The Old Hen and the Philosopher: a Fable.

PART I.

REFLECTIONS OF A HEN WITH CHICKENS DURING AN ECLIPSE OF THE SUN.

"Craw * * * craw * * * craw! What's the matter with my eyes? It looks very dark, for a clear summer's day. I must be getting old, for it ain't more than ten o'clock, and it seems exactly like sundown. Craw * * * craw * * * craw! Why, it's getting cold. It seems as chill as evening. Cut, cut, cudawcut! What can be the matter? Why, the sun is going to bed before it's fairly got up. Cur—r-r-r-r-r! Well, after all, it may be only a fit of the vapors—or my gizzard may be put out of order by that toad I ate yesterday. I thought, then, I should pay dear for it. Cur—r-r-r-r-r? Here chicks—come under my wings! I'm going to take a nap. Come along—Nip, Dip, Pip, Rip—come into your featherbed, my little dearies! There! Don't stick your noses out—be still now—I'm going to sing a song.

Fiddle-de-dee—I can't sleep, and the chickens are as lively as bed-bugs. Cut—cut—cu—daw—cut! What on airth is the matter! The sun has got put out, right up there in the sky, just like a candle. Well—never did I see or hear of such a thing afore! And now it's night in the middle of the day! What will come next? Why, I expect I shall walk on my head, and fly with my claws! It ain't half fair, to shave an old hen and chickens out of their dinner and supper in this way. However, it's too dark for decent people to be abroad. So, my chicks, we must get into the coop and go to rest. Cur—r-r-r-r—it's very queer indeed. How thankful I am that I don't make day and night, and get the world into such a scrape as this. Come in! Come in, chicks! It ain't our affair. Come along—there—you rowdies! You ain't sleepy, and I don't wonder at it. But hens and chickens must go to bed when the lamp is put out. Cur—r-r-r-r-r."

PART II.

REFLECTIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER UPON A BLADE OF GRASS.

Here is a leaf, which we call a blade of grass. There are myriads like it in this field; it seems a trifle; it seems insignificant. But let me look at it with my glass. How wonderful is its texture! It seems woven like network, and nothing can exceed the beauty of its structure. And yet every blade of grass is like this. It exceeds all human art in the delicacy of its fabric, yet it grows here out of the ground. Grows! What does that mean? What makes it grow? Has it life? It must have life, or it could not grow. And what is that life? It cannot think; it cannot walk; who makes it grow then? Who made this blade of grass? It was not man; it is not the beast of the field. It is God who made it! And is God here in the field, all around me—in every blade of grass, in every leaf, and stem, and flower?

It must be so, indeed. How full of instruction is every thing around us, if we use the powers we possess!

Moral. Some people believe, that birds and beasts have minds and souls as well as human beings; but we see that the most stupendous wonder of nature excited in one of the most intelligent and civilized of birds, only a queer sort of surprise, expressed in the words cut—cut—cu—dawcut! At the same time it appears that a single blade of grass opens to the philosopher a sublime strain of thought, teaching the profound lesson that God is everywhere!

Is there not a gulf as wide as eternity, between the human soul and animal instinct?

All the children. Bravo, bravo—John!

Parley. Well, John—that'll do for a boy. I shan't insert it as my own, you know; people will say, it's good for John Smith, only fourteen years old; but for Peter Parley—why, it's too ridiculous, altogether. At any rate—John—the moral is good—and if people do laugh at the article, you just say to 'em—keep your tongue between your teeth, till you do better, and you won't speak for a year! There's nothing like showing a proper spirit upon occasions of importance.

To return to Mat Olmstead. Notwithstanding his habitual incredulity, he had still his weak side, for he was a firm believer in ghosts: not ghosts in general, but in two that he had seen himself. These were of enormous size, white, and winged like angels. He had seen them one dark night as he was going to his house, which was situated in a lonesome lane that diverged from the high road. It was very late, and Mat had spent the evening at the tavern, like Tam O'Shanter; like him, he "was na fou, but just had plenty." Well, Mat Olmstead's two angels turned out to be a couple of white geese, which he had startled into flight as he stumbled upon them quietly snoozing in the joint of a rail fence!

It has often appeared to me that Mat Olmstead was a type, a representative of a class of men not very rare in this world of ours. It is not at all uncommon to find people, and those who are called strong-minded, who are habitual unbelievers in things possible and probable—nay, in things well established by testimony—while they readily become the dupes of the most absurd illusions and impositions. Dr. Johnson, it is stated, did not believe in the great earthquake of Lisbon in 1755, until six months after it had happened, while he readily accepted the egregious deception of the Cock Lane Ghost. In our day we see people, and sharp ones, too, who reject the plainest teachings of common sense, sanctioned by the good and wise of centuries, and follow with implicit faith some goose of the imagination, like Joe Smith or Brigham Young. These are Mat Olmsteads, a little intoxicated by their own imaginations, and in their night of ignorance and folly they fall down and worship the grossest and goosiest of illusions.

I now turn to a different character, Lieutenant, or, as we all called him, Leftenant Smith, who has been already introduced to you. He was a man of extensive reading and large information; he was also some sixty years old, and had stored in his memory the results of his own observation and experience. He read the newspapers and conversed with travellers, affected philosophy, and deemed himself the great intelligencer of the town: he dearly loved to dispense his learning, asking only in return attentive listeners; and he liked discussion, provided the talk was all left to himself. He was equal to all questions: with my father, he dilated upon such high matters as the purchase of Louisiana; Lewis and Clarke's exploring expedition; the death of Hamilton in the duel with Aaron Burr; the attack of the Leopard on the Chesapeake; Fulton's attempts at steam navigation, and the other agitating topics of those times, as they came one after another.

I have an impression now that Lieut. Smith, after all, was not very profound; but to me he was a miracle of learning. I listened to his discussions with very little interest, but his narratives engaged my whole attention. These were always descriptive of actual events, for he would have disdained fiction: from them I derived a satisfaction that I never found in fables. The travels of Mungo Park, his strange adventures and melancholy death, which about those days transpired through the newspapers, and all of which Lieut. Smith had at his tongue's end, excited my interest and my imagination, even beyond the romances of Sinbad the Sailor and Robinson Crusoe.

In the year 1807 an event occurred, not only startling in itself, but giving exercise to all the philosophical powers of Lieut. Smith. On the morning of the 14th of December, about daybreak, I had arisen, and was occupied in building a fire, this being my daily duty; suddenly the room was filled with light, and, looking up, I saw through the window a ball of fire, nearly the size of the moon, passing across the heavens from north-west to south-east. It was at an immense height, and of intense brilliancy. Having passed the zenith, it swiftly descended toward the earth: while still at a great elevation it burst, with three successive explosions, into fiery fragments. The report was like three claps of rattling thunder in quick succession.

My father, who saw the light and heard the sounds, declared it to be a meteor of extraordinary magnitude. It was noticed all over the town, and caused great excitement. On the following day the news came that huge fragments of stone had fallen in the adjacent town of Weston, some eight or ten miles south-east of Ridgefield. It appeared that the people in the neighborhood heard the rushing of the stones through the air, as well as the shock when they struck the earth. One, weighing two hundred pounds, fell on a rock, which it splintered; its huge fragments ploughing up the ground around to the extent of a hundred feet. This meteor was estimated to be half-a-mile in diameter, and to have travelled through the heavens at the rate of two or three hundred miles a minute.

On this extraordinary occasion the Lieutenant came to our house, according to his wont, and for several successive evenings discoursed to us upon the subject. I must endeavor to give you a specimen of his performances.

"I have examined the subject, sir," said he, addressing my father, "and am inclined to the opinion that these phenomena are animals revolving in the orbits of space between the heavenly bodies. Occasionally, one of them comes too near the earth, and rushing through our atmosphere with immense velocity, takes fire and explodes!"

"This is rather a new theory, is it not?" said my father. "It appears that these meteoric stones, in whatever country they fall, are composed of the same ingredients: mostly silex, iron, and nickel: these substances would make rather a hard character, if endowed with animal life, and especially with the capacity of rushing through space at the rate of two or three hundred miles a minute, and then exploding?"

"These substances I consider only as the shell of the animal, sir."

"You regard the creature as a huge shell-fish, then?"

"Not necessarily a fish; for the whole order of nature, called Crustacea, has the bones on the outside. In this case of meteors, I suppose them to be covered with some softer substance; for it frequently happens that a jelly-like matter comes down with meteoric stones. This resembles coagulated blood; and thus what is called bloody rain or snow has often fallen over great spaces of country. Now, when the chemists analyze these things—the stones, which I consider the bones; and the jelly, which I consider the fat; and the rain, which I consider the blood—they find them all to consist of the same elements; that is, silex, iron, nickel, &c. None but my animal theory will harmonise all these phenomena, sir."

"But," interposed my father, "consider the enormous size of your aËrial monsters. I recollect to have read only a short time since, that in the year 1803, about one o'clock in the afternoon, the inhabitants of several towns of Normandy, in France, heard noises in the sky, like the peals of cannon and musketry, with a long-continued roll of drums. Looking upward, they saw something like a small cloud at an immense elevation, which soon seemed to explode, sending its vapor in all directions. At last a hissing noise was heard, and then stones fell, spreading over a country three miles wide by eight miles long. No less than two thousand pieces were collected, weighing from one ounce to seventeen pounds. That must have been rather a large animal, eight miles long and three miles wide!"

"What is that, sir, in comparison with the earth, which Kepler, the greatest philosopher that ever lived, conceived to be a huge beast?"

"Yes; but did he prove it?"

"He gave good reasons for it, sir. He found very striking analogies between the earth and animal existences: such as the tides, indicating its breathing through vast internal lungs; earthquakes, resembling eructations from the stomach; and volcanoes, suggestive of boils, pimples, and other cutaneous eruptions."

"I think I have seen your theory set to verse."

Saying this, my father rose, and bringing a book, read as follows,—

My father having closed the book, the profound Lieutenant, who did not conceive it possible that a thing so serious could be made the subject of a joke, said,—

"A happy illustration of my philosophy, sir, though I cannot commend the form in which it is put. If a man has anything worth saying, sir, he should use prose. Poetry is only proper when one wishes to embellish folly or dignify trifles. In this case it is otherwise, I admit; and I am happy to find so powerful a supporter of my animal theory of meteors. I shall consider the subject, and present it for the consideration of the philosophic world."

One prominent characteristic of this philosopher was, that when a great event came about, he fancied that he had foreseen and predicted it from the beginning. Now, about this time Fulton actually succeeded in his long-sought application of steam to navigation. The general opinion of the country had been, all along, that he was a monomaniac, attempting an impossibility. He was the standing theme of cheap newspaper wit, and a God-send to orators who were hard run for a joke. Lieutenant Smith, who was only an echo of what passed around him during the period of Fulton's labors, joined in the current contempt; but when the news came, in October, 1807, that he had actually succeeded—that one of his boats had steamed at the rate of five miles an hour against the current of the Hudson river—then, still an echo of the public voice, did he greatly jubilate.

"I told you so! I told you so!" was his first exclamation, as he entered the house, swelling with the account.

"Well, and what is it?" said my father.

"Fulton has made his boat go, sir! I told you how it would be, sir. It opens a new era in the history of navigation. We shall go to Europe in ten days, sir."

Now, you will readily understand, that in these sketches I do not pretend to report with literal precision the profound discourses of our Ridgefield savant; I remember only the general outlines, the rest being easily suggested. My desire is to present the portrait of one of the notables of our village—one whom I remember with pleasure, and whom I conceive to be a representative of the amiable, and perhaps useful race of fussy philosophers to be found in most country villages.

From the town oracle I turn to the town miser. Granther Baldwin, as I remember him, was threescore years and ten—perhaps a little more. He was a man of middle size, thin, wiry, and bloodless, and having his body bent forward at a sharp angle with his hips, while his head was thrown back over his shoulders, giving his person the general form of a reversed letter Z. His complexion was brown and stony; his eye grey and twinkling, with a nose and chin almost meeting like a pair of forceps. His hair, standing out with an irritable friz, was of a rusty gray. He always walked and rode with restless rapidity. At church, he wriggled in his seat, tasted fennel, and bobbed his head up and down and around. He could not afford tobacco, so he chewed, with a constant activity, either an oak chip or the roots of elecampane, which was indigenous in the lane near his house. On Sundays he was decent in his attire, but on week-days he was a beggarly curiosity. It was said that he once exchanged hats with a scarecrow, and cheated scandalously in the bargain. His boots—a withered wreck of an old pair of whitetops—dangled over his shrunken calves and a coat in tatters fluttered from his body. He rode a rat-tailed, ambling mare, which always went like the wind, shaking the old gentleman merrily from right to left, and making his bones, boots, and rags rustle like his own bush-harrow. Familiar as he was, the school-boys were never tired of him, and when he passed, "There goes Granther Baldwin!" was the invariable ejaculation.

I must add, in order to complete the picture, that in contrast to his leanness and activity, his wife was very fat, and, either from indolence or lethargy, dozed away half her life in the chimney-corner. She spent a large part of her life in cheating her husband out of fourpence-ha'pennies, of which more than a peck were found secreted in an old chest at her death.

It was the boast of this man that he had risen from poverty to wealth, and he loved to describe the process of his advancement. He always worked in the cornfield till it was so dark that he could see his hoe strike fire. When in the heat of summer he was obliged occasionally to let his cattle breathe, he sat on a sharp stone, lest he should rest too long. He paid half-a-dollar to the parson for marrying him, which he always regretted, as one of his neighbors got the job done for a pint of mustard-seed. On fast-days he made his cattle go without food as well as himself. He systematically stooped to save a crooked pin or a rusty nail, as it would cost more to make it than to pick it up. Such were his boasts—or at least, such were the things traditionally imputed to him.

He was withal a man of keen faculties; sagacious in the purchase of land, as well as in the rotation of crops. He was literally honest, and never cheated any one out of a farthing, according to his arithmetic, though he had sometimes an odd way of reckoning. It is said that in his day the law imposed a fine of one dollar for profane swearing. During this period, Granther Baldwin employed a carpenter who was notoriously addicted to this vice. Granther kept a strict account of every instance of transgression, and when the job was done, and the time came to settle the account, he said to the carpenter,—

"You've worked with me thirty days, I think, Mr. Kellogg?"

"Yes, Granther," was the reply.

"At a dollar a-day: that makes thirty dollars, I think?"

"Yes, Granther."

"Mr. Kellogg, I am sorry to observe that you have a very bad habit of taking the Lord's name in vain."

"Yes, Granther."

"Well, you know that's agin the law."

"Yes, Granther."

"And there's a fine of one dollar for each offence."

"Yes, Granther."

"Well—here's the account I've kept, and I find you've broken the law twenty-five times; that is, sixteen times in April, and nine in May. At a dollar a time, that makes twenty-five dollars—don't it?"

"Yes, Granther."

"So, then, twenty-five from thirty leaves five; it appears, therefore, that there is a balance of five dollars due to you. How'll you take it, Mr. Kellogg? In cash, or in my way—say in 'taters, pork, and other things?"

At this point the carpenter's brow lowered, but with a prodigious effort at composure he replied,—

"Well, Granther, you may keep the five dollars, and I'll take it out in my way—that is, in swearing!"

Upon this he hurled at the old gentleman a volley of oaths, too numerous and too profane to repeat.

One sketch more, and my gallery of eccentricities is finished. Men hermits have been frequently heard of, but a woman hermit is of rare occurrence. Nevertheless, Ridgefield could boast of one of these among its curiosities. Sarah Bishop was, at the period of my boyhood, a thin, ghostly old woman, bent and wrinkled, but still possessing a good deal of activity. She lived in a cave, formed by nature, in a mass of projecting rocks that overhung a deep valley or gorge in West Mountain, about four miles from our house.

The rock, bare and desolate, was her home, except that occasionally she strayed to the neighborhood villages; seldom being absent more than one or two days at a time. She never begged, but received such articles as were given to her. She was of a highly religious turn of mind, and at long intervals came to our church, and partook of the sacrament. She sometimes visited our family—the only one thus favored in the town—and occasionally remained overnight. She never would eat with us at the table, nor engage in general conversation. Upon her early history she was invariably silent; indeed, she spoke of her affairs with great reluctance. She neither seemed to have sympathy for others, nor to ask it in return. If there was any exception, it was only in respect to the religious exercises of the family: she listened intently to the reading of the Bible, and joined with apparent devotion in the morning and evening prayer.

My excursions frequently brought me within the wild precincts of her solitary den. Several times I have paid a visit to the spot, and in two instances found her at home. A place more desolate, in its general outline, more absolutely given up to the wildness of nature, it is impossible to conceive. Her cave was a hollow in the rock, about six feet square. Except a few rags and an old basin, it was without furniture; her bed being the floor of the cave, and her pillow a projecting point of the rock. It was entered by a natural door about three feet wide and four feet high, and was closed in severe weather only by pieces of bark. At a distance of a few feet was a cleft, where she kept a supply of roots and nuts, which she gathered, and the food that was given her. She was reputed to have a secret depository, where she kept a quantity of antique dresses; several of them of rich silks, and apparently suited to fashionable life: though I think this was an exaggeration. At a little distance down the ledge there was a fine spring of water, near which she was often found in fair weather.

There was no attempt, either in or around the spot, to bestow upon it an air of convenience or comfort. A small space of cleared ground was occupied by a few thriftless peachtrees, and in summer a patch of starveling beans, cucumbers, and potatoes. Up two or three of the adjacent forest-trees there clambered luxuriant grape-vines, highly productive in their season. With the exception of these feeble marks of cultivation, all was left ghastly and savage as nature made it. The trees, standing upon the tops of the cliff, and exposed to the shock of the tempest, were bent and stooping towards the valley: their limbs contorted, and their roots clinging, as with an agonized grasp, into the rifts of the rocks upon which they stood. Many of them were hoary with age, and hollow with decay; others were stripped of their leaves by the blasts; and others still, grooved and splintered by the lightning. The valley below, enriched with the decay of centuries, and fed with moisture from the surrounding hills, was a wild paradise of towering oaks, and other giants of the vegetable kingdom, with a rank undergrowth of tangled shrubs. In the distance, to the east, the gathered streams spread out into a beautiful expanse of water called Long Pond.

A place at once so secluded and so wild was, of course, the chosen haunt of birds, beasts and reptiles. The eagle built her nest and reared her young in the clefts of the rocks; foxes found shelter in the caverns; and serpents revelled alike in the dry hollows of the cliffs and the dark recesses of the valley. The hermitess had made companionship with these brute tenants of the wood. The birds had become so familiar with her, that they seemed to heed her almost as little as if she had been a stone. The fox fearlessly pursued his hunt and his gambols in her presence. The rattlesnake hushed his monitory signal as he approached her. Such things, at least, were entertained by the popular belief. It was said, indeed, that she had domesticated a particular rattlesnake, and that he paid her daily visits. She was accustomed—so said the legend—to bring him milk from the villages, which he devoured with great relish.

It will not surprise you that a subject like this should have given rise to one of my first poetical efforts; the first verses, in fact, that I ever published. I gave them to Brainard, then editor of the Mirror, at Hartford; and he inserted them, probably about the year 1823.

The facts in respect to this Nun of the Mountain were, indeed, strange enough, without any embellishment of fancy. During the winter she was confined for several months to her cell. At that period she lived upon roots and nuts, which she had laid in for the season. She had no fire; and, deserted even by her brute companions, she was absolutely alone. She appeared to have no sense of solitude, no weariness at the slow lapse of days and months. When spring returned, she came down from her mountain a mere shadow; each year her form more bent, her limbs more thin and wasted, her hair more blanched, her eye more colorless. At last, life seemed ebbing away, like the faint light of a lamp sinking into the socket. The final winter came; it passed, and she was not seen in the villages around. Some of the inhabitants went to the mountain, and found her standing erect, her feet sunk in the frozen marsh of the valley. In this situation, being unable to extricate herself, she had yielded her breath to Him who gave it!

The early history of this strange personage was involved in some mystery. So much as this, however, was ascertained, that she was of good family, and lived on Long Island. During the Revolutionary war, in one of the numerous forays of the British soldiers, her father's house was burned, and she was infamously treated. Desolate in fortune, blighted at heart, she fled from human society, and for a long time concealed her sorrows in the cavern which she had accidentally found. Her grief—softened by time, perhaps alleviated by a veil of insanity—was at length so far mitigated, that, although she did not seek human society, she could endure it. She continued to occupy her cave till the year 1810 or 1811, when she departed in the manner I have described; and we may hope, for a brighter and happier existence.