After my Uncle went away, the silence began to rasp on my nerves; it was so different from what I had been accustomed to. I had that curious, attenuated nervousness which is always expecting something unpleasant to happen. This was especially acute along about seven in the evening, at which time my talented relative was wont to begin his regular recital upon the instrument he so thoroughly understood.

From seven to eleven, the air would be full of faint, mysterious echoes which had no discernible source. Fragmentary, disorganised phrases from Bedelia, Could Ye Come Back to Me, Douglas, and the beautiful, though familiar melodies from Il Trovatore, came in from the woods around me and beat against the walls of my cabin. It seemed as though some of Uncle’s music had been canned and the cans were exploding. The effect was uncanny, to say the least.

As time went on, it became evident that I must do something desperate, or else become the star inmate of a padded cell. Those who do not believe in personal influence should remain alone for a time in a place which an uninvited relation has regretfully left. With nerves and senses sharpened by the ordeal through which they have recently passed, they will hear and feel some queer things, or I miss my guess.

At the crisis of my unhappy condition, I remembered the old saying, “Like cures like,” and I clutched at it as a drowning man grabs the proverbial straw. “The hair of a dog will cure the bite,” continued my inner consciousness.

But what could I do that would even remotely approach the things that Uncle did? I had no musical gifts, and an organ like his was out of the question for about eleven hundred and eighty-nine different reasons. I must have something, however; something distinctively Italian. Like lightning the solution of my problem burst upon me. A concertina!

Within a week I had procured a fine one, also an instruction book. The new study became so absorbing that I forgot all about Unnatural History, for the time being. It was not long before I could play Down on the Suwanee River, The Last Rose of Summer, and Home, Sweet Home. The instrument had a wonderfully fine tone, and, for the first time, I began to understand the wild, universal passion to learn music.

I discovered that the pleasure is mainly selfish, the joy being principally that of the performer. The one who plays, or rather works, an instrument of any sort, can never give others as much pleasure as he gives himself. With the voice, the principle is the same, though greatly intensified. Conversation exemplifies it in lesser degree, though not much less. I remembered that when I was very young, a number of other rising citizens used to battle with me for the control of the harmonica which I found in my infantile sock one radiant Christmas morning. “The child is father of the man,” said Wordsworth, though how much his word’s worth it is not for me to say.

As I played, one day, I felt bright eyes upon me. I was taking deep accordion plaits in the silence, but I was not wholly oblivious to my surroundings. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”—how wonderfully true that is! Already I looked forward to the time when all the wood-folk should come and stand around me, open-mouthed and rapt, while I worked my concertina.

Every day, when I began to practise my technical exercises, I felt the bright eyes. When an eye is laid on a Little Brother of the Woods, he can feel it all through his system. I was not sufficiently interested, however, to investigate.

One bright morning, when I was practising that beautiful song beginning: “Knock, and the world knocks with you; boost, and you boost alone,” I heard a corroborative thump from the woods.

It was really a tremendous noise and seemed as though it must have been made by a Moose, an Elephant, or some animal equally large. At brief intervals the sound was repeated and at last I concluded that someone in my immediate neighbourhood was giving a pound party.

The next day, according to the entries in my observation ledger, I had filled the concertina with cooky crumbs and had begun to play a cake-walk, adding a little milk to the interior occasionally to produce a more liquid tone. From the distant shrubbery, from the same quarter where I had repeatedly felt the bright eyes, I heard a thump-thump-thump, perfectly metrical, and in time with my merry tune. It was accompanied by a soft patter, seemingly from very small hands. With a sudden reversion to my former interests I threw the concertina aside, and dashed into the forest.

There, beneath a bush, were Jenny Ragtail and her son, Chee-Wee, still patting and thumping in the metre of the cake-walk and not knowing that the music had stopped. It takes sound some time to travel and I have always been very quick on my feet.

As soon as they saw me, they vanished.

When I returned to my instrument, it refused to work, and upon taking it apart, I discovered that the milk had been churned to butter. I was obliged to scrape the entire mechanism before I could play any more, but there was a smile of satisfaction upon my face as I did so. I had always known that the long ears of Rabbits served some good purpose in the wise economy of creation, and now I perceived that they were ears for music. A Donkey’s telephonic apparatus is constructed upon much the same plan, and everyone knows how he can sing.

I have not space to describe the gradual manner in which my acquaintance with Jenny Ragtail progressed, nor how I learned all that I know about Rabbits and their language. Suffice it to say that before many weeks had passed by, she and Chee-Wee would scamper into my presence as soon as I began the first notes of the cake-walk, and would sit very close to me as I extracted the melody from the instrument, patting and thumping at the accented notes.

I remembered reading in my well-thumbed copy of Uncle Remus that “Bre’r Rabbit was always a master hand to pat a tune,” but I never wholly believed it until I saw it done. Little Brothers of the Woods are sometimes very incredulous of the observations of others, as my readers have doubtless noted.

In the remainder of this scientific treatise, though I may translate freely and frequently from Rabbit into English, I shall say nothing that the Rabbits did not say. Accuracy has always been a strong point with me—in fact, I am rabid upon it.

Jenny Ragtail was a large, well-shaped brown Rabbit. Her body tapered slightly in at the waist line, and this led me to surmise that in the privacy of her chamber she wore some sort of a corset. Her finale was a gloriously beautiful tuft of white Rabbit fur, which led Chee-Wee in and out of the mazes of the forest trails like a friendly beacon. Her eyes were large and brown and motherly, and projected so far from her kind, matronly countenance, that she could see behind her, in the same manner that the ever-feminine of our own species can see around a corner or through a stone wall. Jenny’s intuition was marvellous.

Chee-Wee was almost infinitesimal in size. He looked like a baby Rat and was once taken for one by a lady book agent, with a very dignified carriage, who penetrated the wilderness as far as my hermitage. I never knew whose Nature Library she was canvassing for, because, at the first glimpse of Chee-Wee, she took the brakes off her carriage and fled into the next county. Those who think that women cannot run should have seen this book agent.

Chee-Wee was not many weeks old, but already he was beginning to study in the school his mother taught. There are schools of Rabbits, just as there are schools of Fish, though it is not so generally known. They learn by whisker touching, the sense of smell, telegraphy with the hind feet, and by another method which I shall explain later.

The first thing Jenny taught Chee-Wee was to play dead. One thump means “freeze.” Two thumps mean “follow me.” Three thumps mean “danger—run for dear life,” and four thumps mean “come.” The politicians who have their ears to the ground are many times only Unnaturalists in disguise, listening for Rabbit thumps. Then, when a valuable franchise comes along, they are in a position to grab it.

One day Chee-Wee had a dreadful adventure. He was in the woods near my cabin and Jenny was out foraging. She had put him in a crÈche under the roots of a pine and told him not to move a muscle until she came. A terrible serpent, with a very bright head, was close to Chee-Wee; a peculiar, striped serpent that made him stiff with fright. He had read in his little primer about garter snakes, and in his childish ignorance supposed this was one. He was scared almost to death, but he had enough presence of mind to thump for his mother, who instantly left her shopping tour and hastened to his side.

He was partially right, though it was not a Snake at all and had been dropped by the lady book agent in her mad flight through the forest, but, none the less, Chee-Wee was soundly spanked for turning in a 4:11 alarm for nothing more than a smoking chimney, while his mother was engaged in chasing up a bargain sale.

Those who have not lived near enough to the animals to know what they are talking about will think I have made Chee-Wee and his mother too human, but that little band of choice spirits who study the encyclopedias all Winter and get out a Nature Book apiece every Spring, will know that I have not so abased my high calling as to be inaccurate in even the smallest detail.

A Rabbits best friend is his brier patch and he is seldom more than eight and one half hops away from it. Jenny Ragtail used to carry a copy of that beautiful poem, Brier Rose, in her reticule, so that she would always have a place of refuge in time of trouble. I know this, because I wrote the piece out for her myself from my book of Parlour Elocution.

Jenny was devoted to Chee-Wee. She loved him nineteen times as hard as she could have done if his eighteen little brothers and sisters, who were published simultaneously, had not died of a fever before they were a week old. This was an epidemic which raged fiercely among the Squirrels and nearly spoiled all the Rabbit stew. He got nineteen times as much schooling and learned nineteen times as much as he could otherwise have done. This accounts for anything that may seem unusually intelligent in the future conduct of Chee-Wee.

First, she taught him geography. With a toothpick I gave her, she drew out a singularly accurate relief map of the surrounding country in the sand at my door. I still have the toothpick and a small bottle of the sand, which I kept to convince the doubting ones. She was a week or more in making it, and I fear that Chee-Wee would have been very restless, had it not been for the little silvery minnow in a glass of water at Jenny’s elbow, which interested him greatly. She kept it there in order that her map might be drawn to scale.

When the map was finished, I was allowed to inspect it, and it was really wonderful, though it was not at all the kind of a map that I should have drawn. She had marked the brier patches, the dens of Woodchucks and Weasels, the kennel of a distant farmer’s Hound, and a log in the middle of a pond. This latter place was marked by a small piece of flag-root which bore the picture of a Rabbit’s hind foot, and meant “Last Stand.” It was well named, for no animal but a loan shark could have found them there.

She taught him to comb his hair, brush his teeth, wash his face, paying special attention to his ears, and to curl his tail up over his back, like a Squirrel. It was the merest stub of a tail and Chee-Wee got vertigo once from chasing it round and round trying to get a good view of it. Their comb was an ordinary curry comb, which presumably had dropped from the vest pocket of some canine pursuer.

Jenny saved her own combings, putting them carefully away in a box made of Squirrel bark. I noted afterward that she had stuck little bits of fur on some of the thorns in the brier patch where she and Chee-Wee lived, after the manner of Hop o’ My Thumb, who dropped pebbles in the wood that he might find his way home again. This was to guide Chee-Wee to the family residence in time of need.

It is not generally known that Rabbits make a blanket to cover their babies out of tufts of fur which they pick from themselves. Jenny’s blanket was a beauty and exemplified the arts and crafts movement among the Rabbits in a particularly striking way.

The background was white, and on it, in bold relief, was a large brown Rabbit, just vanishing around the corner of the blanket. Below was the motto, “Always Keep Your Front Feet off the Landscape.”

When this blanket was soiled, she washed it in the brook, using a bit of soap bark on the more soiled places, and hanging it out to dry on a line from home. Thinking that Chee-Wee might possibly take cold, I offered her a small square of brussels carpet for them to sleep under. It was the best I had, but she disdained the offering, and upon examining it closely, I saw why. Neither of them could have slept under it, because the nap was all worn off.

Rabbits love rose bushes and even that fine, new, man-made rose bush which climbs all over the country—the barbed wire fence. Jenny taught Chee-Wee how to lead his enemies into the fence and how to take the flying leap through the wires, leaving not so much as a tuft of fur behind to tell the tale. That summer Chee-Wee killed two Dogs, a Weasel, a Skunk, and three Bull Frogs, who were chasing him across the country, at different times, of course, by leading them full blast into this dangerous fence. Here they always hung until some of their mourning friends or relatives would come and cut down the body.

A Rabbit’s nose is exactly like the paper pin-wheels the children make and pin to the end of a stick. When the children run, with the stick held straight out in front of them, the pin-wheel whirls merrily, as everyone knows. A Rabbit’s nose has an interior formation of precisely the same size and shape, which revolves on an axis of cartilage at the slightest movement of the wearer. Thus does Nature care for her children.

Chee-Wee would never eat anything until his mother had certified to the quality of it. She always had to taste of it first, to be sure that it was all right, and frequently he took the food out of her mouth, in this way becoming very fond of hash. I have often seen them nibbling the ends of a long blade of grass, coming closer and closer together as the grass got shorter, and finally ending in a very loving kiss. It was both pretty and touching.

One cold day, I prepared some spaghetti according to Uncle Antonio’s method, though the pipes that I bought in the village were not at all like those that he took out of the interior recesses of his organ. We had it for lunch, Jenny Ragtail, Chee-Wee, and I, and we all ate heartily.

I was never more forcibly convinced of the truth of the saying that “What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” than I was that afternoon. Personally, I never felt better in my life. A warm glow of brotherly love pervaded my entire system, and there was enough spaghetti left for my luncheon the following day, if I could summon up sufficient self-denial to keep it that long.

But in less than an hour, Jenny and Chee-Wee were both very sick. Chee-Wee lay on the ground at the foot of a pine tree, and his mother, pitiable though her condition was, hobbled off to the marsh for some medicine.

When she returned, weak and exhausted, she had a large quantity of teaberries. She brewed these into a strong, bitter liquid over my fire, with boiling water from my tea-kettle. She dosed Chee-Wee with it liberally, then drank some of it herself. In half an hour, they were capering around as usual, and I was much pleased with Jenny’s cleverness.

Seeing that the mixture was a good Hare tonic, I rubbed some on my dome of thought where the thatching was thin, but it did not work in the same way.

The next day, when I brought out the plate of spaghetti for my luncheon, intending to divide, as usual, with my guests, they both scampered off at such a mad pace that I could see nothing but a cloud of dust and the gleam of light from their white tails. I did not know that anything on earth could go at such a pace as that, though my mother used to tell me, when she was making my gingham shirts, that brown and white were always fast colours. I believe it now, but I did not then, for those shirts never used to get me to school on time during the swimming season, and, indeed, often delayed me, with unaccountable knots in the sleeves.

Chee-Wee soon grew into a good-sized Rabbit. He used to stand up on his hind legs and bite the trees as high as he could reach. One tree, a few feet from my cabin door, is scarred with these tiny teeth marks from the height of one inch above the ground, where he could just reach when he was a little baby Rabbit, up to three feet and eighteen inches from the ground, which measured his height in his prime.

Any Rabbit, passing through the woods, would know that he was on Chee-Wee’s reservation, and would stop to measure his height on the tree. If he was taller than Chee-Wee, he would go on, and when they met, they would fight it out with claw and tooth and fang and the wild rush through the long-burrows that honeycombed the earth beneath my cabin. If the trespasser was not as tall as Chee-Wee, he would go away, taking long jumps that he might not leave any tracks.

This custom is also followed out by Bears, as any writer on the subject will tell you. I am always willing to give my fellow Unnaturalists credit for what they see. Goodness knows it is little enough, compared with what I have done.

Jenny’s school was near the lake, beyond a hill, and securely sheltered from observation except from the water. When a canoe approached, they all had plenty of time to hide before it came near enough to be dangerous. These brown, fuzzy things are so much like the landscape that they are fully protected.

Usually, a Rabbit does not travel much in the daytime. They are nocturnal animals and by day they sit in forms, or cases, that they have made of grass and leaves and their combings and stationed in secluded spots. When they get tired of living in one place, they change their spots, but it always means the building of a new form.

The Rabbits were not afraid of me, however, and I shall never forget the day that I rowed up silently along the shore and came upon Mistress Jenny’s school. The baby Rabbits were all sitting on toadstools, with their spelling-books held up close to their faces. One little Rabbit missed a word while I was looking on, and was promptly put to bed on account of his sick spell, as was quite right and proper.

There was a large map made on the hill just back of the teacher’s desk, and a tin pail, freshly filled with water, stood in one corner. They drank out of a nutshell, cunningly chiselled by sharp little teeth into the shape of a cup, and many were the trips to the corner. How it reminded me of my own schooldays!

Another little brown Rabbit, who seemed to be a very naughty bunny, brought a Spider to school and put it in Jenny’s desk while she was teaching the youngest class to count. Jenny learned what she knew of arithmetic from an old Adder that lived under a log in the woods. When she saw the Spider, she instantly called the culprit to her, and in plain sight of the whole school punished him severely with a lady’s slipper that I had unaccountably missed from my flower bed.

Under Jenny’s careful tuition, all these little Rabbits learned things that their own parents would never have had time to teach them. Children are born so fast in Rabbit families that there is never an opportunity for any one set of children to learn more than the merest rudiments of education, and this school of Jenny’s was like a University Extension Centre in an Esquimaux village. My cabin became a general meeting place for the Rabbits of the neighbourhood, and at length they got to be rather of a nuisance. Uncle Antonio had taken my only pillow with him for Jocko to sleep on—dear Uncle was always so considerate of animals!—and I was forced to make a pair of overalls do duty instead. I used to roll these up at night, with a stray feather or two in the pockets, and put my weary head down over all. Usually, I knew nothing more until morning, when Jenny and Chee-Wee would come and pat my face with their soft, velvety paws, and tell me it was time to get breakfast, and, please, could we have breakfast food this morning?

I used to explain to them that anything that was eaten in the morning was breakfast food, but they were as keen for good cereals as the editor of a popular magazine.

One night my overalls were stolen, so gently that I did not know it. I looked all over the premises for them and could not find them. Jenny seemed troubled also, and after breakfast she and Chee-Wee went out to look for them.

In about an hour, they returned, Jenny with the trouser legs in her mouth and Chee-Wee bringing up the rear. I should never have known them for mine, had not the autograph of the laundry marker been travelling with the band. They were torn, and had as many small holes in them as a fly screen. I was angry and was about to wage a war of extermination on the entire Rabbit tribe, but Jenny pleaded with me so effectively that I refrained. A Rabbit is very cunning when he sits up on his hind legs, with his paws folded, and looks at you eagerly with his bright eyes.

These are all minor details, however, and have been commonly observed by others. The only discovery of real importance which I made that Summer was in relation to the Rabbit method of communicating with each other. Fellow-Unnaturalists have written of the thumping, the whisker touching, and so-on. Some have even attempted to tabulate the thump code, but with only partial success.

My discovery is entirely new and has never appeared in any book before. Briefly it is this. Rabbits converse with each other by means of a deaf-and-dumb alphabet, very similar to that made by mutes of our own species, using their ears entirely.

I have not space here to elaborate upon it, nor to explain how I happened to discover it, but the entire subject will be found in a monograph which will be published in pamphlet form as soon as my paper on The Rabbit Grammar has been read before the International Society of Registered Unnaturalists.

Jenny was very clever at making me understand her, even without resorting to her own language. For instance, one day I had given her a handful of salt, in response to unmistakable signs and gestures on her part. She tasted of it, sniffed, then sat down upon it and began to sway from side to side. I understood then that she preferred rock salt and immediately gave it to her, but was it not clever? Could a human being, without the power of speech, have done more?

Among themselves, the talk of the Rabbits was astonishingly easy and informal. After I learned their language, by watching Jenny, Chee-Wee, and the friends who used to call upon them, I heard, or rather saw, many amusing things. All unconscious of my familiarity with their speech, they used to discuss me in my own presence.

Once, after a long and prolonged wig-wagging on the part of an old, grey-whiskered Rabbit, I made out this: “Say, Jenny, what earthly good is that blamed hermit to you? Haven’t you influence enough to get us some corn?”

With a rare gift of repartee, Jenny replied: “You’re nothing but a pig. You’ve had so much corn now that you’ll have to ride in a grain elevator if you ever get home.” This Rabbit lived high up in a hollow tree to be out of the reach of draughts, as he was old and rheumatic, and so the speech had a double-edged meaning that set all the company to sneezing with suppressed mirth.

Other observers have described a Rabbit entertainment, but I doubt if any of them have ever seen such a one as fell to my lot to witness and even take part in, the night before I left my home in the wilderness to take my vacant place in the city. I do not know that I had been missed in the city, but it was pleasant to think so when the Fall rains fell upon me, and the woods had a penetrating chill which my bravest fire could not subdue.

I was packing, and Jenny and Chee-Wee sat sadly by, heartbroken at the prospect of separation. When I packed my little pincushion, Jenny went out and got a few pine needles to put in; when I gathered up my pens and ink, Chee-Wee scampered away to his treasure box and brought the skin of a Field Mouse for a penwiper. He had prepared and cured the skin himself, and I have it still.

I sat down on the side of my cot, and using the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, I spelled out with my fingers: “I would take you back with me, but you would not like the town, and I shall return next Summer.”

Surprised beyond measure, they were dumb animals for a moment, then Jenny’s ears began to work nervously. “We would not go,” she answered; “we have Winter flannels and are very comfortable here. There is going to be a party to-night. Will you not come?”

“Gladly,” I returned, with all sincerity. “What shall I bring?”

With one accord, Jenny and Chee-Wee ran to the opposite corner of the cabin and sat down on my concertina. They did not know how to spell the name of it, so they chose the more primitive manner of expression.

At eight o’clock they called for me. They were freshly washed and combed, had picked all the burrs out of themselves, and looked very spruce indeed.

We walked about eight miles to a clearing in the midst of the woods—a clearing where some hunters had once camped. This is the kind of a place that Rabbits love. I had matches in my pocket, and as soon as I got there I gathered materials for a fire, and peeled a large, straight piece of very white birch bark, which I set up on a forked stick behind the cheerful flame. This rude reflector served very well, and threw great pieces of ruddy light into the black shadows beyond us.

There were about twenty Rabbits in the gathering, all of whom I knew by sight if not by name. Some were brown and some were white, and there were an equal number of ladies and gentlemen.

While preparations were going on, the ladies and gentlemen promenaded in couples around the clearing, arm in arm, doubtless whispering tender nothings to each other. They were not afraid of me at all, and some of them would even come and jump over my foot as it was stretched out in front of me.

The first number on the programme was a tug of war engaged in by the gentlemen Rabbits, brown on one side and white on the other. The rope was a long strand of Virginia creeper from which the leaves had been stripped. The brown Rabbits won, and Jenny wig-wagged to me with her curiously intelligent ears that the brown Rabbits were the stronger, because they did not bathe as often as the white ones. This was very interesting. I believe there was some old Greek who renewed his strength every time he touched the ground, and the Rabbits seem to have caught the idea.

Then there was a hurdle race, a game of Leap Frog, another of Follow the Leader, and a very fine game of Base Ball. The ball was a perfectly round gourd which they had found somewhere, and at the proper time Chee-Wee brought in a stuffed Bat, which gave great interest to the game. The old rheumatic Rabbit did not play, but continually made love to Jenny while the sport went on. Poor Jenny! I hope she had too much sense to go and be an old man’s darling.

Presently the moon came up and I let the fire go out. It had warmed the clearing pleasantly, and the birch bark reflector was charred so much that it was of no further use.

Refreshments consisted of clover blossoms, dried, preserved rose petals, and toadstools. The lady Rabbits did not eat the toadstools, and when I asked Jenny why, she patted her stomach suggestively, and then with her delicate ears spelled out to me that they took up too mushroom.

I was enjoying myself exceedingly, and after the refreshments had been cleared away a committee of the gentlemen waited upon me, and, not knowing that I understood their language, pointed suggestively to my concertina.

I took up the instrument and began to play the cake-walk which had first attracted Jenny to my side. Instantly the clearing was full of flying feet, and those who were not dancing were thumping with their hind feet and patting out the tune with their paws. One Rabbit, who seemed to be the clown of the party, would dash around the clearing like the ponies at the circus, now and then taking a high jump, or two or three ungraceful hops in imitation of a Bear trying to dance. It was very amusing.

Round and round they went, their mobile noses whizzing like an automobile as they passed. It was like nothing so much as fireworks of brown and white fur.

When I changed the tune, they changed their steps also. There was a minuet, in which the ladies did themselves proud, and a quadrille in which all joined but the rheumatic Rabbit, who knew the calls and thus served the first useful purpose of the evening. To do him justice, however, I believe that after he had eaten all the clover he could hold, he took a few choice blossoms to a little brown mouse of a Rabbit who seemed not to know anyone.

While the ladies were cooling off, there was a boxing match between two of the most athletic of the gentlemen, and it was declared a draw at the end of the fifth round. These gay young bloods refreshed themselves with liberal draughts of beer, which was very innocent, however, being made of Frog hops. I tried it, but it was not to my taste, being clammy in flavour and not cold enough.

The play lasted till long past midnight, and I do not believe the merry party would have broken up then had I not risen to go home. My little furry friends clustered around me with many unspoken regrets, but I fear that the loss of the concertina was uppermost in their thoughts. They had never had music to dance to before.

My suspicion was strengthened the next day when I finished my packing. As before, Jenny and Chee-Wee came and camped on the instrument, refusing to move when I attempted to put it into my suit case. A generous impulse struck me, and, attracting her attention, I spelled out: “You can use it this Winter if you will be very careful of it and not leave it outdoors. I shall want it again in the Spring.”

They forgot me, then, and dragged it away to some secret treasure-house. Such was the ingratitude of the beasts that I never saw either of them again, not to mention my instrument, but there are drawbacks in all callings, so why should there not be in mine? When you come to think of it, the work of a concertina is wholly composed of drawbacks.

Sometimes on moonlight nights, when the earth is exquisitely still, I fancy I see the Rabbits dancing in the clearing, and when a faint, far-off melody comes to my listening ears, so delicate that it might be fairies touching cobweb strings, I think perhaps it may be Chee-Wee or Jenny Ragtail, playing on my lost concertina.