WOODLAND MUSIC AND POETRY.
Reading edition
BUT Mr. Middlerib’s greatest delight, escaping from his daily wrangle with phlegmatic Peorians, was to seek some cool, sequestered spot, where the air was vocal with the song of birds, there to read, and ponder, and doze, and blend with the melody of the woodland warblers wrathful objurgations of the gnats, and flies, and mosquitoes, and hard-backed bugs that nobody knew the names of. But his poetical nature rose above all these minor distractions, and he enjoyed his seclusion and its sylvan delights. One lovely morning he sat in a vine-embowered porch, with four cages of canaries hanging above his head, and the trees around fairly alive with the wild birds, and as he listened to the varied, melodious passages of the wild-wood orchestra, he grew enraptured, and in a moment of enthusiasm gave himself up to poetry for Mrs. M.’s benefit. He opened the book in his hand, and in a lull of the music he began:
“A cloud lay cradled near the set——”
“Tweetle, tweetle, twee twee tweedle dee tweet tweet!” broke in ear-piercing chorus from the four cages, “twee, twee, tweedle de deedle, twee twee!”
“What a delightful interruption,” said Mr. Middlerib, sweetly; and, with a tender smile wrinkling his placid face, like the upper crust of a green apple pie, he waited for the music to cease, and resumed:
“A cloud lay cra——”
“Twee, twee, twee-ee-ee, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle! Tweet-te-deet-deet, tweet tweet! Tweedle-de-deedle, tweetle, tweetle tweet tweet!”
“A poem without words,” said Mr. Middlerib, softly, glancing from his book toward the cages wherein eight yellow throats were manufacturing music of the shrillest key that ever developed an ear-ache or woke up a deaf and dumb asylum. Presently he got another chance, and resumed once more:
“A cloud lay cradled near the set——”
“To-whoot! To-whoot! Whootle-te-toot-toot!” came from a bird in the nearest hickory, a solemn-looking bird with a brown back and a voice like a wooden whistle. Mr. Middlerib paused and glanced toward the tree, while the benign smile which made his face look like a damaged photograph of one of the early Christian martyrs, faded away like a summer twilight. He resumed:
“A cloud lay cra——”
“Too-toot too doodle toot-te-doot! Wheetle de deetle, tweet tweet tweetle tweet, twee twee whoot de doot too too, chippity-wippity, cheep-cheep-cheep, whoot, squack squack!” went off the whole chorus, cages and trees, supplemented by a visiting party of cat-birds, all aroused into indignant and jealous protest by the obtrusive solo of the wooden-whistle bird, who appeared to be an object of general dislike. Mr. Middlerib, thinking he would read down opposition, went right on:
“——dled near the setting sun, A gleam of crim——”
“K-r-r-r-r-r-r!”
A woodpecker tapped his merry roundelay on the roof of the porch, and Mrs. Middlerib sprang from her chair with, “Mercy on us! what is that?” Mr. Middlerib made a cutting remark about people who had no appreciation of the beautiful in nature or art, and remarked:
“A gleam of crimson tinged its——”
“Twee-ee, twee, deedle-eedle-odle twiddle twoddle, twoot, too too tweedle oot! Teedle idle eedle odle, twee twee, twee! Pe weet, pe weet! Whootle ootle tootle too, squack squack!”
Mr. Middlerib elevated his voice to about ninety degrees in the shade, and roared:
“——tinged its braided snow, Long had I wat——”
“Caw, caw, caw! Ca-a-a-aw!” came from the pensive crow, startled from its quiet retreat in the old dead cottonwood, and Miss Middlerib giggled. But Mr. M. inflated his lungs and roared on:
“——ched the glory moving on, O’er the still radiance——”
“Tweetle de twootle, caw, caw, tweetle doodle tweet tweet! K-r-r-r-r-r-r, krk, krk! twee deedle eet tweet! teedle idle, whoot, toot, twoot! who! squack, squack, k-r-r-r——”
“Shut up, ye nasty, squawking, yallipin’, howlin’ little beasts! Shoo! Light out o’ this or I’ll stone ye from here to Halifax! Scat with yer noise! Oh!” exclaimed the exasperated worshiper of nature as he hurled his book into the nearest tree and went off the porch to look for some stones, “If there is any thing in this world I hate more than another, it’s a lot of nasty, flittering, fidgety, yowping, howling birds! Ugh!” And he threw his shoulder nearly out of joint, and sprained his arm, in a herculean but futile effort to hit a black bird a mile and a half away, with a rock as big as a straw hat. He has dropped the sulphur baths for the present and taken to arnica.