 CHAPTER 1 A BOYHOOD IN SCOTLAND earliest recollections, the dandy doctor terror, deeds of daring, the savagery of boys, school and fighting, birds nesting. When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures. Fortunately around my native town of Dunbar by the stormy North Sea there was no lack of wildness, though most of the land lay in smooth cultivation. With red-blooded playmates wild as myself I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low, and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms, thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds were mingled together as one. We never thought of playing truant, but after I was five or six years old I ran away to the seashore or the fields almost every Saturday and every day in the school vacations except Sundays, though solemnly warned that I must play at home in the garden and backyard lest I should learn to think bad thoughts and say bad words. All in vain, in spite of the sure-sore punishments that followed like shadows, the natural inherited wildness in our blood ran true on its glorious course as invincible and unstoppable as stars. My earliest recollections of the country were gained on short walks with my grandfather when I was perhaps not over three years old. On one of these walks grandfather took me to Lord Lauderdale's Gardens where I saw figs growing against a sunny wall and tasted some of them, and got as many apples to eat as I wished. On another memorable walk in a hay-field when we sat down to rest on one of the hay-cocks I heard a sharp, prickly, stinging cry, and jumping up eagerly called grandfather's attention to it. He said he heard only the wind, but I insisted on digging into the hay and turning it over until we discovered the source of the strange, exciting sound, a mother-field mouse with half a dozen naked young hanging to her teats. To me this was a wonderful discovery. No hunter could have been more excited on discovering a bear and her cubs in a wilderness den. I was sent to school before I had completed my third year. The first school day was doubtless full of wonders, but I am not able to recall any of them. I remember the servant washing my face and getting soap in my eyes, and mother hanging a little green bag with my first book in it around my neck so I would not lose it, and it's blowing back in the sea wind like a flag. But before I was sent to school my grandfather, as I was told, had taught me my letters from shop signs across the street. I can remember distinctly how proud I was when I had spelled my way through the little first book into the second, which seemed large and important, and so on to the third. Going from one book to another formed a grand triumphal advancement, the memories of which still stand out in clear relief. The third book contained interesting stories as well as plain reading and spelling lessons. To me the best story of all was Llewellyn's Dog, the first animal that comes to mind after the needle-boist Field Mouse. It's so deeply interested and touched me and some of my classmates that we read it over and over with aching hearts, both in and out of school, and shed bitter tears over the brave, faithful dog Gellert, slain by his own master, who imagined that he had devoured his son because he came to him all bloody when the boy was lost, though he had saved the child's life by killing a big wolf. We have to look far back to learn how great may be the capacity of a child's heart for sorrow and sympathy with animals, as well as with human friends and neighbors. This old langzine story stands out in the throng of old school-day memories as clearly as if I had myself been one of that Welsh hunting-party, heard the bugles blowing, seen Gellert slain, joined in the search for the lost child, discovered it at last happy and smiling among the grass and bushes beside the dead mangled wolf, and wept with Llewellyn over the sad fate of his noble, faithful dog friend. Another favourite in this book was Sothe's poem The Inch Cape Bell, a story of a priest and a pirate. A good priest, in order to warn seaman in dark, stormy weather, hung a big bell on the dangerous Inch Cape Rock. The greater the storm and higher the waves, the louder rang the warning bell, until it was cut off and sunk by wicked Ralph the Rover. One fine day, as the story goes, when the bell was ringing gently, the pirate put out to the rock, saying, I'll sink that bell and plague the abode of Aberberthock. So he cut the rope and down went the bell, with a gurgling sound, the bubbles rose and burst around, etc. Then Ralph the Rover sailed away, he scoured the seas for many a day, and now, grown rich with plundered store, he steers his course for Scotland shore. Then came a terrible storm with cloud darkness and night darkness and high roaring waves. Now where we are, cried the pirate, I cannot tell, but I wish I could hear the Inch Cape Bell. And the story goes on to tell how the wretched Rover tore his hair and cursed himself in his despair, when, with a shivering shock, the stout ship struck on the Inch Cape Rock, and went down with Ralph and his plunder beside the good priest's bell. The story appealed to our love of kind deeds and of wildness and fair play. A lot of terrifying experiences connected with these first school days grew out of crimes committed by the keeper of a low lodging-house in Edinburgh, who allowed poor homeless wretches to sleep on benches or the floor for a penny or so a night, and, when kind death came to their relief, rolled the bodies for dissection to Dr. Hare of the Medical School. None of us children ever heard anything like the original story. The servant girls told us that dandy doctors clad in long black cloaks and supplied with a store of sticking plaster of wondrous adhesiveness prowled at night about the country lanes and even the town streets, watching for children to choke and sell. The dandy doctors' business method, as the servants explained it, was with lightning quickness to clap a sticking plaster on the face of a scholar, covering mouth and nose, preventing breathing or crying for help. Then pop us under his long black cloak and carry us to Edinburgh to be sold and sliced into small pieces for folk to learn how we were made. We always mentioned the name dandy doctor in a fearful whisper and never dared venture out of doors after dark. In the short winter days it got dark before school closed, and in cloudy weather we sometimes had difficulty in finding our way home unless a servant with a lantern was sent for us. But during the dandy doctor period the school was closed earlier, for if detained until the usual hour the teacher could not get us to leave the school room. We would rather stay all night, supperless, than dare the mysterious doctors supposed to be lying in wait for us. We had to go up a hill called the Davo Bray that lay between the schoolhouse and the main street. One evening, just before dark, as we were running up the hill, one of the boys shouted, a dandy doctor, a dandy doctor! And we all fled, pell-mill, back into the schoolhouse to the astonishment of Mungo Sidon's the teacher. I can remember to this day the amused look on the Good Domini's face as he stared and tried to guess what had got into us, until one of the older boys breathlessly explained that there was an awful big dandy doctor on the Bray and we couldn't go home. Others corroborated the dreadful news. Yes, we saw him playing as anything, with his long black cloak to hide us in, and some of us thought we saw a stick and plaster ready in his hand. We were in such a state of fear and trembling that the teacher saw he wasn't going to get rid of us without going himself as leader. He went only a short distance, however, and turned us over to the care of the two biggest scholars, who led us to the top of the Bray and then left us to scurry home and dash into the door like pursued squirrels diving into their holes. Just before school scaled, closed, we all arose and sang the fine hymn, Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing. In the spring, when the swallows were coming back from their winter homes, we sang, Welcome, welcome, little stranger, welcome from a foreign shore, safe escape from many a danger. And, while singing, we all swayed in rhythm with the music. The cuckoo, that always told his name in the spring of the year, was another favorite song. And when there was nothing in particular to call to mind any special bird or animal, the songs we sang were widely varied, such as, The Whale, The Whale is the beast for me, plunging along through the deep, deep sea. But best of all was, Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing, though at that time the most significant part I fear was the first three words. With my school lessons, Father made me learn hymns and Bible verses, for learning rock of ages he gave me a penny, and I thus became suddenly rich. Scotch boys are seldom spoiled with money. We thought more of a penny those economical days than the poorest American schoolboy thinks of a dollar. To decide what to do with that first penny was an extravagantly serious affair. I ran in great excitement up and down the street, examining the tempting goodies in the shop windows, before venturing on so important an investment. My playmates also became excited when the wonderful news got abroad that Johnny Muir had a penny, hoping to obtain a taste of the orange, apple, or candy it was likely to bring forth. At this time infants were baptized and vaccinated a few days after birth. I remember very well a fight with the doctor when my brother David was vaccinated. This happened, I think, before I was sent to school. I couldn't imagine what the doctor, a tall, severe-looking man in black, was doing to my brother. But as mother who was holding him in her arms offered no objection, I looked on quietly while he scratched the arm until I saw blood. Then, unable to trust even my mother, I managed to spring up high enough to grab and bite the doctor's arm, yelling that I wasn't going to let him hurt my bonny brother, while to my utter astonishment mother and the doctor only laughed at me. So far from complete at times is sympathy between parents and children, and so much like wild beasts or baby boys little fighting, biting, climbing pagans. Father was proud of his garden and seemed always to be trying to make it as much like Eden as possible, and in a corner of it he gave each of us a little bit of ground for our very own in which we planted what we best liked, wondering how the hard, dry seeds could change into soft leaves and flowers and find their way out to the light, and to see how they were coming on we used to dig up the larger ones such as peas and beans every day. My aunt had a corner assigned to her in our garden, which she filled with lilies, and we all looked with the utmost respect and admiration at that precious lily bed, and wondered whether when we grew up we should ever be rich enough to own one anything like so grand. We imagined that each lily was worth an enormous sum of money and never dared to touch a single leaf or petal of them. We really stood in awe of them. Far, far was I then from the wild lily gardens of California that I was destined to see in their glory. When I was a little boy at Mungo Sidden's school a flower show was held in Dunbar, and I saw a number of the exhibitors carrying large handfuls of dahlias, the first I had ever seen. I thought them marvellous in size and beauty, and, as in the case of my aunt's lilies, wondered if I should ever be rich enough to own some of them. Although I never dared to touch my aunt's sacred lilies, I have good cause to remember stealing some common flowers from an apothecary, Peter Lawson, who also answered the purpose of a regular physician to most of the poor people of the town and adjacent country. He had a pony which was considered very wild and dangerous, and when he was called out of town he mounted this wonderful beast, which, after standing long in the stable, was frisky and boisterous, and often to artilite reared and jumped and danced about from side to side of the street before he could be persuaded to go ahead. We boys gazed in awful admiration and wondered how the druggist could be so brave and able as to get on and stay on that wild beast's back. His famous Peter loved flowers, and had a fine garden surrounded by an iron fence, through the bars of which, when I thought no one saw me, I oftentimes snatched a flower and took to my heels. One day Peter discovered me in this mischief, dashed out into the street and caught me. I screamed that I wouldn't steal any more if he would let me go. He didn't say anything, but just dragged me along to the stable, where he kept the wild pony, pushed me in, right back of its heels, and shut the door. I was screaming, of course, but as soon as I was imprisoned, the fear of being kicked quenched all noise. I hardly dared breathe. My only hope was in motionless silence. Imagine the agony I endured. I did not steal any more of his flowers. He was a good, hard judge of boy nature. I was in Peter's hand some time before this, when I was about two and a half years old. The servant girl bathed a small folk before putting us to bed. The smarting, soapy scrubbings of the Saturday nights in preparation for the Sabbath were particularly severe, and we all dreaded them. My sister, Sarah, the next older than me, wanted the long, legged stool I was sitting on awaiting my turn, so she just tipped me off. My chin struck on the edge of the bathtub, and as I was talking at the time, my tongue happened to be in the way of my teeth, when they were closed by the blow, and a deep gash was cut on the side of it, which bled profusely. Mother came running at the noise I made, wrapped me up, put me in the servant girl's arms, and told her to run with me through the garden and out by a back way to Peter Lawson, to have something done to stop the bleeding. He simply pushed a wad of cotton into my mouth after soaking it in some brown, astringent stuff, and told me to be sure to keep my mouth shut, and all would soon be well. Mother put me to bed, calmed my fears, and told me to lie still and sleep like a good baron. But just as I was dropping off to sleep, I swallowed the bulky wad of medicated cotton, and with it, as I imagined, my tongue also, my screams over so great a loss brought Mother, and when she anxiously took me in her arms and inquired what was the matter, I told her that I had swallowed my tongue. She only laughed at me, much to my astonishment, when I expected that she would bewail the awful loss her boy had sustained. My sisters, who were older than I, often times said, when I happened to be talking too much, it's a pity you hadn't swallowed at least half of that long tongue of yours when you were little. It appears natural for children to be fond of water, although the scotch method of making every duty dismal contrived to make necessary bathing for health terrible to us. I well remember among the awful experiences of childhood being taken by the servant to the seashore when I was between two and three years old, stripped at the side of a deep pool in the rocks, plunged into it among crawling crawfish and slippery wriggling snake-like eels, and drawn up gasping and shrieking only to be plunged down again and again. As the time approached for this terrible bathing, I used to hide in the darkest corners of the house, and often times a long search was required to find me. But after we were a few years older, we enjoyed bathing with other boys as we wandered along the shore, careful, however, not to get into a pool that had an invisible, boy-devouring monster at the bottom of it. Such pools, miniature maelstroms, were called Suken in Goats, and were well known to most of us. Nevertheless, we never ventured into any pool on strange parts of the coast before we had thrust a stick into it. If the stick were not pulled out of our hands, we boldly entered, and enjoyed plashing and ducking, long air we had learned to swim. One of our best playgrounds was the famous old Dunbar Castle, to which King Edward fled after his defeat at Bannockburn. It was built more than a thousand years ago, and though we know little of its history, we had heard many mysterious stories of the battles fought about its walls, and firmly believed that every bone we found in the ruins belonged to an ancient warrior. We tried to see who could climb highest on the crumbling peaks and craigs, and took chances that no cautious mountaineer would try. That I did not fall and finish my rock scrambling in those adventurous boyhood days seems now a reasonable wonder. Among our best games were running, jumping, wrestling, and scrambling. I was so proud of my skill as a climber that when I first heard of hell from a servant girl who loved to tell its horrors and warn us that if we did anything wrong we would be cast into it, I always insisted that I could climb out of it. I imagined it was only a sooty pit with stone walls like those of the castle, and I felt sure there must be chinks and cracks in the masonry for fingers and toes. Anyhow the terrors of the horrible place seldom lasted long beyond the telling, for natural faith casts out fear. Most of the Scotch children believe in ghosts, and some under peculiar conditions continue to believe in them all through life. Grave ghosts are deemed particularly dangerous, and many of the most credulous will go far out of their way to avoid passing through or near a graveyard in the dark. After being instructed by the servants in the nature, looks, and habits of the various black-and-white ghosts, boo-wuzzies, and witches we often speculated as to whether they could run fast, and tried to believe that we had a good chance to get away from most of them, to improve our speed and wind we often took long runs into the country. Tamashander's mare outran a lot of witches, at least until she reached a place of safety beyond the keystone of the bridge, and we thought, perhaps, we also might be able to outrun them. Our house formally belonged to a physician, and a servant girl told us that the ghost of the dead doctor haunted one of the unoccupied rooms in the second story that was kept dark on account of a heavy window tax. Our bedroom was adjacent to the ghost room, which had in it a lot of chemical apparatus, glass tubing, glass and brass retorts, test tubes, flasks, et cetera, and we thought that those strange articles were still used by the old dead doctor in compounding physics. In the long summer days David and I were put to bed several hours before sunset. Mother tucked us in carefully, drew the curtains of the big old fashioned bed, and told us to lie still and sleep like good barons. But we were usually out of bed playing games of daring called scoochers, about as soon as our loving mother reached the foot of the stairs, for we couldn't lie still, however hard we might try. Going into the ghost room was regarded as a very great scoocher. After venturing in a few steps and rushing back in terror, I used to dare David to go as far without getting caught. The roof of our house, as well as the crigs and walls of the old castle, offered fine mountaineering exercise. Our bedroom was lighted by a dormer window. One night I opened it in search of good scoochers and hung myself out over the slates, holding on to the sill, while the wind was making a balloon of my nightgown. I then dared David to try the adventure, and he did. Then I went out again and hung by one hand, and David did the same. Then I hung by one finger, being careful not to slip, and he did that too. Then I stood on the sill and examined the edge of the left wall of the window, crept up the slates along its side by slight finger-holds, got a stride of the roof, sat there a few minutes looking at the scenery over the garden wall, while the wind was howling and threatening to blow me off, then managed to slip down, catch hold of the sill, and get safely back into the room. But before attempting this scoocher, recognizing its dangerous character with commendable caution, I warned David that in case I should happen to slip, I would grip the ring trough when I was going over the ease and hang on, and that he must then run fast downstairs and tell Father to get a ladder for me, and tell him to be quick because I would soon be tired hanging dangling in the wind by my hands. After my return from this capital scoocher, David not to be outdone, crawled up to the top of the window-roof, and got bravely astride of it. But in trying to return he lost courage, and began to greet, to cry, I cannot get down, I cannot get down. I leaned out of the window and shouted encouragingly, didn't agree, didn't agree, I'll help you down, if you greet Father will hear, and he'll give us an awful scalping. Then standing on the sill and holding on by one hand to the window casing, I directed him to slip his feet down within reach, and, after securing a good hold, I jumped inside and dragged him in by his heels. This finished scoocher scrambling for the night and frightened us into bed. In the short winter days when it was dark even at our early bedtime, we usually spent the hours before going to sleep, playing voyages around the world under the bed-clothing. After Mother had carefully covered us, made us good night, and gone downstairs, we set out on our travels. Burrowing like moles we visited France, India, America, Australia, New Zealand, and all the places we had ever heard of, our travels never ending until we fell asleep. When Mother came to take a last look at us before she went to bed, to see that we were covered, we were oftentimes covered so well that she had difficulty in finding us, for we were hidden in all sorts of positions where sleep happened to overtake us. But in the morning we always found ourselves in good order lying straight, like good barons, as she said. Some fifty years later, when I visited Scotland, I got one of my Dunbar schoolmates to introduce me to the owners of our old home, from whom I obtained permission to go upstairs to examine our bedroom window and judge what sort of adventure getting on its roof must have been. And with all my after-experience in mountaineering I found that what I had done in daring boyhood was now beyond my skill. Those are often, at once, cruel and merciful, thoughtlessly hard-hearted and tender-hearted, sympathetic, pitiful and kind in ever-changing contrasts. Love of neighbors, human or animal, grows up amid savage traits, coarse and fine. When Father made out to get us securely locked up in the backyard, to prevent our shore and field wanderings, we had to play away the comparatively dull time as best we could. One of our amusements was hunting cats without seriously hurting them. These sagacious animals knew, however, that though not very dangerous boys were not to be trusted. One time in particular, I remember, when we began throwing stones at an experienced old tom, not wishing to hurt him much, though he was attempting mark. He soon saw what we were up to, fled to the stable and climbed to the top of the haymanger. He was still within range, however, and we kept the stones flying faster and faster, but he just blinked and played possum without wincing either at our best shots or at the noise we made. I happened to strike him pretty hard with a good-sized pebble, but he still blinked and sat still as if without feeling. "'He must be mortally wounded,' I said, and now we must kill him to put him out of pain, the savage in us rapidly growing with indulgence. All took heartily to this sort of cat-mercy and began throwing the heaviest stones we could manage, but that old fellow knew what characters we were, and just as we imagined him mercifully dead, he evidently thought the play was becoming too serious, and that it was time to retreat. For suddenly, with a wild horror and grr of energy, he launched himself over our heads, rushed across the yard in a blur of speed, climbed to the roof of another building and over the garden wall, out of pain and bad company, with all his lives wide awake and in good working order. After we had thus learned that Tom had at least nine lives, we tried to verify the common saying that no matter how far cats fell, they always landed on their feet unhurt. We caught one in our backyard, not Tom but a smaller one of manageable size, and somehow got him smuggled up to the top story of the house. I don't know how in the world we managed to let go of him, for as soon as we opened the window and held him over the sill, he knew his danger, and made violent efforts to scratch and bite his way back into the room. But we determined to carry the thing through, and at last managed to drop him. I can remember to this day how the poor creature in danger of his life strained and balanced as he was falling and managed to light on his feet. This was a cruel thing for even wild boys to do, and we never tried the experiment again. For we sincerely pitted the poor fellow when we saw him creeping slowly away, stunned and frightened with a swollen black and blue chin. Again showing the natural savagery of boys, we delighted in dogfights and even in the horrid red work of slaughter houses, often running long distances and climbing over walls and roofs to see a pig killed as soon as we heard the desperately earnest squealing, and if the butcher was good-natured we begged him to let us get a near view of the mysterious insides and to give us a bladder to blow up for a football. Here is an illustration of the better side of boy nature. In our backyard there were three elm trees, and in the one nearest the house a pair of robin red breasts had their nest. When the young were almost able to fly a troop of the celebrated Scottish greys, visited Dunbar, and three or four of the fine horses were lodged in our stable. When the soldiers were polishing their swords and helmets, they happened to notice the nest, and just as they were leaving one of them climbed the tree and robbed it. With sore sympathy we watched the young birds as the hard-hearted robber pushed them one by one beneath his jacket, all but two that jumped out of the nest and tried to fly, but they were easily caught as they flooded on the ground and were hidden away with the rest. The distress of the bereaved parents as they hovered and screamed over the frightened crying children they so long had loved and sheltered and fed was pitiful to see, but the shining soldier rolled grandly away on his big grey horse carrying only for the few pennies the young songbirds would bring and the beer they would buy, while we all, sisters and brothers, were crying and sobbing. I remember as if it happened this day how my heart fairly ached and choked me. Mother put us to bed and tried to comfort us, telling us that the little birds would be well fed and grow big and soon learn to sing in pretty cages, but again and again we rehearsed the sad story of the poor bereaved birds and their frightened children, and could not be comforted. Father came into the room when we were half asleep and still sobbing, and I heard mother telling him that, ah, the bairns' hearts were broken over the robbing of the nest in the elm. After attaining the manly, belligerent age of five or six years, very few of my school days passed without a fist-fight, and half a dozen was no uncommon number. When any classmate of our own age questioned our rank in standing as fighters we always made haste to settle the matter at a quiet place on the davel bray. To be a good fighter was our highest ambition, our dearest aim in life in or out of school. To be a good scholar was a secondary consideration, though we tried hard to hold high places in our classes and gloried in being ducks. We fairly reveled in the battle stories of glorious William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, with which every breath of scotch air is saturated, and of course we were all going to be soldiers. On the davel bray battleground we often managed to bring on something like real war greatly more exciting than personal combat. Choosing leaders we divided into two armies. In winter damp snow furnished plenty of ammunition to make the thing serious, and in summer sand and grass sods. Cheering and shouting some battle cry such as Bannock burn, Scotland forever, the last war in India, we were led bravely on. For heavy battery work we stuffed our scotch blue bonnets with snow and sand, sometimes mixed with gravel and fired them at each other as cannonballs. Of course we always looked eagerly forward to vacation days and thought them slow in coming. Old Mungo Siddons gave us a lot of gooseberries or currents and wished us a happy time. Some sort of special closing exercises, singing, recitations, etc., celebrated the great day, but I remember only the berries, freedom from schoolwork, and opportunities for running away rambles in the fields and along the wave-beaten seashore. An exciting time came when at the age of seven or eight years I left the old davel bray school for the grammar school. Of course I had a terrible lot of fighting to do, because a new scholar had to meet every one of his age who dared to challenge him, this being the common introduction to a new school. It was very strenuous for the first month or so establishing my fighting rank, taking up new studies, especially Latin and French, getting acquainted with new classmates and the master and his rules. In the first few Latin and French lessons, the new teacher, Mr. Lyon, blandly smiled at our comical blunders, but pedagogical weather of the severest kind quickly set in, when for every mistake, everything short of perfection, the toss was promptly applied. We had to get three lessons every day in Latin, three in French, and as many in English, besides spelling, history, arithmetic, and geography. Word lessons, in particular, the wouldst, couldst, shouldst, have loved kind were kept up with much warlike thrashing until I had committed the whole of the French, Latin, and English grammars to memory, and in connection with reading lessons we were called on to recite parts of them with the rules over and over again, as if all the regular and irregular, incomprehensible verb stuff was poetry. In addition to all this, Father made me learn so many Bible verses every day that by the time I was eleven years of age I had about three-fourths of the Old Testament and all of the new by heart and by sore flesh. I could recite the New Testament from the beginning of Matthew to the end of Revelation without a single stop. The dangers of cramming and of making scholars study at home instead of letting their little brains rest were never heard of in those days. We carried our schoolbooks home in a strap every night and committed to memory our next day's lessons before we went to bed, and to do that we had to bend our attention as closely on our tasks as lawyers on great million-dollar cases. I can't conceive of anything that would now enable me to concentrate my attention more fully than when I was a mere stripling boy, and it was all done by whipping, thrashing in general. Old-fashioned scotch teachers spent no time in seeking short roads to knowledge or in trying any of the new-fangled psychological methods so much invoked nowadays. There was nothing said about making the seats easy or the lessons easy. We were simply driven, point blank, against our books like soldiers against the enemy, and sternly ordered, up and at them, commit your lessons to memory. If we failed in any part, however slight, we were whipped, for the grand, simple, all-sufficing scotch discovery had been made that there was a close connection between the skin and the memory, and that irritating the skin excited the memory to any required degree. Fighting was carried on still more vigorously in the high school than in the common school. Whenever any one was challenged, either the challenge was allowed or it was decided by a battle on the seashore, where with stubborn enthusiasm we battered each other as if we had not been sufficiently battered by the teacher. When we were so fortunate as to finish a fight without getting a black eye, we usually escaped a thrashing at home and another next morning at school. For other traces of the fray could be easily washed off at a well on the church bray or concealed or passed as results of playground accidents, but a black eye could never be explained away from downright fighting. A good double thrashing was the inevitable penalty, but all without avail. Fighting went on without the slightest abatement, like natural storms, for no punishment less than death could quench the ancient inherited belligerence burning in our pagan blood. Nor could we be made to believe it was fair that father and teacher should thrash us so industriously for our good, while begrudging us the pleasure of thrashing each other for our good. All these various thrashings, however, were admirably influential in developing not only memory, but fortitude as well. For, if we did not endure our school punishments and fighting pains without flinching and making faces, we were mocked on the playground and public opinion on a scotch playground was a powerful agent in controlling behavior. Therefore, we at length managed to keep our features in smooth repose while enduring pain that would try anybody but an American Indian. Far from feeling that we were called on to endure too much pain, one of our playground games was thrashing each other with whips about two feet long made from the tough, wiry stems of a species of polygonum fastened together in a stiff, firm braid. One of us handing two of these whips to a companion to take his choice, we stood up close together and thrashed each other on the legs until once succumbed to the intolerable pain and thus lost the game. Nearly all of our playground games were strenuous, shin battering, shinny, wrestling, prisoner's base, and dogs and hares, all augmenting in no slight degree our lessons in fortitude. Moreover, we regarded our punishments and pains of every sort as training for war, since we were all going to be soldiers. Besides single combats we sometimes assembled on Saturdays to meet the scholars of another school, and very little was required for the growth of strained relations and war. The immediate cause might be nothing more than a saucy stare. Perhaps the scholar stared at would insolently inquire, What are you glaring at, Bob? Bob would reply, I'll look where I have mined, and hinder me if you dare. Well, Bob, the outraged stared at scholar would reply, I'll soon let you see whether I dare or know, and give Bob a blow on the face. This opened the battle, and every good scholar belonging to either school was drawn into it. After both sides were sore and weary, a strong, lunged warrior would be heard above the din of battle, shouting, I'll tell you what we'd do with ye, if ye let us alone, we'll let ye alone. And the school war ended as most wars between nations do, and some of them begin in much the same way. Notwithstanding the great number of harshly enforced rules, not very good order was kept in school in my time. There were two schools within a few rods of each other, one for mathematics, navigation, etc., the other called the grammar school that I attended. The masters lived in a big, freestone house within eight or ten yards of the schools, so that they could easily step out for anything they wanted or send one of the scholars. The moment our master disappeared, perhaps for a book or a drink, every scholar left his seat and his lessons, jumped on top of the benches and desks or crawled beneath them, tugging, rolling, wrestling, accomplishing, in a minute, a depth of disorder and din unbelievable, saved by a Scottish scholar. We even carried on war, class against class, in those wild, precious minutes. A watcher gave the alarm when the master opened his house door to return, and it was a great feat to get into our places before he entered, adorned in awful majestic authority, shouting, silence, and striking resounding blows with his cane on a desk or on some unfortunate scholar's back. Forty-seven years after leaving this fighting school I returned on a visit to Scotland, and a cousin in Dunbar introduced me to a minister who was acquainted with the history of the school, and obtained for me an invitation to dine with the new master. Of course I gladly accepted for I wanted to see the old place of fun and pain and the battle-ground on the sands. Mr. Lyon, our able teacher and thrasher, I learned, had held his place as master of the school for twenty or thirty years after I left it, and had recently died in London, after preparing many young men for the English universities. At the dinner-table, while I was recalling the amusements and fights of my old school days, the minister remarked to the new minister, now don't you wish that you had been teacher in those days and gained the honour of walloping John Muir. This pleasure so merrily suggested showed that the minister also had been a fighter in his youth. The old freestone school building was still perfectly sound, but the carved ink-stained desks were almost whittled away. The highest part of our playground back of the school commanded a view of the sea, and we loved to watch the passing ships and, judging by their rigging, make guesses as to the ports they had sailed from, those to which they were bound, what they were loaded with, their tonnage, etc. In stormy weather they were all smothered in clouds and spray, and showers of salt-scud torn from the tops of the waves came flying over the playground wall. In those tremendous storms many a brave ship founded, or was tossed and smashed on the rocky shore. When a wreck occurred within a mile or two of the town we often managed, by running fast, to reach it and pick up some of the spoils. In particular I remember visiting the battered fragments of an unfortunate brig or schooner that had been loaded with apples, and finding fine unpitiful sport in rushing into the spent waves and picking up the red-cheeked fruit from the frothy, seething foam. All our school-books were extravagantly illustrated with drawings of every kind of sailing-vessel, and every boy owned some sort of craft, whittled from a block of wood and trimmed with infinite panes, sloops, schooners, brigs, and full-rigged ships, with their sails and string-ropes properly adjusted and named for us by some old sailor. These precious toy-craft would lead keels we learned to sail on a pond near the town. With the sail set at the proper angle to the wind they made fast straight voyages across the pond to boys on the other side, who readjusted the sails and started them back on the return voyages. Oftentimes fleets of half a dozen or more were started together in exciting races. Our most exciting sport, however, was playing with gunpowder. We made guns out of gas-pipe, mounted them on sticks of any shape, clubbed our pennies together for powder, gleaned pieces of lead here and there and cut them into slugs, and, while one aimed, another applied a match to the touch-hole. With these awful weapons we wandered along the beach and fired at the gulls and soul and geese as they passed us. Fortunately we never hurt any of them that we knew of. We also dug holes in the ground, put in a handful or two of powder, tamped it well around a fuse made of a wheat stock, and reaching cautiously forward touched a match to the straw, this we called making earthquakes. Oftentimes we went home with singed hair and faces well peppered with powder grains that could not be washed out. Then, of course, came a correspondingly severe punishment from both father and teacher. Another favorite sport was climbing trees and scaling garden walls. Boys eight or ten years of age could get over almost any wall by standing on each other's shoulders, thus making living ladders. To make walls secure against marauders many of them were finished on top with broken bottles embedded in lime, leaving the cutting edges sticking up. But with bunches of grass and weeds we could sit or stand in comfort on top of the jaggedest of them. Like squirrels that begin to eat nuts before they are ripe, we began to eat apples about as soon as they were formed, causing, of course, desperate gastric disturbances to be cured by castor oil. Serious were the risks we ran in climbing and squeezing through hedges and, of course, among the countryfolk we were far from welcome. Farmers passing us on the roads often shouted by way of greeting, Oh, you vagabonds, back to the town with ye, gang back where ye belong. You're up to mischief, eyes warrant, I can see it. The gamekeeper will catch ye, and most like ye'llah be hang some day. Breakfast in those old langzine days was simple oatmeal porridge, usually with a little milk or triacle served in wooden dishes called luggies, formed of staves hooped together like miniature tubs about four or five inches in diameter, one of the staves the lug or ear a few inches longer than the others served as a handle, while the number of luggies ranged in a row on a dresser indicated the size of the family. We never dreamed of anything to come after the porridge or of asking for more. Our portions were consumed in about a couple of minutes, then off to school. At noon we came racing home ravenously hungry. The midday meal called dinner was usually vegetable broth, a small piece of boiled mutton and barley meal scone. None of us liked the barley scone bread, therefore we got all we wanted of it, and in desperation had to eat it, for we were always hungry, about as hungry after as before meals. The evening meal was called tea, and was served on our return from school. It consisted, as far as we children were concerned, of half a slice of white bread without butter, barley scone and warm water with a little milk and sugar in it, a beverage called content, which warmed but neither cheered nor inebriated. Immediately after tea we ran across the street with our books to grandfather Gilry, who took pleasure in seeing us and hearing us recite our next day's lessons, then back home to supper, usually a boiled potato and piece of barley scone, then family worship and to bed. Our amusements on Saturday afternoons and vacations depended mostly on getting away from home into the country, especially in the spring, when the birds were calling loudest. Father sternly forbade David and me from playing truant in the fields, with plundering wanderers like ourselves, fearing we might go on from bad to worse, get hurt in climbing over walls, caught by gamekeepers, or lost by falling over a cliff into the sea. Play as much as you like in the backyard and garden, he said, and mind what you'll get when you forget and disobey. Thus he warned us with an awfully stern countenance, looking very hard-hearted, while naturally his heart was far from hard, though he devoutly believed in eternal punishment for bad boys both here and hereafter. Nevertheless, like devout martyrs of wildness, we stole away to the seashore or the green sunny fields with almost religious regularity, taking advantage of opportunities when Father was very busy to join our companions, oftenness to hear the birds sing and hunt their nests, glorying in the number we had discovered and called our own. A sample of our nest chatter was something like this. Willie Chisholm would proudly exclaim, I can know, 17 nests and you, Johnny, can only fifteen. But I wouldn't give my fifteen for your seventeen, for five of mine are larks and mavis's. You can only three are the best singers. Yes, Johnny, but I can six goldies and you can only one. Most of yours are only sparrows and linties and robin red breasts. Then perhaps Bob Richardson would loudly declare that he canned more nests than anybody, for he can twenty-three, with about fifty eggs in them and more than fifty young birds, maybe a hundred. Some of them nothing but raw goreblings, but lots of them as big as their mithers and ready to flee, and about fifty crows nests and three fox-tens. Oh, yes, Bob, but that's no fair for nobody counts crows nests and foxholes, and then you live in the country at Belle Haven where you have the best chance. Yes, but I can a lot of Bumby's nests, both the red-legged and the yellow-legged kind. Oh, what cares for Bumby's nests? Well, but here's something. My father let me gang to a fox-hunt, and, man, it was grand to see the hounds and the long-legged horses lopin' the dykes and burns and hedges. The nests I fear with the beautiful eggs and young birds were prized quite as highly as the songs of the glad parents, but no scotch-boy that I know of ever failed to listen with enthusiasm to the songs of the skylarks. Often times on a broad meadow near Dunbar we stood for hours, enjoying their marvellous singing and soaring. From the grass where the nest was hidden the mail would suddenly rise as straight as if shot up to a height of perhaps thirty or forty feet, and sustaining himself with rapid wing-beats poured down the most delicious melody, sweet and clear and strong, overflowing all bounds. Then suddenly he would soar higher again and again, ever higher and higher, soaring and singing until lost to sight even on perfectly clear days, and often times in cloudy weather far in the downy cloud as the poet says. To test our eyes we often watched a lark until he seemed a faint speck in the sky and finally passed beyond the keenest sighted of us all. I see him yet, we would cry, I see him yet, I see him yet, I see him yet, as he soared, and finally only one of us would be left to claim that he still saw him. At last he, too, would have to admit that the singer had soared beyond his sight, and still the music came pouring down to us in glorious perfusion from a height far above our vision, requiring marvellous power of wing and marvellous power of voice for that rich, delicious, soft, and yet clear music was distinctly heard long after the bird was out of sight. Then suddenly ceasing the glorious singer would appear, falling like a bolt straight down to his nest where his mate was sitting on the eggs. It was far too common a practice among us to carry off a young lark just before it could fly, place it in a cage and fondly, laboriously feed it. Sometimes we succeeded in keeping one alive for a year or two, and, when awakened by the spring weather, it was pitiful to see the quivering, imprisoned, soarer of the heavens rapidly beating its wings and singing as though it were flying and hovering in the air like its parents. To keep it in health we were taught that we must supply it with a sod of grass, the size of the bottom of the cage, to make the poor bird feel as though it were at home on its native meadow, a meadow perhaps a foot or at most two feet square. Again and again it would try to hover over that miniature meadow from its miniature sky just underneath the top of the cage. At last, conscience stricken, we carried the beloved prisoner to the meadow west of Dunbar where it was born, and, blessing its sweet heart, bravely set it free, and our exceeding great reward was to see it fly and sing in the sky. In the winter, when there was but little doing in the fields, we organized running matches. A dozen or so of us would start out on races that were simply tests of endurance, running on and on along a public road over the breezy hills like hounds without stopping or getting tired. The only serious trouble we ever felt in these long races was an occasional stitch in our sides. One of the boys started the story that sucking raw eggs was a sure cure for the stitches. We had hands in our backyard, and on the next Saturday we managed to swallow a couple of eggs apiece, a disgusting job, but we would do almost anything to mend our speed, and as soon as we could get away after taking the cure, we set out on a ten or twenty mile run to prove its worth. We thought nothing of running right ahead ten or a dozen miles before turning back, for we knew nothing about taking time by the sun, and none of us had a watch in those days. Indeed, we never cared about time until it began to get dark. Then we thought of home and the thrashing that awaited us. Late or early the thrashing was sure unless father happened to be away. If he was expected to return soon, mother made haste to get us to bed before his arrival. We escaped the thrashing next morning, for father never felt like thrashing us in cold blood on the calm, holy Sabbath. But no punishment, however sure and severe was of any avail against the attraction of the fields and woods. It had other uses, developing memory, etc., but in keeping us at home it was of no use at all. Wildness was ever sounding in our ears, and nature saw to it that beside school lessons and church lessons some of her own lessons should be learned, perhaps with a view to the time when we should be called to wander in wildness to our heart's content. Oh, the blessed enchantment of those Saturday runaways in the prime of the spring, how our young wandering eyes reveled in the sunny, breezy glory of the hills and the sky, every particle of us thrilling and tingling with the bees and glad birds and glad streams. Kings may be blessed. We were glorious. We were free. Schoolcares and scoldings, heart thrashings and flesh thrashings alike were forgotten in the fullness of nature's glad wildness. These were my first excursions, the beginnings of lifelong wanderings. Our grammar school reader called, I think, Macalay's course of reading contained a few natural history sketches that excited me very much and left a deep impression, especially a fine description of the fish-hawk and the bald eagle by the scotch ornthologist Wilson, who had the good fortune to wander for years in the American woods while the country was yet mostly wild. I read his description over and over again till I got the vivid picture he drew by heart, the long winged hawk circling over the heaving waves, every motion watched by the eagle perched on the top of a craig or dead tree, the fish-hawk poising for a moment to take aim at a fish and plunging under the water, the eagle with kindling eyes spreading his wings ready for instant flight in case the attack should prove successful, the hawk emerging with a struggling fish in his talons and proud flight, the eagle launching himself in pursuit, the wonderful wingwork in the sky, the fish-hawk though encumbered with his prey circling higher, higher, striving hard to keep above the robber eagle, the eagle at length soaring above him, compelling him with a cry of despair to drop his hard-won prey, then the eagle steadying himself for a moment to take aim, descending swift as a lightning bolt and seizing the falling fish before it reached the sea. Not less exciting and memorable was Audubon's wonderful story of the passenger pigeon, a beautiful bird flying in vast flocks that darkened the sky-like clouds, countless millions assembling to rest and sleep and rear their young in certain forests, miles in length and breadth, fifty or a hundred nests on a single tree, the overloaded branches bending low and often breaking, the farmers gathering from far and near, beating down countless thousands of the young and old birds from their nests and roosts with long poles at night and in the morning driving their bands of hogs, some of them brought from farms a hundred miles distant to fatten on the dead and wounded covering the ground. In another of our reading lessons some of the American forests were described. The most interesting of the trees to us boys was the sugar maple, and soon after we had learned this sweet story we heard everybody talking about the discovery of gold in the same wonder-filled country. One night when David and I were at grandfather's fireside, solemnly learning our lessons as usual, my father came in with news, the most wonderful, most glorious that wild boys ever heard. Bands, he said, he didn't learn your lessons tonight, for we're going to America the morn. No more grammar but boundless woods full of mysterious good things, trees full of sugar growing in ground full of gold, hawks, eagles, pigeons filling the sky, millions of birds nests, and no gamekeepers to stop us in all the wild, happy land, we were utterly, blindly glorious. After father left the room, grandfather gave David and me a gold coin apiece for a keepsake, and looked very serious, for he was about to be deserted in his lonely old age. And when we, in fullness of young joy, spoke of what we were going to do, of the wonderful birds in their nests that we should find, the sugar and gold, et cetera, and promised to send him a big box full of that tree sugar packed in gold from the glorious paradise over the sea, poor lonely grandfather about to be forsaken, looked with downcast eyes on the floor, and said in a low, trembling, troubled voice, ah, poor laddies, poor laddies, you'll find something else over the sea, for by gold and sugar, birds nests and freedom, for lessons and schools, you'll find plenty hard, hard work. And so we did. But nothing he could say could cloud our joy or abate the fire of youthful, hopeful, fearless adventure. Nor could we in the midst of such measureless excitement see or feel the shadows and sorrows of his darkening old age. To my schoolmates, met that night on the street, I shouted the glorious news, I'm going to America, the morn. None could believe it. I said, well, just you see if I am at the school the morn. Next morning we went by rail to Glasgow, and thence joyfully sailed away from beloved Scotland, flying to our fortunes on the wings of the winds, carefree as thistle-seeds. We could not then know what we were leaving, what we were to encounter in the new world, nor what our gains were likely to be. We were too young and full of hope for fear or regret. But not too young to look forward with eager enthusiasm to the wonderful, schoolless, bookless American wilderness. Even the natural heart-pane of parting from grandfather and grandmother Gilry, who loved us so well, and from mother and sisters and brother, was quickly quenched in young joy. Father took with him only my sister Sarah, thirteen years of age, myself eleven, and brother David, nine, leaving my eldest sister Margaret and the three youngest of the family, Daniel, Mary, and Anna, with mother, to join us after a farm had been found in the wilderness, and a comfortable house made to receive them. In crossing the Atlantic before the days of steamships, or even the American clippers, the voyages made in old-fashioned sailing vessels were very long. Ours was six weeks and three days, but because we had no lessons to get, that long voyage had not a dull moment for us boys. Father and sister Sarah with most of the old folks stayed below in rough weather, groaning in the miseries of seasickness, many of the passengers wishing they had never ventured in the old rock and creel, as they called our bluff-bowed, wave-beating ship. And when the weather was moderately calm, singing songs in the evenings, the youthful sailor frank and bold, oh, why left I my home, why did I cross the deep, etc. But no matter how much the old tub tossed about and battered the waves, we were on deck every day, not in the least seasick, watching the sailors at their rope hauling and climbing work, joining in their songs, learning the names of the ropes and sails, and helping them as far as they would let us, playing games with other boys in calm weather when the deck was dry, and in stormy weather rejoicing in sympathy with the big, curly topped waves. The captain occasionally called David and me into his cabin and asked us about our schools, handed us books to read, and seemed surprised to find that Scotch boys could read and pronounce English with perfect accent, and knew so much Latin and French. In Scotch schools, only pure English was taught, although not a word of English was spoken out of school. All through life, however well educated, the Scotch spoke Scotch among their own folk, except at times when unduly excited on the only two subjects on which Scotchmen get much excited, namely religion and politics. So long as the controversy went on with fairly level temper, only good-brained Scots was used, but if one became angry, as was likely to happen, then he immediately began speaking severely correct English, while his antagonist, drawing himself up, would say, Well, there's no use pursuing this subject any further, for I see ye have gotten to your English. As we neared the shore of the great new land, with what eager wonder we watched the whales and dolphins and porpoises and sea-birds, and made the good-natured sailors teach us their names and tell us stories about them. There were quite a large number of immigrants aboard, many of them newly married couples, and the advantages of the different parts of the new world they expected to settle in were often discussed. My father started with the intention of going to the backwoods of Upper Canada. Before the end of the voyage, however, he was persuaded that the states offered superior advantages, especially Wisconsin and Michigan, where the land was said to be as good as in Canada and far more easily brought under cultivation. For in Canada the woods were so close and heavy that a man might wear out his life in getting a few acres cleared of trees and stumps. So he changed his mind and concluded to go to one of the western states. On our wavering westward way a grain dealer in Buffalo told father that most of the wheat he handled came from Wisconsin, and this influential information finally determined my father's choice. At Milwaukee a farmer who had come in from the country near Fort Winnebago with a load of wheat agreed to haul us and our formidable load of stuff to a little town called Kingston for thirty dollars. On that hundred-mile journey just after the spring thaw the roads over the prairies were heavy and mirey, causing no end of lamentation, for we often got stuck in the mud, and the poor farmer sadly declared that never, never again would he be tempted to try to haul such a cruel, heart-breaking, wagon- breaking, horse-killing load. No, not for a hundred dollars. In leaving Scotland, father, like many other home seekers, burdened himself with far too much luggage, as if all America was still a wilderness in which little or nothing could be bought. One of his big iron-bound boxes must have weighed about four hundred pounds, for it contained an old fashioned beam scales with a complete set of cast-iron counterweights, two of them fifty-six pounds each, a twenty-eight and so on down to a single pound, also a lot of iron wedges, carpenters, tools, and so forth, and at Buffalo, as if on the very edge of the wilderness, he gladly added to his burden a big cast-iron stove with pots and pans, provisions enough for a long siege, and a scythe and cumbersome cradle for cutting wheat, all of which he succeeded in landing in the primeval Wisconsin woods. A land agent in Kingston gave father a note to a farmer by the name of Alexander Gray, who lived on the border of the settled part of the country, knew the section lines, and would probably help him find a good place for a farm. So father went away to spy out the land, and in the meantime left us children in Kingston in a rented room. It took us less than an hour to get acquainted with some of the boys in the village. We challenged them to wrestle, run races, climb trees, etc., and in a day or two we felt at home carefree and happy, notwithstanding our family was so widely divided. When father returned he told us that he had found fine land for a farm in sunny open woods on the side of a lake, and that a team of three yoke of oxen with a big wagon was coming to haul us to Mr. Gray's place. We enjoyed the strange ten-mile ride through the woods very much, wondering how the great oxen could be so strong and wise and tame as to pull so heavy a load with no other harness than a chain and a crooked piece of wood on their necks, and how they could sway so obediently to right and left past roadside trees and stumps when the driver said, ha, and g. At Mr. Gray's house father again left us for a few days to build a shanty on the quarter section he had selected four or five miles to the westward, in the mean while we enjoyed our freedom as usual, wandering in the fields and meadows, looking at the trees and flowers, snakes and birds and squirrels. With the help of the nearest neighbors the little shanty was built in less than a day after the rough burr oak logs for the walls and the white oak boards for the floor and rough were got together. To this charming hut in the sunny woods overlooking a flowery glacier meadow and a lake rimmed with white water lilies, we were hauled by an ox team across trackless, karak swamps and low rolling hills sparsely dotted with round-headed oaks. Just as we arrived at the shanty before we had time to look at it or the scenery about it, David and I jumped down in a hurry off the load of household goods, for we had discovered a Blue Jay's nest, and in a minute or so we were up the tree beside it, feasting our eyes on the beautiful green eggs and beautiful birds, our first memorable discovery. The handsome birds had not seen scotch boys before and made a desperate screaming as if we were robbers like themselves, though we left the eggs untouched, feeling that we were already beginning to get rich and wondering how many more nests we should find in the grand, sunny woods. Then we ran along the brow of the hill that the shanty stood on and down to the meadow, searching the trees and grass tufts and bushes, and soon discovered a Blue Bird's and a Woodpecker's nest, and began an acquaintance with the frogs and snakes and turtles in the creeks and springs. This sudden plash into pure wildness, baptism in nature's warm heart, how utterly happy it made us, nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. Here, without knowing it, we were still at school, every wild lesson, a love lesson, not whipped but charmed into us. Ah, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness, everything new and pure in the very prime of the spring, when nature's pulses were beating highest and mysteriously keeping time with our own, young hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams, and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together. Next morning, when we climbed to the precious J-nest to take another admiring look at the eggs, we found it empty, not a shell fragment was left, and we wondered how, in the world, the birds were able to carry off their thin-shelled eggs, either in their bills or in their feet without breaking them, and how they could be kept warm while a new nest was being built. Well, I am still asking these questions. When I was on the Harriman Expedition, I asked Robert Ridgway, the eminent or anthologist, how these sudden flittings were accomplished, and he frankly confessed that he didn't know, but guess that J's and many other birds carried their eggs in their mouths, and when I objected that a J's mouth seemed too small to hold its eggs, he replied that bird's mouths were larger than the narrowness of their bills indicated. Then I asked him what he thought they did with the eggs, while a new nest was being prepared. He didn't know, neither do I to this day, a specimen of the many puzzling problems presented to the naturalist. We soon found many more nests belonging to birds that were not half so suspicious, the handsome and notorious blue jay plunders the nests of other birds, and, of course, he could not trust us. Almost all the others, brown thrushes, blue birds, song sparrows, king birds, hen hawks, night hawks, whipper-wills, woodpeckers, etc., simply tried to avoid being seen, to draw or drive us away or paid no attention to us. We used to wonder how the woodpeckers could bore holes so perfectly round, true mathematical circles. We ourselves could not have done it even with gouges and chisels. We loved to watch them feeding their young and wondered how they could glean food enough for so many clamorous, hungry, unsatisfiable babies, and how they managed to give each one its share, for after the young grew strong one would get its head out of the door-hole and try to hold possession of it to meet the food-laden parents. How hard they worked to support their families, especially the red headed and speckledy woodpeckers and flickers, digging, hammering on scaly bark and decaying trunks and branches from dawn to dark, coming and going at intervals of a few minutes all the live-long day. We discovered a hen hawk's nest on the top of a tall oak, thirty or forty rods from the shanty, and approached it cautiously. One of the pair always kept watch, soaring in wide circles high above the tree, and when we attempted to climb it, the big, dangerous-looking bird came swooping down at us and drove us away. We greatly admired the plucky kingbird. In Scotland our great ambition was to be good fighters, and we admired this quality in the handsome, little, chattering fly-catcher that whips all the other birds. He was particularly angry when plundering jays and hawks came near his home, and took pains to thrash them not only away from the nest tree, but out of the neighborhood. The nest was usually built on a burr oak near a meadow where insects were abundant, and where no undesirable visitor could approach without being discovered. When a hen hawk hoeved in sight, the male immediately set off after him, and it was ridiculous to see that great, strong bird hurrying away as fast as his clumsy wings would carry him, as soon as he saw the little waspish kingbird coming. But the kingbird easily overtook him. Flew just a few feet above him, and with a lot of chattering, scolding notes kept diving and striking him on the back of the head until tired. Then he alighted to rest on the hawk's broad shoulders, still scolding and chattering as he rode along, like an angry boy pouring out vials of wrath. Then up and at him again with his sharp bill, and after he had thus driven and ridden his big enemy a mile or so from the nest, he went home to his mate, chuckling and bragging as if trying to tell her what a wonderful fellow he was. This first spring, while some of the birds were still building their nests, and very few young ones had yet tried to fly, father hired a Yankee to assist in clearing eight or ten acres of the best ground for a field. We found new wonders every day, and often had to call on this Yankee to solve puzzling questions. We asked him one day if there was any bird in America that the king bird couldn't whip. What about the sandhill crane? Could he whip that long-legged, long-build fellow? A crane never goes near king bird's nests or notices so small a bird, he said, and therefore there could be no fighting between them. So we hastily concluded that our hero could whip every bird in the country, except perhaps the sandhill crane. We never tired listening to the wonderful whipper will. One came every night about dusk, and sat on a log about twenty or thirty feet from our cabin door, and began shouting, Whipper will, whipper will, with loud emphatic earnestness. What's that? What's that? We cried when this startling visitor first announced himself. What do you call it? Why, it's telling you its name, said the Yankee. Don't you hear it? And what do you want you to do? He says his name is Poor Will, and he wants you to whip him, and you may, if you're able to catch him. Poor Will seemed the most wonderful of all the strange creatures we had seen. What a wild, strong, bold voice he had, unlike any other we had ever heard on sea or land. A near relative, the bull-bat or night-hawk, seemed hardly less wonderful. Towards evening scattered flocks kept the sky lively as they circled around on their long wings a hundred feet or more above the ground, hunting moths and beetles, interrupting their rather slow but strong regular wingbeats at short intervals with quick quivering strokes while uttering keen, squeaky cries, something like fee, fee, and every now and then diving nearly to the ground with a loud ripping, bellowing sound, like bullroaring, suggesting its name, then turning and gliding swiftly up again. These fine, wild gray birds, about the size of a pigeon, lay their two eggs on bare ground without anything like a nest or even a concealing bush or grass tuft. Nevertheless they are not easily seen, for they are colored like the ground. While sitting on their eggs they depend so much upon not being noticed that, if you are walking rapidly ahead, they allow you to step with an inch or two of them without flinching. But if they see, by your looks, that you have discovered them, they leave their eggs or young and, like a good many other birds, pretend they are sorely wounded, fluttering and rolling over on the ground and gasping as if dying to draw you away. When pursued we were surprised to find that just when we were at the point of overtaking them they were always able to flutter a few yards further, until they had led us a quarter of a mile away from the nest. Then suddenly, getting well, they quietly flew home by a roundabout way to their precious babies or eggs, over the ills of life victorious, bad boys among the worst. The Yankee took particular pleasure in encouraging us to pursue them. Everything about us was so novel and wonderful that we could hardly believe our senses except when hungry or a wild father was thrashing us. When we first saw a fountain lake meadow on a sultry evening sprinkled with millions of lightning bugs throbbing with light the effect was so strange and beautiful that it seemed far too marvellous to be real. Looking from our shanty on the hill I thought that the whole wonderful fairy-show must be in my eyes for only in fighting when my eyes were struck had I ever seen anything in the least like it. But when I asked my brother if he saw anything strange in the meadow he said, Yes, it's all covered with shaky firesparks. Then I guessed that it might be something outside of us and applied to our all-knowing Yankee to explain it. Oh, it's nothing but lightning bugs, he said, and kindly let us down the hill to the edge of the fiery meadow, caught a few of the wonderful bugs, dropped them into a cup, and carried them to the shanty, where we watched them throbbing and flashing out their mysterious light at regular intervals as if each little passionate glow were caused by the beating of a heart. Once I saw a splendid display of glow-worm light in the foothills of the Himalayas north of Calcutta, but glorious as it appeared in pure starry radiance it was far less impressive than the extravagant, abounding, quivering, dancing fire on our Wisconsin meadow. Partridge-drumming was another great marvel. When I first heard the low, soft, solemn sound I thought it must be made by some strange disturbance in my head or stomach, but as all seemed serene within I asked David whether he heard anything queer. Yes, he said, I hear something saying, bump, bump, bump, and I'm wondering at it. Then I was half satisfied that the source of the mysterious sound must be in something outside of us, coming perhaps from the ground or from some ghost or bogey or woodland fairy. Only after long watching and listening did we at last discover it in the wings of the plump, brown bird. The love song of the common jack-snipe seemed not a whit less mysterious than the partridge-drumming. It was usually heard on cloudy evenings a strange, unearthly, winnowing, spirit-like sound, yet easily heard at a distance of a third of a mile. Our sharp eyes soon detected the bird while making it, as it circled high in the air over the meadow, with wonderfully strong and rapid wing beats, suddenly descending and rising again and again in deep, wide loops, the tones being very low and smooth at the beginning of the descent, rapidly increasing to a curious little hurling storm roar at the bottom and gradually fading lower and lower until the top was reached. It was long, however, before we identified this mysterious wing-singer as the little brown jack-snipe that we knew so well, and had so often marched as he silently probed the mud around the edges of our meadow stream and spring-holes, and made short zig-zag flights over the grass, uttering only little short, crisp, quacks, and chucks. The love songs of the frogs seemed hardly less wonderful than those of the birds, their musical notes varying from the sweet, tranquil, soothing, peeping, and purring of the hilus to the awfully deep, low-bass, blunt bellowing of the bullfrogs. Some of the smaller species have wonderfully sharp, clear voices, and told us their good Bible names in musical tones about as plenty as the whipper-will. Isaac, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob, Israel, Israel, shouted in sharp, ringing, far-reaching tones, as if they had all been to school and severely drilled in elocution, in the still warm evening's big, bunchy bullfrogs bellowed, drunk, drunk, drunk, juggerum, juggerum, and early in the spring countless thousands of the commonest species, up to the throat in cold water, sang in concert, making a mass of music, such as it was, loud enough to be heard at a distance of more than half a mile. Far, far apart from this loud marsh music is that of the many species of Hila, a sort of soothing immortal melody filling the air like light. We reveled in the glory of the sky scenery, as well as that of the woods and meadows and rushy, lily-bordered lakes. The great thunderstorms in particular interested us, so unlike any scene in Scotland, exciting, awful, wandering admiration. Gazing awestrucken, we watched the upbuilding of the sublime cloud mountains, glowing, sun-beaten pearl and alabaster cumuli, glorious in beauty and majesty, and looking so firm and lasting that birds, we thought, might build their nests amid their downy bosses. The black brown storm clouds marching an awful grandeur across the landscape, trailing broad gray sheets of hail and rain, like vast cataracts, and ever and anon flashing down vivid zigzag lightning followed by terrible crashing thunder. We saw several trees shattered, and one of them, a punky old oak, was set on fire, while we wondered why all the trees and everybody and everything did not share the same fate, for oftentimes the whole sky blazed. After sultry storm days, many of the nights were darkened by smooth, black, apparently structuralist cloud mantles, which at short intervals were illumined with startling suddenness to a fiery glow by quick, quivering lightning flashes, revealing the landscape in almost noonday brightness, to be instantly quenched in solid blackness. But those first days and weeks of unmixed enjoyment and freedom, reveling in the wonderful wildness about us, were soon to be mingled with the hard work of making a farm. I was first put to burning brush in clearing land for the plow, those magnificent brush fires with great white hearts in red flames, the first big wild outdoor fires I had ever seen, were wonderful sights for young eyes, again and again when they were burning fiercest so that we could hardly approach near enough to throw on another branch, farther put them to awfully practical use as warning lessons, comparing their heat with that of hell and the branches with bad boys. Now, John, he would say, now, John, just think what an awful thing it would be to be thrown into that fire, and then think of hell fire that is so many times hotter, into that fire all bad boys with sinners of every sort who disobey God will be cast, as we are casting branches into this brush fire, and all those suffering so much, their sufferings will never, never end, because neither the fire nor the sinners can die. But those terrible fire lessons quickly faded away in the blithe wilderness air, for no fire can be hotter than the heavenly fire of faith and hope that burns in every healthy boy's heart. Soon after our arrival in the woods someone added a cat and puppy to the animals father had brought. The cat soon had kittens, and it was interesting to watch her feeding, protecting, and training them. After they were able to leave their nest and play, she went out hunting and brought in many kinds of birds and squirrels for them, mostly ground squirrels, spermophiles, called gophers in Wisconsin. When she got within a dozen yards or so of the shanty she announced her approach by a peculiar call, and the sleeping kittens immediately bounced up and ran to meet her, all racing for the first bite of they knew not what. And we too ran to see what she brought. She then laid down a few minutes to rest and enjoy the enjoyment of her feasting family, and again vanished in the grass and flowers, coming and going every half hour or so. Sometimes she brought in birds that we had never seen before, and occasionally a flying squirrel, chipmunk, or big fox squirrel. We were just old enough, David and I, to regard all these creatures as wonders, the strange inhabitants of our new world. The pup was a common cur, though very uncommon to us, a black and white, short-haired mongrel that we named Watch. We always gave him a pan of milk in the evening, just before we knelt in family worship, while daylight still lingered in the shanty. And instead of attending to the prayers, I too often studied the small wild creatures playing around us. Field mice scampered about the cabin as though it had been built for them alone, and their performances were very amusing. About dusk on one of the calm, three nights so grateful to moths and beetles, when the puppy was lapping his milk, and we were on our knees, in through the door came a heavy, broad-shouldered beetle, about as big as a mouse, and after it had droned and boomed around the cabin two or three times, the pan of milk, showing white in the gloaming, caught its eyes, and taking good aim, it alighted with a slanting, glinting splash in the middle of the pan, like a duck alighting in a lake. Baby Watch, having never before seen anything like that beetle, started back, gazing in dumb astonishment and fear at the black sprawling monster trying to swim. Recovering somewhat from his fright, he began to bark at the creature, and ran around and round his milk-pan, woof-woofing, gurring, growling like an old dog barking at a wildcat or a bear. The natural astonishment and curiosity of that boy-dog getting his first entomological lesson in this wonderful world was so immoderately funny that I had great difficulty in keeping from laughing out loud. Snapping turtles were common throughout the woods, and we were delighted to find that they would snap at a stick and hang on like bulldogs, and we amused ourselves by introducing Watch to them, enjoying his curious behavior and theirs in getting acquainted with each other. One day we assisted one of the smallest of the turtles to get a good grip of poor Watch's ear, then away he rushed, holding his head sideways, yelping and terror-stricken, with the strange, bug-like reptile biting hard and clinging fast, a shameful amusement even for wild boys. As a playmate, Watch was too serious, though he learned more than any stranger would judge him capable of, was a bold, faithful Watch-dog and, in his prime, a grand fighter, able to whip all the other dogs in the neighborhood. Comparing him with ourselves we soon learned that, although he could not read books, he could read faces, was a good judge of character, always knew what was going on and what we were about to do, and like to help us. We could run nearly as fast as he could, see about as far and perhaps here as well, but in sense of smell his nose was incomparably better than ours. One sharp winter morning when the ground was covered with snow, I noticed that when he was yawning and stretching himself after leaving his bed he suddenly caught the scent of something that excited him, went round the corner of the house and looked intently to the westward across a tongue of land that we called West Bank, eagerly questioning the air with quivering nostrils, and bristling up as though he felt sure that there was something dangerous in that direction and had actually caught sight of it. Then he ran toward the bank and I followed him, curious to see what his nose had discovered. The top of the bank commanded a view of the north end of our lake and meadow, and when we got there we saw an Indian hunter with a long spear going from one muskrat cabin to another, approaching cautiously, careful to make no noise, and then suddenly thrusting his spear down through the house. If well aimed the spear went through the poor beaver-rat as it lay cuddled up in the snug nest it had made for itself in the fall with so much far-seeing care, and when the hunter felt the spear quivering he dug down the mossy hut with his tomahawk and secured his prey, the flesh for food and the skin to sell for a dime or so. This was a clear object lesson on dogs' keenness of scent. That Indian was more than half a mile away across a wooded ridge. Had the hunter been a white man, I suppose watch would not have noticed him. When he was about six or seven years old he not only became cross so that he would do only what he liked, but he fell on evil ways, and was accused by the neighbors who had settled around us of catching and devouring whole broods of chickens, some of them only a day or two out of the shell. We never imagined he would do anything so grossly undog-like, he never did at home, but several of the neighbors declared over and over again that they had caught him in the act and insisted that he must be shot. At last in spite of tearful protest he was condemned and executed. Father examined the poor fellow's stomach in search of sure evidence and discovered the heads of eight chickens that he had devoured at his last meal. So poor watch was killed simply because his taste for chickens was too much like our own. Think of the millions of squabs that preaching, praying, men and women kill and eat, with all sorts of other animals great and small, young and old, while eloquently discoursing on the coming of the blessed, peaceful, bloodless millennium. Think of the passenger pigeons that fifty or sixty years ago filled the woods and sky over half the continent, now exterminated by beating down the young from the nests, together with the brooding parents before they could try their wonderful wings, by trapping them in nets, feeding them to hogs, etc. None of our fellow mortals is safe who eats what we eat, who in any way interferes with our pleasures or who may be used for work or food, clothing or ornament or mere cruel sportish amusement. Fortunately many are too small to be seen and therefore enjoy life beyond our reach. And in looking through God's great stone books made up of records reaching back millions and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn that vast multitudes of creatures great and small and infinite in number lived and had a good time in God's love before man was created. The old Scotch fashion of whipping for every act of disobedience or of simple, playful forgetfulness was still kept up in the wilderness, and of course many of those whippings fell upon me. Most of them were outrageously severe and utterly barren of fun, but here is one that was nearly all fun. Father was busy hauling lumber for the frame house that was to be got ready for the arrival of my mother, sisters, and brother left behind in Scotland. One morning when he was ready to start for another load his ox whip was not to be found. He asked me if I knew anything about it. I told him I didn't know where it was, but Scotch conscience compelled me to confess that when I was playing with it I had tied it to watch his tail and that he ran away dragging it through the grass and came back without it. It must have slipped off his tail, I said, and so I didn't know where it was. This honest straightforward little story made Father so angry that he exclaimed with heavy foreboding emphasis, the very devils in that boy, David who had been playing with me and was perhaps about as responsible for the loss of the whip as I was, said never a word, for he was always prudent enough to hold his tongue when the parental weather was stormy and so escaped nearly all punishment, and strange to say this time I also escaped, all except a terrible scolding, though the thrashing weather seemed darker than ever. As if unwilling to let the sun see the shameful job, Father took me into the cabin where the storm was to fall and sent David to the woods for a switch. While he was out selecting the switch, Father put in the spare time sketching my play wickedness in awful colors, and of course referred again and again to the place prepared for bad boys. In the midst of this terrible word storm, dreading most the impending thrashing, I whimpered that I was only playing because I couldn't help it, didn't know I was doing wrong, wouldn't do it again and so forth. After this miserable dialogue was about exhausted, Father became impatient at my brother for taking so long to find the switch, and so was I, for I wanted to have the thing over and done with. At last in came David, a picture of open-hearted innocence, solemnly dragging a young bur-oak sapling and handed the end of it to Father, saying it was the best switch he could find. It was an awfully heavy one, about two-and-a-half inches thick at the butt, and ten feet long, almost big enough for a fence pole. There wasn't room enough in the cabin to swing it, and the moment I saw it I burst out laughing in the midst of my fears. But Father failed to see the fun and was very angry at David, heaved the bur-oak outside, and passionately demanded his reason for fetching such a muckl rail like that instead of a switch. Do you call that a switch? I have a good mind to thrash you instead of John. David, with the muir downcast eyes, looked preternaturally righteous, but as usual prudently answered, never a word. It was a hard job in those days to bring up scotch boys in the way they should go, and poor overworked Father was determined to do it, if enough of the right kind of switches could be found. But this time, as the sun was getting high, he hitched up old Tom and Jerry and made haste to the Kingston lumberyard, leaving me unscathed and as innocently wicked as ever. For hardly had Father got fairly out of sight among the oaks and hickories ere all our troubles, health threatenings and exhortations were forgotten, in the fun we had lassoing a stubborn old sow, and laboriously trying to teach her to go reasonably steady in rope harness. She was the first hog that Father bought to stalk the farm, and we boys regarded her as a very wonderful beast. In a few weeks she had a lot of pigs, and of all the queer, funny animal children we had yet seen, none amused us more. They were so comic in size and shape, in their gait and gestures, their merry sham fights, and the false alarms they got up for the fun of scampering back to their mother and begging her in most persuasive little squeals to lie down and give them a drink. After her darling short-stouted babies were about a month old, she took them out to the woods and gradually roamed further and further from the shanty in search of acorns and roots. One afternoon we heard a rifle shot, a very noticeable thing as we had no near neighbors as yet. We thought it must have been fired by an Indian on the trail that followed the right bank of the Fox River between Portage and Pakwaki Lake, and passed our shanty at the distance of about three-quarters of a mile. Just a few minutes after that shot was heard along came the poor mother rushing up to the shanty for protection with her pigs, all out of breath and terror-stricken. One of them was missing, and we supposed, of course, that an Indian had shot it for food. Next day I discovered a blood puddle where the Indian trail crossed the outlet of our lake. One of father's hired men told us that the Indians thought nothing of levying this sort of blackmail whenever they were hungry. The solemn awe and fear in the eyes of that old mother and those little pigs I never can forget. It was as unmistakable and deadly a fear as I ever saw expressed by any human eye and corroborates in no uncertain