape measure and scales. Twenty inches long and five
pounds two ounces. The largest bass taken in Benedict Pond during the
past ten years! Moreover, the tackle was a seven-foot, three-ounce rod
and a dry fly! Fishermen, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The soft darkness of a summer's night enveloped hill and dale before we
reached Pondwood Farm. I could hardly wait to telephone Fred Barbour,
Bud Smith, Reg Rowland, Reg Lewis, Freddie Wildman, and other sportsman
neighbors. I think I gave the correct weight the first time. But
unconsciously it upped a bit with each recital. Soon we had convinced
ourselves that the bass weighed seven pounds and was thirty inches long.
That evening two anglers were born.

This new interest in fishing came as a godsend to me. Aside from
shooting, my recreations had been confined exclusively to horses. Polo,
fox hunting, and training ponies were my only sports. I could not
conceive of a time when I would be divorced from horses. But the time
came, nevertheless. Shortly before we purchased Pondwood Farm a bad
spill in a polo match ended all that. Two vertebrae were severely
injured. The doctors said another fall would either kill me or I'd be
crippled for life. It wasn't worth the risk. I sold my ponies and gear
and have not had a leg across a horse from that day to this. It was hard
to give up. The smell of a stable was like the smoke of a forbidden
cigar to a tobacco addict; watching a polo game made me miserable for
days. I tried golf and tennis but could develop no real interest. So far
as sports were concerned I was completely baffled, left in the air. For
one who has lived an active life, to be suddenly cut off from all
outdoor recreation is a very real tragedy. The farm supplied an outlet
during that first year. We were so busy that we had no time or thought
for anything else. But most of the work was in the past and I wanted
something else.

Fly fishing, since Billie enjoyed it, too, solved my problem. Possibly
it may solve the problem of others; I recommend it to them. Some of our
friends feel that a woman spoils their sport; they assume that she can
never fish or shoot well enough to be anything but a nuisance in the
field. Of course that is simply poppycock. How do they know she cannot
learn to cast a fly or shoot a gun as well, or better, than they
themselves, if she is never given a chance to try? Most men will spend
neither time nor trouble to teach their wives or daughters to shoot or
fish, but take infinite pains with their sons. To me, it doesn't make
sense. It is just plain unfair discrimination because of sex. It is true
that few women care for outdoor sports as much as men. Billie is by no
means so keen as I am but she enjoys both fishing and shooting in
moderation. As she puts it: "I always like to fish but I don't like to
fish always."

Well, I don't expect her to shoot or fish to the exclusion of feminine
pursuits. If she is not in the mood for either I never press the point,
for I know she would not enjoy it. But a day in the field or on a stream
with her gives me not only pleasure but happiness, and there is a vast
difference between the two. If she makes a difficult shot, or takes a
trout that will rise only to a perfectly presented fly, I am bursting
with pride. I think we have had some of our happiest hours while we were
fishing or shooting together.

Companionship in the woods is a very special kind of relationship which
is achieved nowhere else. Moreover, it is not to be taken casually. How
many of you know men who are delightful in a club, or at a dinner, but
would you take them fishing or shooting? No. They wouldn't fit and you
realize it instinctively. Nature makes one shed conventions like a
garment. The veneer of social life is as brittle as glass and breaks as
easily in a grouse cover or on a trout stream. Fundamentals inevitably
appear in nature's cathedral. It is an unseen confessional where men and
women unconsciously reveal their true selves.

Billie and I fished together almost every day that summer and I became a
passionate dry-fly addict. Trout, of course, are the ultimate in an
angler's life because they offer so many interesting problems and know
so much more than one expects. Discovering what fly they will or will
not take; where they lie at certain times of the day and their moods;
how to present a fly to entice or fool them requires experience and
study. Then there is the variety of casts to cope with unusual
situations in a stream; the skill and artistry in learning to float down
a fly like a natural insect; the peace and quiet of a brook when one
becomes a part of Nature's Great Revival in the spring.

These and many other subtle joys are what gives a man "troutitis." It is
a dread disease for which no permanent cure has ever been discovered or
ever will be. Medical practitioners themselves are most susceptible to
its pernicious effects. Bacteriologists poring over microscopes have
explored the little-known worlds of autointoxication, prickly heat, and
_herpes zoster_, but without success. The bacilli never have been
isolated. They swarm in countless millions through the angler's
bloodstream, play leapfrog in his lymph, impregnate the very marrow of
his bones. The attacks come periodically and with startling suddenness.
During the winter the germs lie dormant. The patient pursues his normal
vocation with no outward sign that his body is host to a deadly virus.
But, like malaria, a change of seasons revives the sleeping bugs. The
first sight of a trout stream in the spring, rushing between banks of
pregnant vegetation, leaping, laughing, calling, reduces the patient to
a pitiable semblance of his once-normal self. He shakes as with a palsy.
Hot flashes pursue each other up and down his spine; the palms of his
hands sweat profusely; every nerve in his body pushes through his skin
and curls at the end. In a matter of moments he has become a sick man, a
very sick man, indeed. Quick action is advised after the initial attack,
else the patient will lapse into the secondary stages. These may have
disastrous consequences to domestic felicity.

If, however, his wife follows these simple directions, immediate and
gratifying results are guaranteed. She must rush for his fishing rod and
creel, fly box and waders, and lead him to them, even though he may be
in a state of daze and ocular disbelief. Once arrayed, she should point
him in the direction of the nearest stream, give a little push, a pat on
his back, smile brightly, and carol: "Have a good time, darling. Don't
come home till you feel better." Then let nature take its course.

Thus the crisis of the disease will be avoided, the recovery almost
instantaneous, and the dividends enormous. The patient will return a
well man, a more loving husband and father, and a being at peace with
all the world. Billie has learned not to push with bare hands against
the onrushing wave of my early spring troutitis.

So one morning in May, with a song on my lips and the blessing of my
wife, I hied to the enticing waters of Sandy Brook, just at the edge of
our own property. In my hand rested the "Fairy Rod," a wand of split
bamboo weighing one ounce and five eighths made by Leonard of angling
fame. True, it is not a practical rod. Wind renders it virtually
useless, and only short casts are possible. But for me it is not the
number of fish in my creel; it is the thrill I have in catching them
that counts. On that lovely morning I decided to fish a stretch of water
where no big trout lay. At most twelve-inches running, perhaps, to half
a pound. With them the Fairy Rod would give me real sport. Turning off
the main highway beyond Grandpa Phelps's house, I swung across the
meadow to my favorite pool where Brummagem enters Sandy Brook. As usual,
I lighted my pipe and sat down to watch the water. It is important to
know what is happening in the trout's day before one begins to fish.

Above the junction of the two streams the current swirls close to the
left bank, curls about a glacial boulder, and swings outward through a
narrow funnel, to spend itself in the basin of a gravel pool. Feeding
trout invariably lie near the big rock. There floating insects are
caught for an instant in the backwash before they lose themselves in the
downward rush of fast water.

The sun-warmed flannel shirt was very comfortable and fragrant smoke
drifted up from my pipe in white plumes and spirals. Not a swirl broke
the surface of the stream. I became interested in a kingbird dashing off
from a branch to catch flying insects. How could that tiny bill make a
clack like castanets? I didn't know. A muskrat poked its nose out from a
fallen tree across the smaller brook, regarded me with friendly eyes,
swam downstream, and landed not ten feet from where I rested against a
log. In his mouth was a trailing lily bulb. He sat up on his hunkers,
held the root in both forepaws like a squirrel, and nibbled leisurely.
At any moment I expected him to offer me a bite, but while the
appreciation of my company might extend to his heart it did not reach
the region of his stomach. I got no taste of bulb.

For half an hour I sat motionless, enjoying the sun's warmth and the
wild creatures that did not resent my presence. Then, suddenly, a cloud
of insects appeared above the pool. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, danced
in a close-packed ball, dipping, climbing higher, only to drop again.
Some of the little flies were caught in the swirling water and drifted
downward, struggling on dampened wings to free themselves. Black gnats.
A hatch had just been liberated from the eggs. That meant trout. Just to
be sure I scooped some of the tiny things from the water with a
three-inch pocket net. My artificial flies matched them but there was
nothing half so small. Stringing my rod, I extracted a nine-foot 4X
leader from the wet felt in the round black box, affixed a Black Gnat,
tied on a Number 14 hook, and sat down to wait.

In less than ten minutes the surface of the pool was broken by a rise;
then another and another. Trout were feeding eagerly above the rock. I
waded out, half concealed by an overhanging hemlock on the left, and
dropped my fly at the near end of the pool. A fish rose, hung doubtfully
for a moment, but turned away. The fly drifted down until the current
caught the line. At the next cast a ten-inch trout leaped in a beautiful
curve over the fly. It happened again and again. Fish rose right beside
the artificial fly, leaped over it, but would not take. Sometimes they
slapped it with their tails. I sent a long roll cast to the backwash
above the rock. Same result. Obviously the fly was too big. It looked
unnatural in the midst of those diminutive gnats.

Wading downstream, to avoid becoming silhouetted against the sky, I
stepped out upon the bank. In the pocket of my fishing coat was a
half-forgotten box of flies--Lady Beaverkill, Royal Coachman, Gray
Gnats, Apple Green--all too big. But there, nestled in a separate
compartment beneath a mass of Quill Gordons, lay a single Black Gnat
tied on a Number 18 hook, so tiny it was well-nigh invisible. I whooped
with joy. My temperature rose three degrees at least.

Wading back to my position behind the hemlock, I dropped the first cast
just at the edge of the grassy bank on the far side of the pool. For an
instant the fly remained motionless, then drifted downward a foot or
two. In a splash it disappeared, and a thrill like an electric current
shot up the line through the sensitive rod in my hand.

A flick of the wrist set the hook. The battle was on. In nine minutes by
my watch (I am curious about the time it takes to land a fish) I slid
the net under a twelve-inch trout. Then it was all excitement. The
little fly did the trick. Standing in that one spot, I took eight fish
during the next hour. Three of the smaller ones were returned to the
water because the limit is ten and the day was young.

To release a trout without damage requires care and understanding. In
the first place the skin of a fish is alive. The outermost layer is
composed of living cells. It is quite different with humans. The living
part of our skin is covered with several layers of hardened cells which,
although transparent, are completely dead. These protect the vital cells
underneath. A fish can expose the living cells only because it exists in
a liquid medium. Yet even so fish are not completely without protection.
They are covered with mucus or slime secreted by the living cells and
exuded onto the surface. This slime, in addition to other functions,
protects the skin against bacteria, fungus, and aquatic parasites. When
one finds fish with sores on their bodies it usually means that an
accident has removed a section of the slime. Susceptibility to injury by
loss of mucus varies in different species. Trout are particularly
vulnerable. They should never be touched with dry hands. When I wish to
return a fish to the stream, I grasp it by the tip of the lower jaw
while under water and detach the hook with a pair of tweezers. If it is
necessary to hold its body, one should be particularly careful not to
squeeze unduly. By exercising care, ninety-five out of a hundred trout
will survive. I have fished with men who took great credit to themselves
because they released most of their catch during a day's sport. Yet the
next morning the stream shores were spotted with dead fish. Their will
was good but they simply did not understand the physiology of a trout.

Five fish from the Junction Pool were enough for me. Other days were
coming. So I sat on a cushion of star moss and smoked my pipe. The
insects were still swirling above the water, but the trout stopped
rising as suddenly as they began. Evidently their stomachs were full.
From a bank above the pool I could see half-a-dozen beauties lying
quietly on the bottom obviously enjoying the process of digestion. Being
careful not to disturb their peace, I waded upstream, casting at the
edge of the current or seeking shady spots beneath overhanging banks.
The Black Gnat fly was no good up there. I tried half-a-dozen others and
at last found that the Lady Beaverkill, with its little yellow egg sac,
was what they wanted.

Just below the bridge across Sandy Brook a plume of white water shoots
out from a narrow funnel between two boulders.

"If," said I to myself, "a rainbow is on the prowl, that's where he will
be lying. Just for fun I'll try a Spent Wing Coachman."

My first cast landed at the tail of the plume. The fly drifted a few
feet and I flicked it out a moment too soon, just as a swirl broke the
water. The dark shadow looked nothing like a ten-inch trout.

"By Jove, there's a big one there. What'll I do if I nail him with this
Fairy Rod? Well, we'll see."

By luck I dropped the fly again within six inches of where it first
touched the water. Actually the Spent Wing did not reach the surface. A
lithe body shot out and caught it in midair. I set the hook, and a
shiver ran up my spine. This was no hatchery fish. He was an old
sockdologer from the Farmington River. As he felt the prick of the hook
(a Number 14) the rainbow made a spectacular leap, landing full on a
midstream rock. In one flop he was off. After two circles about the pool
he dashed directly toward me down the brook. Frantically I stripped in
the line. The fish passed within six inches of my leg and started back
to the Farmington River five miles away. Of course I could only let him
go. I gave the tiny rod everything it would stand but he hardly felt the
check. Fifty feet of line was out before the trout came to a temporary
rest behind a ledge.

I stumbled downstream, recovering line, for I knew he'd start another
rush. They say there are no atheists in a foxhole! Neither do atheists
belong on a trout stream. I prayed mightily that I might arrive at his
stopping place before he broke the hairlike leader against a rock. Slack
line, plenty of it, that was the thing, and it saved my fish. I got to
the edge of the pool just as he began another rush toward the
Farmington. Thank God, I knew the stream. Below him was a stretch of
fast water over shallows ending in another pool. Mentally I measured the
distance and the line on my reel. About sixty feet and there was eighty
feet of line! If he didn't stop, my trout was lost. The delicate rod
bent almost double and I blessed the maker. That willowy seven-foot
length of split bamboo was never meant to fight such a fish but it stood
the test. My rainbow headed straight for a boulder in the center of the
pool. There he halted.

Even though I was wearing hobnailed wading sandles over my boots, the
loose stones were my downfall. Dashing downstream, I slipped, wildly
waved one arm, and sat down with a terrific splash in the middle of
Sandy Brook. Both boots were full of water, my hat bobbed away happily
on the current, and my left hip ached where it had struck a stone. It
hurt awfully. But the rod was safe. I struggled up, took two steps,
gurgled like a drainpipe, and sat down again.

Eventually I arrived at the rock in the pool. There was the leader,
swept by the current under a projection of the trout's haven. One
backward pull would snap it like the hair it was. I reeled in every foot
of line and surveyed the problem. Also there was a severe mental
struggle. It would have been possible to slip the net under the rock and
capture the fish, but that would have taken all the joy out of the
battle for me. No. The odds were on his side but he'd have his chance. I
would win fairly or not at all. I decided if I could float the leader
downstream and persuade the trout to go forward, he couldn't break the
gut. Nothing would do, but I must start him moving in the right
direction. With the rod high and free in my left hand, I leaned down and
tickled his tail. Now no self-respecting trout will stand for that. Out
he shot, just as I planned, and was off to keep his date in the
Farmington.

I'll refrain from giving the other details. They might be boring, but I
assure you they were not to me. Suffice it to say that I fought that
fish through a third of a mile of stream just like a salmon. At last he
reached the Junction Pool and there he holed up. I came down, gloating,
to see him lying on the bottom, half on his side. Not one to savor
victory lightly, I twitched the rod and saw him shiver but barely move.
"Leave him lie," I said, "till I get set." Walking along the shore, I
took up my station at the friendly hemlock. Then I gave him the works.
He was a tired fish. After two or three half-hearted circles around the
pool he turned on his side. I drew him in, gently slipped the net under
his shining body, and waded ashore.

I don't mind telling you I was well-nigh as exhausted as the trout.
First I extracted a tape measure and scales from my fishing coat.
Eighteen inches and two pounds even. What a fish to be taken on an
ounce-and-a-half rod with a 4X leader in a mountain stream! I lit my
pipe and thought, "Ain't life grand!"

Half an hour later I plodded painfully up the road. One shin was skinned
where it had come in violent contact with a rock; my hip hurt, and my
hat was gone with five dollars' worth of flies, but in the creel was a
two-pound rainbow trout. Moreover, the Fairy Rod remained undamaged. I
could have kissed every strand of its bamboo splicing. What a rod! What
a fish! What a day!

I met Cary Phelps in front of the tavern.

"Cary," I said, "you see before you an angler. Never to this day have I
dared claim that title. But I do now. I took that trout on this rod. It
weighs just one ounce and five eighths. Weigh that fish. Here are the
scales. I hooked him at the bridge. He was netted at the Junction pool.
Am I an angler? I ask you."

Cary is not a fisherman. Nevertheless, he is a gentleman. He sensed it
was a great moment in my life.

"Roy," he said, "I hand it to you!" Of course he couldn't begin to know
what I had been through. Only an angler could. But he did see that I was
a mess.

"You're as wet as a muskrat," he remarked. "Aren't you cold?"

"No, I'm not. I'm hot. I love the sun, the birds, I love Colebrook. By
God, I love everything."




[Illustration]

  VI

  _The Lord and the Queen_


We discovered Queen, an English Setter, in Carmel, New York. She
captured our hearts instantly but we were exceedingly uneasy as we
brought her in the car to Pondwood Farm. How would Lord Jitters, the
autocrat of our household, receive a dog? Although we had decided that
we could not continue to be ruled by a cat and keep our self-respect, we
fervently wished the ordeal of presentation were over.

Lord Jitters left his post on the stone wall and, as usual, walked
sedately out to the car to welcome us home. Suddenly he caught sight of
Queen with Billie's arms about her neck. Frozen in astonishment, he
turned a look on her that would have withered a cactus. Then he stalked,
with indignant flirts of his tail, to the stone wall, where he proposed
to watch proceedings. Queen disappeared into the house with me to be fed
and petted and introduced to her new home. No dog could have been nicer.
I sat in a chair with Queen's head between my hands. Her brown eyes
gazed into mine.

"Now, Queen," I said, "we'll have some wonderful times together. Out in
those alders are woodcock, and every day I hear grouse drumming in the
forest. You love to hunt and so do we. You'll find them for us and we'll
shoot. But about the white cat. He is going to be difficult, I know, but
you've got to be patient with him. Keep out of his way as much as you
can for a while, and above all things don't chase him! If you do, you'll
get scratched. Barking won't do you any good, for Lord Jitters is stone
deaf. Just be nice and friendly and remember that this is his home and
he thinks we belong to him completely and he's jealous. After a while
I'm sure you will win his friendship."

Queen did tail-rappings on the floor and pushed her head farther into my
hands. "I'll do just as you say," she told me with her eyes and low,
gurgling barks. "Anything, anything, only just tell me."

Queen was true to her pledge, but her role was not an easy one. For
forty-eight hours the Lord left the stone wall only at night. With cold
eyes he gazed at us, jerking away if we tried to pet him, and refusing
to eat in our presence. Even fillet of cod, his favorite dish, remained
untouched during the daylight hours. With the delectable smell of fish
in his nostrils, how he was able to resist I cannot imagine. But the
hunger strike ended after dark concealed his movements; or at least I
suppose it did, for in the morning the fish was gone, although he
pretended it never had been there at all.

Queen roamed the house and fields, always at our heels, but never
approached Lord Jitters. Eventually time broke Jitters's resistance. In
frigid silence he returned to the house, but not to his usual place on
the bed in our room. Instead, he took up his residence in the guest
room, there to sleep in lonely grandeur on a pillow. Billie and I hated
to admit, even to ourselves, how much Jitters's conduct distressed us.
His feelings were so deeply hurt that we wondered if he would ever
forgive us. However, now that the break had been made, we decided we
might as well "die for a sheep as a lamb." We had long wanted a black
Persian kitten. Better get it now, for Lord Jitters could not be more
disturbed than he was at present. The kitten arrived. It was only a
month old--just a tiny ball of coal-black fluff punctuated by two yellow
eyes. "Smoke" was his name, but we eventually changed it to "Poke-Poke"
because he always poked along behind everyone else. Jitters took one
look, spat disgustedly in the little thing's face, and walked away. I
followed him into his room and endeavored to remonstrate. He stood
stiffly just inside the door and heard me out. Translated, his reply was
as follows:

"If you have quite finished, I will state my position once and for all.
It is this. For three years I have given you my complete loyalty and
affection. I assumed that I had yours. Evidently I was mistaken. Your
introduction of these animals into my household has made it impossible
for me ever to look upon either of you as I did in the happy past. I
shall go my way and you will go yours. All I ask is to be let alone.
Under no circumstances will I fraternize with these interlopers. So far
as I am concerned they do not exist."

I bowed meekly and retired with a heavy heart. We hoped that time would
bring a more tolerant attitude on Jitters's part and effect a cure to
his injured feelings. In the weeks that followed Lord Jitters gave the
most perfect exhibition of ignoring I have ever seen by man or beast. He
would walk within a foot of Queen, never betraying by look or action
that he knew the dog was even on the same planet. Pokie made a few
kittenish attempts to play, without response from His Lordship. Only
when he actually touched Jitters was there the slightest sign of
recognition. It came in the form of a hiss and a smart slap from a white
paw.

Toward Billie and me his attitude eventually softened. He was polite but
it ended there. The old companionship was gone. Never did he cross the
threshold of our bedroom where he had always lived. No longer did he
accompany us on walks through the woods. If we went on the pond we
could never persuade him to enter the canoe. No more did he follow along
the edge of the water while we were fishing, sitting patiently on a rock
or picking his way daintily around the margin of an overflow. He had
withdrawn completely within himself, devoted only to his own affairs.

All this time Queen behaved like an angel. Only once did she cross
Jitters's path and that was more by accident than design. There is a
small patch of thick alders near the canoe landing which we call
"Jitters's Jungle" because he appropriated it as his own special
territory immediately upon arriving at Pondwood Farm. There he has the
most thrilling adventures with bugs and leaves and frogs and sometimes a
garter snake. He would come to us, his eyes wide and dark and his little
face working in excitement, to recount the story of experiences with
what, to him, must have been lions and tigers and boa constrictors, and
perhaps even dinosaurs. Hour after hour we would see him stalking an
imaginary enemy or watching a hole from which anything might suddenly
emerge. It was sacred territory and we were careful never to invade it.
From the first Queen seemed to realize that Jitters's Jungle was taboo,
but one day, while chasing a butterfly, she blundered into the outer
margin. Suddenly there was a flash of white, an anguished yelp, and
Queen leaped out bleeding from three raking scratches on her delicate
nose. Then along the edge of the thicket Lord Jitters paraded, every
hair on end and his plume twice its normal size. Queen ran to Billie for
comfort while I tried to explain to Lord Jitters that it was all a
mistake.

"Queen didn't mean to go into your Jungle," I protested. "She was only
chasing that butterfly. She won't do it again, I'm sure."

In a series of indignant growls, pur-ups, and tail flirts, Jitters
replied: "I, too, am sure she won't do it again. Mistake or no mistake,
she had no business here. I tolerate her in the house and in the yard. I
never go to the house except when necessary to accept food or retire
from the rain. This, however, is my territory. It has always been so and
I intend to keep what is mine. You may tell that to your dog and your
black kitten with my compliments."

I sighed and left Jitters to his sentry duty. It was obvious that hurt
pride and jealousy still rankled in his little breast and there seemed
to be no remedy except to admit defeat and send Queen and Poke-Poke
away, which we could not do. Each of them, with his own separate and
individual witchery, had woven a spell about our hearts and we loved
them dearly.

Lord Jitters retained his frigid attitude toward both Queen and
Poke-Poke for many months. But as time wore on he became accustomed to
their presence and accepted it as inevitable. Naturally he softened
first toward the black cat. No one, animal or human, could resist the
indolent sweetness of Poke-Poke's nature. Jitters seldom played with
him--as a matter of fact, Pokie is too lazy to play much and Jitters too
dignified--but he adopted a sort of protective big-brother attitude
which is very amusing. Poke-Poke seldom washes himself because Queen and
Jitters have taken the responsibility for keeping him clean. When
Pokie's appearance becomes intolerable to Jitters, who is always
immaculate, His Lordship sits down to it like a job which must be done
and gives him a thorough cleaning from head to tail. Queen finishes the
operation by nibbling up and down Pokie's back with her front teeth
while he purrs ecstatically. With Queen, and other dogs which came
later, Lord Jitters has never gone much beyond toleration. After all
these years he has accepted the fact that they are permanent members of
the family but he brooks no familiarity.

Lord Jitters dearly loved to go for a walk with us up the wood road in
the evening. After Queenie's arrival he no longer accompanied us.
Eventually, however, he dropped back into his old habit. We are again a
happy family. Queen dashes about in front; Lord Jitters precedes us
sedately by a few yards, now and then jumping off the road to stalk a
bug; behind, plodding along, with many a pause for rest, comes
Poke-Poke. After a short distance he calls for us to wait. Then he asks
to be picked up, for he is utterly exhausted from his unaccustomed
exertions. During the remainder of the walk he rides comfortably, draped
over my shoulder, interestedly watching the passing show. If he must
take exercise that is the way it should be done.

For a year after Queen and Poke-Poke arrived Lord Jitters never entered
our bedroom. Then one morning, just as the breakfast tray was being
brought up, he walked in as though he had never left it. Queen and
Poke-Poke were already there, for they invariably arrive coincident with
the food. Jitters jumped on the bed.

"Good morning," he said, "I hope you slept well. Let's see what we have
to eat this morning. Cream! Yes, I'll have a little, not too much--just
a spoonful. And a piece of buttered toast with marmalade. No, not on the
toast--there, on the side of the plate, where I can lick it as I wish."

Queen and Pokie backed off and made not the slightest effort to get
their accustomed bits until His Lordship had finished. Then he jumped to
the floor and, with a flirt of his plume, signified they had his
permission to eat. After his initial appearance he returned to his
accustomed place on our bed even though he had to share the room with
Queen. One night he was restless and I put him out about eleven o'clock
but let Queen remain. At first he could not believe that I really meant
him to go. This was his room and who was I to dismiss him from it! When
I gave a gentle push to his lordly rear, he favored me with what can
only be described as a "dirty look." About two o'clock in the morning a
scratching and yowling at the door waked Billie and me. There was the
Lord with a mouse. He jumped on the bed and deposited the limp rodent in
Billie's lap.

"You evacuate me from my own room for no reason that I can fathom," he
said, "but I return good for evil. I rid the house of mice while you
sleep."

Having delivered himself of this reproof, he stalked out the door and
down the stairs. For two nights he punished us by refusing to enter the
bedroom.

Lord Jitters is as keen a sportsman as any human. I shoot grouse and
catch trout and spend hours in the forest or on a stream only for sport.
Jitters does his hunting for exactly the same reason. His game is mice,
shrews, chipmunks, moles, and sometimes a garter snake. With his head
held high, so his quarry will not drag on the ground, he brings it to
the house. A peculiar deep-throated yowl summons Billie or me. After his
skill has been sufficiently praised, he presents his catch to Poke-Poke
for ultimate consumption. The Lord never eats his game; in this he is
like some of my sportsman friends. If a mouse were broiled in butter and
served on toast with a cream sauce, Lord Jitters might possibly find it
appetizing. I wouldn't be sure. But Pokie's tastes are more catholic and
he devours a mouse, _au naturel_, with gusto.

Lord Jitters has discovered that his most productive hunting ground is
the stone wall in front of our house. Small animals are attracted there
by the grain which birds scatter from the feeding boxes on the maple
trees. A mouse or chipmunk can duck into the holes between the stones
with impunity but Jitters has solved that problem. The wall is
interrupted by two or three breaks for entrance to the yard. Jitters
settles down comfortably just above the gateway. When an animal runs
across the opening he pounces like a flash of white lightning. Queen
recognizes that the wall is as much the Lord's territory as is Jitters's
Jungle. She never trespasses but watches interestedly while he pursues
his sport.

From the living-room window Billie and I observed one game for weeks. A
chipmunk obviously had discovered that Jitters is deaf. So, after the
Lord chased him into a hole in the wall and began his vigil, it would
pop up behind the cat chattering, frisking about, and figuratively
putting its fingers to its nose in derision. Once it actually tweaked
Jitters's tail but ducked into a crevice before he could turn. Watching
this performance became our daily diversion. Whenever the chipmunk
discovered Jitters in the yard, it danced about like a tiny monkey,
daring him to catch it. The Lord never could resist the challenge. But
when he saw Billie and me in the window his pride was dreadfully hurt;
particularly because we laughed. He would stalk into the house, flirting
his plume, and giving us black looks.

"All right, laugh if you wish. But I'll get him yet. Just you wait. No
chipmunk can make a fool of me forever."

Eventually the little animal became too daring and careless. One day
Jitters lay on the wall above the opening, apparently sound asleep. The
chipmunk started to cross. Jitters dropped like a striking falcon before
it had gone two feet. Billie and I witnessed the proceedings from the
window much to the Lord's delight. He brought the chipmunk to the door
and deposited it at Billie's feet, simply bursting with pride.

"Now laugh! I told you I'd get him. Let me remind you that 'he who
laughs last laughs best.'"

Lord Jitters's personality and character so fascinated me that I wrote
his biography for a magazine. Public reaction to that story demonstrated
to my satisfaction that cat lovers are a class apart. They constitute a
closely knit and rather exclusive society which definitely stands on the
defensive. With dogs it is different. Almost everyone likes dogs, and
those who love them are as numerous as black flies in June. But people
do not just _like_ cats; they either love them or they dislike them,
often intensely. Ailurophobia is a common disease among women.

Lord Jitters's biography had been published only a few days when letters
began pouring in. Men, women, and children seemed impelled to write me
stories about their own cats. I was asked to become an associate editor
of a cat magazine; the director of the Cat Hall of Fame requested a
photograph of Lord Jitters to be enshrined with the Cat Immortals; I was
deluged with telephone calls; people stopped me on the street to talk
about their feline favorites. No other magazine article I ever wrote
produced such a fulsome response. At first I was bewildered. Then it was
slowly borne in upon me that, by acclaim, I had been elected to the
International Society of Cat Lovers without knowing that such a body
existed. It was not that the story was particularly good; its merit
seemed to have little to do with the matter. The importance lay in the
fact that I had publicly proclaimed myself a lover of cats. I had stood
up in meeting, as it were, and given a testimonial.

Just because I like cats, however, does not mean that I am any less fond
of our dogs. But for some reason the two do not go together as a rule.
Either one likes dogs or one likes cats, but not both.

My public declaration regarding cats led to continual discussions with
dog-loving and cat-hating friends. Their chief accusations against
felines fell into four "categories" (forgive me); to wit: 1, cats show
no affection; 2, no personality--one cat is like another; 3, they have
neither loyalty nor strong attachments to individuals; 4, they are
independent. I maintain that the first three items of the indictment are
false, slanderous, and due either to ignorance or prejudice. The fourth,
independence, I freely admit, and it is, in my opinion, a virtue.

Opening my argument for the defense, I suggest that he or she who
believes cats show no affection just doesn't know cats. People judge
cats by dogs, which is unfair. Moreover, a cat is much more choosey than
a dog. It gives its loyalty very slowly and only after the recipient has
proved worthy of the distinction. It is quite true that a cat does not
exhibit violent manifestations of joy. That isn't cat nature; it doesn't
do things that way. But I wish any skeptic could watch when Billie and I
return to Pondwood Farm after even a short absence. As our car swings
into the drive we see a white ball of fur walk sedately from the stone
wall and a black muff, punctuated by two yellow eyes, running down the
steps. The Lord waves his plume, rubs against our legs, and "purr-ups"
his pleasure. Pokie murmurs "meow, meow," and asks to be taken up. With
both paws clasped tightly about my neck, purring like a motor engine, he
licks my eyelids and snuggles his head under my chin. That is their way
of welcome. Meanwhile, the dogs are leaping about with frantic barks and
such violent body wriggling that they seem to be trying to shed their
skins. That is their way. Of course they aren't alike, for cats are cats
and dogs are dogs.

If either Billie or I am ill and have to stay in bed, the Lord is in
constant attendance. He cancels all the day's engagements and remains in
the room where he can be on instant call if his services are required.
He knows the doctor as well as we do, greets him at the bedroom door,
and watches with anxious eyes while symptoms are being diagnosed. When
we go into the woods with Jitters he feels that our safety is his
responsibility. If we separate, he is in a desperate quandary. After
running frantically from one to the other, trying to keep us both in
sight, he sits down and howls miserably.

So far as the second item of the indictment is concerned, that cats have
no distinctive personality, I will present Lord Jitters and Poke-Poke to
any jury. One is as different from the other as is an Eskimo from an
African Negro. Lord Jitters is the most consistent aristocrat I have
ever known, be it man or beast. His every move is dignity personified;
no matter what the circumstances, I have never seen him lose that
dignity. He would go hungry rather than push for his food; if he cannot
eat in the manner befitting a gentleman he will not eat at all. He not
only picks daintily, but prefers the most epicurean viands like any
gourmet. Green turtle soup is an especial favorite, and for caviar he
will purr ecstatically. He even enjoys a sip or two of wine when it is
being served, particularly a haut sauterne, but sometimes we have the
uncomfortable feeling that he is criticizing the vintage. Poke-Poke, on
the other hand, has plebeian tastes. He gobbles his food, will consume
virtually anything at any time, and the more of it the better.

Lord Jitters stalks into a room with the air of majesty at a formal
reception; one feels that his entrance should be accompanied by a
fanfare of trumpets. Poke-Poke scuttles. He carries his head down, like
a tiger, and makes no pretense at dignity. He is just a lazy, incredibly
affectionate cat with the disposition of a cat angel. Pokie loves to be
carried in my arms in any position and petted at any time or place. I
have never taken him up that he did not purr. Lord Jitters, on the other
hand, cannot abide being handled except when he so indicates. Jitters is
full of energy and a very busy cat. He always has more important
business than he can possibly transact. Pokie is an indolent cat. He has
no business whatever except to eat and sleep. He will sleep
indefinitely wherever he happens to be.

This habit cost him his beautiful plume. How Pokie lost his tail is a
sad, sad story. One rather warm winter's evening he climbed the vines to
the porch in front of the guest room. Meowing at the door elicited no
response and he knew not how to descend. So he solved the problem, as he
does all problems, by going to sleep. During the night the temperature
dropped. When Pokie awoke in the morning he discovered, to his horror,
that he could not budge. The long hair of his plume and trouser legs was
frozen solidly to the deck. His frantic howls brought Billie and me on
the double-quick. We laughed until our sides ached, which made his
ridiculous predicament all the worse. Any animal loathes being laughed
at. With a hatchet, ice pick, and scissors we carefully chopped Pokie
out, but some of the hair from his tail and trousers remained in the
ice. His plume never has regained its former beauty.

That cats form no individual attachments is the third of the
indictments. Again I need only refer to Pokie and the Lord to prove it
false. Although both of them try to distribute their affections between
Billie and me, Poke-Poke is definitely my cat. He comes to me before any
other member of the family. Some years ago he contracted a dangerous
infection in the glands of his mouth. After an operation and a week in
the hospital he was brought home. The dressings were agonizing and the
doctor found him very difficult; no one could touch him. But if I held
him in my arms he would rest quietly, his eyes, dark with pain, fixed
intently on mine, only whimpering a little while the washing and probing
were going on.

Lord Jitters is just as much Billie's cat as Pokie is mine. His trust is
touching; if anything is wrong he runs to her like a child to its
mother. Early in the winter I set a fox trap in the forest below my log
cabin. It was so far from the house I thought there could be no
possibility of danger to either our dogs or cats. But Lord Jitters
wanders far afield. He did not come home for his dinner at four o'clock
one afternoon; neither did he appear that night. The next day I
telephoned neighbors and searched the road. We were afraid that, being
stone deaf, he might have been killed by a motorcar. Reg Rowland and
Frederick Barbour were at our house and they suggested that we look at
the fox trap. There we found the poor little fellow, caught by the front
paw. The moment he saw me his eyes lighted, he stretched out his free
foot, and began to "meow" and "purr-up."

"Better cover him with your coat," said Reg, who has no love for cats.
"It will hurt when you release the trap. He'll go wild and probably claw
you."

I knew better. As I stepped on the springs he pulled his foot loose
without a sound. When I gathered him in my arms, he relaxed like a tired
child. Utterly exhausted, he was almost asleep by the time we reached
the house. I laid him on the bed in our room. Billie was in tears. She
wrapped him in a warm blanket and gave him a few spoonfuls of cream.
Then I examined his paw. He lay quietly while I pressed the bones. I
found that none were broken. But there were ugly cuts on both sides of
his leg made by the jaws of the trap. Obviously he had not pulled or
struggled, for had he struggled his leg would have been fractured. I
wish I knew what went on in his little cat brain during those
interminable hours. I am sure that with his wonderful philosophy and his
abiding trust in us he simply said to himself: "I know they'll come. I
_know_ it. So I must just sit quietly until they find me."

Jitters slept for twenty-four hours, waking only to whimper when the
returning blood started a throbbing ache in his swollen leg. He felt
very sorry for himself and wanted to spend every moment in Billie's
arms. No longer was he the untouchable, self-sufficient Lord of pre-trap
days. He was just a little hurt animal wanting to be mothered.

After a fortnight the cuts and bruises healed sufficiently for him to
move about with an exaggerated limp. He thoroughly enjoyed being a
cripple and only reluctantly admitted that he was again a well man. If
something interested him he scampered off without a trace of a limp.
Suddenly remembering that he had made a tactical error he would return,
hobbling pitifully and holding his foot high off the floor. At times, to
our intense amusement, he forgot which leg was hurt and limped on the
wrong one.

This was not the only experience Jitters had with a trap that winter. On
the brook by our duck coop a mink had tried to get under the wire. I set
a small trap, baited with fish, far back in a covered stone runway, the
only entrance being from the half-frozen stream. No cat, I firmly
believed, would approach through the icy water. But we reckoned without
the Lord. During one of his excursions he smelled the fish, jumped into
the brook, and stretched his paw up the stone corridor. Fortunately he
was caught only by the toes and was able to twist himself out of the
water onto the rocks; otherwise he would have drowned.

I discovered him within a few hours. The instant he was released he ran
for the house and up to our room, unhurt. There, in high dudgeon, he
recounted his experience to Billie and me and had us on the carpet.

"After the unfortunate affair of the fox trap, only a few months ago,
why you should have set more of those odious things on my estate is
beyond my comprehension. You know that, like any other sportsman, when
hunting I am not deterred by water. I hope this has finally taught you a
lesson."

We apologized humbly and assured him that in the future no trap of any
kind, anywhere, or at any time, would be set upon his property.

I have profound respect for Lord Jitters as an individual and devoutly
wish I could live my own life according to a code as simple and clean
cut as his. He is a great gentleman--one of the old school--a type which
has almost disappeared from this modern world. The obligations to his
family he takes very seriously. There is no sacrifice he would not make
for the family name. But certain things he will not do. They are as
clear in his mind as black and white. His code admits of no deviations
or concessions beyond the bounds of politeness, and he is always
scrupulously polite. Thus he is never projected into undesirable
situations because of mental vacillations.

No cat will allow itself to be pushed around. Dogs will. A cat does what
it wants, when it wants, or not at all. Freedom to choose for itself
amounts to a fetish in the cat mind and extends to every phase of its
life in the most minute details. No one can understand a cat unless he
recognizes and respects this fundamental characteristic. Cat haters call
this selfishness; I maintain it is independence, engendered by complete
self-confidence. What human would not wish to be in the same position?
We don't dare do exactly as we please for fear of social or business
complications. A cat has no such fear. More than any other domestic
animal it is master of its own destiny. Independence and adaptability
have enabled the cat family to survive for sixty million years while
other animal groups have fallen by the wayside. Even though Lord Jitters
was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he could go from riches to
rags and still adequately provide for himself. He would do so, too,
rather than deviate one iota from his code. Reversely, an alley cat will
become a gentleman of leisure with the greatest of ease if opportunity
offers. A wild kitten at Pondwood Farm demonstrated to us how quickly
the transition can take place.

One day I heard meows near the open garage. Lord Jitters and Poke-Poke
were in the house, so I knew it could not be them. Our colored man,
Walter, who loves all animals, was exceedingly vague when I questioned
him.

"Yes, Doctah, there's a cat out there. He lives in de garden. Guess he
eats vegetables."

Walter knows perfectly well that cats don't eat vegetables. A little
wild kitten had made its home among the cabbages, and he had been
feeding it surreptitiously because he couldn't let any animal go hungry.
The following Thursday, when the servants were out, Billie glimpsed a
gray shadow disappearing under the garage. She called me, brought a dish
of fish, and in five minutes a tiger kitten hesitatingly ventured out,
enticed by the delectable odor but more by her caressing cat talk. He
was only a tiny thing, as light as a feather, his eyes wild with fright.
We brought him into the house, fed him milk and fish, and watched the
little animal grow in confidence with every hour. In two days "Little
Cat," as we called him, was as completely at home in his new menage and
demanded as much attention as Lord Jitters or Poke-Poke. But, alas, the
others would not accept him as a house guest, so, in order to spare
their feelings and ours, we gave him away.

"Jealous as a cat!" It's a common phrase. Jealous as a dog would be more
accurate. Let me so much as touch one of our dogs and the others are
piling into my lap, jockeying for position and their share of attention.
Seldom will cats behave in such a manner. They would consider it
shockingly undignified. As a rule, a dog accepts another of its kind
quickly. A cat does not. It bitterly resents the intrusion of any
animal in its domain and remains hostile for months. This, I believe, is
less pure jealousy than because cats are fundamentally individualists
and creatures of habit. If their established routine is disrupted it is
regarded as a personal affront and a major tragedy. "Custom" is a sacred
word in cat vocabulary.

From my defense of cats one may gain the impression that I think them
superior to dogs. This is not true. Cats cannot compare with dogs in
intelligence. Their status is totally different. But I do maintain that
those humans who dismiss cats as characterless animals, without loyalty
or affection, are denying themselves the pleasure of knowing fascinating
personalities.




[Illustration]

  VII

  _Rebirth_


In the late winter of 1939 I stood before the fire at Pondwood Farm
reading a letter. It was from the Gaekwar of Baroda inviting us to come
to India for a tiger shoot. (The real reason was because he wanted me to
help him plan a museum of natural history for Baroda.) Just then Billie
burst in, breathless with excitement. She came from inspecting the
remodeled house of one of our friends.

"It is so lovely and it's given me a hundred ideas. I want to do our
house over. Now we are sure of what we want. Besides, when you retire
we're going to live here and we might as well prepare."

"But I haven't the slightest idea of retiring," I lied, for I had been
thinking about it vaguely. She looked very wise.

"Oh, not now! But you will before long. I know."

Instead of arguing the matter I read her the letter from the Gaekwar. Of
course she wanted to go. Who wouldn't? To be the guest of an Indian
prince would be like living in the days of the Arabian nights.

"Well, we can't do both, that's certain. If we go to India we'll spend a
lot of money, but we'll have a glorious time. To rebuild the house will
be fun too. We will be living in it when you retire."

She was back at that again. I was keen for India. She favored the house.
So we discussed it pro and con. The house won. Before the week end
passed she and Walter McGill, a local contractor-architect, held a
three-hour conference. Billie was in her element. I really think that
during the planning, rebuilding, and decorating she had as much
happiness as the trip to India would have given her. I sat on the side
lines acting merely as an adviser.

In early April, even before the frost was out of the ground, operations
were under way. By the end of June we moved in. I never would have
believed there could be such a transformation in our little farmhouse.
An addition to the northwest gives us a large living room. Through a
plate-glass window we can see every part of the pond; opposite, a big
fireplace balances the window. The former living room became a
pine-paneled sports room with glass-fronted cases for guns and fishing
rods. The kitchen boasts all the modern gadgets for making work easy. I
particularly like the red-topped counters; also the electric stove. The
Connecticut Light and Power Company was persuaded to extend the line to
our house and we electrified everything, as well as installing an oil
burner. Upstairs our bed-sitting-room, with a fireplace, is a duplicate
of the living room in size. Two small bedrooms, thrown together, partly
separated by an arch, give me a spacious study. Our former bedroom
became the guest quarters, opening upon a deck porch where one can take
a sun bath observed only by the birds and squirrels. Billie did a fine
job and I was devoutly thankful she had turned thumbs down on India.

It is primarily a livable house filled with light, color, and freedom,
where people, dogs, and cats may roam at will. True the animals, even
though they are well behaved, do raise hob with the rugs and covers. Cat
fur and dog hair stick like glue and little muddy feet leave tracks. I
continually hear an agonized wail from Billie.

"Oh, Queenie, do you _have_ to come in here? You're all wet."

Queen looks up with an expression of surprise and shakes herself just to
demonstrate that it is her house as much as ours. No, we could not
exclude the animals and be happy. They are as much a part of our family
life indoors as out, and preserving the furnishings never would
compensate for what they give us in affection and companionship. So
every room is shared with them.

Having lived in the Orient for so many years, color is essential to my
peace of mind. No matter how beautiful a house, if it lacks color I am
vaguely uncomfortable. Billie shares that feeling. Of course it is well
known that certain colors are stimulating, others soothing, and still
others depressing. Brown, for instance, has a tendency to induce
dejection and moroseness. But red is often used in color therapy and has
cured more than one case of suicidal despondency. Blue, although a cold
color, acts as a psychological sedative on persons who are inclined to
be overstimulated. Certain shades of yellow produce a feeling of warmth
and sunlight. Green is a healthy and invigorating color because it is
subconsciously associated with nature and growing things.

Billie and I are both cheerful people, so the walls of our living room
are a sunlight yellow, the fireplace sofas the same tone; a jade-green
Chinese rug covers the floor, and the big chairs flanking the picture
window are a soft red. With sun flooding the room, it would be a sure
cure for the most chronic mental depressive. Red leather predominates in
the pine-paneled gun room where bird and animal paintings brighten the
walls. Glass cases filled with a dozen shotguns and rifles occupy both
ends. Fishing creels, nets, and hats hang from deer antlers on the wall.
Racks for the rods in use are above the sofa.

The dining room became a successful experiment. Our New York apartment
was entirely Chinese, even to red woodwork and gold ceilings, but most
of its furnishings, which I had accumulated over many years and brought
from Peking, went into storage when we moved to the country. One day
Billie had a brilliant idea.

"Why not try having a Chinese dining room? It is somewhat shut off and
can be a unit all by itself, just like the gun room. Perhaps it will
clash, but let's see anyway."

We tried it and it worked. An embroidered Imperial throne screen stands
in front of one wall; the other three sides are covered with Ming
Dynasty panels from floor to ceiling and a Ming chest occupies one
corner. A huge Buddha sits atop the chest, benignly regarding the food
we eat through half-closed eyes. The dining table and chairs are of
carved black-and-gold lacquer, replicas of the furniture used by the
Empress Dowager in her private breakfast room.

Upstairs in my study three walls of the alcove are half occupied by
bookshelves. From the desk I can reach all the working volumes without
moving. Above the books photographs of my explorer colleagues, Peary,
Bartlett, Byrd, Stefansson, Wilkins, Ellsworth, Granger, Sir Francis
Younghusband, Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, and others, autographed with
personal messages, look down at me with friendliness and, I think, a
touch of envy, because some of them have departed on their last Great
Expedition.

Billie's and my room is a combination bed-sitting-room. Bright
furnishings harmonize with the green walls. It is, I think, the nicest
place in the house. The fireplace is a joy. On Thursdays and Sundays,
when the servants are out, we bring up food on a tray, broil a chicken
or lamb chops over the coals, and eat in front of the fire. Obviously we
do not have a period house. To my mind most period houses are
uncomfortable. We built what we ourselves wanted and what suits our
distinctly casual way of life. Both of us insisted that a picture window
overlook the pond. The room is thirty feet long and we wanted a
fifteen-foot plate-glass window with no obstructions. The architect was
dubious. He murmured things about "not enough wall space," "too much
light," "overbalance the house," "entirely unconventional," "look
awfully strange."

"Wall space, wall space, who wants wall space when you have a view like
that? Let the great outdoors be our wall space," I said rather brutally.
Billie, of course, was more diplomatic. Eventually she convinced our
friend that even if it was not conventional it could be done and if it
turned out badly we'd swear he never built the house. So we got our
picture window. To my inartistic mind it doesn't appear at all strange
from the outside nor spoil the symmetry of the house. From the inside
looking out it is entrancing.

Of course the room is about as private as a goldfish bowl, but our only
Peeping Toms are the birds and chipmunks and we peep right back at them.
Since we are continually prying into their private lives, why shouldn't
they have a chance to do a bit of prying on their own account? So far as
humans are concerned, they are few and far between. Those few are
interesting. Like real country people, whenever a car passes, we dash
to the window and wonder who is going where and why. There aren't many,
because our dirt road doesn't lead anywhere except to the Doolittle
Club. On Sunday a few tourists, out to view the scenery, stop to
photograph the pond, the rock garden, or our sign which reads: "Please
drive slowly. Look out for wild ducks, tame cats, and dumb dogs in the
road." Tom Voter, an artist at the Museum, decorated it with paintings
of Lord Jitters and Poke-Poke and a pair of ducks stepping out for a
stroll hand in hand.

In the bow of the window Billie installed a deep-cushioned green seat
which matches the rug and is flanked by two red easy chairs with a
Chinese smoking table between, sacred to my pipes and tobacco. I gave
the chairs to Billie for an anniversary present because I particularly
wanted them myself. She got wind of my intention and countered by
presenting me with the electric kitchen stove which her heart desired.

The window dominates the room. Everybody instinctively gravitates toward
it, even on a cold winter's day when the blazing fire and two big sofas
invite them to the opposite side. Billie and I almost live in the
window. We can see far up the gorgeous avenue of trees which marks the
brown ribbon of road, and something interesting is always happening on
the pond. Suddenly, reaching for the field glasses, Billie says:
"There's muskie. He's got his wife with him today and all the little
muskies." We watch the muskrat family happily feeding on roots and
bulbs, diving and playing like aquatic kittens. Our great blue heron
lends dignity to the pond. Now and then an osprey hovers far up in the
sky and unexpectedly drops like a plummet to snatch a bass from the
water. We don't begrudge him the fish, for the sight of his thrilling
power dive is payment enough. The ducks are a constant source of
interest, and without moving from our chairs we can enjoy the loves and
hates and domestic affairs of their duck world; also the spotted
sandpipers running about the shore, who seem permanently troubled with
hiccups and a nervous affliction of their rear ends. Often deer come to
the water, pause to drink, wade out confidently, and swim across; or
they may slosh along the edge, feeding on the succulent vegetation. We
pass the field glasses alternately from one to the other, watching every
move of the graceful animals. Indoors, yet outdoors, we occupy box seats
in nature's theater with the pond as the stage.

The rebirth of Pondwood was not the result of a preconceived idea, or a
definite plan, either inside or out. We simply let nature take its
course. Each improvement was a logical development of our needs. This
called for that and that for something else. Thus the place grew and
changed year by year until now its lawns run into the goldenrod,
blueberry bushes, and birch trees as naturally as the clearing of a camp
site. The view from our windows is neither grand nor impressive. There
are no far hills or vast expanse of horizon. One looks out upon the pond
encircled by a stately forest rising in undulating waves to nearby
green-clothed summits. It is an intimate view, and as peaceful as the
courtyard of a Chinese temple. Majestic peaks and wide sweeps of broken
mountains are vaguely disturbing. They emphasize the smallness and
unimportance of the human animal compared with the forces of nature. Man
does not like to feel unimportant; an ego deflated by the vastness of
his surroundings is not conducive to mental composure. Pondwood has none
of that. Its charm lies in the restfulness and calm that have become
such scarce commodities in this modern world; it recharges one's
spiritual batteries instead of draining them of vital energy.

At Thanksgiving we held a housewarming. George arrived from Princeton
with a classmate, Carl Toby, and two lovely girls from Finch School,
Marcelite Boles and Priscilla Payne. Everything conspired to make the
week end perfect. The days were dry, bright, and windless; black ice
covered the pond. Our guests vainly shot at a covey of grouse in the
swamp, took long walks through the woods, and lolled on the floor in
front of a blazing fire.

On Thanksgiving night a brilliant moon flooded the pond. Stuffed with
turkey, they donned ski clothes, strapped on skates, and clumped down to
the shore. Billie and I followed with a phonograph and dance records.
Beside a fire on the ice we played waltzes, foxtrots, and tangoes, while
the youngsters glided about emitting delighted squeals.

About midnight I built a fire in the rock garden and set pots of coffee
and chocolate on the grate. Billie provided sandwiches, marshmallows,
and apples. It was two-thirty in the morning before we went to bed.
About five o'clock I was awakened by so-called whisperings and subdued
laughter.

"What on earth," I asked drowsily, "is going on?"

Billie sat up, wide awake, her eyes shining.

"I'll bet they're hungry again." She giggled. "You never can fill them
up. Let's join them. I'm hungry too."

So we put on robes and padded downstairs. Stretched on the floor at
impossible angles in front of the fire were our guests gobbling bacon
and scrambled eggs. They greeted us with cheers. Needless to say, we had
a spot of food ourselves. When they left for college Billie and I agreed
that Pondwood Farm couldn't have been more perfectly "housewarmed."

After the house was completed the rather nebulous thoughts of retiring
transferred themselves from the back to the front of my mind. It reached
the point where we were discussing it almost every day. I told Billie,
with considerable amusement, of the only other time I had seriously
thought of retiring. It was on the opposite side of the world, and the
plan and the place were fantastically different from what we were
thinking of. The Central Asiatic Expedition was camped high on the
slopes of Baga Bogdo, in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia. Behind us
towered a snowcapped peak. From the rock outcrop to the west grassy,
flower-dotted hills rolled in gentle waves down to a vast meadow, flat
as a billiard table. Walter Granger and I were sitting in the door of
the mess tent smoking our pipes. We could see herds of gazelle grazing
on the plain and the high ridges above us were the homes of mountain
sheep, ibex, chukar partridge, and snow cocks.

"Walter," I said, "this, and Peking, is where we ought to end our days.
We both love China. We could buy the Peking house, study our
collections, and write during the winter. In the summer, we could come
up here. It wouldn't be difficult to make enough money to live on
comfortably. We could buy and sell race and polo ponies and run
expeditions for various museums. Thus we wouldn't be giving up
scientific work but we could do exactly as we pleased. What do you think
of it?"

"Sounds awfully good to me," Walter replied. "When do we retire?"

"Just as soon as this expedition is ended and we get things cleared up
in New York."

That was in 1925. Walter and I continued to discuss the matter and made
tentative plans, but politics ended that dream. The Chinese perennial
civil wars became increasingly less civil, and by 1932 it was high time
to leave. So I gave up my house and sailed for the United States. I
never again thought of retiring until Billie and I bought Pondwood Farm.

That I lacked the courage to take the plunge from a lifelong familiar
existence into one that was unknown and problematical seemed to be the
major difficulty. For thirty-five years I had lived amid constant change
and excitement with the seven seas and all the continents as a
playground. Even the more static existence, as Director of the American
Museum of Natural History, kept me in touch with personalities and
events of international importance. What would happen to me,
psychologically, if I dropped all that and retired to a life in the
country? Would I stagnate, be unhappy, wish I were back again in the
world picture? Billie thought not. I wasn't so sure.

Moreover, we explorers are improvident people. The insatiable desire to
know what lies over the next hill, the call of the lone trail, so
absorbs our minds that we seldom plan financially for the future. When
field work ends we can write a lot of funny letters, which few people
understand, after our names, and our safe-deposit boxes bulge with
medals, but you can't eat letters or medals. I had been no different
from the others, but I did have avocations which might be turned to
account.

The problem centered largely about me, for Billie knew exactly what she
wanted. She could be happy in making Pondwood Farm our permanent
home--with reservations. To visit New York when we felt like seeing
bright lights; to keep in touch with friends and city activities, and to
travel at times, completed her picture. She had no intention of going
native. Neither had I.

We discussed the matter for days and got exactly nowhere. I have
discovered that sometimes it is wise to cease talking, or even thinking,
of such a problem. Let circumstances and one's subconscious mind make
the decision. So it came about that in November 1941 I offered my
resignation to the Board of Trustees of the Museum and became Honorary
Director. The joy of being free again with no harassing official duties
surpassed anticipation. Moreover, to create a new life for myself was an
inspiring challenge. All the enthusiasm, curiosity, and thrilling
uncertainty of exploring an unknown country returned. Mentally and
physically I was a man reborn.

Immediately we discovered that retiring from professional life did not
mean retirement from life unless we decided to have it so. We need not
become mere spectators and non-participants. Both of us were as busy as
bird dogs. Almost every day exciting things were presented which I could
not have considered as Director of the Museum. Also there came a
complete and interesting change in our personal contacts. People of New
York's social world, financiers, clubmen, scientists, and educators,
gave place to publishers and writers, editors, musicians, radio artists,
and painters who, in New York City, center about the Dutch Treat Club.
This sudden switch in our social activities did entail a certain loss.
Billie and I regretted losing touch with some delightful friends who no
longer came within our new orbit. But it was inevitable. Paradoxically,
the bigger the city the narrower the path one travels. To step off the
highway, naturally circumscribed by absorbing mutual interests, becomes
a major effort. Sporadic attempts at maintaining old contacts outside
one's immediate sphere bog down in conflicting engagements and
eventually die a natural death.

Because friends laughed when we said I had retired, we looked up the
definition in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary to be sure our use of the
word was correct. "1, to withdraw from action or danger; to retreat. 2,
to withdraw for the sake of privacy, seclusion, protection, or the
like."

To withdraw for the sake of privacy! That's exactly what I did. So
etymologically we had the authority of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
But from my experience of the last few years I could add a supplementary
definition. I would say: "3, to withdraw from official duties; to be
free to select the most interesting things out of all those offered in
this amazing world; to be able to pursue one's avocation."

To be free to select the most interesting things out of all those
offered in this amazing world! I've really got something there. After
all, the ultimate goal of most humans, the state which they strive to
attain, is freedom to choose what they want to do. Getting rid of
official duties accomplished that for me.

To be able to pursue one's avocation! God help the man who has no
avocation. I believe it is even more important than accumulating a bank
account to provide for the autumn of one's life. With no avocation, a
man may find himself well fed and mentally starved. I have known a few
such improvident individuals, and they were pitiful examples of the
human species--unhappy, lonely, bored, and boring. Living only for their
profession or business, when that ended they had nothing left; their
existence became a vacuum. On the other hand, a dozen of my friends
turned, upon retirement, to their avocations with all the enthusiasm of
a hungry man for a good dinner. Every one of them is happy and
thoroughly enjoys the opportunity to indulge in what the duties of a
professional career denied him.

Life for me has been a series of distinctly separate episodes and
violent contrasts. Each one, apparently, had no relation to the
immediate past, yet in reality was a logical outgrowth of what went
before. I had written eight books and dozens of magazine articles but
never thought of myself as a writer. Every explorer must tell what he
has done in order to maintain public interest and support of his
expeditions. Writing was a necessary corollary to exploration but only
an avocation. Radio, too, was an avocation which materially assisted my
work. I sometimes wondered, vaguely, if I could make a living by
writing. I never thought I wrote well, but believed that if I had time
to devote to it exclusively I might do better. All my writing had been
done under pressure--just snatching an hour here and there. I often
carried the last page of a magazine article in my pocket and wrote a
sentence or two while my shoes were being shined, while riding in a
taxi, or waiting for a train. My books had been produced between
expeditions, on ships, trains, and airplanes; often when I was too tired
to care whether the stuff was good or bad--just to get what I had done
down on paper. If an editor thought the field accomplishment was
important enough to carry the deficiencies in expression that was the
best I could hope for.

I often thought how I would enjoy leisurely writing--when I felt like
it, and only then. That happy day arrived when I retired. I now go to my
study or log-cabin studio, pregnant with ideas waiting to be born into
words. Sometimes the accouchement does not happen on schedule. Thoughts
are elusive and defy me to express them on paper. So be it. I do not
resort to a Caesarean operation. There are always trout or bass to be
caught, and a rabbit to shoot or fox traps to tend in winter. I know
full well that sometime that day, or the next, I will be eager to return
to my desk.

Frequently an idea comes at the most inopportune moment. Perhaps I have
been mulling over a magazine article or a chapter in a new book. The
facts are all there in my subconscious mind but they won't jell. Then,
suddenly, I see it clearly. Sentences materialize, the picture takes
shape. If I don't write it down instantly the inspiration is lost. One
day Billie was in town. It was hot and I had been fishing. A magazine
editor had asked me to do an article for him but I couldn't get started.
So I took a cold bath and began to shave. For no reason whatever the
whole article assumed concrete form. Face still lathered, I ran to my
study to get the opening remarks on paper. The words just rushed--they
came faster than my pencil could put them down. For four mortal hours I
sat there, until the article was finished. My skin was stiff from the
dried shaving soap, but I was afraid to interrupt the flow of thought.
At the end I had a glow of satisfaction. Whether or not the editor would
like my production seemed unimportant at the time. It was the best I
could do and, in its way, had been as exciting as killing a thirty-pound
salmon.

While writing a book on human evolution called _Meet Your Ancestors_,
one chapter, the story of Peking man, defeated me. It is full of the
romance of a great discovery, but in spite of all I could do it remained
as dead as the dodo. So, fishing rod in hand, I hied to Sandy Brook. The
trout were rising avidly to a hatch of insects. I had just netted a fine
fish and was drying my fly when I happened to see a stone shaped like a
fist ax of Neanderthal man. While examining it, the ideas I had been
trying to capture arranged themselves mentally like parts of a jigsaw
puzzle falling into place.

Trout or no trout, I dared not delay. I always carry a pencil in my
pocket, but alas there was no paper. Looking wildly around, I spotted an
enormous white birch tree and waded out of the stream. Stripping off a
length of bark, I sat down with my back against a pine and began to
write. For two hours I scribbled furiously, until the birch was denuded
of bark as high as I could reach and the chapter finished. My back
ached, my legs were cramped and stiff, but joy filled my heart. Packing
my beautiful thoughts carefully in the creel, I wrapped the lone trout
in ferns and set off happily up the hill. Billie met me in the gun room
with an expectant look, for she likes trout.

"Have you," she asked, "by any chance got some trout for dinner?"

I grinned a bit sheepishly. "One trout, to be exact. You can have him.
I'll dine on Peking man and like it."

So much for my avocation of writing, which has proved enormously
satisfying. My other avocation, radio, fascinates me. Moreover, I like
and admire the people associated with radio. They are intelligent,
well-educated, brilliant in their own field, and have admitted me into
an interesting sphere of which I knew little.

This realm of Creative Arts in which our life has centered is
idealistic, delightfully unconventional, happy-go-lucky, and mentally
stimulating. Clarence Budington Kelland has expressed the creed so
completely in the _Dutch Treat Year Book for 1944_, that with Bud's
permission I am quoting most of it here.

    *    *    *    *    *

"Another year has lurched around on flat wheels and here we still are, a
little grayer but still spry. More false teeth champ down on
non-existent meat. There are more grandsons, and a few great-grandsons.
Our sons are absent from home on important business, and our main
preoccupation is awaiting their safe return. Yet, verging on senility as
we are, lonely as we may be for those who are absent, we are happier
than most. Because we have compensations. Our lives, for the most part,
have been lived in that imponderable world where the common garden
vegetable is not the cabbage, but belongs to that queer genus ineptly
called the Creative Arts. We have dealt in a commodity that cannot be
garnered into barns, nor marketed upon the produce exchange. The chief
reward of our laboring has been the thing that we have produced, and not
the price we received for it. We have written books, we have whittled
out statues, we have daubed canvas with paint, we have striven to
capture songs and cage them in the letters of the alphabet or the notes
of the scale. It has been a more entertaining life than our fellows have
known who deal in fabricated material things and take their pay in
commissions or bonuses. And because it has been more entertaining we
have more gay things to remember. We have had our gay, footless,
improvident friends who loved a caper more than a dollar. We have
committed lovely imprudences that we should delight to commit again if
the opportunity came to us. We remember jokes instead of successful
investments, and our admiration is bestowed upon the pranksters of our
youth and the pranks their humor devised, rather than to the Captains of
Industry who have made our nation Great. We would rather belong to the
Dutch Treat Club than to the National Association of Manufacturers, and
what some of us have produced will outlive the sturdiest automobile. We
have not all been great in our chosen art, but some of us have climbed
to the sublime heights of mediocrity. I think we have all been sincere.
Few of us have swapped our talent willfully for a mess of pottage.
Critics without understanding have looked down their narrow noses at
some of our paintings, our popular songs, our best-selling novels. But
we who made them know that the paintings and the songs and the romances
were the best product of which we were capable, and that, seeking
perfection, we arrived at the elevation that was justly our desert. A
few of us failed completely, but we tried. It is no ill thing to say of
any man that he amused many. Few nights have fallen upon us when we
could not say truthfully, 'Today I painted the best I could. Today I
carved with all my skill. Today I wrote with all the ability that
resided in me.'"

    *    *    *    *    *

A month after my retirement, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, while working
in the study late in the afternoon, a happy thought was born. I shouted
to Billie: "How about taking a cruise to South America? Wouldn't that be
fun? Now we can go anywhere at any time. Office hours are ended."

"Oh," she cried, "it would be heavenly! Hurry up and finish your work.
I'll get the paper. We'll see what ships go where."

For the next hour we perused the advertisements of southern cruises.
One, on the Grace Line, would be gone a month, touching at ports of
Venezuela and Chile. We had friends in Caracas. It was perfect.

Of course Billie's first thought was for her wardrobe, and while she
planned I ascended to the attic to find what of my clothes were left
from the Orient. There were quantities of mess jackets, pongee suits,
and white shoes.

"I'll call Helen at home," I said, "and ask her to make reservations
first thing in the morning." (Helen Voter was my secretary.)

Helen listened patiently to my accustomed enthusiasm.

"But are you going in spite of the war?"

"What do you mean? The show in Europe hasn't touched South America yet.
There are a dozen cruises advertised."

"Haven't you heard? The Japs attacked Pearl Harbor this morning. It's
been on the radio since two o'clock."

Well, we hadn't heard. All that fateful Sunday, while we were blissfully
reveling in our new-found freedom, the Japanese had blasted the Pacific
fleet. Billie rushed to the radio. The air waves vibrated with reports
of the tragedy. By the flick of a dial our joy was changed to direst
forebodings. Finally Billie said with a wry smile:

"We've just made the quickest and least expensive trip to South America
on record. They say anticipation is greater than realization. For the
price of a Sunday paper we've had an hour of anticipation. So that's
that."

We did not take the war casually. I offered my services for duty in the
field. A desk job in Washington was out; I never could have stuck it.
Even though many of the top generals were old friends the answer was
always the same.

"Sorry, you are too old. This is a young man's war. It's going to be
tough."

Although I did not believe it at the time, they were right. Never in the
history of modern warfare has so much been demanded, physically, from
the general to the GI. Suddenly I realized that I had been more than
twenty years behind my age. The years had slipped by quietly,
unobtrusively, while I was looking the other way and too busy to note
their passage.

Well, even if they would not let me go into the field there were other
ways in which we could do our bit and we set about it. George enlisted
immediately in New York's famed Seventh Regiment. Dozens of his friends
from St. Paul's and Princeton were with him. The monotonous life of
drill with wooden guns in an infantry regiment changed to an
anti-aircraft unit, where few of the officers knew more than the
privates, irked him beyond the power of words. "Dad," he wrote, "if I
don't get out of this I'll go mad." So with five other boys he applied
for the Army Air Corps. Eventually their transfer was authorized and
George was sent for preliminary training as a fighter pilot to
Corsicana, Texas. Rated as one of the best cadets of his class (proud
father speaking; he'll hate me for this!), he went on to Randolph Field
for his wings. Then to Sherman, Texas, where he met Mary Nancy
McElhannon, to whom he is now married.




[Illustration]

  VIII

  _Spring Comes to Pondwood_


Since I was continually called on during the winter by government
bureaus for consultation on oriental matters and other activities
connected with the war, it was necessary for me to be in the city.
Therefore we did not move permanently to the country until the middle of
April 1942. In spite of the war, I looked forward as much to the coming
of spring at Pondwood as I did when a boy in Wisconsin. Then I wandered
restlessly about our village home in the evening, filled with vague
excitement and blood fever, pressing my face into the new grass, chewing
the lilac buds, and straining my ears for the honk of wild geese flying
to the river. The damp, sodden smell of the marshes and the _oka-ma-lee_
of the redwing blackbirds perching on dead cattails were the most
delightful odor and the sweetest music in the world. By a single
revolution of the Wheel of Life it had all returned. There was one
difference. In those days every week was a year; now every year is a
week.

While the ground was snow-covered, chickadees, hairy and downy
woodpeckers, nuthatches, snowbirds, jays, and yellow evening grosbeaks
had come regularly to the feeding boxes opposite our big living-room
window. Sometimes a flock of dark red pine siskins would flutter out of
the clouds, like a puff of wind-blown autumn leaves, to remain for only
a day or two. Most of these winter friends were still with us when we
began permanent residence in April. But other birds had arrived. Robins
and song sparrows were telling the world how happy they were to be home,
and bluebirds sang from the very tips of the tallest trees. Billie
fastened a bird box to an old apple tree in the orchard with a little
sign reading: "Apartment to let to bluebird family. Children expected."
Her invitation was accepted within a fortnight. The birds paid their
rent by singing every morning outside our bedroom window.

But the true harbinger of spring is our great blue heron. He has been
coming for a dozen years. Although he summers at Benedict Pond, two
miles away, he visits us almost every day. For some strange reason he
brings his wife only twice a year. We feel that he ought to share the
fish and frogs of our marsh with the Little Woman, but apparently he
does not consider that necessary. They are for him alone. At Benedict we
always see the pair together, but only the two. We have come to believe
they are a permanently childless couple. In 1942 he arrived too early.
Our pond was frozen except at the inlet. We sat in the window watching
with binoculars as he paraded along the edge of the ice. Obviously he
could not quite make up his mind to step off into the cold water. He
would dip one foot in and jerk it back like a bathing girl gathering
courage for her first plunge. Finally he decided he was being rather
silly and leaped off the ice. We could see him shiver.

The sun opened the pond too slowly for our impatient spirits so, while I
rowed, Billie stood in the bow of the boat, like "Washington Crossing
the Delaware," smashing the soft ice with an oar. Thus we hastened
nature's process by nearly a week. On April 22 the first spring peepers
began their welcome song in the marsh, and a few days later leopard
frogs joined the chorus. In May the shores of the pond were alive with
toads making their annual pilgrimage to the water for egg laying. Little
brown heads by the thousands poked above the surface, each wife carrying
her husband picka-back. As the long strings of eggs emerged he
fertilized them industriously. Once the business of propagation was
ended, the toads disappeared into the woods and fields. We were happy to
see them come, for a big crop of toads meant fewer mosquitoes to plague
Billie in the summer evenings. I say Billie because neither mosquitoes
nor any other insect will bite me unless it is close to starvation. This
immunity annoys my wife exceedingly. While she slaps and squirms I sit
untouched. At such times she is moved to make most uncomplimentary
remarks about the epidermis of the man she married. The word "pachyderm"
occurs frequently. I only grin smugly and smoke my pipe. Occasionally,
however, in May or June, even I will be driven off a trout stream or the
pond by the black gnats and the "nosee-ums," which are our greatest
pest. Then Billie chortles with unholy joy and says, "Now you know how I
feel!"

I become enthusiastic over the insect songs which accompany the arrival
of spring and summer. Billie evinces a more controlled joy, since to her
they mean bites and "fly dope." I can identify most of the noises and
explain how they are produced, for in China I used to keep insects in
tiny bamboo cages and watch them make their music.

"If we can catch a katydid," I said one day, "you will see a real
violinist."

In due time we caught a katydid. He was a very obliging katydid and
fiddled industriously while we watched. His bow was a little file on the
underside of one forewing which he drew over the upper surface of the
other.

"Kreisler couldn't do better," Billie said, which was great praise for
Kreisler.

"Flies, mosquitoes, bees, and some beetles sing by vibrating the wings
with sufficient speed and regularity to produce a definite note," I
informed her.

"Tell me something I don't know," she remarked. "I'm not so dumb as you
think."

Even with such little encouragement I felt obliged to educate her in a
scientific understanding of insect sounds. After all, a naturalist's
wife is supposed to know something of natural history.

"How about the cicada?" I asked hopefully. "Do you know how he
'shrills'?"

"No, I don't. I suppose he just does it with his mouth when he feels
like shrilling to his mate."

"Not at all," I replied. "He has a complex sound-producing organ. The
shrilling of the male cicada, Mrs. Andrews, is made by rapid vibrations
of a pair of membranes, or drums, situated at the base of the abdomen.
The drums vibrate by the action of two powerful muscles and the timbre
can be modified by so-called mirrors or sounding boards."

"Do tell," said Billie. Nevertheless, I could see she was impressed.

"If," I asked, "you were strolling in the woods and heard a subdued
tapping noise, what would you think it was?"

"Probably a woodpecker. But if it was a whistle I'd know for sure. I've
never been tapped at that I can remember."

"Subdued! Very subdued!" I reiterated patiently. "It would be a beetle
hitting his head against dead wood--or maybe a soldier termite. It's a
sex call."

"Not the kind I understand," said my wife brazenly.

I had hard sledding with entomology where she was concerned. She warned
me that her chief interest was to keep "bugs" away from her--not to pry
into their private lives. After trying to teach her the names of the
principal orders of insects, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that
she did not _want_ to learn. Coleoptera, she willfully pronounced
"coreopsis" in spite of the fact that I informed her repeatedly it was
the name of a flower. Lepidoptera she translated into "lapis lazuli"
because she likes the color of the stone. Finally I gave up, except for
crickets. She thought they would impart a homey atmosphere to the gun
room, so we caught four and installed them in the woodbox by the
fireplace. Billie fed them on lettuce and bits of moist bread. In return
they fiddled industriously, just as katydids do. In order to be true to
my cloth I made one last attempt to educate her entomologically.

"The significance of insect sounds," I intoned, "is not always easy to
infer. In many species they are probably sex calls, but others seem to
communicate some kind of intelligence, such as recognition, danger, et
cetera, to members of the colony. Certain entomologists, however,
believe that insect sounds have no biological significance. Personally,
I do not believe them."

"Neither do I," said Billie. "I think those entomologists are just plain
stupid."

So we let it go at that.

    *    *    *    *    *

A fascinating spring event is the coming of the timberdoodles. What, you
may well ask, is a timberdoodle? Timberdoodle is one name for a woodcock
because it lives in the timber and flies like a doodle. But what is a
woodcock? A woodcock is a fat little brown bird weighing about half a
pound. It is a very peculiar bird. It has a bill three inches long which
it pushes deeply into the mud to extract earthworms and the like. It
does not see what it eats. The terminal third of its bill is soft,
flexible, and filled with sensitive nerves. When these come in contact
with a palatable morsel they telegraph a suggestion to the bird's brain
that it draw the worm into its mouth and swallow it. A woodcock will
consume its own weight in earthworms every twenty-four hours. Woodcock
are considered to be the most delicious of all birds for the table.
Epicures smack their lips and drool at the mere thought of roast
woodcock.

In addition to other oddities a woodcock can see back and up better than
forward. If its bug eyes were in the normal position, its vision would
be restricted to the ground immediately in front of its nose while
probing for worms. Thus its natural enemies could stalk the little
fellow at ease and soon woodcock would cease to exist. So Nature did
something about it. She provided that its eyes move up and back until
they occupy the top third of its head. The bird wears an expression of
perpetual surprise. William J. Schaldach characterizes the woodcock as
"a grade-A screwball . . . a long-billed enigma . . . eccentric as an
old miser . . . as unreliable as April weather . . . where he lives or
stops is a question of the mysterious reactions of the wheels that go
around in Jonathan's head." To this profile I say, "Here, here!" But
looks are not everything, and perhaps his unconventional brain is what
helps him continue to exist in this world of peril.

Woodcock raise their addle-pated families mostly in the north, but a few
pair seem to like the vicinity of Pondwood Farm and set up housekeeping
not far from our front door. When the frost makes it difficult to get
their bills into the ground they leave their northern homes and journey
to winter quarters in the southern states. But they don't pack bag and
baggage, buy a through ticket, and make a well-regulated,
straight-in-a-line trip with mother and the children. Quite the
contrary. They believe in taking it easy with frequent stops at way
stations, and the way stations may be extraordinary places. Twice in the
most arid spots of the Gobi Desert, where one would be as little
surprised to see a bird of paradise as a woodcock, I have flushed them
from behind rocks. Of course Jonathan had been overtaken by daylight in
the long flight from his summer home in Siberia to the sunny South.
Because the desert swarms with hawks and eagles his not-so-dumb little
brain said, "Hole up and be a fly-by-night." One thing is sure, before
he started southward he stocked up his insides with a copious supply of
earthworms, for he knew he'd find none in the Gobi sands. We have
flushed timberdoodles in our rock garden at Pondwood; sometimes on the
lawn. Anywhere and everywhere when the flight is on. Unpredictable, here
today and gone tomorrow, a bird of mystery and caprice. That's what
makes him such a fascinating thing to hunt.

One of the major results of clearing our meadow was to produce a
"singing field" for the lovesick timberdoodles on their northward
flight. Like human wooers, the moon affects their ardor. Lacking the
moon, a starbright night will do, but the amount of light for his mating
performance is a matter of serious import. He insists that his
gymnastics be appreciated to the full. We listen for the nasal p-e-e-n-t
which announces that the woodcock are making wedding plans. Utterly
absorbed in their emotion, I suspect that human Peeping Toms are even
welcomed.

On the lawn one night, just at our front door, a pair gave us a
spectacular exhibition. Billie and I watched with a flashlight. The
little brown maiden sat demurely while her prospective husband, erect
and pompous, strutted about like a fat little alderman arrayed in
striped trousers and morning coat. Tail spread, wings drooped, and chin
pulled in, he displayed his charms to her apparently unseeing eyes.
Nevertheless, we were sure she never missed a trick. Suddenly, with a
dramatic "peent," he launched himself into the air on a long spiral
flight. We tried to follow him with the flash beam but he went much
beyond its range. Then from far up in the sky an indescribably sweet,
melodious song drifted down to her and us. A moment later the tiny lover
shot into the field of light, sideslipped, recovered, and volplaned in a
perfect two-point landing at the feet of the little brown bird he had
selected to be his mate out of all the woodcock world. Long after we had
gone to bed, and again before dawn, through the open windows, we heard
the music of the timberdoodle's song.

Spring in the rock garden is a never-ending source of joy to both of
us. Even with patches of snow still dotting the meadow we can find the
delicate tips of yellow and white crocus pushing up through the soft
earth. The first blossoms are the signal for a celebration. Then come
the blue grape hyacinths, yellow daffodils, tulips, and, as the sun
warms the earth, violets, Johnny-jump-ups, pansies, and iris. Billie
works unceasingly at weeding. I volunteered to help one day, but after
having pulled up several of her special plants under the impression that
they were undesirable aliens, I was indignantly relegated to the side
lines. So while she weeded I lay on my stomach in the new grass and
observed the multitudinous insect life just beyond my nose. A
play-by-play account of what transpired in the small world of creeping
things that swarmed over the few square feet of earth within my lazy
vision entertained her moderately.

A colony of ants worked industriously at moving bits of wood from one
place to another. Why, I could not discover. Ants have always interested
me because, when I first came to the Museum as a boy just out of
college, Professor William Morton Wheeler took a fatherly interest in my
career. He was one of America's most distinguished biologists and a
particular student of ants. He told me much about them and later I
collected specimens for him in many parts of the world. As a result of
my industry I have several ants, bearing my name, running about on the
islands of the East Indies at this very moment. I took occasion to tell
Billie of this distinction, hoping she would be impressed. "So what?"
was all she said. But when I recited some of the things an ant can do
she put down her trowel, lighted a cigarette, and gave me attention.

"Did you know," I asked, "that a chap who was interested in ants saw a
dead grasshopper being dragged along by an ant? He was curious, so he
weighed them both. He found the ant was hauling sixty times its own
weight. That would be like a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound man pulling a
load of nine thousand pounds!"

"Well, I never did know that," said Billie. "Tell me more."

"All right. An Australian ant, while suspending itself by its feet,
supported in its jaws a pair of gloves more than eleven hundred times
its own weight. To equal this a hundred-and-fifty-pound man would have
to hold in his teeth a weight of eighty-two and a half _tons_ if he were
hanging by his toes."

"Of course," said Billie, "I wouldn't believe your figures except I am
sure you have learned them by heart, just for dinner conversation.
Probably they are entirely correct."

"You can bet they are. Moreover, I'll tell you another. In some parts of
India and Algeria biting ants are used in surgery where we would employ
adhesive plaster or stitches. The edges of a wound are pressed together
and each ant applied by means of forceps. The jaws of the ant are widely
opened and, as it is brought near the wound, it seizes both edges,
holding them together. Then the "surgeon" snips off the bodies and the
heads remain firmly clamped until the wound has healed.

"I'll go even further. When I was in the Philippines years ago an
American soldier had been captured by Moros. They buried him up to his
neck in an anthill, cut off his tongue, propped open his jaws, and laid
a trail of honey to his mouth. When we found him he was only a skeleton.
Would you like more about the natural history of ants?"

Billie shuddered. "No, I wouldn't. Quit looking at ants and think about
flowers for a change."

I rolled over to where a bush of flowering almond was beginning to put
out new leaves. A tiny spider sat on the topmost twig. It was preparing
for an adventure. Tilting up its abdomen, it spun a thread and waited
patiently until the silken rope was long enough to bear the weight of
its body. Then it let go. Wafted into the air by a vagrant breeze, it
floated ten feet to the next bush. Where it would ride from there on its
magic carpet I could only guess. It might travel a hundred feet, a
hundred yards, or as many miles. Darwin records that "ballooning"
spiders landed on the ship _Beagle_ when she was sixty miles at sea.

"You could," I said to Billie, "really create a fashion sensation if you
got some stockings made of spider silk instead of nylon."

That made her take notice. "Well, why can't I?"

"You can't because a poor naturalist like me couldn't afford to buy them
for you, that's why. Only a few pairs have ever been woven and it was a
special stunt. It would require fifty-seven thousand spiders to produce
a pound of silk."

"Why," Billie asked, "doesn't someone start a spider farm? I've heard
that spider silk is the best thing for the cross hairs in telescopes."

"Spiders are too difficult to raise in big numbers. You'd have to catch
a lot of insects to feed them and they are cannibals. That makes it
bad."

Billie was really interested. She abandoned weeding and we hunted about
until we discovered a spider industriously spinning a web on a rosebush
near the stone wall.

"How," she asked, "does that funny thing make silk? It looks as though
it were coming out of its little hind end."

"That's exactly what it is doing," I explained. "Every spider has
fingerlike appendages near the end of the abdomen on the underside. Each
one has a tiny spigot through which the liquid silk issues from internal
glands and hardens in the air. Wherever a spider goes, he plays out a
silken line behind him, attaching it at intervals to something on the
surface. You wouldn't believe that spiders are scared of falling down
steep places, would you?"

"They can fall down all the steep places they like," said my wife, "so
long as the steep places aren't me."

Obviously her interest in spiders was waning. Drastic action was
required. We discovered an orb weaver that had constructed a lovely
whirl-shaped web on a crimson rambler. I lit my pipe and we sat down to
watch.

"If," said Billie, "we are here for the rest of the afternoon, I need a
cocktail."

I ran to the house and returned with an "old folks," as Walter calls it.
Having finished his work, the spider descended from the outer rim of his
web and sat quietly in the center. Before long a fly became entangled.
Instantly the spider galvanized into action. Up the ladder it ran,
quickly wrapped the struggling victim in a sheet of silk, and killed it
by injecting poison secreted in glands connected with the claws in front
of its mouth. It was a spectacular exhibition of planning, skill, and
technique.

In spite of her feminine aversion to insects and creeping things, Billie
was enjoying herself. We hunted about until we found the burrow of a
wolf spider with "the big bad wolf" at home. He ran down into the cellar
of his house while we inspected the walls he had cleverly hung with silk
curtains to entrap insects. Others had lined a space under a stone with
filmy draperies for the same fell purpose.

"On one of the islands near New Guinea," I told Billie, "I saw natives
using a dip net made of large spiderwebs to catch small fish. They bent
a piece of cane into an oval shape and twisted it around and around
among large spiderwebs until three or four layers were stretched across
the frame. Although flat when made, the silk was so elastic that it
became bag-shaped in the water. Moreover, it was absolutely invisible.
The natives caught birds, butterflies, and bats with the same net.

"In England the armament inspection department at one time employed a
man who was skillful enough to separate spider threads with a tiny
knife. His colony of gray-backed spiders lived on dahlias. Whenever
filaments were needed for telescopes or bomb sights, he selected a
likely looking spider and kept it without food for two days so that all
impurities would be eliminated from the silk. Then the creature was
allowed to spin for fifteen minutes and the thread wound on small metal
frames. After that it got food." The spider lesson ended as the chill of
evening began to creep up from the pond. Billie agreed that it had been
an exciting afternoon.

    *    *    *    *    *

That spring of 1942 we were concerned because the cherry trees of the
entire region were enveloped by tent caterpillars. "Burn them," said our
neighbors, and proceeded to do it on their own places by holding torches
of oil-soaked rags under the nests. It killed many of the leaves and
branches too. The trees stood like brown ghosts when the burning was
finished. It didn't make sense to me; the cure seemed worse than the
disease. So I consulted the late Dr. Frank E. Lutz, Curator of
Entomology in the Museum. The information he gave me seems worth passing
along to others, for we tried it successfully.

"The tent caterpillar," said Dr. Lutz, "is a native American insect--not
a foreigner like the Japanese beetle. It has been here for millions of
years--long before garden clubs thought of managing things out of doors.
Nature herself has arranged that both the tent caterpillar and
vegetation can live together. There is a "balance of nature" between
the caterpillar and its insect enemies; thus years of abundance are
followed by years of scarcity. This season happens to be a peak;
probably they won't be a serious pest again for sometime.

"Tent caterpillar females lay their eggs almost exclusively on wild
cherry trees. But even at the worst, the insects do not seriously injure
the trees. Three weeks after complete defoliation the cherry trees are
in full leaf again. In late spring the female moth places a band of eggs
around a twig and smears it with a frothy substance that dries into a
shiny, dark-brown protective cover. In a few weeks each egg will contain
a caterpillar, destined to remain dormant until the following spring.
Warm sun stirs it to emerge, feed on the new leaves, and spin a nest.
Eventually it weaves a cocoon in which it changes to pupal form and then
into the winged moth.

"That," said Dr. Lutz, "is the story of the lucky tent caterpillar. But
by no means all are lucky. Thousands of insects live by eating other
insects, and the tent caterpillar is preyed upon by a beetle of the
genus Calosoma. Other parasitic insects lay their eggs in the
caterpillars' bodies and kill them. Also, they may die from starvation.

"Suppose," he said, "there were an organized campaign to burn tent
caterpillars. Thousands of parasites which Nature uses in her control
would be destroyed. The interdependence of insect life is so complex
that we had best let Nature do the job alone and not upset the balance
she has created."

Thus spoke an authority, so we didn't burn our caterpillars. As a
result, our trees are flourishing, while some of our neighbors look
sorrowfully upon shriveled remnants of their once-lovely cherry trees. I
was so moved by our successful experiment that I published a short
account of it in a magazine. The result was a flood of letters
denouncing my article. One woman wrote, "Any damned fool who says 'don't
burn tent caterpillars' would say, 'don't slap Jersey mosquitoes when
they sting.' Bah to you, Dr. Andrews!"

Bah right back to you, lady! Burn your caterpillars and see where it
gets you.

The tent caterpillars were hardly off our minds before we suffered an
invasion of seventeen-year locusts. They swarmed in the maples, crawled
over the stone walls, and dropped like rain from the branches; the
shrilling was almost deafening. Even though I knew they were cicadas,
not true locusts, and were virtually harmless, I had a vivid memory of
what happened in North China. That summer the locusts swept down upon
Peiping like a devastating horde, devouring every leaf and blade of
grass, leaving only stark bare ground behind the advancing army. The
Chinese tried desperately to protect their rice fields and vegetable
gardens but it was hopeless. They did, however, salvage something out of
the ruin--trust a Chinese for that! I saw thousands of men, women, and
children gathering the insects in baskets. That night at dinner I said
to Lo, my Number One Boy:

"Why were the people catching all those locusts?"

"Oh, Master, they belong very good to eat. Bug eat 'um garden; we eat
'um bug. We cook in sugar. They just like candy. You like eat some? Cook
have plenty in kitchen."

"Bring on your bugs. I'll try anything once," I replied.

The locusts arrived. I tasted one rather gingerly. It was surprisingly
good, crisp and sweet, and, as Lo had promised, much like candy.

The point of the story is that the Chinese bugs were true locusts which
belong to the grasshopper group and are equipped with chewing mouth
parts. Our seventeen-year locusts aren't locusts at all but represent
the plant louse group and have no chewing parts. Therefore they can do
little damage to crops, gardens, or trees even though they come in
terrifying numbers.

The cicadas lay their eggs on trees. The young crawl down the trunk of
the tree or drop off and burrow into the ground below frost level. There
they remain for seventeen years, finally emerging to live from one to
three weeks above ground.

After we had finally settled at Pondwood Farm our life slipped into a
natural pattern with no effort or planning. I retire to my log studio
immediately after breakfast and write until lunchtime at one o'clock. I
enjoy those hours enormously. Even though deep in the woods, beyond the
reach of telephone or household traffic, I am seldom alone. With the
door and windows open, the cabin becomes a part of the forest life.

One day, while sitting at my desk in the far corner of the room, I heard
a faint stirring in the leaves and the click of hoofs. The noise sounded
louder, then it transferred itself to the little porch. A moment later
the silhouette of a magnificent buck deer, with antlers in the velvet,
was framed in the doorway. He paused, pushed his forequarters into the
room, and stared curiously at a Mongolian mountain sheep head on the
wall; then his gaze shifted to a pair of ibex horns. Twice he looked
squarely at me but my shirt was dark and the corner in shadow. He was
about to take another step when a breeze through the window wafted the
man scent to his nostrils. With a "whoof" of terror he turned, caught
his antlers in the doorjamb, twisted loose, and dashed off through the
forest.

Deer are not my only visitors. Chipmunks, squirrels, and delicate little
white-footed mice follow the trail of grain I lay from the porch into
the cabin. After a day or two they come regularly for their meals and
sometimes even hop on to my desk, regarding me curiously with bright
black eyes. My attempts at conversation are answered by friendly,
high-pitched squeaks and "gurrs."

But one "white-foot" did a good deal more than squeak. He actually sang
to me. Singing mice are rare, but they exist all over the world, and you
may even have one in your own kitchen if you take the trouble to make
friends with the little fellow. My mouse visited me half-a-dozen times
before he vocalized. I discovered that he liked the window sill just
above my desk, and that peanuts were his favorite food. He would scamper
through the doorway, run up the bark-covered log bookcase, and sit down
to eat with the utmost confidence. One afternoon, having finished dinner
and washed his face, he regarded me speculatively for a few minutes;
then he stood on his hind feet, balanced against the window sill, poked
his nose in the air, and began a series of musical chirps and twitters.
The sound was very birdlike in quality with variations in notes and
tones but weak in volume. It was just as definitely a song as that of a
bird but did not seem to have any particular theme. I was tremendously
excited, for this was my second singing mouse. The first one was brought
to me by my Number One Boy in Peiping, China. He walked into my office
one morning carrying a little bamboo cage containing a common house
mouse.

"Master, you wantchee buy mouse?"

"Why on earth should I buy a mouse?" I asked. "There are too many of
them about the place now."

"Oh, Master, this belong very special mouse--he sing. Very rare. He cost
five dolla."

"All right," I said. "Leave the mouse. If he sings, I'll give you five
dollars. If not, you take him back."

The mouse did sing, exactly like my friend on the window sill. I kept
him for a week and he performed frequently, usually in the evening. Then
one night the office door was left open and a stray cat discovered my
little singing companion. All I found in the morning was a broken bamboo
cage and a few drops of blood on the floor. During all my years in
China I never saw another.

Some time ago Mrs. William LeRoy Cabell of New York, whose apartment
contained a collection of three hundred tropical birds, discovered that
she had three singing mice in her home. The report runs that "Dr. Cabell
saw the mice: a little one with a shrill, melodious soprano; a
medium-sized mouse (shades of the three bears) with a medium-sized
voice, and a big fat one with a deep 'churrup.'"

Dr. Lee R. Dice, a biologist of the University of Michigan, studied
singing mice and published his results in the _Journal of Mammalogy_,
1932. His bibliography lists titles of forty-three papers in English,
French, Spanish, and German. Dr. Dice concludes that singing mice have
been recorded in many parts of the world; that both males and females
have this rare habit, and that the songs are of different types.

My white-footed mouse in the studio came regularly for his food during a
fortnight but sang only twice. Then one afternoon he did not appear. I
watched hopefully every day but I never saw him again.

I had one not-so-welcome caller. A porcupine waddled through the door. I
hated to reward his faith with treachery, but he was an exceedingly
dangerous creature to have about the woods. The reversely directed barbs
work the quills deeper and deeper into an animal's body as the muscles
move and often cause death. Had Lord Jitters or Queen encountered the
beast, not being familiar with his ilk, the results would have been
disastrous. I once shot a wildcat that had just attacked a porcupine.
The poor thing's face, jaws, and neck were like a pincushion stuck full
of broken quills. Unquestionably it would have died in agony from
starvation had I not killed it.

Having done my daily literary stint I can enjoy interviewing trout or
bass with a clear conscience. When I announce at luncheon that I expect
to fish in the afternoon, Billie sings: "Roy's work is from nine to one,
but Billie's work is never done." Actually she isn't so put upon as she
would have me believe. When our friends ask, "What does Billie do in the
country?" I enumerate her activities with pleasure for I know she enjoys
them all. She often says: "In New York I seem to have so much time on my
hands. At Pondwood there are never enough hours to do what I want to
do." As a result, we spend fewer and fewer days in the city.

She is responsible for the house and servants as she always has been. In
addition she took over our finances and pays all the bills. In the past
Helen, my secretary, attended to such poisonous details. Since neither
of us can add, subtract, or multiply without the aid of fingers, some of
our financial perplexities are ludicrous. Now we are better off,
theoretically, for Billie has recently acquired a calculator. She never
can be quite certain that she has operated the gadget correctly,
however, and has to check the figures by fingers. Eventually she expects
to learn all its combinations and become a mathematical wizard.
Nevertheless, we muddle along. Billie assumed charge of an acre of
vegetables as well as her flower gardens. With our man she works out
details of when and where to plant the crops and keeps a watchful eye
on the harvesting. She oversees the canning of vegetables, putting them
down in the deep-freeze boxes, making jelly, and preserving fruit. She
is, moreover, a born mechanic and electrician. Give her a tool kit, plus
a lot of wires and electrical gadgets, and she is happy. As a plumber
she falls down a bit. Something tells me she does not care deeply for
plumbing. On the other hand, I am not mechanical nor electrical, nor do
I wish to learn. After all, why should I, when my wife is such an
expert? It affords me the opportunity to keep my thoughts always on
higher things.

Billie has an eccentricity of mine to cope with which I might commend to
H. T. Webster who draws the cartoon "How to Torture Your Wife." Just
before dinner is to be announced I have a tendency to absent myself to
some distant part of the place or put in a long-distance telephone call.
Why, I do not know, but my father always did the same. It must be an
inherited instinct. Our dogs, except Queen, seem to have acquired the
habit from me. They all may be asleep on the porch when I go to prepare
their food and shut them in the kennel for the night. In two minutes
every one will have disappeared. Billie has trained me over a period of
years, so now I try to curb the disappearing act. It requires will
power.

Like all wives, Billie complains bitterly that I take no interest in the
house. That is not true, but I refrain from arguing the matter. At
night, if a blind slams or she hears a noise downstairs, or thinks she
smells smoke, Billie is out of bed like a shot. She parades up and down
stairs from cellar to attic until she locates the disturbance. Seldom do
I accompany her on such excursions. One person can explore as well as
two. If something demands my attention I know full well she will have me
at it pronto. In fact, I suspect she calls for help at times simply to
disturb my slumbers. For some strange feminine reason it annoys her that
I can sleep while she prowls.

"You'd let the ceiling fall on your head," she says, "and do nothing
about it."

"But," I retort, "I know the ceiling won't fall on my head because you'd
have had it fixed long before the falling stage. The home is a woman's
castle. To win the bread is man's obligation."

"Oh, _you_!" is all she says to that, but it holds a world of scorn.




[Illustration]

  IX

  _The Great Pig Derby_


When we came to Pondwood, Florina, a personable colored girl, graced the
kitchen. Moreover, she improved her mind. She read the best books from
our library, studied assiduously, and spoke with a Harvard accent. Her
_a_'s were so broad that at times they made me wince. Under emotional
stress she had a tendency to slip, but on the whole the impression was
devastating.

While Florina cooked, her thoughts were on higher things. Admittedly she
was on the prowl for a husband. Yet, as she frankly informed us, not
just an ordinary man. The one of her choice, the one to whom she could
give her all, must have financial means sufficient to support her in
the style to which she aspired. I often discussed the matter with her,
for I recognized a soul struggling upward.

"Doctor," she would ask, "why should I get married just to go on
working? I can have all the men I need without that. I don't want just a
man. I want a man _and_ a bank account."

What should I advise? It was a poser. Since she was a worldly person,
one who had never experienced the deeper passion, I could only say "more
power to you."

We took her back and forth with us on week ends, but she was restless in
the country. During the two months we spent at the farm in the summer
she became a veritable hermit. Her only companion was Poke-Poke, the
cat.

Norfolk has a colored society of considerable proportions. They have
picnics, dances, and dinners on Thursdays and Sundays. Florina gave them
the once-over, found no candidate who could fill her requirements, and
then retired into herself.

During the period of her self-imposed seclusion Florina spent every
evening before the radio listening to quiz programs. In the morning she
would present Billie with her score and a statement of how much money
she would have made had she been one of the contestants. After two years
Florina reviewed the situation and realized she had made no progress
toward her desired end. One evening while we were having coffee she
asked very formally to speak to us on a personal matter.

"Madam, I like you very much. Doctor, I admire and respect your
erudition." I choked but recovered my composure. "Nevertheless, I
realize that life in the country is not for me. The social horizon is
too limited. I do not meet the class with whom I am accustomed to
associate. Regretfully I must tender my resignation. Of course I shall
be glad to remain until you have filled my position."

Then she almost broke down. With a sob she wailed, "What will I do
without Poke-Poke?" It was a harrowing moment. I made a dash upstairs
with a handkerchief at my mouth, leaving Billie to handle the situation.

This was in May 1942. Having received a radar message that its services
were required, my Lucky Star directed Walter and Edith Douglas, a
colored couple from Virginia, to Pondwood Farm. They dropped in one day
and stayed. It was just like that.

Edith presides over the kitchen and Walter presides over me. He can do
virtually anything from serving a dinner to felling a tree. But his
principal asset, from my standpoint, is his consuming passion for
shooting and fishing. He will go with me anywhere at any time if a gun
or a fishing rod is involved. Billie considers this a mixed blessing.
When she goes to Winsted shopping Walter and I sometimes sneak off to
Sandy Brook or Benedict Pond the moment her car is out of sight. She
puts on a great show of indignation when she discovers we have gone
fishing instead of performing our appointed tasks. Secretly I think she
is relieved, because of a newly developed complex that I am not to be
trusted out alone. In vain do I call her attention to the fact that I
have spent most of my life in the wilderness. It makes no impression.
She remembers that I once got lost in our own woods. She still believes
me incapable of taking care of myself. I think it originated when I
broke my leg.

However, the prohibition now extends to motorcars. I will admit that
when I am driving my thoughts do wander. If I see a nice straight road
or a car in front of me I am prone to follow, no matter where it leads.
Moreover, someone is always bumping into me or doing some stupid thing
which I am sure is not my fault but seems to happen to me alone. I refer
Billie to my long years of driving in the Gobi Desert. "Yes," she says,
"the desert is just the place for you. Out in the wide-open spaces, and
the wider the spaces the better." So now I am allowed to drive to the
post box at the foot of our hill, and, on very rare occasions, to
Winsted or Norfolk.

My old friend, General Ted Roosevelt, was similarly afflicted. His wife,
Eleanor, permitted him to drive only within a radius of ten miles about
Oyster Bay. "But, Eleanor," I said, "if you let him go that far why not
farther?"

"Because, Roy, in case he got stranded we would not have to go so far to
bring him and the car home."

    *    *    *    *    *

I am constantly amused by Walter's stories. One day we were going
fishing.

"Doctah," he said, "I'se gettin' fat."

"How much do you weigh, Walter?"

"Two hundred and twelve," he replied.

"But that isn't much. You are over six feet and you've got a big frame.
Two hundred and twelve is about right, I should say."

"I never did think of that. Now take my mother. She was a big woman. She
had a big frame. She weighed two hundred and forty-five. But if you had
a-stewed the old lady up you wouldn't-a got a pound o' lard out o' her!"

I roared. Walter wasn't trying to be funny. It was just his way of
expressing an obvious fact.

Both Walter and Edith are very religious. His profanity consists of
"Great day in the mornin'." One evening I lost a very large bass in
Benedict Pond as we were about to net the fish. I'd need asbestos paper
to record my remarks. Walter just sat with his head in his hands
repeating, "Great day in the mornin', great day in the mornin'."

At home, I said to Edith, who has a keen sense of humor, "If you could
have heard what Walter said when we lost that fish you'd be sorry you
married him."

"Yes, Doctah," she replied seriously, but with a gleam in her eyes, "I
know Walter can say very bad words. I've heard him. The other night the
light was out and he was down on his knees saying his prayers. When he
got up he hit his shin against the table, and, Doctah, he sure did _ruin
that prayer_!"

Walter's strength is "as the strength of ten."

"Doctah," he said, "when I was young I carried eight ninety-six-pound
bags of ce-ment thirty feet on a bet. That's seven hundred and
sixty-eight pounds. They piled 'em up, three on each shoulder and one
under each arm. But I only won fifty cents!" It didn't tax my credulity,
for I saw him handle a three-hundred-pound log with the greatest ease.
Upending it, he worked his shoulder to the exact balancing point,
leveled off, gave a heave, and shot the tree trunk into the wagon. I
gasped. He only laughed. "Shucks, that was nothin', Doctah. I ain't what
I used to be."

An ax, to Walter, is as delicate an instrument in balance and feel as a
fly rod, a gun, or a golf club to a professional. The handles he makes
himself from a hickory tree with a drawshave, file, sandpaper, and a
piece of glass. After setting the head at the exact angle, he weights it
to the perfect balance with wedges of lead or iron. The edge is always
razor sharp. His ax is as sacred as the Koran. If I so much as touch it
Walter yells like a banshee. Well, I do the same if anyone stretches a
hand toward my fly rods. When Walter "falls" a tree his ease and grace
are like a physical poem. Someday I shall have him do it before a
slow-motion camera. His great shoulders swing in perfect rhythm, first
one side then the other, without a pause, each stroke carving out chips
as clean and perfect as though cut by a cabinetmaker. Half through the
trunk he stops, breathing as easily as though he hadn't touched the ax.

"Just where you want the tree, Doctah?"

"Right here, Walter. I'll put a stake. See if you can hit it."

"I'll hit it, don't you never mind. Already it's done done. Bet you a
quarter I don't miss it twelve inches."

I take his bet, although I know it's financial suicide. Walter surveys
the situation critically. Not only a quarter but his reputation is
involved, and that's serious. He sights from behind the tree, shifts
position slightly, and swings his ax. Clop, clop; the tree trembles.
Walter steps back, takes one last look, and gives the _coup de grce_.
Down comes the giant.

"I done it, Doctah! I done done it! Bet you another quarter I hit that
stake _ex_-actly."

"Nothing doing, Walter; I can't afford it."

So we examine the stake and find it driven half into the ground, right
under the trunk of the tree. It sounds fantastic. But let a city dweller
watch an expert axman and he will bare his head in recognition of skill
as great as that of any world-famous tennis player, golfer, or baseball
star.

Of course Walter is a wonderful shot. With such perfect co-ordination of
hand and eye it could not be otherwise. I saw him kill a flying ruffed
grouse with a .22-caliber rifle--and that's shooting in any sportsman's
language. But of fishing he knew nothing beyond bait. At first he
scoffed at my dry flies.

"No fish ain't goin' be fool enough to grab one o' them things when he
can git a fat worm. You jes' can't make me believe you can ketch no fish
thataway."

So, while he fished with worms for bullheads on our pond in the
evening, I floated about in the canoe dropping a dry fly wherever I saw
the rise of a rainbow trout. I took fish after fish before his eyes.
Then, just to convince him, I switched to a casting rod and plug. After
five or six bass had come to the lure it was obvious that Walter was
slipping. I said nothing, but one day he remarked casually, "Doctah, if
you'll show me how to throw one o' them things I'd kinda like to try.
'Course I done expect to ketch nothin'."

I did show him and when he took his first bass on a casting rod he was
radiant. "'Tain't only ketchin' de fish. It's kinda figurin' out whether
or not you'se goin' to get one every time you throw out this funny
contraption. I jes' don't know why they grabs it, but they do, and
that's 'nough fo' me. If a little ole fish wanta make fool o' hisself, I
ain't de man to stop him."

Now Walter casts as pretty a plug as any fisherman would wish to see and
wonders why he ever thought bait fishing was fun.

I enjoy shooting and fishing with Walter enormously. He is not only an
amusing companion, but he is mentally stimulating. His simple philosophy
of life, learned in the school of hard experience, continually gives me
food for thought. His mind, fundamentally honest and uncluttered by
details of book learning, sees a fact in its primitive nakedness. It is
this or that with no "ifs" or "ands."

Walter and I get more fish and birds than any of our sportsman neighbors
because each of us knows exactly what the other will do under given
circumstances. Moreover, Walter has great respect for a gun and is not
"trigger happy." Never will he shoot unless he knows where I am, and
that engenders not only confidence but comfort when one is in thick
cover.

One morning, while poking about in the swamp to see what had become of
three of our ducks, we found raccoon tracks. Walter was as excited as a
hound on a hot scent.

"Doctah, did you ever eat a coon?"

"No, I never did. I got one but Florina wouldn't cook it. She said she'd
'never cook no animal what goes in de graveyard.'"

"Oh that! Some people down South they thinks coons digs up dead people
in de graveyards. That ain't so. A coon is de cleanest feedin' animal I
ever see. He washes all his food 'fore he eats it. Why, a coon, he is so
much cleaner feedin' than a pig or a chicken it jus' ain't funny. You
gives me a coon, an' really I'se got sumpin. Edith, she can cook a coon
fit to make yo' mouf watah. You miss half yo' life when it comes down to
right good eatin'. You jes wait, Doctah. We'll catch one o' them
critters and I'm goin' to give yo' a dish fitten fo' anybody on dis
earth."

So we caught a coon. Edith cooked it according to the following recipe:

"Cut off most of the fat and parboil coon until tender. Put a
large-sized onion in water when boiling. Average time, about two hours.
Remove coon to baking pan and sift flour, salt, and pepper over him.
Bake about one hour in oven of moderate heat--350 to 400 degrees, until
done, and deliciously brown. Serve with sweet potatoes or anything that
goes with lamb."

That says it, for it tastes more like baby lamb than anything else.
Walter hadn't exaggerated. If one doesn't like a properly cooked coon he
just doesn't like meat.

Frederick Barbour is a real gourmet, so we initiated him into the coon
fraternity. Because Frederick felt such a regal dish should have a more
distinctive name than coon, he coined the designation "swale shoat." If
any of you can get yourself a swale shoat don't miss it, I implore you.

I must admit that Walter is not one to depreciate his own abilities.
Plainly, he brags like the devil, so I welcome anything that will take
him down a peg or two. A fox had been having a field day in the birch
grove at the top of our meadow. We found the remains of three grouse and
several rabbits, victims of his depredations. But catch or shoot him we
could not. In spite of the fact that it is against the law to use scent
on a trap, I decided that since it was on our own property I could break
the law in the interest of game conservation. So I procured a bottle of
scent from a farmer neighbor whose conscience is somewhat atrophied. It
was compounded, he informed me, from the glands of lady foxes. Having
cooked in the sun for days, it was just ripe and guaranteed to bring any
gentleman fox from as much as two miles away. He would follow it, said
the farmer, like an airplane pilot on a radio beam.

Walter and I prepared with care. First we boiled the trap in black
alder shoots to remove any human smell. We boiled our gloves. We put
trap and all the fixings into a piece of boiled canvas and proceeded to
the top of the hill. Having set the trap, we were ready for the grand
opening of the scent bottle. Just uncork it, said the farmer, and bury
it close beside the "set." We proceeded according to directions. I
sniffed and Walter sniffed. Neither of us smelled a thing. Said Walter,
"Maybe he done done us in the eye, Doctah. You paid him one dollar for
this stinkum but it don't stink. That's a lot of money for a little
bottle of stinkum. I done paid a dollah for a bottle of perfume for
Edith and I got my money's worth. I could smell Edith anywhere in de
room even if it was dark."

"Walter," I said, "why don't you dig it up and take a sniff? We don't
want anybody to make a fool of us."

"I'll do jes that little thing. I don't believe they's nothing in that
there bottle but muddy water."

Walter carefully excavated the bottle and put it to his nose. He went
right over backward. "Good God amighty! Great day in de mornin'! Great
day in de mornin'! Oh, Doctah, what I done done? I spilled it on me. I
stinks. Good God, how I stinks!"

There was no doubt about it. Walter stunk. We had our dollar's worth of
fox-gland perfume, and how! While Walter was up-chucking in a nearby
bush I went away from there quickly. Finally he emerged, wiping tears
from his eyes. He tried to join me.

"Walter, don't you come near me!" I yelled ruthlessly. "You go on ahead.
I can't stand you."

So Walter cut off through the woods back to the house like a pariah dog.
As he entered the yard Edith emerged on the back porch. Walter made the
great mistake of trying to come into the kitchen. With one horrified
look Edith put a dish towel to her nose and rushed inside.

"Walter, what _has_ you done done? You smells worse'n any polecat I ever
smelled. You go 'way from here."

I explained to Edith what had happened. She laughed until I thought she
would have hysterics. Meanwhile, poor Walter stood despondently by the
corner of the garage listening to what was going on in the kitchen. He
felt awfully sorry for himself.

"What I goin' do, Doctah? I can't stand this much longer. I'se goin' be
sick again."

"Walter," I said, "you go in the garage and take your clothes off. I'll
get a bucket of hot water and soap. You scrub all over. Throw your
clothes outside. I'll bring some clean ones."

When Edith had recovered sufficiently to be reasonably normal, she
produced a clean outfit for her husband. Holding my nose, I consigned
the clothes to the incinerator and set them alight. Walter, newly
arrayed, ventured diffidently into the kitchen. Edith bedeviled him by
saying he still smelled. So I produced some of Billie's Swiss pine scent
and sprinkled him thoroughly, much to his disgust.

Walter got even with Edith a few days later. At times Edith is
absent-minded. She brought up six bottles of beer from the basement
and, with her thoughts on cooking or something, carefully placed them in
the oven instead of the refrigerator. Then she turned on the heat. An
explosion resulted which flooded the kitchen with hot beer and Walter
with joy.

Walter had another experience which gave Edith acute enjoyment, for she
likes to tease him. He had trapped a skunk, a very fine black skunk
wearing fur worth at least three dollars--possibly three-fifty. Whether
to skin it or throw it into the bushes was the question. The three
dollars won. After an appropriate period of hanging in a pine tree,
Walter "reckoned as how" he could stand it. Oddly enough, although the
odor in a large dose is nauseating, a slight essence of skunk is not
unpleasant; the same applies to musk. To dogs it is enticing.

Immediately after preparing the skunk Walter went shopping. Hardly had
he walked a block before the canine world of Winsted became aware of his
presence. Half-a-dozen dogs followed him into a grocery store. Walter
was rather pleased. But at the gasoline station, where he became the
center of a fawning audience, he wondered uneasily why he was suddenly
so attractive to dogs. At the ten-cent store he hoped to buy Edith some
thread, but the dogs crowded in with him, yapping at his heels, each
trying to get closer to the delectable odor. That was too much. Dashing
out of the shop, he ran down the street, jumped into the car, and
slammed the door.

"You all go 'way and leave me be!" he shouted. "I ain't done nothin' to
yo' and I ain't got nothin' fo' yo'. Great day in the mornin'! What's
got into yo' all?"

Still puzzled, Walter drove home.

"Edith," he said, "I ain't got yore thread. All the dogs o' Winsted
followed me wherever I went. They druv me out of town."

Edith sniffed. "Skunk," she said. "Skunk!"

Walter loves all animals and birds and, of course, is good with them.
When he came we decided to get some chickens. I bought a dozen hens and
an enormous rooster, Napoleon. He was almost as big as a turkey and a
conscientious protector of his harem. The slightest disturbance brought
him on the double-quick, ready to do battle for his womenfolk. One
morning Walter came in wearing a rueful expression.

"You know, Doctah, what that old Napoleon done done? I was leanin' over
gettin' a settin' hen off her nest and somebody kicked me right in de
pants. It hurt, and I thought it was Edith, and I was mad. But it wasn't
her, it was that ol' Napoleon. He's got spurs a foot long, seems like.
One of 'em made a hole in my laig you could put a hickory nut in."

Of course Napoleon stood at the top of the social system of the hen
house. When I say social system I mean just that, for make no mistake it
is as well defined and as exclusive as that of Newport or Long Island.
Modern scientific recognition of the existence of a social order in
small flocks of birds dates from the work of a German, Schyelderup-Ebbe,
in 1922. Since then dozens of papers on the subject have been published
in psychological journals. The reactions are so much like those of
humans that I find them intensely amusing. The social order does not owe
its existence merely to strength. Bluff or circumstance frequently
enters into establishing the caste. If two hens, strangers to each
other, meet, the first one to be frightened becomes subordinate. If both
are frightened, the one that recovers first assumes dominance. A
newcomer to the barnyard automatically goes to the bottom of the social
ladder. She can only hope to climb by asserting her superiority over
some other hen or waiting for the appearance of a still newer bird.

The hen at the top of the social system is able to peck all the other
hens without being pecked back. The reigning dowager, however, does not
exercise her right frequently; merely a long, hard look down her bill at
an offender is quite sufficient to send her scuttling away. Perhaps that
is the real origin of the term "looking down her nose." But the hens
lower in the social scale are often insufferably rude and cruel to those
of subordinate rank. Revolts rarely occur among hens and successful
revolts that result in a change of status are still more rare.

The social system of the barnyard plays an important part in the
well-being of the hens. Those low in the scale must give way to the
society leaders above them. If a reigning dowager wants an uninterrupted
spell at the feeding trough, she need only give a few icy stares to the
crowding underlings and they retire to await her pleasure. After she
has finished they may feed or not feed as they like; it is sublimely
immaterial to her. Therefore, the low-scale hens get less food than the
top birds and lay fewer eggs. Moreover, the hens of inferior rank are
unable to keep themselves as neat and clean as those at the top. They
cannot patronize the fashionable dust baths and feather-dressing
establishments, for the social leaders reserve the best for their
exclusive use.

Woe betide a sick hen! She gets no sympathy from her one-time bosom
friends. Be she ever so important, once she falls ill those on the lower
level struggle to usurp her place. When she recovers health and vigor
she tries to climb back, if she can, to her former exalted state. But it
is a hard row to hoe and seldom does she make the grade a second time.
Given a good break, a hen may maintain her dominance in the pecking
order throughout life. Nevertheless, it requires constant vigilance and
the blessing of good health. Hens seldom forget faces of either friends
or people. Once their caste system has been established and they are
listed in the "Social Register" they remember birds of their particular
set throughout life.

Don't think for a moment that the social order exists only among the
feminine inmates of the hen house. The roosters are just as snooty. If
several cocks share a flock of hens, the most amusing things are sure to
happen. One rooster will immediately establish himself as the ruler of
the harem. He may gain the ascendancy by strength and frequent battles,
fighting his way to the top; or, like Napoleon, sheer size and bluff
put him there. Once established, he can select the most attractive hens
for his pleasure, sublimely ignoring the other cocks. They have to take
the ones he doesn't want. He struts about, crowing defiance, inviting
the lady of his momentary choice. But she may not accept his invitation.
Sometimes it isn't so simple even in the barnyard. He has to cope with
feminine perversity. Perhaps she doesn't like him. No discernible
reason, even to the observers who pry into the private life of hens, but
she just doesn't. He discovers, to his intense surprise, that no hen
will give him the glad eye. His amorous activities are restricted to
pure-and-simple rape. The gals run from him, not coyly, but
determinedly. They even fly to the top of the roost and remain there
until he transfers his unwelcome attentions to some other unfortunate
female. In one flock 76 per cent of the boss rooster's matings were
forced. Only a few low-scale hussies gave themselves willingly.

On the other hand, a number-two or number-three rooster may have that
divine something that makes him irresistible. He is besieged by
invitations from the unpredictable girls. Why they want him, and only
him, our observers do not state. They don't know. But whatever the
cause, he has "it." Still, he can't enjoy himself without a watchful eye
on the boss rooster. Whenever he takes his pleasure, he is almost
certainly in for a fight.

In one barnyard a fine feathered gentleman who had long ruled the harem
lost an eye in battle. Down he dropped to the bottom of the social
scale. His fall from grace cut his pride to the very dregs. Retiring to
the uppermost rung of the roost, he remained in solitary despair. He ate
little and lost thirteen ounces in weight. Moreover, he became what the
observers called "psychologically castrated," i.e., completely
suppressed sexually. He never crowed; he was the picture of a beaten
man.

But friendly psychologists were on the job. They transferred him to an
entirely new group of hens who knew nothing of his downfall. Then they
composed themselves to watch. It required several days to effect a
comeback. Little by little he became his former lusty self, told the
world by confident crows what a big, strong guy he was, and flashed his
good eye warningly at any erring member of his flock.

Psychologists have done the most amazing things to hens by the injection
of the male hormone, testosterone propionate. They selected one lady at
the very bottom of the hen social scale. The poor thing was a pitiable
object. She shuddered if a ranking bird even glanced in her direction.
Off she fluttered, hoping against hope she had done nothing to warrant
royal displeasure. But a few injections of testosterone changed her
innermost nature. Believe it or not, she staged a successful social
revolt and swiftly moved to the topmost rung. She, who had trembled at a
look, now dispensed her favors with not too great largesse. But it did
not end there. Far from it. Her comb enlarged, she almost quit egg
laying, she began to crow like a rooster, and even tried to mount the
snooty old dowagers from whom she had fled in fright.

Withal she was having a wonderful time for herself, but the observers
had a problem to solve and she was the guinea pig. Would she return to
her former status if they took her off testosterone? They'd see. So the
male hormones were stopped. Sad to relate, her comb decreased in size,
she began the mundane business of producing eggs, and no longer made
improper advances to her lady friends. But she did salvage something out
of the experiment. She still retained her position at the top of the
social ladder.[1]

I explained the social system of the barnyard to Walter and it intrigued
him mightily. So when I bought a dozen more hens we got two stools,
lighted our pipes, and sat down to watch events. One by one the new
arrivals were slipped through the gate. None gave a good performance.
After a few hard stares from the older inmates they retired
ignominiously to corners of the yard. One Rhode Island Red we kept until
the last. She was a beautiful hen, sleek and well fed. There was a
certain air about her that made us feel she would not be pushed around.
Walter talked to her as he would to a pair of dice in a crap game.

"Now, ole lady, we is bettin' on yo'. Don't yo' let them hens beat yo'
down. Yo' is just as good as any o' them no-account chickens. Is yo'
ready or is yo' not? If yo' is, in yo' go and do yore stuff. Yore name
is 'Ole Red' and don't yo' fergit it."

He opened the gate and Old Red stepped in as though she owned the place.
A young Plymouth Rock advanced. Red gave her a hard look, ruffled her
neck feathers, and darted her bill like a striking snake. The Plymouth
Rock fled. Another took her place, and another. All were routed. Old Red
continued the triumphal advance about the yard while Walter and I
squealed in delight.

"Doctah, jes yo' _watch_ that chicken. I done tole yo'. I done tole
yo'."

At last she encountered the boss hen, a White Leghorn, face to face.
That was her Waterloo, and Old Red succumbed to the icy indifference
with which the dowager met her defiance. Nevertheless, she had advanced
to the top ranks of hen aristocracy in half an hour.

Walter could hardly wait to visit the coop in the morning. I was having
breakfast when he came in.

"Doctah, Old Red done done it. She's eatin' out of the feedin' tray with
that high-falutin' White Leghorn. She's my hen. They ain't nothin' goin'
to happen to that chicken so long as I is on this place."

Old Red fulfilled all our predictions for a brilliant future. In four
years she has never set. Regularly she produces her daily egg except for
a month's vacation during the moulting season. I cannot resist giving
one example of her co-operation.

I had promised one of our friends a dozen fresh-laid eggs. A few hours
before leaving for New York there were only eleven. I made a last trip
to the hen house. Old Red was on her nest. Slipping my hand under her, I
pleaded, "Give, old lady, give." She cocked her head, blinked one eye,
shivered, and there in my hand was an egg. Believe it or not, it is
gospel truth.

The rooster, Napoleon, had a sad end. He produced a son, "Churchill,"
who in course of time grew to the size and strength of his father.
Inevitably there came a clash for supremacy in the harem. The initial
battle was a titanic struggle lasting half an hour. Youth and vigor won,
and Napoleon retired, a beaten bird. Churchill followed his advantage on
succeeding days and at last the old man acknowledged complete defeat.
For a week he sulked in a corner but then began to vent his rancor on
the hens. One was killed and another crippled. Finally Walter put him in
a coop by himself. That broke his heart. One morning we found him beside
the drinking basin, propped against the wire, dead. The old warrior had
died standing erect. Walter and I removed our hats in silent tribute to
a gallant spirit.

Because of the meat shortage we felt it obligatory to raise our own
food. Lambs were our first venture. They seemed rather amusing in the
beginning and I was fearful lest Billie become so fond of them that
their ultimate destination for the table would be in doubt. I needn't
have worried. They grew in size but not in brains. There is little to
love about a lamb in my estimation. Of all stupid, dumb, and mentally
unattractive animals I have ever encountered, lambs top all records.
They won't eat grass over which they have trampled. So if one hasn't
several fenced-in pastures the creatures must be staked out and
continually moved. I have always felt that I am normally good at making
friends with animals, but the lambs defeated me completely. At the end
of four months they dashed about in wild-eyed fear when I came to
restake them. Running in circles, they wound their ropes about my legs
and in two minutes I was sitting on the ground, hopelessly entangled,
with the wretched brutes struggling in my lap. So far as I am concerned
Mary can have her little lamb even though its fleece is white as
snow--which I doubt!

Pigs, of course, were on the list. Pork was well-nigh unobtainable.
Frederick Barbour, who can always find an amusing slant to any problem,
called me on the telephone.

"Roy, let's have a Pig Derby. Here's the plan. You and Freddie Wildman,
and Bud Smith and I will all buy pigs from the same litter. We'll have a
war bond as a prize for the man who raises the biggest pig. On a stated
day we'll foregather, weigh the pigs, and award the prize."

It was a brilliant idea. Walter was sure he'd win, for he had raised
pigs all his life in Virginia. The piglets were duly selected and the
race began. Our little porker was christened "Vibola." But Vibola
wouldn't eat. Walter was distressed.

"What's the trouble?" I asked. "She's not sick?"

"No, Doctah, not sick, only lonesome. You see she's always lived with
Charles and seems like she jes can't get on without him. Mr. Barbour,
he's got Charles. I kinda eased over thataway yesterday and asked how
Charles was doin'. He didn't say much, but I could see he was upset. He
said Charles was sleepin' but he sure looked lak a sick pig to me."

I suddenly remembered my only parlor trick. When I was nine years old I
had been taught by a farmer to grunt like a pig. I practiced early and
late. Mother thought it was a nervous throat affliction and was terribly
worried.

"You can stop it if you try," she'd say. "Just keep your mind on it." Of
course then I only grunted the louder.

"Walter, you get a bucket of feed and we'll go to the pen. I can talk
pig talk. Maybe Vibola will eat."

"What you sayin', Doctah? Pig talk! Where you learn it? You tryin' to
make a fool outa Walter?"

Nevertheless, he got the food. Vibola manifested no interest. After a
little warming up of my throat muscles, I emitted a series of dulcet
grunts. Instantly Vibola got to her feet and answered eagerly. For five
minutes we carried on a conversation in pig language. Then she stuck her
nose in the trough and began to eat.

Walter was amazed. New respect shone from his eyes.

"Doctah, never in my whole life did I ever see the like. Doctah, yo'
shore is good!"

For the next three days, at feeding time, Vibola and I carried on our
private conversations. Soon she was eating regularly and, under
Walter's tender ministrations, grew like a weed. When he finally
dispatched her she dressed five hundred and twenty pounds. He won the
derby and the war bond far ahead of all other competitors.

Vibola's demise was accompanied by interesting funeral arrangements.
Walter sunk a big iron garbage can slantwise in the ground and filled it
with water. A heap of wood and half-a-dozen rocks were readied. Because
Vibola was so huge that she could barely get to her feet, Walter sent
her to pig heaven in the pen. With block and tackle and the assistance
of one of his friends he drew her out. Meanwhile the rocks, white-hot
from the fire, were transferred to the can. In a few minutes the water
was boiling merrily. In went Vibola head first up to her middle. The
block and tackle pulled her out and the men scraped her skin until not a
hair remained. Then her rear half received similar treatment. When at
last she was dressed, hung by her heels from an apple tree, and neatly
spread open to cool, Walter called me.

"Well, Doctah, there she is. There's Vibola, as pretty a hog as ever I
see. I'se done done it."

"Yes, Walter, I hand it to you. You sure have done done it. It was a big
job to tackle alone. Let's smoke a pipe and talk it over."

But Walter's work was far from finished. He was determined to prepare
her himself, from snout to knuckles, for our consumption. He cut out the
chops, cured the hams and bacon in smoked hickory salt, and made
sausage from the odds and ends. One night when he was alone he opened
all the doors and windows of the kitchen and "tried out" Vibola's fat.
She yielded seventy pounds of lard. At that time one couldn't buy an
ounce of lard in the market for love or money. Thus the Great Pig Derby
ended in pounds of pork for the Andrews family.

I must issue a solemn warning to prospective country dwellers. Our
experience with chickens, lambs, and pigs demonstrated conclusively that
subsistence farming on a small scale was not for us; that we would lose
money instead of saving any. The alluring prospect held out to city
innocents that on a few acres of land they can cut living expenses to a
minimum and tell the butcher and grocer to go jump in the lake is a
myth. They will find they can buy the same food in the market for less
than it costs to raise it and not be chained to the animal inhabitants
of the farm.

Billie and I had always believed this to be true and so did not get
caught in the trap. During the war it was a patriotic obligation to
raise our own food, if possible. We did it and were independent of some
of the shortages, but it cost plenty. Even under normal conditions, when
feed for the animals is not excessively high, we would still lose money.
For us, a vegetable garden and fifteen hens just about pay for
themselves and give us fresh products. Cows, sheep, pigs, et cetera, are
out--we can't afford the luxury. This, I may say, is not only our
experience; a dozen of our friends have discovered it to their sorrow.

Before I leave the subject of food in the country I must spread a little
propaganda for the deep-freeze boxes. We had a small one before the war
but it held only one hundred and fifty pounds and was soon filled to
overflowing. To buy another was impossible; production had stopped with
Pearl Harbor. Billie mentioned our desire to her friend Benny the
Butcher, to whom she confides all her domestic problems.

"I might help you," said Benny. "The ice-cream dealers are turning back
all their freezers to the manufacturers because they can't get any ice
cream. I know of one in Torrington. I'll see what I can do."

The next morning Benny telephoned.

"It's practically new; a six-holer. But there are a lot of people after
it. You better come down right away."

Billie broke all speed records to Torrington. Benny greeted her at the
door of the shop.

"There's the box. Goes to twenty below zero. Works like a charm."

Billie produced a thermometer from her bag, turned on the juice, and in
due time Benny was proved correct.

"I'll take it," she said. "Benny, get me a truck. I'm not going to leave
without it."

Forgetting the fact that he was a butcher and had customers crying for
his meat, Benny rushed out the door to return with an adequate
conveyance. Like an eagle guarding its young Billie chaperoned the
vehicle from Torrington to Pondwood Farm. On the way she corralled an
icebox engineer. He had pressing business but she smiled at him, spoke
honeyed words, and he forgot other affairs to journey with her to
superintend its proper installation. The luncheon hour had long since
passed but I took her a sandwich to the cellar while she learned about
the proper care and feeding of deep freezers.

All of us have reaped the results of her labor. If we have a surplus of
anything edible it goes into the boxes. Fish, game, meat, vegetables,
fruit can all be preserved for future use. Nothing need be wasted. Yes,
the deep freeze is the answer to the farmer's prayer.

Another must for the country dweller on a sizable place, in these days
of labor shortages, is a hand tractor. The fact that we have one
reflects no credit on me. Just before the war an enterprising dealer
sent Billie a folder describing a very superior tractor. Nothing
intrigues her more than a prospectus of a new mechanical gadget, unless
it's a flower or seed catalogue. She endeavored to interest me in the
tractor, but her enthusiasm left me cold. Not to be deterred, she wrote
for a demonstration. It was a most successful demonstration from the
tractor's standpoint. The operator made it perform miracles. He cut
grass; he demolished weeds and bushes; he plowed, cultivated, and
harrowed; in fact he did almost everything except plant the garden and
harvest the crop. Still I could not see the tractor for Pondwood Farm
because it cost five hundred and fifty dollars.

Billie was unconvinced by my arguments, but apparently she submitted to
my superior judgment and I forgot about tractors, whereby I showed
little understanding of my wife. One afternoon she was late in arriving
home. I was smoking a pipe with a friend when she burst in wearing the
cat-and-canary expression of extreme satisfaction.

"Where," I asked, "have you been? You look extraordinarily pleased with
yourself."

"Oh," she replied, "I've been buying a tractor. It's a beautiful one and
it cost only three hundred and fifty dollars."

"That's just dandy. If it is not probing too deeply into your personal
affairs may I ask what you used for money?"

"I used my own money. I guess I can buy a tractor if I want to. Besides,
it's an investment."

"What do you mean--investment?"

"Well, it is. In a little while I'll have enough to pay for it and buy
me two or three hats besides. I'm going to rent the tractor."

"Oh, you are! To whom are you going to rent it?"

"You. I'm going to rent it to you. Of course anybody else, too, if
they've got the price. I'll put a chain and a lock on it and if you want
to use it to cut the grass or the weeds you'll have to rent it from me
at so much an hour. I haven't decided yet what I'll charge."

To make a long story short, Billie did rent her tractor to me and before
long I realized it was cheaper to buy the one she originally wanted,
which was a better machine. So she made a deal to turn in her tractor
if I'd buy the other and everyone was happy--except me. She had made a
sizable fortune, besides getting the tractor her heart desired.
Moreover, by that time war was on and I had to pay a lot more than
five-fifty. But I was philosophical about it. One learns by experience,
and I was beginning to realize that her foresight was much better than
my hindsight. Now the tractor has become a _sine qua non_ at Pondwood.
Walter uses it for almost everything except to cut his hair.

[Footnote 1: "Mating Behavior and the Social Hierarchy in Small Flocks
of White Leghorns." A. M. Guhl, N. E. Collias, W. C. Cillee. _Physical
Zoology_, Vol. XVIII, 1945, pp. 365-89.]




[Illustration]

  X

  _Prisoners in Pondwood_


The winter of 1942-43 was eventful in our rather quiet lives. I broke a
leg, wrote a book, we were isolated for six days by a devastating ice
storm, and the temperature dropped to forty degrees below zero. My
leg-breaking seemed to start the chain of events. It could hardly have
been less dramatic and I felt rather silly. It happened on Friday,
December 11, while Walter and I were setting a line of traps for mink
and foxes. Just as I was about to step on the ice of Benedict Pond, my
foot slipped sideways on a slight incline. There was a snap, and my leg
went numb.

"Walter," I said, "my leg is broken."

"What yo' talk, Doctah? Yo' can't break no leg thataway."

"Didn't you hear the crack?" I asked.

"'Course I hear a crack, but it was that branch right beside yo'."

"Well, it wasn't. That was my leg. It wobbles."

Walter helped me to my feet, but it was no go, so I crawled up the hill
feeling a bit hollow in the pit of my stomach. He collected our
impedimenta, which consisted of two guns, eight traps, one pail of
chicken manure, and a defunct hen; then he hoisted me into the car and
we drove home.

Billie had just completed a course of first aid with a Red Cross unit
and was prepared to practice on me. Resting my leg on a pillow, she
murmured something about "applying traction."

"You can apply traction on your own leg but not on mine," I retorted.
"I'm sure no bones are out of place. The only traction I need is a good
stiff drink."

She was visibly disappointed, but after examination admitted I was
right. In Norfolk, Dr. Frank Ursone discovered that both bones were
broken just above the ankle. Neatly bound with pink plaster binding, I
settled down to a period of being waited upon by Billie, Edith, and
Walter. Lying on a sofa in front of the fire, I howled lustily for
things not really necessary just to see the household jump. Actually
navigation on crutches was perfectly easy. When going downstairs I
simply slid on my fanny; the up trip was negotiated by the same method
in reverse. It was a thoroughly happy life but after a few days of
pampering Billie issued an edict.

"For weeks you have been talking about writing your autobiography. Never
was there a better time to start than _right now_. If you think you are
going to sit here and do nothing for five weeks you are jolly well
mistaken."

My weak protests were of no avail. Still, it might work to my advantage.
If I were "producing," attention could be demanded that otherwise might
not be forthcoming. Thus _Under a Lucky Star_ had its beginning.

The first heavy snow of winter marooned us two days after the
leg-breaking incident. Through the window in the living room we watched
the big, soft flakes drift gently over the pond, obliterate the road,
and turn the pine trees into bowers of white. The snow induced a
delightful feeling of isolation. All obligations to go anywhere were
temporarily ended. Outside, the mercury hovered about zero; inside,
fragrant hemlock logs blazed in the fireplace. Of course there is no
pleasure in being warm unless the weather is cold; or in being dry
unless it is raining; or in being cool unless it is hot. Contrasts make
for comfort. So with a sense of complete well-being I settled down to
relive my past and put some of the events on paper.

Christmas that year was a very happy one for us. George was in Texas
with the Army Air Forces so he could not be at Pondwood, but two warm
friends, Marion and Kurt Schelling, arrived from New York laden with
exciting-looking boxes. They decorated the tree, and on Christmas Eve,
after dinner, Walter and Edith came in while the packages were being
opened. We reserved our stockings, strung on the mantel for next
morning. Billie had provided each animal with a little stocking filled
with dog biscuits, bits of liver, and catnip mice. Lord Jitters and
Poke-Poke rated red bows. The Lord delighted in his decoration, since it
had been sprayed with perfume, but Pokie immediately pushed his off at
an angle and was as sulky as a small boy dressed in Sunday clothes.
Billie gave me a trout rod which I had seen in Abercrombie & Fitch's. I
just mentioned, casually, that it was a dream rod, weight three ounces,
eight feet long, made by Payne. Of course I could never hope to own it
since it was much too expensive and I didn't really need another rod! So
she had ordered it the next day.

Cold, crisp weather and a brilliant sun made Christmas in the country
all that traditionally it is supposed to be. On Monday, December 28, it
warmed up and began to rain in a steady, purposeful downpour. With the
temperature just twenty-nine degrees above zero every drop of water
froze the instant it touched a solid object. At ten o'clock Tuesday
evening I hobbled out on the porch. The lawn was a sheet of gleaming
crystal under the light and the maple trees drooped from their weight of
ice. We went upstairs feeling that tragedy for our beloved farm was in
the air.

A few hours later dull booms from the surrounding forest punctuated the
night like muffled cannon; then the sharper crash of nearby trees.
Listening to music from a New York hotel helped us forget our
apprehension for a time, but suddenly the radio stopped and the lights
went off. The power line must be down. We tried to call our nearest
neighbor but the telephone was dead. The room became cold and colder
still, for without electricity the oil furnace could not operate; or the
water pump, either. The faucets gave only despairing gasps.

All night we lay in the darkness, listening to the drum of rain and the
awful crashes that spelled the doom of hundreds of noble trees; each one
was like hearing a friend die before the firing squad. A candle
flickered from below. Walter and Edith were huddled together at the
bottom of the stairs.

"Doctah, we's scared. Mebby one those big trees fall on de house. What
we gonna do?"

Somehow the hours wore on and the gray light of dawn crept solemnly over
a world of desolation. Reluctantly we looked out of the window. The
trunks of naked trees, branches piled about their feet, stood stark
against the leaden sky like giants sentenced to be burned at the stake.
Two beautiful pines guarding the path to the swimming pool had snapped
off sheer midway up their trunks; every birch bowed its head to earth,
the tips trapped in the frozen crust. Only a tangled mass of ice-bound
branches showed where the road had been. And still the rain fell
relentlessly, a sullen, monotonous tattoo that beat incessantly against
our ears in the funeral dirge of other trees. The temperature in our
bedroom dropped to thirty-nine degrees. Already a damp chill blanketed
the house. While we shivered into our clothes Walter called cheerfully
from below:

"Yo' come on down now, Doctah. I'se got a big fire in de livin' room.
Edith, she's made some coffee on the chunk stove in de kitchen. We'll
have breakfast for yo' in two shakes."

I slithered down the stairs and hobbled to my couch. What a difference
that fire made--the single note of cheer in a dead world!

Walter's buoyant spirit would not be downed. There was work to do.

"Just as soon as I git the fire lit in de gun room I'se goin' down de
hill," he said.

Starting with confidence, he returned in an hour, a saddened man.

"Doctah, I done my best but I couldn't git nowhere. De road is worst.
They ain't nobody can travel that road. So I give up. I tried to cut off
through de woods. I clum over branches and trees till I'se plum beat
out. De crust is terrible. 'Tain't no use. We'se just got to set here
till they clears us out."

Of course there was no means of knowing how widespread the storm had
been or the appalling damage it had caused. Two or three days at most,
we thought, would see us released. It was borne in upon me then how
easily Nature can disrupt one's creature comforts, be she so minded,
when one's life is based on the inventions of modern civilization. By
the destruction of that single thread of power line connecting our house
with the source of electric supply we were deprived of heat, light,
water, telephone, and radio. We must fall back upon so-called primitive
methods of subsistence--cook over an open fire and on the chunk stove in
the kitchen; depend upon a meager store of candles for light, and draw
water from the well with a rope and bucket. There was no worry about
food, for the deep-freeze boxes were full of meat, vegetables, game, and
fish.

After Billie and I had adjusted our minds and eyes to the devastation
beyond the window, we settled down to derive what interest we might from
Nature's sentence of confinement to quarters. Complete isolation is no
novelty to me. For months on end I have lived in the wilderness or on
the desert divorced from all touch with civilization, dependent upon
myself alone for the fundamentals of existence. I have always enjoyed
the feeling. There is a sense of privacy in creating one's own little
world where others cannot possibly intrude even by the printed or
written word. Every man, woman, or child has obligations to someone else
and to society from the moment he becomes of thinking age. But when one
is completely isolated, physically, obligations cease to exist in one's
mind. The enjoyment comes, of course, from an inborn selfishness; a
natural desire to live, for a time, an absolutely individual existence.
Still my separation from the world has always been self-imposed. To
adjust one's mental perspective to forced isolation is quite another
thing.

Billie didn't like it much in spite of the fact that I was quite happy.
She is an amazingly philosophical person and accepts the inevitable with
grace once she is satisfied that it is inevitable. The physical
inconveniences bothered her not at all. To camp out for a few days in
our own house would be fun. But I, with a broken leg, was continually on
her mind. Suppose something should happen that I needed a doctor? What
to do? Suppose the house should catch fire? No one could possibly get
here.

Then I did a thoughtless thing that threw her into a complete swivet.
Having progressed so satisfactorily on my crutches about the house, I
decided to go upstairs like a gentleman instead of a hitch-hiking crab.
All went well until almost at the top. Then I over-balanced and fell
directly backward. Only the banister on the way down saved me from a
broken neck or a fractured skull. Billie almost fainted when she heard
the crash. Edith and Walter rushed in from the kitchen trembling with
fright. I, being completely uninjured and furious at my own stupidity,
simply lay there and swore.

After three days, when nothing happened down the so-called road, we
realized that the ice storm must have been as devastating in other
places as it was with us. Our First Selectman Willys Smith would never
leave us isolated if it were possible to get through. Everyone in the
community knew that I was crippled because the newspapers had had a
field day with headlines to the effect that: "After thirty-five years
of exploration, Andrews breaks leg at home."

The heat situation began to worry us a bit. Ordinarily we use the
fireplaces simply for cheer. Warming the house with wood alone had made
the stock in the cellar disappear like mist before the sun. So fires in
the gun room and our bedroom were stopped and we continued only those in
the kitchen and living room. Walter slipped and slid with his ax among
the ice-covered branches on the lawn, trying to get something to eke out
our meager store. But it was wet and green and gave out little heat.

Meanwhile Billie and I were very busy. In the morning I was ensconced on
the sofa in front of the fire and wrote steadily until late in the
evening. Billie typed the sheets as they came from my pencil. After
dark, with candles at my head, I looked very much like a corpse laid out
for burial.

_Under a Lucky Star_ progressed rapidly. Billie found it interesting
because, as my life story unfolded, she learned many details that were
unknown to her, even though we had been married seven years. Some of
them required a bit of adroit explanation. Now and then her typewriter
stopped abruptly. After an interval of silence she would remark: "Well,
I never knew _that_ before."

Almost all of it was drawn from memory. When I began to review my life
from the beginning in orderly sequence, I was surprised how clearly some
events stood out. They seemed to have been mental photographs, exactly
as on a film, that had been filed away in my subconscious mind, and I
could recall the most minute and unimportant details. It was like
turning the pages of an album of snapshots.

The title of the book, was Billie's suggestion. We had discussed
half-a-dozen titles but none seemed to fit. One day she remarked:

"You have always said you were born under a lucky star. As I read this
manuscript I'm sure you must have been. Why not call it that?"

So we did. Writing the book was a godsend in our imprisonment for it
kept our minds occupied every waking hour. Generally we were so tired at
night that when we ascended to the frigid bedroom sleep came
immediately. Billie wore a red-flannel creation called an "alert suit"
that had been given her as a joke. It surely did come in handy, for she
was continually "alerted" during the night when some new crisis
developed either above or below stairs.

On the sixth day Walter rushed in with the announcement that there was
chopping down the road. From the door we could hear it distinctly and
the crash of branches. It was like the sounds of a rescue party to
miners cut off in a shaft by a cave-in, or sailors in a sunken
submarine.

"Let's everybody yell," I said. "Then they'll know we are alive at
least."

Answering shouts came from below. In a short time eight or ten men
appeared at the driveway. For six hours they had been at work clearing
the three quarters of a mile of road from the bottom of the hill to our
house. We welcomed them like visitors from another planet. Edith hurried
to make coffee. In the gun room Willys Smith related the news of the
last six days. The storm damage, he said, had been confined to the
region above one thousand feet altitude (our house is 1,450); below that
level the rain didn't freeze. Never in the memory of the oldest resident
had its like been known. Hundreds of thousands of trees in the forest
were mere shattered hulks; years would pass before Nature could efface
the scars. An electric task force was right behind the roadmen, and an
hour after our deliverance the furnace began to hum and the telephone
jangled. What welcome sounds they were!

Practically on the heels of the work crew came our neighbors from
Norfolk, Frederick and Helen Barbour, Stuart Crocker, Abel I. Smith, and
Reg Rowland, to see how we had fared. While they were sipping cocktails,
the fireplace suddenly roared like a blast furnace and great masses of
blazing soot drifted to the lawn. The chimney was on fire. We let it
burn, since ice covered the roof, but had it occurred while we were
marooned, the effect on our household would have been climactic.

Personally, I had enjoyed the imprisonment, but for poor Billie it was a
mental and nervous beating. At the end she remarked sadly:

"I'm sorry, but I'm just not a pioneer woman. I want to go to New York
and forget ice and snow and electricity that won't electrify. I want to
go to a theater every evening and to a night club and see a lot of
bright lights."

So to New York we went for a week's stay at the Weylin Hotel which has
become our second home; and a delightful home it is. To Tom Russell, the
managing director, we owe a great debt of gratitude for his kindness
during many years.

Being a cripple in New York was an enlightening experience. In these
postwar days of disillusionment with tales of strikes, political graft,
profiteering, and murder flaring in every headline, one needs a revival
of faith in the essential decency of the American people. One can get it
by hobbling about on crutches for a few days. He will find, as I did,
that whatever our other faults, poor sportsmanship and lack of
warmhearted kindness are not among them. My first surprise came when we
arrived in New York. It was pouring rain. Ordinarily getting a taxi on
such a day becomes a free-for-all fight with no holds barred. He who has
most agility, unblushing brass, or the broadest shoulders, wins the
battle. But as the first cab drew up the way was cleared for me almost
as though I had been royalty. It was always the same. If I stood on a
corner signaling for a taxi I never had to wait my turn. The driver
invariably left his seat to help me into and out of the cab and across
the sidewalk. Only once did an individual try to push ahead.

"Hey, you guy," yelled the driver, "who do you think you are? Can't you
see this man is on crutches? You get the hell out of there."

The man stuttered apologies and oozed off into the crowd.

My crutches were as effective as a police escort. At first Billie was
fearful of allowing me on the street alone but she soon learned that
every pedestrian became a self-appointed guardian.

When we arrived at Grand Central Station to return home a policeman
instantly stepped to my side.

"What train do you want to get?" he asked. Billie told him.

He escorted us through a side door to an elevator and right to the gate,
clearing a path through the waiting passengers.

"Better open up and let this man through," he told the trainman. "He
might get hurt when they start to push."

I could cite instances _ad infinitum_ of unexpected and heartwarming
kindness.

My broken leg made me miss only one of the broadcasts on Columbia's
"American School of the Air" because of the two weeks' vacation of the
series during the Christmas holidays. From October until the middle of
April Billie and I journeyed every Monday to New York and returned
Wednesday evening. It had been simple enough in other years, but the
weather that winter made it really difficult. Who knows or cares about
the weather in New York? One travels in underground tunnels like a human
mole from house to office and lives in an aura of artificial light. But
sun and rain, ice storms and snow assume vast importance to the country
dweller. Moreover, two inches of snow in New York means ten inches in
our Berkshire hills. We were always faced with the problem of how to
reach home once we were in the city.

Often on Wednesday morning Reg or Alice Lewis telephoned from Norfolk to
us at the Weylin Hotel.

"It is snowing like everything up here and blowing hard. The plows are
out but the men say if this continues the roads will be blocked. I don't
think you can get home. Your room is ready for you at our house."

Reg would meet us at the station in the blackness of a winter's night
and drive us to the warmth and cheer of their lovely home. In the
morning Billie would don Alice's boots, slacks, and sweater, while I
arrayed myself in Reg's clothes. Walter would meet us at the foot of our
hill with snowshoes and we would plod three quarters of a mile up the
blocked road through knee-deep drifts. By the following Monday the plows
would have the road open--unless a storm materialized Sunday night. In
that event we would again dress ourselves in the borrowed raiment, Reg
meet us at the state road, we would lunch with him and Alice, and take
the afternoon train to New York. This happened so frequently that the
Lewis's house became known to us as the "Weylin Hotel Annex."

Just to make the winter memorable, our eighth wedding anniversary,
February 21, was ushered in by a real old-fashioned blizzard. The word
is often misused, for a blizzard isn't merely a heavy snowstorm. The
dictionary says: "Blizzard: a furious windstorm accompanied by fine
driving snow and intense cold."

That was what we had. Blinding snow, before a fifty-mile gale, leaped
over Nap Hill, turned the trees to shivering ghosts, and swept across
the pond to beat furiously against our house. There was something
distinctly living and personal about the storm. Like a raging demon, it
tried to uproot the building, take it in its mouth, and shake it to
bits. It tore at the shutters, howled around the corner of the gun room,
and shrieked in a rising crescendo of wrath at the windows which defied
its entrance. Balked at every turn, it decided to block us in. Snow
heaped on the porch against the doors and packed into a solid mass which
one could cut like cheese. The big living-room window became only a
panel of white frost; at high noon our rooms were almost dark.

By seven o'clock the voice of the storm died to a despairing wail.
Fortunately, the power lines were still intact and we maintained
communication with the outside world; also we had heat and light. I say
fortunately with real feeling, for the mercury almost dropped out of the
tube that night. The thermostat was set at sixty degrees, but in the
morning I had a hazy recollection that the subdued purr of the oil
furnace had permeated my dreams all night. Billie, too, had the same
remembrance.

"It must have turned colder," she said. "I'll look at the thermometer."
Putting one bare foot on the floor, she drew it back with a shiver and
snuggled under the covers.

"It's as cold as Greenland's icy mountains. You get up first."

Throwing on my Chinese fur-lined robe, I skipped to the corner of the
room where the outdoor indoor thermometer lives.

I looked and looked again.

"Something is wrong. I can't see the mercury. Yes, there it is. It
registers forty below. I don't believe it."

But it was true, nevertheless. Walter checked with the thermometer on
the back porch.

"Doctah, it say forty below zero _ex_actly. I'se seen hot weather and
I'se seen cole weather, but I ain't never seen forty degrees below zero
befo'. What sort of a place is this Connecticut?"

This time only three days elapsed before we were liberated. Eventually
the men hacked and dug their way through the wind-packed drifts and
freed our road. The entry in my diary for that week reads:

"It has been a hell of a winter."

Billie says, "Amen."

    *    *    *    *    *

The following spring was as soft and warm as the winter had been cold.
Its happiest event for us was a visit from George. He had been unduly
disturbed over my leg-breaking episode and wanted to see for himself
that his energetic father was not hobbling about like a lame duck. So he
flew up from Texas in his training plane. I met him at the Waldorf in
New York where we lunched. To my secret delight the headwaiter
completely ignored me when we asked for a table. His eyes were fixed on
the silver wings decorating George's tunic. "Yes, Lieutenant. No,
Lieutenant." So far as he was concerned I didn't exist.

George's happiness in again having a glimpse of Pondwood was pathetic.
Our first walk was to the pine grove on the hill overlooking Brummagem
Brook. The spot has always been his "Temple of Worship." A photograph of
it flew with him over many parts of Naziland.

Later George was transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, to fly the
Thunderbolt P-47, which had been his ambition as a pilot. Then it was
the fastest and most effective fighter plane in our Air Corps. When I
mentioned to Eddie Rickenbacker what George was flying he said: "Tell
him from me to treat that plane like a rattlesnake. No matter how much
he loves it, never get careless. Otherwise, it will bite him and
probably he won't live to have a second bite."

One day George flew up to Bradley Field at Windsor Locks, Connecticut,
only forty miles from Pondwood Farm. Oddly enough we left home in our
car at eleven o'clock in the morning, at exactly the time he took off
from Norfolk, Virginia. Ten minutes after we reached the visitors' room
of the field George's plane was posted to arrive. Although from the
ground the buildings and landing strip seemed to stand out like a sore
thumb, only striped with different colors, George said the camouflage
was so perfect that, even with the radio beam to guide him in, he had
difficulty in locating the runway. When Billie remarked about how fast
he had come, he said, "I was just loafing along at three hundred miles
an hour. If I'd gone up high and opened up, I'd have been waiting for
you."

George could stay only two hours, so we ate our box luncheon in a pine
grove and then went back to Bradley. I wanted to sit in the cockpit of
his plane and feel like an aviator, but George said: "Can't let you,
Dad. There's a lot of 'brass' on the field and I don't dare take a
chance."

Billie had baked him a box of his favorite chocolate cookies, but even
in the huge plane there was no place to put them. After he had donned
his Mae West and the parachute was strapped to his shoulders, he was
squeezed in like a packed sardine. "I might stuff a few in my pants
leg," he said and proceeded to line his suit with cookies. When the
signal from the control tower came for him to take off, he rolled down
the runway, circled the field, and waggled his wings in farewell to us.
We watched his plane become smaller and smaller in the eastern sky,
until it vanished like a flying bird. Both Billie and I had lumps in our
throats. We had been happy that he was not in a fighting theater, until
we learned that more cadets and pilots were killed at home in training
than by Nazi bullets. Only a week later George had the sad duty of
taking what remained of his roommate back to his parents and fiance in
Chicago. The sympathy and tact which he showed brought grateful letters
to us from the boy's father and the girl he was to have married within
a fortnight. George himself wrote: "If anything happens to me, I hope
you and Billie can take it as they did, and I know you will. All of them
were wonderful."

Out of seven pilots from his class designated for training, George was
the only one who lived to fight in Germany. Probably because he
remembered Eddie Rickenbacker's message, but I like to think that he has
inherited my Lucky Star and I believe he has.




[Illustration]

  XI

  _The Hunter's Moon_


Sport is important to most normal, healthy individuals. Ergo, it is
important to us, for we are healthy and reasonably normal. Vacation at
Pondwood, and for some of our friends, begins on the opening day of the
shooting season in late October. September is a period of preparation.
None of our household can enjoy the month of play unless the particular
tasks for which each is responsible are finished. So I write feverishly
in my study; Billie cans vegetables and fruit with Edith and attends to
the hundred details which puts the house away for the winter; Walter
cleans the garden, cuts dead trees, and fills the cellar with wood.

Five days of the week we labor unceasingly, but Saturdays and Sundays
are devoted to the dogs to get them in condition and to locate resident
birds. Usually there is a puppy in the kennel who must have her first
experience with woodcock or grouse. This autumn it was Peggy, whose
grandfather is Mississippi Zev, winner of the National Field Trials.
Ayreslea Rowland, Reg's daughter, raised the litter virtually by hand,
and as Ayreslea is my favorite young lady, I am as proud of her as of
the puppy. Peggy came to us when she was only a tiny ball of white fuzzy
hair. Under Billie's care she grew amazingly and promises to be a "brag
dog," fast, stanch, and with a nose that picks scent globules out of the
air like cherries off a tree. On the twenty-ninth of September she
pointed her first woodcock. Head high, tail up, one forefoot off the
ground, she made a picture that would have gained a prideful bark from
her illustrious grandfather. I hugged Peggy, for only a dog lover can
know the thrill of seeing a pup he has raised do herself proud.

Reg Lewis had an experience with a new setter this autumn which outdid
us all. On the first day he stopped at a small cover beside the road and
left the car door open. In a little swamp the dog found a woodcock,
which Reg killed. The bird fell in the road. The pup retrieved it and
looked around wildly for Reg. Not seeing him, he did what came
naturally, hopped into the car, deposited the woodcock on the floor, sat
down on the seat, and happily awaited Reg's return.

Billie started shooting from scratch. She knew the difference between
the butt and the muzzle of the gun when I married her, but that was
about all. I had a twenty-gauge made for her, purchased a trap and some
clay birds, and explained the mechanism of the weapon.

"Now," I said, "shoot at that can on the stone wall. Don't aim, point
quickly, and press the trigger." She did, and filled the can full of
holes.

"Fine. You are ready for flying birds because a shotgun is meant only
for moving objects."

From directly behind the trap I kept her firing at straight-away targets
until she was breaking them pretty regularly. Then she graduated to
various angles. I soon discovered that her natural sense of timing,
balance, and co-ordination of hand and eye, the essence of bird
shooting, were excellent. In two or three weeks she was doing very well
indeed. I suspected she might become a good shot, for she is a wonderful
dancer, and strangely enough the two activities are not so far apart as
one might imagine.

In England, and again at Paul Hammond's place on Long Island, I had seen
an artificial shoot that intrigued me mightily. Traps were concealed in
the bushes, with wires extending to a path. The shooter moved forward,
and as a man behind him sprung the traps, the clay targets flew through
the trees exactly like living birds. The park we had cleared opposite
the house was an ideal spot for such a shoot. I purchased half-a-dozen
traps and simulated the shots one usually got in a day with woodcock or
grouse. The "walk" kept growing, however, as some of our friends
reported new and interesting angles. Now it numbers fifteen traps and,
I think, duplicates almost every type of shot one will get during a day
in the coverts. Eltinge Warner, publisher of _Field and Stream_, said it
was the best artificial shoot he had ever seen. Constant practice on the
woodcock walk and experience in the field have made Billie a better shot
than the ordinary man. And she loves it too.

We hardly touch a gun all summer until September, for fly fishing
occupies our minds. But when the leaves begin to turn and autumn smells
are in the air, Walter oils the traps and Billie and I prepare to swing
our reflexes into gear. Woodcock and grouse won't wait to say good-by.
If you don't shoot in a flash, you can't serve them on the table. Every
Sunday morning the woodcock walk occupies the center of the stage.
Shooting friends drop in with their house guests. Perhaps Colonel
Freddie Wildman telephones:

"Harriet and I have some people up for the week end. How about a go at
the walk?"

"Fine. About eleven. Frederick Barbour and Helen and Eddie and Mary
Bench are coming over. We'll have luncheon in the rock garden if you'll
cook. Broiler chickens out of our own coop."

Queen and Star point the traps as stanchly as though they were live
birds and bring back the unbroken targets to lay them at the gunner's
feet. That is hard to take for a poor shot; they definitely rub it in.
While we men shoot, our wives sit in the golden sunshine talking of
whatever women talk about when they are alone. Their husbands are
earnestly analyzing every shot.

"Freddie, I think you were a bit above that bird. I was looking over
your gun barrels. Why don't you try it again?"

"Maybe you're right, Roy. Walter, give me another."

This time the target dissolves in a puff of black powder. Just over the
stone wall he gets a beautiful double, which is far from easy. The
colonel beams: "I'm getting on, Roy. I'm getting on." So it goes for an
hour or two, and we have a lot of fun.

When we return to the women they unconsciously view us a little like
children who have been playing a new game. Listening patiently to our
enthusiastic account of the shooting, they applaud our hits and deplore
our misses. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I seem always to detect a slightly
superior air, as though they had settled all the problems of the United
Nations while we were breaking clay birds that never did us harm.

At the luncheon ceremonies in the rock garden Freddie assumes charge by
divine right, for he is a real gourmet. From long residence in France,
cooking, to him, is an art as great as that of producing a symphony or
painting a masterpiece. Besides his gun, he brings a kind of vanity case
filled with an amazing assortment of tins and bottles. Most of these
herbs and condiments are as foreign to me as are the phials on a
druggist's shelf. But not to him. A touch of this, a soupon of that,
and Freddie produces a sauce that would bring a gleam of envy to a
French chef's eyes.

Ever since we rebuilt the house Pondwood has been a halfway stop
between Norfolk and Colebrook for our friends. They come and go at will.
If we are not at home, they fish in the pond, shoot the walk, and mix
their drinks in the gun room. It is a delightfully casual way of life
and we like it, particularly during the shooting season.

The evening before the first day Billie and I are as excited as though
we were the star actors in the opening of a new play on Broadway. Guns
and shells are in the car, coats, sweaters, and hip boots laid out, and
flashlights ready. We go upstairs early. I read a detective story aloud
to calm our minds. In the middle of a chapter I see Billie's eyes are
closed and I talk a lot of jargon without changing tone. She doesn't
protest, so I know she is asleep, but as I turn off the light she
murmurs: "I hope I shoot well tomorrow."

Long before daylight the alarm clock rings. Billie snuggles her head
deeper into the pillow.

"Why should anyone get up at this ungodly hour?" she murmurs. "You shoot
your old ducks. I'm not going."

"All right, darling," I say, knowing full well she wouldn't miss it for
the world. "You go back to sleep. I'll go alone."

So I start to dress. That does the trick. In a few minutes she says
crossly, "I just don't understand why ducks can't be shot at a human
hour. But I'm awake now. Go put the coffee on."

I start the coffee. When I return she is pulling on hip boots and
sweater. Her eyes are shining as she runs to the window.

"I can see a smitch of daylight already. Why didn't you set the alarm
earlier?"

There is a delightful feeling of sneaking out, like burglars in the
night, when we travel to the garage along the flashlight's beam. The
motor roars as violently as an airplane in the stillness. Everything
looks strange in the headlights as we drive over the familiar road, park
the car below the blind, and pick our way down the steep hill to the
wooden platform, surrounded by leaves and rushes. It is almost dark but
we peer through our gun barrels against the sky to be sure no twig or
leaf has lodged inside, put a box of shells between us, and settle
ourselves on little chairs to await the coming of day. The blackness of
night changes imperceptibly to gray; we can see a tree that wasn't
visible before; then a bush. The shore is a silver streak, barely
showing against the forest blackness. I smoke my pipe and Billie's
cigarette is a tiny point of fire.

"I can just see the decoys," she whispers. "Gee, I wish those were live
ducks. Couldn't I pot 'em! I would, too, you know."

"No, you wouldn't. We're law-abiding citizens--at least _pretty_
law-abiding--and the law says we must wait till sunrise."

"Oh, you and your old law! If a duck comes in I'm going to shoot. If I
get arrested you can bail me out."

"Well, I won't bail you out. I'll come and feed you peanuts through the
bars but bail you out I will not. I'd just love to have you sit in
jail. It would do you good."

Suddenly a whistle of wings sounds over the marsh. Billie stamps out her
cigarette and I park my pipe on the boards. We hear a swish of set
pinions and a splash almost in our laps it seems; then "whoose" as
another flock just skims the blind, circles, and drops into the water,
talking softly among themselves.

"Blacks," I whisper. "There must be twenty out there now."

"I see bright streaks over in the east. If that isn't sunup I don't know
what is. Let's shoot. They'll go away and we won't get any," she
answers.

"No, it isn't sunup, and anyway it's too dark. If they rise against the
shore line we'd never see them."

So we sit for hours, it seems, tense as steel springs, peering through
peepholes in the blind, while the ducks gabble and dive and gossip like
old ladies at a tea party. Suddenly, "Bang, bang, bang, bang," rolls
down from the upper end of the pond. We jump to our feet just as the
ducks leave the surface in a roar of wings. Billie picks birds to the
right; I shoot at those in front. Points of fire stab the dawn and a
thunderous roar is tumbled back upon our heads by the hills across the
marsh. Four ducks are down and a fifth volplanes to the water in a
slanting dive just at the edge of the bushes. Cramming shells in my gun,
I fire again before it reaches cover.

"If a bird sits up, shoot him." Her gun bangs. All the cripples are
accounted for.

A moment later heavy stillness settles over the marsh, broken only by
the distant quack of a wandering duck. Billie's face is radiant.

"Wasn't that fun? Oh, wasn't that fun! I got a double. Did you see it?
First one on ducks for me."

Then she rubs her shoulder ruefully.

"Those heavy loads do pound a person. I could feel my back teeth rattle.
This twelve-gauge is a lot different from my twenty."

The fusillade has sent flocks and singles circling wildly. A thin, dark
line shows faintly against the sky. Ducks coming from the north. I give
the hail call, a long-drawn-out q-u-a-c-k followed by four short notes.
Eight blacks hear it, the leader drops away, turns sharply, and the
flock heads straight for our decoys. But they need more talk. The
greeting call, slow and clear, assures them all is well; then the soft,
satisfied chuckles of the feeding invitation. That does it. The flock
swings back, diving toward us like black bullets. We crouch motionless,
heads down, hardly daring to breathe.

"Get ready. They're coming like hell. Give 'em a big lead."

The birds are almost overhead, sharp silhouettes against the sky, when
we leap to our feet. Squawking wildly, they back-paddle with feet and
wings and try to turn straight up. Both of us shoot too quickly and miss
with the first barrel, but each gets a bird with the second. Mine
hurtles into the trees behind the blind; hers strikes the water, bounces
like a rubber ball, and lies motionless except for two red legs waving
feebly in the air.

There is one supreme moment that morning, a picture that only a
sportsman-artist could put on canvas. Passing clouds dropped a shower of
rain just as the sun climbed above the trees on the eastern hills.
Stretched across the sky from shore to shore was a double rainbow.
Suddenly, right under the arch, came a battalion of ducks winging toward
the distant marshes. At my hail call one segment broke away, dropped
like tiny black parachutes, and swung in to the decoys. The roar of our
guns died away, leaving a solemn stillness, but the scene will remain
photographed in our memories as long as either of us shall live.

The fun goes on for half an hour; then the big flocks leave for
Doolittle Lake and Wood Creek. We pick up a few more single blacks and
two wood ducks almost too beautiful to shoot.

By eight o'clock the first act of the opening day is ended. It has been
a wonderful beginning. At home Walter comes to the car as we enter the
drive. His eyes widen when he sees the pile of ducks.

"Oh, you done done it. How many did Madam get? Did she shoot good?"

Edith serves us breakfast on a tray beside the window in the living room
while Billie and I stretch luxuriously in the big red chairs. Good shots
and bad misses are rehearsed while we eat bacon and eggs and smoke
cigarettes with our coffee. No need to hurry. We like to savor our
sport, drawing the ultimate drop of pleasure from every hour.

The second act of the day's drama begins about half-past nine when we
start for the woodcock coverts. Poor little Star, shut in the kennels,
sobs like a child, pleading to go. But two dogs in the thickets are too
many--one is hard enough to find--and the first morning's hunt is always
Queen's.

Half a mile from Pondwood we reach the edge of an alder swamp--not a
nice open swamp. It is so thick one can hardly see ten feet. Queen
almost chokes from half-grown barks and shakes like an aspen leaf. Her
great moment has come. This is what she was dreaming of when sharp
little whimpers disturbed her sleep during the long winter nights. I
wave my hand. "Go, Old Lady." She is off like a bullet. Of course she
wears a bell; otherwise she'd be lost in a moment.

We work slowly through the smother, pushing alder saplings aside. I hear
a cry from Billie.

"Oh, that branch hit me right in the face. Oh, it hurts so. _Damn_ the
woodcock."

She wipes tears from her eyes, gets her gun up, and pushes on. Off to
the left Queen's bell jingles steadily. Suddenly it lapses into a broken
"tinkle," pause, "tinkle," pause, "tinkle, tinkle." Silence. Billie and
I strain our ears to locate the sound, for we know Queen has found a
bird. We go forward carefully, kneeling to peer under the screening
branches. I catch a glimpse of white.

"There she is. She's pointing, right behind that bush."

Moving in, we see Queen, stiff as a ramrod, her lips trembling. She
rolls one eye toward us and, with the utmost care, shifts position
slightly. I take a line from her nose.

"The bird is right over there. You work around to that little open
space. I'll go in on the dog. Ready?"

I move in and the woodcock flutters up like a bat in daylight. "Bang,"
goes Billie's gun.

"You got him. Good girl. Damned fine shot."

Queen brings the bird, lays it at our feet, and gives a happy little
bark. Then she is off again. I whistle her back and motion to the left.
She takes a few steps but returns looking at me imploringly.

"Not that way. There's another bird over here. _Please_ let me go." Of
course I do, for her nose knows. In five minutes she is on another
timberdoodle. It flies straight up, hits a twig with one wing, and falls
back almost on Queen's head. Instinctively she makes a grab, but the
bird escapes and hurls itself in a twisting flight through a maze of
branches. By a lucky shot I drop it in an open glade at the foot of a
big tree. I can see it perfectly, but for some strange reason Queen
can't find the bird. She depends upon smell entirely and apparently not
a trace of scent is in the air. Head low, she covers every foot of
ground, twice passing within six inches of the woodcock. Finally, by
accident, she pokes her nose into the soft ball of feathers. Utterly
surprised, she brings it to my feet with a puzzled and shamefaced look
in her brown eyes.

"Don't you care, Old Lady. They do that sometimes. I think it's the way
they fall. Scent is a mysterious thing. Someday scientists will learn
something about it. Then I'll explain it to you."

From the tone of my voice and some of the words Queen knows that I am
not displeased because of her failure. She rushes off happily to find
another bird.

Deep in the alder swamp Queen "makes game," treading as if on eggs.
Suddenly, like the explosion of a bomb, a grouse bursts out of the cover
in front of me. "Bang, bang!" Not a feather! It is going at terrific
speed from the instant it leaves the ground, but my reflexes, geared to
slow-flying woodcock, are behind the feathered bullet. For some
unaccountable reason, which only a grouse would know, the bird swings to
the left, and, when Billie shoots, it hits the ground with a thud. She
says nothing, but in her eyes is the "light that never was on land or
sea." What I say is the burble of a prideful husband who has taught his
wife to shoot.

At the end of the morning we go home to an inviting luncheon, then an
hour's sleep, for we've been up since dawn, and pushing through the
thickets is exhausting work. Most of our friends are making a day of it.
They eat sandwiches at noon in the field and arrive home exhausted. That
doesn't appeal to us. We shoot or fish for pleasure. When shooting or
fishing becomes work it is no longer pleasure. Therefore we stop. I
think our view is logical. Neither of us feels that the number of birds
we garner is important.

Billie and I both enjoy woodcock shooting most of all, but to vary the
first day's experience we concentrate on grouse in the afternoon. That
is a very different story. Without fear of contradiction from any
sportsman I will state that the ruffed grouse is the most difficult of
all American game birds to shoot. His canny brain is never confined to a
pattern. What he did today is no criterion as to what he will do
tomorrow. Moreover, it is not a hit-or-miss proposition like a woodcock.
He figures it out carefully in advance. A dozen tricks to confound the
sportsman are always up his little brown sleeve. Perhaps he will lie
perfectly to the dog on point. Then, like a bursting bomb, he roars out
right into your face. You stand in a daze.

"My God! What happened?" Next time he won't wait. The instant he knows
the dog has scented him, off he buzzes through the woods. Unlike a
woodcock, he doesn't go into first, second, and then high gear. When he
leaves the earth his accelerator is pressed to the floor boards and he
is giving all the gas his motor will take. The trunk of a tree is his
greatest protection, and the grouse hunter learns, to his surprise, how
many trees there are in the forest. Before he leaps into the air the
bird knows exactly what tree to place between you and him. He does it
instantly. Sometimes he will lie within ten inches of your feet. After
you pass, out he goes directly behind you, figuratively thumbing his
nose as he blithely sails into the shelter of a hemlock grove.

On that opening afternoon Queen pointed in a park-like glade at the foot
of a pine tree. From the way she acted I knew it was a grouse. Crouched
close to the trunk, the bird watched us with its beady black eyes.

"Billie," I shouted, "get around that tree! Hurry!"

The instant the grouse saw where she was headed, it ran to the other
side of the pine and roared away. Later Queen made game in high grass,
about fifty feet from a tangled mass of birch and alder. The grouse was
caught in an impossible position. If it stayed put we would have a shot
right in the open. Its only chance was to run for the brush. But the
wise Old Lady used her head and experience. We were close behind her,
so, instead of creeping forward slowly, she rushed the bird. I dropped
it just before it disappeared behind a birch tree.

Queen brought back the grouse and laid it at my feet with a happy little
bark. Looking up, she said in her dog language: "We foxed him, didn't
we? He thought I'd stop and point. But I didn't. I knew what he was
trying to do."

That's what makes you love a dog--and grouse.

We were lucky in the afternoon and got our limit before five o'clock. At
home Billie reveled in a hot bath while I gave Queen a rubdown. Later, I
came into our room. Billie lay on the bed, one arm extended. Queen's
black-and-white head was half covered by Billie's blond curls. Both were
sound asleep. The end of a perfect day!

In the evening we have what golfers call the nineteenth hole. Our
friends and their guests drift in for the annual buffet supper. The
house is decorated with autumn leaves, red berries, and pine branches.
Fires blaze in every grate, and Edith and Walter are as excited as
though it were their own party. Food is on the dining-room table and
drinks in the gun room. Sometimes twenty-five or thirty people arrive.
We men are all in shooting clothes. Every hour, every shot, how each dog
worked, is told and retold. Were the woodcock lying in the swamps or on
the hillsides? Were they resident birds? Will the frost bring down a
flight? What reports from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick? We talk and
talk and never tire. Heaven help anyone who is not keen on shooting;
he'd be bored stiff. But only sportsmen and their wives are there, so we
need not be polite.

The party of 1944 was a particularly happy one because George and his
bride, Mary Nancy McElhannon, were there. It was a great compliment to
Billie and me that they elected to spend their honeymoon at Pondwood.
George had a fortnight's leave. "We'll stay a week in New York," he
wrote, "and then come on to the farm."

We laughed when we read the letter. "Bet you a dollar," Billie said,
"they won't spend more than three days in New York. You know George.
Even a bride can't keep him away from Pondwood when he is this close."

She was exactly right. Just three days after their arrival in New York
the telephone rang.

"Dad," said a happy voice, "we're coming up tomorrow. Both of us want to
be at the farm."

It was the morning of opening day party. When Frederick Barbour learned
that the bride and groom were arriving he sent magnums of champagne,
everyone brought gifts, and Mary Nancy got a glimpse of the kind of
life that would be hers if she liked it.

Billie and I tried to keep out of their way as much as possible, but
they would have none of it. George gave me some very happy hours while
we shot grouse and woodcock over Queen and Star. He had changed greatly
during the war years. No longer was he the happy-go-lucky boy of
Princeton days. With the lives of thirty or forty men and millions of
dollars' worth of planes dependent on his judgment, he was fifteen years
older than I had been at his age. I regretted this sudden forced
maturity, but it was inevitable. Thousands of other boys had had the
same experience.

George had been assigned to an airfield in the wilderness of Michigan
and there Mary Nancy spent her first northern winter. With the mercury
always hovering about zero, in a tiny cottage where the plumbing didn't
"plumb" and not a closet in the place, she learned that "war is hell."
But the Lone Star State had produced a thoroughbred with a sense of
humor that can save any situation.

Because George speaks French like a native he had been kept in the
United States, instructing Free French pilots in flying the Thunderbolt.
But after four months of married life he was alerted for overseas.
Billie and I went to Virginia to bid him farewell. Then began the long
wait when we were afraid to open a telegram or answer the telephone, for
fear it might be the one message we dreaded to receive. In support of
Patton's army rampaging through Germany George flew forty-five combat
missions and miraculously survived uninjured. His letters, guarded as
they had to be, were a thrilling story of fighting in the air. Someday I
hope he will let me publish them, for he writes much better than I do.

After the bride and groom departed that autumn of 1944, Billie and I
shot grouse until the season ended. Then another kind of sport
began--rabbit hunting and ice fishing. Once I went ice fishing in the
approved way--but only once. For six mortal hours we thrashed our arms
and stamped our feet. At times we thawed out by a fire, thrashed more
arms, stamped more feet, and froze again. Soggy, icy sandwiches were our
noonday portion; raw liquor flowed down our throats but was powerless to
warm the marrow of our bones. We caught a few pickerel and I told myself
again and again that I was having a grand time--that ice fishing in a
bitter wind was certainly the sport of sports. But it didn't take. "Way
down in my stummick," as the Chinese say, I knew I hated it. Any other
kind of fishing, yes. Ice fishing, no! Never since that day had I fished
through the ice, but our picture window changed all that. One afternoon,
when the pond was frozen hard, I sat idly looking through my field
glasses across the glare ice. Like a flash the great idea was born. I
flew to the telephone and called Reg Rowland.

"Reg," I pleaded, "lend me your tip-ups. And minnows!"

With great excitement I cut the holes next morning and rigged my gear.
Within an hour as beautiful a field of tip-ups had bloomed on the pond
as any fisherman ever gazed upon. Like a garden of red tulips they
were, each flag neatly bowed toward the green water below, waiting for
the tug which would send its colors proudly floating in the wind. Then
back to the house, where I poked the fire into a cheerful blaze, lighted
my pipe, and, with binoculars at my eyes, sat down to wait in the easy
chair before the window. Five tense minutes passed. Six minutes. Bing!
Up went a flag. Through the glasses I could see the line run off the
spool, stop as the fish turned the minnow in his mouth, and then strip
to the end. It took all my will power to keep from rushing out. But no!
I would wait until three flags at least were aloft, for then it would be
time to skim the holes. Another flag flaunted against the background of
the ice. Yelping as the third flag went up, I threw on my fur-lined
coat, pulled my coonskin cap well down over my ears, and dashed for the
pond.

The nearest tip-up yielded a two-pound pickerel and, as his gleaming
body flashed out of the dark water, I gloated over my prize. The second
was a dud, for the line was out to the end of the spool but the hook was
bare. I carefully rebaited it. The third tip-up presented a big perch,
fat and hard.

After skimming all the holes I returned to the blazing fire. By that
time Billie called me to luncheon. Reluctantly I left the fascination of
the window. She, however, knowing that a husband who has been ice
fishing would need something to warm the inner man, had provided a
superlative meal. A roast pheasant, hung the required five days, bread
sauce, and spiced grape jelly, wild rice, and a mixed green salad, with
a bit of cheese and a bottle of sauterne. Ah, I thought, what a
difference! When last I fished through the ice I had lunched upon a
half-frozen sandwich and drunk raw whisky without a chaser.

All afternoon I sat before the window, drowsing now and then. Four times
I left the fire for the ice, and four times I came back with fish. As
the sun sank in a red glow behind the pine trees, I rolled up the lines
on the spools, placed them on the radiator to dry, and surveyed the
results lying in the kitchen sink. There were thirteen green beauties
and two perch for the first day's work. I called Billie and proudly
waved my hand.

"That," I said, "is the triumph of mind over the elements."

As she looked at me I detected a new light in her eyes. It was pride--I
_think_. Yes, I am sure it was.




[Illustration]

  XII

  _Pondwood Queen_


I have known some men and some women who definitely belong in kennels,
not in houses; conversely, a few dogs who belong in houses, not in
kennels. Queen is one. She leads an unorthodox life for a bird dog and
most sportsmen would consider it rank heresy. I'll not quarrel with them
except to say that every rule has exceptions. First, Queen is a very
superior dog; second, she was Billie's anniversary present, and you
can't expect a girl to keep her anniversary present in a kennel. So
Queen is as much a member of the family as I am. Certainly her
personality is just as definite as mine.

Billie and I continually try to translate Queen's world into terms of
our own understanding; to put ourselves in her place, to see and know
things as she sees and knows them. One day Billie came home to find me
on my hands and knees crawling about on the floor with Queen in
interested attendance.

"What in the name of common sense are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm trying to see the room as Queen sees it. It's awfully strange. The
walls converge, the ceiling drops toward the floor, and everything is
foreshortened. Stand over by the piano and let me get a squint at you.
Gee, you look funny; you're all sort of spread out and pushed down
topsides."

That didn't make a hit. "Well, I'm not spread out and I'm not pushed
down. You get up off the floor. If that's the way Queen sees me, you
probably look a lot worse to her than I do."

I got up. "Do you realize that Queen doesn't see this green rug as
green, or these red chairs as red? They are only different shades of
gray to her."

"Of course I know it. She's color blind. And you needn't tell me that
bulls don't see red. I know that too. I've heard you recite that little
story a hundred times."

"Well, it's true. So what?"

Billie was looking out of the window. "Oh, nothing. But I'm sorry Queen
can't see these colors. Think of what she misses. Of course she can
smell a lot that we can't smell--thank God!"

Everyone who really loves a dog feels the same desire to understand its
world, but we cannot comprehend experiences we have never had. We can
try, but if we begin by thinking of a dog merely as an immature human
being we are immediately off on the wrong track. Queen isn't a child or
immature; she is a different kind of individual. Her life is entirely
controlled by sensations, while sensations to us are supposed to be
subordinate to mental dominance. At times, of course, they aren't; that
is why I say some people should live in kennels, not in houses. We are
unable to conceive of a realm in which hearing and smell are of such
vital importance that happiness, well-being, and safety depend upon the
ears and olfactory organs.

I have a "silent" whistle which emits a sound so highly pitched that I
can barely hear it, but the thin notes stop Queen in her tracks a
hundred yards away. The vibrations have a frequency of thirty thousand a
second; normal human ears hear only waves up to twenty thousand a
second. Queen experiences such a violent nervous spasm from the scent of
a woodcock or grouse that it stiffens every muscle of her body like an
electric shock. Thousands of odors which to us are imperceptible tell
exciting stories to her.

Of course speech is a barrier to our understanding of a dog, but it is
not so completely insurmountable as one might suppose. Queen has her own
language, much of which we comprehend. And she knows a good deal of
English. I can imagine that she repeats a certain word over and over in
her mind when she hears us use it frequently and it applies to something
of importance to her. For instance, "woodcock." She thinks and dreams
woodcock. If she hears that word she knows what it means. We wonder how
much English she actually understands. Probably much more than we think.
When we are talking, particularly about sport, Queen will often get up,
listen attentively, and give a little bark of interest and agreement. A
psychologist states that the ordinary house dog knows sixty-five words.
He discovered it by laboratory experiments, I suppose. An unusually
intelligent police dog, Fellow, who was studied at Columbia University,
understood four hundred words of English. That's a lot of words. I could
get about any country in the world with four hundred words at my command
and probably would boast that I knew the language well. Of course voice
tones, signs, and facial expressions enter into the picture when we are
talking with Queen but perhaps most of all intuition.

The intuition of a dog is beyond human understanding. To my mind it is
an extra sense in the realm of thought transference, unlimited by
language, space, or distance. A few days ago I read that Franklin
Roosevelt's dog, Falla, who was in another room, went into violent
hysterics when the President died. The late Dr. Alexis Carrel was a firm
believer in human thought transference. Since I shared his conviction we
often discussed the subject. The problem, of course, was how to reduce
to scientifically demonstrable fact what we both were sure exists. I
firmly believe that one day in the not-too-distant future the magic
formula will be discovered, just as radio utilized the eternal air waves
after humans comprehended certain physical laws. When we understand it
for ourselves, perhaps we can interpret the mysterious intuition of
animals. Queen's amazing knowledge of Billie and me, I am sure, is
because her mental sending and receiving set is on the same wave length
as ours.

As Director of the American Museum of Natural History I was responsible
for, and intensely interested in, the Department of Animal Behavior.
There is no more fascinating subject for research than to try to
discover what goes on in an animal's brain. Although I am a great
believer in the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff and reduce
animal reactions to scientific fact so far as possible, I still believe
that, at times, psychologists may go too far in dogmatic conclusions.
Most experiments can be conducted only in a laboratory where animals are
under control and apparatus is at hand. But any laboratory, no matter
how carefully arranged, is an artificial environment for higher mammals,
and their reactions to some problems might be quite different under
natural conditions and unusual stimuli. Again, scientists are human.
There is a tendency to play safe and interpret all data in the light of
accepted criteria and overlook or discount the obvious when it does not
fit a preconceived theory. I am sticking my neck out. I can see the
raised eyebrows and sorrowful faces of some of my scientific colleagues.

"Poor Roy, he's slipping. Too much country. He'll be telling us next
that animals can reason."

That's exactly what I do say, with reservations, even though I may be
consigned to the uttermost depths of our scientific hell. Certainly most
of the clever actions of our cats and dogs and other domestic animals
can be traced to inheritance, instinct, curiosity, memory, reflexes,
suggestion, association, habit, sensation, and so on. But to my mind not
all. When one attempts to refer _every_ action of all animals to
established scientific criteria, excluding the possibility that they may
actually reason at times, I am in revolt. A few psychologists will
admit, grudgingly, that some animals do have reactions that seem
suspiciously like reasoning--but only grudgingly. Living as we do in the
closest association with four dogs and three Persian cats, both indoors
and out, I see some actions which to my mind can only be interpreted as
reasoning--a conception of cause and effect. Here is one example with
Queen.

She never has been trained to stand for shot as are quail dogs. We
seldom find grouse or woodcock in coveys so it is unnecessary. In other
words, at the sound of the gun she invariably dashes off to retrieve the
bird. I was hunting with her one day on Whiting's Hill. She pointed. I
flushed the woodcock and killed it. Without moving her hind legs she
shifted her forequarters a few inches to the left and remained
transfixed. I moved in. A timberdoodle fluttered up and I knocked it
down. Still Queen did not break. She took two steps to the right and
pointed again. As the third bird fell, she dashed off joyously and
brought it back. Five minutes later the other two woodcock were lying at
my feet. That, to my feeble mind, was reasoning--a definite conception
of cause and effect, with no ifs, ands, or buts. Queen's reflexes,
association with the sound of the gun, instinct, and training were all
against standing fast. But her nose told her three woodcock were there
and she knew they would fly if she broke point. So she waited until the
last bird had flushed before dashing off as usual.

I can cite another instance. A wood road winds along the edge of
Brummagem Brook with tree-covered slopes rising steeply to the west. It
is a favorite place for ruffed grouse. Queen knows it as well as I do.
While I walk along the trail she works the hillside. I see her making
game and start to climb. Far away a grouse flushes, but Queen keeps
right on creeping slowly up the hill. I think she has scented the bird
which has already flown and start back, being loath to spend energy on a
fruitless chase. When Queen sees that I am not following her she comes
to a stiff point. I reverse action and climb back. Queen rolls one eye
in my direction and moves on. She keeps going unless I start down the
hill again. Then she points. I return and she moves forward. This may
happen three or four times, but at the end of the trek a grouse
invariably gets up. Doubtless she saw the first bird rise, but from the
strong scent she knew another was not far away. When I leave, she
realizes her work will be fruitless: that if she points, I'll return. So
she entices me on. This has happened a dozen times. Not only has the Old
Lady reasoned it out but she knows my psychology, which is not to work
for nothing.

Last year Queen and I were shooting beside a strongly flowing brook in
an alder swamp when I killed a woodcock flying over the water. The Old
Lady rushed in to retrieve the bird but was swept off her feet and had
considerable difficulty in regaining the bank. Once ashore, she raced
along the stream to a place where it widened considerably and the
current slacked off. Wading out, she waited patiently for the bird to
float down, and brought it to me, beaming with satisfaction. What was
that if not reasoning? A few days later I had a similar experience with
Queen's daughter, Star. Although Star is a very highly trained dog and
loves water, when the force of the current knocked her down she climbed
out on the bank and sat there, with no idea of what to do. Her training
had not included such an eventuality and she couldn't think out the
problem.

Queen likes to hunt at any time, but she particularly loves to hunt with
me alone. She is almost beside herself with joy when we get into the car
together and she sees no one else is coming.

"It's just like old times," she tells me with gurgling barks. "Only us
two. Won't we have fun!"

And we do. On those days she is especially careful to keep me in sight;
to report back at frequent intervals, and to work the best covers. She
remembers them all. Once she has found a bird in a certain spot it is
photographed indelibly in her memory. She goes there as truly as the
compass needle points to north.

One morning after we had killed three woodcock in Hell's Hollow which,
by the way, is all the name implies, I was ready to go home. Sitting on
a log smoking my pipe, absorbed in my own thoughts, I did not notice
that the Old Lady was not at my feet. I whistled, but no Queen.

"Damn it all, she's on a bird. Now I've got to find her and I'm tired.
It's one o'clock and I want lunch."

So I started moving about the spot in an ever-widening circle, calling
and whistling. Finally I said to myself: "I'm going, Queen or no Queen.
She knows the way home." Then I discovered I had left my pipe on the
log. Returning, I almost stumbled over the dog in an alder thicket not
ten feet from where I had been resting. One foreleg was off the ground,
but when she saw me in position to shoot she carefully put it down. I
could see every muscle of her tense body relax, and thought I heard a
sigh of relief. Had I missed the bird I never would have forgiven
myself. But the shooting gods were kind, and I knocked it down. Queen
retrieved the woodcock and collapsed at my feet from utter exhaustion.
She had held the point for forty-two minutes by the watch. This, of
course, was training, not reasoning.

Even during the summer, when she cannot hunt, Queen is seldom bored.
Unlike many humans I know, she creates interests for herself. Every
setter wants to be of use; that is an outstanding characteristic of the
breed. So when we started shooting clay pigeons on the woodcock walk she
felt that was in her province.

She developed another sport which keeps her occupied in the off season.
One day I had an order from Billie for frogs' legs; she likes them, and
the pond harbors some old soakers. Queen watched me curiously for a few
minutes. She soon realized that I wanted frogs. So, on her own
initiative, she set about finding frogs. I saw her pointing and thought
it must be a stray woodcock. No, she had a nice fat frog right under her
nose. She discovered a dozen where I never would have looked for them.
We developed a deadly teamwork. I smoke my pipe while she does the
hunting. Always she edges around between the frog and the water. The
frog faces her, and while its attention is diverted I sneak up behind
and make a quick grab. We practically never miss.

Frogging became her chief summer sport. She also taught her daughter,
Star, the joys of the chase. Now, when Billie and I sit in the
living-room window, we can see two white rear ends and wagging tails
somewhere along the edge of the pond at almost any hour of the day. At
first she only pointed the frogs until they wearied of sitting still,
but now when they jump she kills them with a paw. I must admit, however,
that she does not bring them to the kitchen door.

Once I saw Queenie defeated by a bullfrog. He lived on the edge of the
swimming pool and used to take flies and bugs from our fingers when we
were bathing. His thanks were expressed in a throaty "grumph." He was
such a friendly frog that we liked him very much. We always referred to
him as Mister Frog. The pool needed repairs during the summer, and two
masons were doing a cement job along the sides. Queen, overseeing
operations, disturbed Mister Frog. When he jumped into the dry pool
Queen ran down the steps and made a pass at our friend. To her intense
surprise Mister Frog took the offensive. He leaped into her face,
smacking her on the nose. I laughed, and that completed her
discomfiture. Squaring about, she made a second pass, only to receive
another whack on her tender proboscis. Mister Frog followed his
advantage. Bang, whack, bang, whack! The gallant old fellow leaped at
any part of her anatomy within his reach. The masons and I cheered him
on.

"Attaboy! Give her hell. Smack her again."

Mister Frog chased Queen all around the pool floor but, in spite of our
encouragement, he was visibly tiring. Moreover, Queen had lost such face
that she was in a rage. At last she turned on Mister Frog and, in spite
of nose poundings, backed him into a corner. Then he began to mew
pathetically like a hurt kitten, imploring my help. That was too much. I
pushed Queen away and stretched out my hand. Mister Frog hopped in
gratefully and I transferred him to my shoulder. He snuggled tightly
against my neck, breathing heavily into my ear. After a rest I took him
to the pond. With a "grumph" of gratitude he pushed off into the safety
of deep water.

Queen has certain prerogatives upon which she rigidly insists. During
meals she sits quietly in a corner of the dining room, but before the
plates are removed she expects her tidbit. The importance lies not in
how much she gets, but that her right to something is recognized.

One evening when I was alone I had a dinner of potato salad and ham in
front of our bedroom fire. It tasted particularly good and I ate every
scrap. When nothing was left for Queen she protested volubly and I spoke
to her harshly. With a hurt look she retired to a corner and lay down
with her head on her paws, visibly crushed. I so regretted my ill nature
that I brought a delectable slice of ham from the kitchen. Even though I
apologized profusely she refused to touch the food and spent the night
in the corner. By morning I had been forgiven.

A besetting sin, one which she seems unable to conquer although she
tries, is her love of sweets. When we go out and tell her to watch the
house, which she does with punctilious care, we must put any candy box
beyond her reach. One night we returned to find Queen prostrate on the
floor, her head between her paws, obviously very much ashamed and
apologizing for something she had done.

"Oh, oh," said Billie, "I forgot to put away the candy box."

Sure enough the empty box was on the floor and two pounds of expensive
chocolates inside Queen.

I could continue indefinitely relating Queen's lovable qualities, her
uncanny understanding of Billie and me, and the remarkable things she
does. But it would be just another dog story. I have only one thing to
say. No one can take a dog for granted and expect a big dividend on his
casual investment. He will receive a hundredfold what he gives, but he,
too, must give. You can't fool a dog. He knows when you really love
him.




[Illustration]

  XIII

  _Glamor Girl with Wings_


The duck world has glamor girls just like Hollywood. I know because we
had one on our pond, and she did everything the traditional glamor girl
is supposed to do. Countless boy friends were ever at her beck and call;
she caused bitter domestic squabbles among respectable married couples;
stayed out on the town all day, and refused to make a home or rear a
family. She was a very bad duck indeed--but she had a lot of fun. We
didn't deliberately intend to get ourselves a glamor girl. She came with
other ducks because our five-acre pond suggested waterfowl. Billie
wanted white Peking ducks, which could be fattened for the table. Of
course I knew them from China, but my ideas were more aesthetic,
although less practical.

"No Chinese 'walkie ducks' for us," I insisted. "'Flyaway ducks' are
what we want. Given care, understanding, and corn, I will have wild
ducks as tame as chickens. When we are sitting in the rock garden with
distinguished guests and you call, 'Come, duckie, come, duckie,' out
from the pond-lily blossoms will swim gorgeous ducks. They will parade
upon the lawn and pick food from your fingers. It will lend a note of
distinction and, shall we say--difference--to the place."

Billie was dubious but willing to be convinced. So, for a trial, I
purchased a pair of wood ducks, the most beautiful of all American wild
fowl. The birds were wing-clipped and by the time their pinions had
rejuvenated I hoped to have accomplished my ambition. But pride had a
nasty fall. When we released the wood ducks they gave us one glance and,
with terrified squawks, streaked across the water for the swamp at the
far end of the pond. Never did we glimpse them again except early in the
morning or late evening. All my pleadings, cajolings, and quarts of corn
were of no avail; they had decided to become hermits and to stay so.

Billie couldn't say "I told you so," for she hadn't, and she wouldn't
have, anyway. Moreover, she acquiesced in the purchase of a pair of wild
mallards. They were really satisfactory. The old greenheaded drake was
beautiful to behold, and in a few weeks the pair had made themselves
completely at home. When we called "Quack, quack," they would answer
from the pond and come to the lawn to eat from our hands, just as I had
predicted.

In due course the lady duck started housekeeping behind a rock at the
foot of an apple tree covered with poison ivy. Whether or not she was a
botanist and had selected the spot with due thought, I will not argue.
Anyway, she was safe from human intruders, and after twenty-eight days
nine little yellow puffballs were trailing her about the pond. Having
grown up with us, they became as tame as chickens. When we were at the
pool the whole flock would waddle solemnly across the bank and swarm
over us searching in our pockets for corn. Strangely enough, all the old
lady's offspring were drakes. So the following spring we purchased nine
little females and let nature take its course. It did to such an extent
that blushes mantled our cheeks whenever we looked at the pond. How the
ducks sorted themselves and selected husbands and wives I cannot
imagine. But by the first of May they went apartment hunting at various
spots along the shore. The nests were lined with down plucked from the
ladies' breasts. All except one. In a short time we realized she was a
glamor girl with wings. In spite of herself she could not deny nature's
rights. She had to build a nest, but it was a most sketchy affair--just
a slight hollow in the ground surrounded by a few dry leaves. No
down--not her! She didn't intend to ruin the smooth roundness of her
breast by pulling out a lot of feathers. It set her more distinctly
apart from the other bedraggled females, whose domestic affairs were
more important than their appearance.

The glamor girl bothered to get only six eggs in the nest; the others
were dropped along the shore, in the mud, anywhere to get rid of them.
Her home site was on the very edge of the pond. Boy friends continually
swam back and forth right at her front door. Apparently she hadn't the
slightest interest in her prospective children. A duck's place might be
on the nest but not for her. She was frankly bored with the whole
proceeding and much more interested in having a good time with the
gentlemen whose wives were doing their duckly duty.

When we stood watching it did not disturb her in the slightest. Cocking
one eye, she would look up at us with a wearied expression, sigh deeply,
and evidently say, "You know how it is. The hell with it." Then she'd
hop off, without bothering to cover her eggs as did the other ducks, and
send forth a raucous quack. At the first summons every drake on the pond
flew to her side. Battles were continually waged for the favors which
she offered indiscriminately. While two gentlemen were fighting, she'd
quack delightedly and make love to the victor in the most outrageous
fashion. We never could discover the glamor girl's lawful husband, for
she seldom appeared with less than six males in tow. The other ducks
hated her. She was completely ostracized from respectable duck society.
Once the glamor girl flew to the feeding place with a husband evidently
not her own. The outraged wife attacked her savagely, pulling feathers
from her back and neck. All the other ducks, with whose husbands she had
been stepping out, quacked in delight. I am ashamed to admit that even
the drakes, with an eye to domestic felicity, joined the chorus. Of
course not one of the Glamor Girl's eggs hatched, for she spent so much
time gallivanting about the pond that they soon got cold. Had any
children appeared I am sure she would have consigned them to a duck
orphanage.

The greatest number of eggs in a single nest was fourteen except one;
that had twenty-six. The duck was one of those motherly souls and did
her best to cover them but they bulged out all around her. Obviously she
had not been responsible for all the eggs. One of her friends had
sneaked in and used the same nest, thinking she could be rid of all
domestic problems by that subtle bit of shenanigan.

After incubation started the ducks never left the nests without pulling
neat little blankets of down over the eggs to conceal them and keep them
warm. I learned a bit of duck lore that surprised me mightily. About a
week before the eggs were due to hatch the mothers would roll their
infertile productions out of the nest. By some occult power (I suspect
it is temperature) they seemed to know that further warming of those
particular eggs was wasted effort. They wanted to get their homes nice
and tidy for the advent of the expected children. When I returned the
eggs, the next morning they would again be removed, this time farther
away. Thinking to fool the old ladies, I replaced them in the very
center of the clusters, carefully rearranging the down puffs. But the
birds would not be fooled. They summarily ended the matter by smashing
the eggs. In not one did I find an embryo.

When we started to rebuild our house the ducks became constant visitors.
The whole flock would string up the path from the pond, across the road,
and through the gate. Then they held a caucus, solemnly discussing every
phase of the building operations. At first I thought they had come for
food, but scant attention was paid to corn, which they love. We finally
realized it was mere curiosity. They wished to see what was going on and
inspected every part of the new house, waddling up the stairs and even
going into the cellar. The workmen were entranced. Sometimes the whole
flock would fly about the building, just missing the carpenters high up
on ladders, apparently protesting about certain operations which weren't
being done to their satisfaction.

One morning at daylight a duck came up alone, quacking in the most
dismal manner. It was her evident intention to wake us. I went out to
shoo her away but she wouldn't be shooed. She was trying to tell us
something. For an hour she wandered about the house complaining under
the bedroom windows. After breakfast, when I visited the pond, she came
halfway up the path to meet me. I soon discovered that her entire brood
had disappeared. During the next few days the same thing happened with
other ducks, and always the little brown babies that had been skittering
over the surface like water bugs were gone.

Of course we thought first of foxes, but the babies were always taken to
the raft in the center of the pond at night by their mothers and foxes
couldn't reach them. I circled the shore with Queen but not a feather
could we find. Foxes, horned owls, mink, skunks, or weasels would have
left some trace, and anyway they never could take so many ducklings in
such a short time. After two weeks only six were left out of eighty or
ninety. The tragedy in our duck world was mysterious and appalling. We
even suspected the silly old muskrat that lives on the pond as well as
an otter that makes occasional visits, but they were ruled out. Muskrats
don't eat ducks and the otter would have taken only two or three, if
any.

Snapping turtles, of course, had been in our minds from the first but we
never had seen one and the ducklings of the previous summer had not been
molested. Nevertheless, I put out set lines baited with chunks of meat.
On the third morning, to my surprise, I pulled in a snapping turtle
weighing twenty pounds. Two days later a thirty-five pounder was hooked.
The wretched turtles must have come overland from Benedict Pond, two
miles away, early in the spring. Diligent fishing and turtle traps
produced no more. They may have been responsible for some of the deaths,
but the real cause we discovered later. Pickerel and largemouthed bass
were the culprits.

I had stocked the pond with bass and they did remarkably well. Some of
them were big fellows, weighing more than six pounds, with mouths four
inches in diameter. One day I was at the canoe landing watching a
mallard with five babies trailing along like an elongated tail. Suddenly
the water boiled behind the happy family--and then there were four. The
mother never knew what happened. She continued on her way, but before
she reached the center of the pond the water swirled again--and then
there were three! Probably the same bass had followed the brood like a
submarine stalking a convoy of ships, picking off the rearmost one.
Before the day passed all five ducklings had disappeared. Only when the
mother was left alone did she seem distressed. Perhaps ducks cannot
count. Pickerel, too, are responsible for a terrible mortality in the
duckling world. The wardens on the great breeding grounds of Canada
estimate that more than a million baby ducks are eaten by pickerel every
year.

One of our ducks broke its leg. Walter brought it to the house and
together we manufactured a splint. Since it was imperative that the bird
be kept off its injured leg, he put it in a gunny sack with a hole in
the side through which it could stretch its neck to view the scenery if
it became bored. One day when we were away Walter hung the bag on the
garage door to give the duck a little sun. Queen was with us. As she
jumped out of the car the scent of wild duck filled her nostrils. She
made a beautiful point with her nose almost against the bag. Suddenly,
out popped the duck's head like a jack-in-the-box, bopping Queenie on
the snout. She turned a complete somersault. Because we roared with
laughter, she retired to the house, her feelings deeply hurt. After the
leg was nearly healed Billie and I took the duck to our bathroom to give
it a little aquatic exercise. In the tub filled with water it splashed,
stood on its tail, and quacked with delight. From that time on it
followed us about like a dog, and we had difficulty in keeping it out of
the house.

When autumn frosts sharpened the air we expected our ducks to depart. I
had leg-banded them all, hoping to learn when and where they were taken
if they fell to some sportsman's gun. They became very restless and shy
but still lingered on. All day and all night they talked among
themselves, feeling the strange urge to move southward but never quite
able to decide to go. Migrating flocks sometimes dropped into the pond
for an hour or two. When they left, our ducks joined the wanderers, but
after a short flight we saw the black line of them begin to take form in
the sky and could hear the rush of wings as they swung over the treetops
and back to the pond. Thanksgiving Day brought a sudden freeze. Next
morning a coating of ice reached from shore to shore, but in the very
center the birds had kept a circle of open water. Quacking dismally,
they seemed unable to adjust their duck minds to this strange visitation
in their pond. They had no food, but we could not entice them to their
regular feeding place at the canoe landing.

All night they complained bitterly to the cold moon. Next morning the
temperature had dropped to zero and the ice was an inch thick. Their
circle of open water had shrunk to half its size and only by frantic
swimming could they keep enough space in which to move about. I walked
to the edge of the opening and gave them corn but they were too
distracted to eat. Blood spots from their tender little feet crimsoned
the ice. We were not prepared to keep them with us all winter but it was
obvious something had to be done about it or they would freeze to death.
Evidently they did not intend to go South. We had been responsible for
their birth and education and the problem was ours.

Billie and I decided they were right. But, first of all, how to catch
them? We tried every way we knew, without success. The ducks were
frightened and would not let us near them. They flew around and around
the pond and then back to the patch of open water. Sometimes they
alighted on the ice only to sit on their tails and skid thirty or forty
feet, squawking in terror. Our neighbor, Lou Guerin, produced some
long-handled fish nets. For an hour we carried on an ice carnival,
scooping flying mallards out of the air as they swooped into the open
water, slipping and sliding on our backs and laughing until we were
weak. At last all the ducks were housed in a wire coop at the outlet of
the pond, where they happily spent the winter.

I became wishful for a pair of Canada geese. During boyhood the honk of
a wild goose always sent me into delightful spring fever and I wanted to
hear it on our pond. So, after correspondence with a wild-fowl dealer,
Charles and Ann arrived. But only when they were installed on the pond
did we discover what absolute hell a pair of wild geese can raise. They
are birds of strong personality and refuse to be taken lightly. Never
have I known such possessiveness in any other creature. Cats and dogs
simply aren't in the same class. Complete dominance of the pond, lawn,
the animals, Billie, and me was their avowed objective. They considered
themselves divinely appointed rulers of Pondwood Farm, and immediately
set about taking over their kingdom. First, the ducks must be brought
into line. So they destroyed all their nests and, like street bullies,
drove the poor ducks away from the best feeding places. Then they ate
the pond lilies I had planted with infinite care.

Sitting in the road for dust baths was a particular pleasure. Having
settled themselves comfortably, if a motorcar attempted to pass, did
they move? They did not. Charles rose in majesty, spread his wings,
hissed, and challenged the car, while Ann backed him up like a good
wife. When a perplexed driver tried to shoo them away, Charles grabbed
him by the pants and did wing whackings on his shins. Our friends began
to avoid Pondwood as though we were afflicted with a pestilence. I
should have known this instinct of the goose tribe, because in Peking I
had one as a gateman. He waddled about the compound, greeting his
particular friends politely but attacking any stranger like a demon.

Charles and Ann took possession of the lawn, diving at Lord Jitters,
Poke-Poke, and Queen if they ventured within their sacred territory.
Moreover, they were not lawn-broken and it became a major operation for
anyone to reach the rock garden without unpleasant results. One day a
year-old setter, Gobi by name, arrived on his summer vacation from
school in South Carolina. He was a big boisterous fellow, completely
self-confident, and inclined to be something of a bully. Gobi saw
Charles and Ann peacefully nibbling grass on the lawn. Then I discovered
the origin of the word "goosing." With a roar Gobi rushed at the gander.
To his intense surprise Charles did not retreat. Instead, he spread his
wings, hissed like a rattlesnake, and threw a fast one at Gobi's nose.
The pup yelped and turned tail. There he made a great mistake. Charles
took deliberate aim and shot a perfect bull's-eye. Squalling in fright,
Gobi sprinted for the orchard to drag his injured rear in the soft
grass, whining dismally.

I cannot resist quoting the scientific description of what I have
recounted so baldly from a paper entitled "Territory as a Result of
Despotism and Social Organization in Geese."

"A typical peck was delivered by the dominant bird forcefully striking
with its bill at the posterior part of the subordinate bird. The pecked
bird quickly moved away after shaking its rump and tail from side to
side which seemed to denote subordinance and defeat . . ." To put it
plainly, the bird was "goosed."

Geese have a long life span. It is difficult to state accurately how
long any bird or animal lives, for verifiable facts are scarce. We do,
however, know that tortoises head the list. One on St. Helena is
probably the only living creature that saw Napoleon. Another on the
island of Mauritius, off the coast of Madagascar, and home of the
extinct dodo bird, is at least one hundred and sixty-five years old.
Vultures and parrots cling to life longer than any other birds. In the
Zoological Gardens of Giza, Egypt, a vulture lived ninety-five years.
Parrots have been authentically recorded to be eighty years old. Geese
and swans are possibly centenarians, but reliable data do not give them
more than seventy years.

Geese mate only once and never have divorce. McAtee reports a pair of
Canada geese married for forty-two years and another couple for twenty
years. In both cases when one died the other passed away within a few
months. Geese do not consummate their union with unseemly haste.
Possibly they enter into some sort of trial marriage to make certain
their temperaments are harmonious before rearing a family.

According to the dealer, Charles and Ann had been united in the bonds of
matrimony for two years before they came to us, but they maintained a
platonic existence on our pond. The joys of spring seemed not to affect
them in the slightest, though the ducks made love shamelessly in front
of their very eyes.

Billie and I had looked forward to seeing a flock of goslings trailing
about the pond but obviously Charles and Ann had no intention of doing
anything about it. So, after consultation with Dr. Frank Beach of the
Department of Experimental Biology at the Museum, Frederick Barbour, Reg
Rowland, and I corralled Charles one beautiful morning and gave him a
shot of male hormones. In due course Charles surprised Ann immeasurably
by his sudden ardor.

It was late in the season and we were becoming considerably bored by
having the place ruled by geese, so we presented the pair to an
unsuspecting neighbor. Wanting to be rid of them, I am afraid we
stretched the truth a bit in painting a glowing picture of what charming
companions they would be for his wife and children. But he found out.
After Charles had frightened his little daughter into hysterics he cut
off their heads and ate them both. We didn't shed a tear.




[Illustration]

  XIV

  _Making Movies_


That I would ever become a movie actor never entered my mind. My face is
not my fortune. But the most unexpected things are presented to us at
Pondwood Farm. Every time the telephone rings or the mail arrives we
have a feeling of anticipation that something interesting is about to
happen. Something did on a September morning when Eltinge Warner called
me from New York.

"What," he asked, "is doing with you?"

"Plenty," I replied. "Queen just found two woodcock in the alders fifty
yards from the house."

"Good! That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Would you be
interested in doing a moving picture of shooting woodcock for _Field and
Stream_ and Path News 'Sportoscope'?"

"Of course," I answered. "But you know that the chances are fifty to one
against getting movies of timberdoodles. Did you ever see a good movie
of woodcock?"

"No. That's the reason we want to try it. It's a gamble like playing a
thousand-to-one shot; still, I think it is worth trying. We ought to
finish it in four or five days at most."

That was the beginning. Now the picture is done. Possibly some of you
have seen it, for it has been on the regular Path circuit all over the
world. You can judge whether it is good or not. But what you can't know,
if you have never shot or fished for the camera, is the work, time, and
expense behind the making of a game movie. You see it in ten or twelve
minutes, sitting comfortably in a theater or at a sportsman's dinner.
But you don't see the aggravating waits for the sun to emerge from
behind a cloud; the plowing through a tangle of birch or alders where
the dog is on point in an impossible place to use the camera; the
heartbreaking failures; the patience and the loss of patience; the
cussing when tempers are worn thin. The camera doesn't record any of
that, but it is there! Ask anyone who has ever done it. They will have a
story to tell, unless they have the patience of Job.

Late one October evening the caravan arrived: Joe Walsh, veteran
director of scores of game films, two photographers, and enough
equipment to have supplied the invading army on D-Day. The next morning
I took a look at the cameramen and was surprised at what I saw. The
chief had on brown sude oxfords and his trousers were distressingly
immaculate, with a knife-like crease.

"Have you," I asked, "ever seen a woodcock? Do you know in what kind of
cover the little birdies live?" Well, he hadn't ever seen a woodcock,
which isn't strange, and he thought they hopped about on lawns, or
places like that. "Friend, you are about to receive a shock--a severe
shock. Come with me." We walked a few yards from the house into an alder
thicket beside our pond. "This is where the woodcock live and not on
lawns."

"Not in there! How are you going to photograph in that stuff?"

"That," I remarked, "is where you'll photograph if you ever get a
picture of a timberdoodle. I may also add that no good movies of
woodcock have ever been taken and that's the reason."

"Oh my God!" was all he said.

We will skip the events of the first day with only a few passing
remarks. I couldn't stand another like it. It would be too much for even
the strongest heart. The cameraman was a fine photographer for studio
setups. I have never seen more beautiful pictures than those he took in
the house and about the place. But photographing in the thickets of a
woodcock cover was as foreign to anything he had ever done as it would
be for me to try to sing in the Metropolitan. He just could not
understand what it was all about or adapt himself to it. He tried hard,
but it was no go.

That first morning we went to a covert on an upland pasture. It was the
prize spot from a photographer's standpoint. Star found a bird almost
immediately. Her bell stopped and there she was, frozen stiff, just
inside the margin of a clump of white birch. Elt and I were jubilant.
"Billie," he said, "you do the shooting. Camera, get behind her. The
bird will go straight out into the open. Ready? Billie, go in on the
dog."

Oh, it was beautiful--and tragic! The bird might have been trained. As
Billie moved in, out it went, straight across a spot as clear as
Broadway. Bang! the timberdoodle dropped not thirty feet away, dead in
the air.

"Good girl," I yelled; "couldn't have been prettier. You got it, didn't
you, Camera?"

A very dazed young man said, "Got what? I didn't see any bird. What was
she shooting at?"

"A woodcock! Didn't you get _anything_?"

No, not a foot of film had been exposed. Not a foot, on a picture that
we might never duplicate!

Billie was disconsolate, so I kissed her gently and said, "Never mind,
dear, he'll get it next time," and believe it or not, he took twenty
feet of the kiss! That was something he understood.

There was one more incident the first morning which should have been
recorded for posterity. Not a hundred yards from the first bird Star
found another. Never have I seen a more beautiful point. It could have
been a portrait for the cover of a sportsman's magazine. Head and tail
high, one forefoot raised, body quivering! She was on the edge of
another thick clump of scrub birch, facing inward. Behind her was a high
rock. Elt directed the attack.

"Roy, you and I will move in on either side of the dog. Billie, you get
on that rock and shoot. Camera, behind her. The bird will surely go out
in front. Now, Camera, for heavens' sake, get this."

We were set, and moved according to plan. But, alas, the woodcock
didn't. Instead of flying forward through an open spot in the birches,
it hurtled straight up into the air and turned back directly above
Billie's head. She whirled like a flash and made the prettiest shot I
have ever seen right over the camera. The bird was dead as a herring. We
looked for the photographer. There he was on his face in the dirt,
trying to dig a foxhole. "Good God," he gasped, "she almost shot me." Be
it said in my favor that when I muttered "I devoutly wish she had," it
was only to myself.

I shall draw a veil over the next ten days. It was a chapter of
disappointments. Just one damned thing after another. The dogs pointing
in an open spot as the sun went under a cloud; there they would stand,
like living statues, while we waited impotently; kills made when the
photographer wasn't in position; day after day of plowing through
thickets and briars that cut our faces and hands. There were not many
birds either, because of three weeks' drought. No big flight came
through; only "puffs" that passed us by, going into the deep swamps and
bogs. We could not follow them there with the cameras. Our field of
operations was restricted to the dry pastures and hillsides where the
scrub birch and alders stood in patches.

We did, however, get some beautiful accessory pictures. There is a
lovely scene in our gun room; another when we were having breakfast in
the big window of the living room, looking across the pond. Photographs
in slow motion of practicing on the traps of our woodcock walk. Yes,
those were fine; couldn't have been better. There the photographer was
in his proper element. _But we didn't have a woodcock picture._ It was
Hamlet, with Hamlet left out.

The days were slipping by. Every morning sharp frosts brought a new
shower of red and yellow leaves to float in golden islands on the
surface of our pond. Elt, Billie, and I were desperate. The picture had
become something very personal to each of us. We had worked so hard, and
spent so much time, that we couldn't bear the thought of failure.
Already the possibility of shooting for sport before the season ended
was in the discard.

The climax came one day when the photographer remarked: "I don't see why
we've got to kill ourselves fighting these birches. Why don't you buy a
few woodcock and do the whole thing in a studio?" That was the detonator
that set off my personal charge of T.N.T. Next day we visited New York
and the motion-picture studio. To an amazed executive I hinted
delicately, in language learned during eight years on whaling ships,
that we must have two new photographers. They must be fieldmen who knew
the difference between a camera and a gun and could operate and
understand both. Men who themselves like to shoot. They were promised
for the next day. After Elt and I left the motion-picture office he was
strangely silent. There was a kind of awe in his eyes. It is reliably
reported that he remarked to a friend: "Gosh, Roy was awful mad."

When the cameramen arrived at Pondwood Farm a new birth of hope flooded
our hearts. Harry Smith is a handsome six-footer. He had just returned
from a pheasant shoot, on his own, in Michigan. His assistant, George
Wellstead, is a little fellow, but tough as a boiled owl. He can take it
with the best of them.

We got busy in an hour. Oh, what a relief! Even in the worst cover they
were right behind us. Not a possible chance was missed. We would hear
the camera whirring when even I couldn't see the vestige of hope for a
picture. That is how game films are made. In four more days--days of
grueling work but ultimate success--the picture was an accomplished
fact. No longer was it a film of just "going woodcock shooting." We had
the birds themselves, each one of us with several good clean kills
recorded by the camera. The last night, as we sat in the gun room, we
knew the job was well done. It had required three weeks of failure and
disappointments but that made final success all the more satisfying.
Looking at Harry and George, we drank a toast to _Timberdoodles_.

During the following year the picture had unexpected repercussions. John
Rowland, son of our close friend Reg, was just out of battle in Germany
where he won the Bronze Star for bravery. At the movies in a rest camp,
suddenly there on the screen were Billie and me and a picture of his own
house. Such a flood of homesickness swept over him that he had to leave.
Another friend in the Marines, invalided from the Okinawa hell to
Tientsin, China, recognized the birch grove behind their barn where he
had shot woodcock all his life. A Colebrook boy, rescued from a plane
crash in Burma, was greeted at his first movie by pictures of his own
Connecticut village.

After _Timberdoodles_, Billie and I had sworn a solemn oath "never
again." But it was much "like the cold gray dawn of the morning after."
Never again will you take another drink! Still, when we saw its opening
at the Palace Theater in New York, and letters from soldiers began to
arrive, we were glad we had helped to make _Timberdoodles_. So I
mentioned to Eltinge Warner that I knew a lake where smallmouthed bass
were as plentiful as fleas on a dog; where you could take them all day
and every day in sunshine or shadow. Before we knew it we were committed
again and August arrived on the wings of the morn. So we enlisted the
services of Abel I. Smith and Ernie Blanchard, who had a particular
interest in this lake which, for special reasons, must remain unnamed.
Suffice it to say that it is in Connecticut.

Our old friend Joe Walsh was to direct the picture. The cameramen were
Bill Deeke and George Wellstead, so there was no worry about the
photographic end of it. In fact, we had no worries at all except
concerning the weather. Since March there had not been a single week
which favored us with more than one or two days of sunshine. But the
camera crew were shot with luck. They arrived on a Monday night.
Wednesday dawned as a day of days, crystal-clear air, brilliant sun, and
a cloudless sky. So it remained for seven days. The picture was finished
on the following Wednesday. Three days of rain followed--not just a
drizzle but a real downpour. The temperature dropped twenty degrees and
dry-fly fishing for bass ended that week. So this is not a chronicle of
misfortune but one of happiness and light.

Joe Walsh wanted to show different methods of taking bass--dry and wet
fly, plug and bait. The photographers set up their camera on the shore
behind a great bed of white pond lilies in full bloom. Billie and I did
a bit of fly casting for long shots and then they got down to business.
Abel, who is a devotee of bait casting, was the first victim.

"Now," Joe said, "make a cast right here in front of the camera. We want
to get the technique in a closeup."

Abel swung his minnow. The camera started grinding.

"Would you mind," he said in a controlled voice, "if I caught a bass?
One has just taken the bait."

So there it was in that incredible picture week. A fish on the first
cast within thirty feet of the camera set up only to get scenic shots in
the most beautiful part of a lovely lake!

Abel took three bass in the same place before noon, but he did not get
jumpers, so they worked with him until his fish did the proper
acrobatics. Eventually Billie and I got tired of fighting fish for fun
and went home. After the first two days the photographers were
completely spoiled. They got the idea that in this particular lake all
they had to do was to set up the camera on the bank in a spot with a
nice scenic background and then sit in the shade while we fished right
in front of them. The bass thought differently, however. After two days
of rising along the shore line they decided that enough was enough. They
were through. But the cameramen couldn't believe it. So Billie and I,
with our fly fishing, got the short end of the deal.

"You see that patch of lilies right there? Cast your fly just on the
edge. We'll be all set. A jumper, please."

We cast and we cast with no results. The director had a pained
expression on his face.

"Nothing seems to happen."

"Nothing will," I said. "You must follow us around the lake."

"But the boat won't be a stable base for photography," he moaned.
"Please catch a bass that we can get from here."

"No, I can't. Damn it all, there isn't any wind. The lake is as calm as
a millpond. It's a big boat. Set up your camera and follow us about.
We'll take plenty of bass, but not here."

They sat disconsolate. Have you ever tried to convince a movie cameraman
that he can take a picture without having the legs of his tripod
implanted solidly on terra firma? Just try it. You'll be in for a
surprise. He will look at you as though you were well-meaning but dumb.
He will explain patiently that if he turns in film showing any movement
whatever the studio will throw it out and dock his salary. So that's
that. Just try to get him off from dry land! I ask you! Just try it!

Well, Billie and I cooked in the sun all that day. At the end we were
tired and hot and mad. Not really, when we got home and cool and had a
dip in the pool, but still I had drawn on my whaling vocabulary to a
slight extent during the afternoon. That was Saturday. Billie had a
headache from the glare and the heat--she wasn't allowed to use dark
glasses or a hat in the picture.

"Tomorrow I am not going out," she moaned. "My skin is like parchment,
my head aches, and I look and feel like a boiled lobster. Why should I
ruin myself for a lot of old bass? It will take years and a fortune to
get reconverted and I wanted to go to New York next week. I can't go. I
look a fright. Oh, why did I ever learn to fish?"

There wasn't a thing I could say. Had I been out there all day without a
hat and no dark glasses I'd have been dead. So we went to sleep that
Saturday night, determined to give _Field and Stream_, Path, bass, and
everyone concerned a miss the next day. We'd spend hours in our pool in
the woods, dipping in and out, sipping cold drinks, and never even
mention the word fish.

But it was not to be. At eight-fifteen in the morning Joe Walsh's
cheerful voice came over the phone. "It's a wonderful day. Not a breath
of wind. Let's finish the picture."

I looked at Billie. She was obviously wavering. Shakes of her head could
mean anything. So I hesitated and was lost.

"Joe, will you go to the north end and put the camera in the boat and
follow us around and not fiddle about on shore?" I got it off all in one
breath.

There was a long moment of hesitation. I could feel he was going through
a crisis. At last came the word. "Yes, we'll do all that."

I looked at Billie. She nodded emphatically.

"All right; we'll come. Be there in half an hour."

The day was everything Joe said it was. Still, bright sun, hot as
Tophet. He was true to his word. Up to the end of the lake we went,
camera firmly braced in the stern of the boat. George rowed, Bill Deeke
ran the machine, Joe stretched out flat as a pancake for balance.

It was a great day. Billie and I moved along the edge of the lily pads,
casting into the open spots. Bass rose; we hooked them, we fought them.
They jumped, stood on their heads, ran on their tails. The camera moved
in closer and closer when we yelled "fish." They got everything. The
crowning achievement came when, after an exciting battle between Billie
and a three-pound bass, Joe said, "Well, I'm afraid I can't find any
fault. The light was right, the position excellent, the fish did his
stuff as though he were trained. It was just naturally perfect."

We took twenty-three bass for the camera that day, on dry flies, wet
flies, and plugs. At four-thirty, when the light faded a bit, Joe said,
"We've got everything. I don't know what else could possibly happen in a
bass picture."

Thus ended _Battling Bass_. It may never occur again before a movie
camera. Our headaches were forgotten, Billie reconverted herself, and
all that remained was to enjoy the film. Path said, "Pictures
excellent." From a movie executive that is something!

    *    *    *    *    *

At last the war was over. One day Billie and I were at the swimming pool
in the forest. I lay on a deck chair, luxuriating in the sun which found
its way through the maple leaves and formed a mosaic of shifting
brilliance on the surface. Billie dabbled her feet in the water.

"Isn't it wonderful," she said reflectively, "to have peace again. We
don't have to worry about George any more. He and Mary Nancy are in
London. You are all right, and so am I. Walter and Edith are content.
Lord Jitters and Poke-Poke are happy. Queen is about to become a
mother. I wonder what exciting thing will happen next."

Just at that moment Walter appeared. "Doctah, what you think? Queen was
in the kennel. She done had her pups an hour ago. I made her all
comfortable and then I went away. The door was open. An', Doctah, she
done took every last one o' them pups and plunked 'em right square in
the middle o' the bed in yore room. She's settin' there now waitin' for
you all to come."


  =Transcriber's Notes:=
  hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in the original
  Page 40, the Wetherfield settlers ==> the Wethersfield settlers
  Page 42, the creek of swaying loads ==> the creak of swaying loads
  Page 101, It weights just one ==> It weighs just one
  Page 136, the most interestings things ==> the most interesting things
  Page 217, househould can enjoy ==> household can enjoy




[End of An Explorer Comes Home, by Roy Chapman Andrews]
