The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 28, 1897, Page 19

THE SAN FRAN! SCO' CALL, SUNDAY, MARCH 28, 1897 19 5 CAME down the steep bank xo? ¥ whers I was nailingup a seed tray YAN for the birdsin a willow tree beside the stream. In his hand he carried a sin- gle poppy, and there was an expression at once trustful and pleading in his slow rather dull eyes. “I may pick a few poppies?” he said, with & strong German accent. Iam some- | what unwilling, as e, to have trippe wander over the p but there was | someihing in this boy’s eager, homesick fece that I eould not resist, so I gave the desired jermission, snd even told him where, on a farther siope, the poppies grew in thick masses and of nobie size. He thanked me as I have seldom been thanked for so small a fav up the hiil. Ireturned to my forgot him until, as I in alf an hour iater, I saw on'his way to the road, car- I took bim out = glass of milk, and as he drank it be gazed slow- 1y about him until the tears came in his eyes. It is so and started task and saic turned to go. “Some people vill not let e come iu and pick flowers,” he said in parting. Ilaughed and answered, “‘Some people come in and help themseives with- » Trecord the little incident ase I am pleased with his reply, which was: “Ido not do so. I care to) live so I can like m % That, after all, is about as satisfactory a | philosophy of life as most of us could ac- quire from the reading of many books. Now that the warm weather is here in earnest, the serious business of bird life is beginning. The lady goldfinches have arrived and the low-growing irees and bushes are the scenes of many a brave battle between the males to decide who shall possess the favor of some demure little hen who sits with apparent calm in- difference while the black-capped gallants rush fuil tilt at each other in the air. I must confess they never seem to give or receive any injuries in their encounters. They observe a good deal of etiquette throughout them, advancing and retiring, | rising in the air, clinching and withdraw- ing as though by set rule, until at last one retreats, apvarently defeated, this just bhow or why I have never been able to de- termine, for vietor and vanquished seem alike unruffled and serene. A pair of red-shafted flickers have been prospecting about the neighborhood for several days and seem at last to have hit upon a desirable homesite in a tall euca- Iyptus tree near the barn. Isaw the male bird making tentative cuts in the bark this morning, while his mate looked on trom her coign of vantage on another limb. Ido not know, however, whether he was thinking of building@r whether he | was merely drumming to please tue lady. I never have known the highhole to exca- vate into the eucalyptus tree, and shall be interested to se2 if this one does so. The red-shafted flicker differs from the other | woodpeckers in that he may often be seen perching upon the branches of trees, ALIST AT LARGE rather than clinging to the trunks, as most of these birds do. They are not 5o industrious as their fellows, or, at any rate, “they do not seem to be s0 out here, and the acorns and nuts we find buried in the roofs and even In the walls of our houses and in the trunks of trees are not put there by the flickers. In fact these handsome birds are very largely insectivorous. They search the boughs of trees diligently for insects, and even bore into decayed wood after their prey, but their favorite game is ants. They will linger by the hour about an anthill picking off the ousy toilers as they come and go. They do not catch the in- sects in their bills, as the flycatchers do their prey, but run out their tongues, wrapping them around the shining btack bodies, and so gather them in, asa cow Teaps the green grass. The sparrows and fycatchers are al- ready busy with building operations and the air is musical with pretty cries and snatches of song. In the midst of all this busyness I came this morning upon the only idler in the throng—the white-crowned sparrow. Per- haps I ought not to call him idle. The word applies but imperfectly to a bird of his dignity and earnestness. This soli- tary bird is the only one of his kind that I have seen thus far this season; yet he does not seem a recluse, even though his whilom companions, the white-throated sparrows, have apparently departed. He has rather the air of electing to dwell apart and contemplate life. There are a good many bachelors among birds, though possibly no voluntary ones, and he may be one of these. He sat singing softly on a low branch this moraing and I caught a glimpse of him as I pausea at a dividing of the way. 1 love a place where a path divides. ‘When one is out for an early prowl there is always an instant of delicious uncer- tainty as to which way to take. I usually hesitate at this particulag, point, though I know that a iittle further down the di- verging ways merge again at a tiny bridge, | Turning to the left I may creep through a low-growing tangle of chaparral, willows and sweetbrier, from which, at this season, half a dozen buds are sure to dart, and come out at a pretty woodsy snuggery where a rustic seat invites to rest and meditation; or, I may keep to the right and follow the tiny stream to where a great bed of iris is growing, and where [ am sure to find butterflies in wonderful Variety, and happy little lizards sunning themselves on the rocks. ‘The warm weather has brought these pretty crea- tures out in great mumbers. But this morning the sight of the white- crowned sparrow decided me. I turned to the left and threw myself down upon the soft grass, crushing out the musky fra- grance of the’fileree, and the wholesome, pungent scent of the wormwood, as I did 50, and lay watching him and listening to his faint rather sad song. How almost inevitably we associate buman emotions with the songs of the birds. The melodious carol of the gold- finch suggests nothing so much as the sincerity and innocence of childhood. We never catch in its liquid trill the full, rich note of tender maturity that sounds in the voice of the meadow lark, or the trinmph- ant, ringing joyousness that pours from the throat of the black-headed grosbeak as he shouts defiance to his rivals from o me tall treetop. Isaw and heard a wren singing a few days ago, perched upon a dead twig that swayed in the wind, and the song was a veritable lyric of spring. The little fellow sang all over, his tiny throat swelling as though it would burst, his wings lifting and trembling, his whole body quivering with the raptare of his welcome to the sunlight and warmth and the vivid, gold-touched green world tbat surged all about him. It was such a spontaneous, fervid performance, 8o brim- ful of the essential quality of spring that my nerves grew tense with sympathetic excitement as I watched him. ‘Who can listen to the song of the thrush without such a feeling of the beauty and the depth of life as swells the throat and fills the soul with yearning toward long- forgoiten good? It is a wonderful per- formance. Starting with a low, hali- hesitant measure, as though the singer were trying whether life itself would bear him up; ascendingin clear certainty unt:l it pauses for an instanton a high, wild, pure note that seems to touch heaven itself; then down it sweeps with an out- pouring of transparent melody, to fall, a rain of silvery notes, like a tiny cataract into a little pool of silence. It is a song that has its own measure of serene joyousness, but blended with it is a tragic note, & high prophetic strain, that makes its appeal more directly to man’s soul than does any other sound in sylvan nature. Is it because the thrush is the bird of quiet and solitude, singing, lonely, in deep canyons and woods? We can hardly think of the creature as feeling loneliness, and yet what quality in its nature gives its song such penetrating power and invests the bird itself with such an air of serenity and visible, simple dignity ? How can we know ? It is in hours of loneliness when we hunger most for hu- man companionship, the sympathy of our kind, that the soul learns its own strength and that other wisdon,, that is in itself a power to still, the knowledge of its own weakness. the power of the hermit thrush born as well of such knowledge ? It is not really necessary that we should know. The main thingis to lisien to his song simply, without reading into it too much of “the painful riddle of the earth,” which is afier all a man-made ridd ADELINE KNAPP, He's a Typical Southern Newspaper Man Golonel Bruffey of Atlanta, Georgia, Gomes to Jown and Breaks Into Reminiscence OLONEL E. C. BRUFFEY, a no- @ table journalist from the South, is visiting friends in this City. In addition to his own striking personality, Colonel Bruffey bears the distinction of having been‘the warm personal friend and associate of the illustrious Southern jour- nalist, Henry W. Grady, who died while he was “loving a nation into peace.” courses the fighting blood of an intrepid race. The colonel had not been in the City an hour before he had been accosted by at least a dozen mean with the salutatio “Hello, Bruff, what are you doing here?’ All of bis friends call him cause he wants them to. “Bruff’’ be- He has won the Mr. Bruffey is a tvpical Southerner of | distinction of being called colonel, as it is the old school—warm-hearted and chiv- alrous. He has gray bair, that has come to him in his prime because of sleepless COLONEL E. nights and restless days during the twenty-three years that he has been en- gaged in the newspaper business. With his iron-gray mustache and his dignified carriage and courteous manner, he bears striking resemblance to the typical “Kaintucky kunnel,” except for his diminutive stature, for Colonel B¥uffey is not over five feet three in height, but throngh every inch of his five feet three applied in the South, several times over, but Bruffey is thoroughly democratic and wants to be called ‘‘Bruff,’” and that set- C. BRUFFEY. tles it. Colonel Bruffey is one of the staff of the Atlanta _Constitution, the paper which Henry W. Grady made famous. A friend of Bruffey’s in San Francisco, who worked with him in the South, spegking of him said: “Among all those engaged in the newspaper profession in the Southern States to-day, there is none who has had a more varied career than Bruffey. When it came to getting news quick and fast from any accessible dis tance, Bruffey was Grady’s favorite lieu- tenant during those dars when the fam- ous “journalist was paralyzing the tben slow-going South by getting out a rapid newspaper. “‘He has plunged through the night on a wild engine, rushing at a breakneck speed over terrible Southern roads, where pas- sengers in ordinary trains would often hold their breath in fear, to be the first reporter at some scene of important news, because Grady had sent him. “The atmosphere of a newspaper office is like unto the breath to his nostrils to Bruffey. He entered into a matrimonial alliance with the profession a quarter of & century ago, and never since that time has he found a bride to wean him away from the work he learned to love so well under the tutelage of Henry Grady.” “When 1 first met Mr. Grady,” said Colonel Bruffey toa SuNpAY CALL reporter, “be was doing space work on the Atlanta Constitution, and I was one of its report- ers. Fortune had not favored him then and his great abilities were yet unknown, and in those days he knew no more about | where his next meal was coming from than many of the boys do now, but then he was the same happy-hearted, liberal- minded, true, stanch man that the world has declared him to have been since his death. “Certainly Mr. Grady,” Colonel Bruf- fey continued, “was the. first Southern man to sound the tocsin of peace and to seek to. restore a feeling of good-fellow- ship. ‘In all my newspaper life 1 have never found a man possessed of more per- sonal magnetizm than Henry Grady. “Time and again I have heard him com- pliment his men for work they had done in such a way that' were it possible for every word to be turned into gold, the exchange would not have been made. But Grady’s gone now and all the old boys miss him,” and the colonel turned his head to wipe away a silent tear. In addition to having been the friend of the illustrious Grady, Bruffey is a werm personal friend of Joel Chandler Hariis, whose “Uncle Remus” stories have de- lighted children and charmed those of older growth in all the civilized nations of the earth, and of Frank L. Stanton, the Southern poet, whose charming verses of the South are quoted from San Francisco to Boston and in England and European countries. They all work together, thess three. Mr. Harris is the chief editorial writer on the Constitution, while Mr. Stanton, with wonderful versatility, writes a brighr, witty column of verse and prose daily for the same paper. All three were warm personal friends of Grady and this tie brings them into close communion. HE time before last that Mr. Wig-( gins moved he did so with an eye | the chicken business, in 1ght pleasure and profit. wife, who was raised on a ferm, mildly | es d to give him some information on | thesubject, but he vetoed this'at once. “You no doubt mean well. Susan,” he eaid, “‘but it’s many a long year since you associated with hens, and your ideas are | crude and old-fashioned. Besides, I am the one thai’s going into this thing, not you, and I'm eoing to run it alone, AllI uis to atiend to your home and | ex and keep out of my chicken- yard, I'll guarantee to supply you h more eggs and broilers and roasters | than you can shake a stick at, just as soon | as I get down to business; but interfer- | ence of any kind I will not tolerate.” | Six rather dilapidated-looking hens and | a ragged rooster were soon tenants of the | chicken-house in the back yard, on the gate of which Mr. Wiggins ostentatiously | fastened a huge padiock. A Milesian lady | who was moving further into town was | former owner, and she gave them a | class charactar. | They’il do ye credit if you trate’em | dacent,” she declared, “for they do e | good, rispictable, steady-goinz hins and | none of ‘yer giddy-headed, onresponsible | young pullets. I've had ‘ema by me going on five years now, and I wouldn’t part | with ’em if we wasu’t taking a flat, for | I’m most as fond of ’em as I am of the childer.” Faithfully and generously Mr. Wiggins fed his new acquisitionsand anxiously but vainly he looked for the eges which were to reward him. His wife made nocom- ments and serenely ordered her eggs of the grocer as usual, bus Mr. Wiggins waa perplexed and unhappy. Something was certamnly wrong with | bis bens, and he studied over the matter for s>veral days. Saturday he came home early, bringing a bulcy bundle, which was in every one’s way on the cars and almost occasioned a personal encounter between him and the conductor. It proved—zreatly to Mrs. Wiggins’ as- tonishment, since the youngest Wiggins is a sturdy youth of 6 years—to be a baby’s tin bathtub, but without vouchsafing any explanations her usband bore it into the seclusion of his exclusive domain. Soon after he came in for the coal shovel and hod, and was observed to be industriously scraping and acratching around out in the street before the house. Later squawks of frantic excitement, horritied surprise and wild dismay came from the poultry-yard, and Mrs. Wiggins, peering through the palings, beheld her Jord and master, very red in the face, hold- ing a terrified and loudly protesting hen firmly by the lezs while he rubbed her vigorously with handfuls of road dust, with which he had filled the little tin tub. “What upon earth are you doing, Achilles?” she cried, astonished into for- getting her neutral policy. “Giving these blamea hensa dust bath,” returned the begrimed and perspiring Wiggins, too excited 1o rebuke her for in- truding upon his privacy. “Ola Jones told me they needed it, but I guess I'll have to give it to’em throagh a colander —make a shower-bath of it—for they don’t seem to like it this way at alll” Very gently Mrs. Wiggins explained that the fowls would attend to their own bathing if the dust was provided for them, and was rewarded by being told with as- perity that Mr. Wiggins *knew all that before,”” but was just amusing bimself with his petsand hadn’t asked her for any information, nor to come out there to “spy upon” and ‘‘boss” mim. “These fowls are mine, Mrs. Wiggins,” he said, ‘“every last one of 'em, and bought with my own hard earnings. firs | | { HOW MR. WIGGINS When I want you to attend to 'em I'il put you in overseer and give you a salary; but until then you will please confine your ne could find both | energies strictly to your own department At the outset his|and leave me and my Lens in peace!” Monday Mr. Wiggins brought home thirteen eggs in a small basket. “I'm going in for fancy poultry,” he ex- plained amiably. “There’s moaey in it, for you get tancy vrices for your eggs and fowls and cash prizes at the shows be- ides. T.ese eggs now will hatch in three | weeks, and—"" “Batare any of your hens clocking?” interrupted his wife, anxiously. “They won’t set unless they are.”” Mr. Wiggins snorted geornfully. “It don't make a mite of difference whether they are clocking, or watching, and closely but vainly pursued by her | angry owner. Mr. Wiggins, variously decorated with dirt, feathers and broken eggs, sat down on the back steps until he had recovered his breath and the prospective mother of his chickens her equanimity; then he arose, grimly determined, and cut down the small rope upon which Mrs. Wiggins dried her dish towels. “There’s only five of ’em left,” he said, “but she’s got to hatch every one of ’em or I'll know the reason why. The mem- bers of my family may, and often do, set me at defiance, but when it comes to a mere hen, and a young hen at that, I in- tend to be master!” And he went into the chicken-yard and closed the gate. writhed so perseveringly that she had smashed every precious egg left in her charge. Moreover, she had managed to entangle her obstinate head in such a way that she hung over the edge of the nest with her neck stretched to three times its usual length and her wings and legs drouping pathetically—stone dead. “What you want,” said old Jones, when told of this misadventure, “is a tramed hen—one that’s well broke to her busi- ness. It takes time to train ’em, fer they’re the stubbornest creturs living, and an amatoor like you hasn’t got the patience, but I’ve got oue that I edicated myself, and she’ll geton brickbats if you want she should, and I won’t charge ye but §3 fer her, as we ain’t got no use for her just now.” SATISFIED HIS AMBITION JO RUN “They’ve got cholera, or pip, or roup, or gapes, or lampers, or blind staggers or something,” said Mr. Wiggins, and he brought old Jones over again to investi- gate. “What yer been a-feedin’ ’em on?” asked that astute party, after a deliberate survey of the premises, and the evidently dying hens,.and Mr. Wiggins pointed to the gravel pile. “Just what you told me to,” he said, “and 1 had it put in_here so that they could help themsdlves, but it don’t seem to agree with ’em any better than the grain did.” . 0Old Jones swallowed the straw he was chewing and choked violently for a moment or two, “I'd give ’em a little bran and mid. A GHIGKEN RANCH which was, he found, full of hen fleas and lice. Kerosene, he was told, was death to these vermin, and so on Sunday he took a five-gallon keg of cheap oil, a large sponge and a broom out into his hennery and proceeded to swash about energeti- cally. He washed the roosts, the nests, the walls and the floor, and gave his set- ting hen a liberal soaking. Then, being tired with bis unwonted labors, he leaned against the door-jamb and surveying the scene of his exertions with satisfied eyes, proceeded to light his pipe. The next moment Mrs. Wiggins, gazing placidly out of the back window, saw ber husband hurled violently across the yard, closely pursued by a sheet of red flame, a blazing bunch of feathers which had an instant before been a live and expostu- trrmy e | THERE'S A BARREL OF MONEy IN THIS CHICKEN BUSINESS™ SAYS W1GGING. JUSTWATCH ME KIND orsick” SAID WIGGINS . or chronometering! [ wouldn’t let any of them set on those six-doliar-a-dozen eggs! These are going to be pure-blooded chick- ens, these are, and no barnyard mongrels | And they’re going to be beauties, too, for T’ve bought the prettiest kind of a pullet of the same breed to mother 'em ! Mrs. Wiggins said no more and re- mained quietly within doors, although soon after the arrival of the feathered aristocrat there came from the chicken- house various noises which indicated that she was not pleased with the prospect be- fore her and that her owner was having serious difficulty in endeavoring to over- come her prejudices. Louder grew the sounds of rebellion and argument, until, making her escape by a heroic effort, the frightened fowl flew out into the yard, knocking down everything in her way The next morning Mr. Wiggins rose early and betook himself to the' chicken- house with & nandful of corn, some soaked bread, a spoonful of mush ana a glass saucedish of water on a small tray. “That pullet shall have every atten- tion,”” ke decinred, *“but she shall attend to business. 1 can afford to be kind now that I have conquered.”’ Two minutes later be appeared in the chicken-house door. ‘‘Susan,’* he called, “I want you ghould come here and see what this fool fien has done!” Alas for Mr. Wiggins’ plans! He had captured his recalcitrant purchase and tied her firmly down upon a nest with an intricate lacework of rope, but although he had made ber a prisoner he had not subdued her proud spirit. “ She had’ wriggled and squirmed and The “trained” hen was purchased at once, and old Jones brought her over and installed her on a new lot of four-bit- apiece eggs. He gazed at the Wiggins hens critically, for they were a sickly looking lot, in spite of their owner’s constant care. “Them hens needs gravel,” he said with decision. ‘“You've been feeding 'em high on grain, but they ueeds gravel, and they needs it bad!” A load of gravel was dumped into the yard the very next day,and Mr. Wiggins eagerly watched for signs of improvement in the heaith of his livesiock, but they n less than before. They spent. t first hanging about the gate, but soon developed alarming weakness, staggering about forlornly or lying down resignedly in secluded corners. [§ 1in’s dough right off, just fora change,” he said, when he recovered. “I'd ought ter hertold yer that gravel ain’t good for stiddy drink—only jest for a side-dish. Them is notional, and they want their grain and things right along with it, and I'm afraid—they're 8o pesky contrairy— that the heft on ’em is going todie on ye right now. jest to spite yel™ He was-a true prophet, for the hens, whose constitutions were - enfeebled by age, anyway, sucoumbed one after the other and left the tough old rooster a dis- consolate, six-ply widower. “Pll give him to the unemployed to help out their Sunday dinner,’” decided Mr. Wiggins, “and start fair with a brand-new lot.” - But previous to buying his new flock he determined to clean up his chicken-house, lating hen, and the roof. The engine-house was on the next cor- ner, so the Wiggins cottage was, by sharp work, saved from destruction, but Mr. Wiggins’ whiskers were singed, his hands scorched and his accommodations for chickens utterly destroyed. “The next time you want to furn my ‘premises into an asylum for a lot of can- tankerous, idiotic hens, Susan,” he said, after the excitement was over and peace restored, ‘‘you just give me timely warn- ing, and Ill start for Cuba, or Crete, or some other safe and quiet spot, at once. ‘You may like the measly things, as you ‘were bronght up with ’em, but I'll die in ‘my tracks before I'll ever let a live hen In- side my gate again! You may start a 1attlesnake farm, or set up as a trainer of chicken-house roaring lions and howling ‘hyenas if you want to, but I draw the line at hens!” And Mrs. Wiggins meekly said “Very well, dear.” FUNEGAL MCVAHOS. A Siamesed Willow Tree The many poets who have sung in vary- ing strains about the willow tree probably never have imagined such a queer willow tree as A. Carlisle of this City has induced to grow upon land which he owns at Berkeley. In fact, this singular willow tree began existence as two willow trees, tiny little saplings, as slender and pliable as rushes that grow by the brookside. They were planied by Mr. Carlisle, a space of about three feet apart, and when they had reached a height of some feet he bent the tops of the eaplings togetber and se- cured them so that they could not be separated without breaking them. They were thus formed into an arch, or perhaps something more like the shape of & lyre, the name of which has long been associated in song with tuneful mention of “a weeping willow tree.” Mr. Carlisla said nothing about his experiment to any one for a time. His purpose was to see ‘whether he could make two trees assums one identity and have two seis of roots giving strength to one upright trunk. He was, in a word, trying to repeat in tree growth that singular freak in human life which has gone into history as the Siam- ese twins, the account of whom has much interested Mr, Carlisle. After the trees had become accustomed to the unusual shape in which they were growing they showed no tendency to pull apart. Then by careful pruning they were made to actually unite and, as might be expected, from the union of the energy of the two shoots of much vitality were de- veloped. The shoots which started out horizontally were lopped off. One shoot which grew vertically was parmitted to remain and into that went all the sus- tenance which could be infiltrated, all the sustenance that two independent and vig- orous sets of distinct roots were able to withdraw from the soil. To stimulate the growth the roots wers watered. Soon the arched trunks, which bad become one trunk under skillful ma- nipulation, became as large around asa man’s arm. The upright trunk, with the strength of double any of its rivals, also rapidly thickened, and is now stout and thick. At the height of a few feet the upright trunk was permitted to branch out freely. The question now is whether this one tree has one, two or three trunks. One set of roots gave rise to the upright trunk. Two sets of roots are keeping it green and thrifty, ———e————— The Poet. ¥rom the Russian of Pushkim. Poet! court not the favor of the many! For short-lived are the transports of applause, And fools shall sit in judgment over thee, And thou shalt hear the world’s unfeeling laugh. ’ Be thou through all impassive, strong snd stern. Thon art & king; 5o live—alone. The path Freely pursue where thy free genius calls, Maturing over the fruits of loving thought, Demsnding no reward for work echieved. ’Tis in thyself. Thyself, thy judge supreme; No eritic’s censure more severe than thine, Fastidious artist. look upon thy work! Art thou content? Then let the crowd abuse it, The altar spurn wiich holds thy sscred flame, Ana try in shildish, mischief-loving gles The tripod to o’erturn, thy throne divine. V. RAGORIN, In every school in Paris there is a res- taurant where free meals are served to the children who are oo poor to pay for them.