FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS THE reader will remember in Scott's Ivanhoe that Athelstane, at the Norman banquet following the tournament, devoured the whole of a Karumpie, which was filled with nightingales and beccaficos. When the Normans discovered that he had thought it was filled with larks and pigeons, his ignorance received the derision which was merited by his gluttony. However, modern educators must admit that the Unready Saxon displayed a knowledge of things with which he was familiar, even in the Dark Ages, before the spread of culture and the I. Q.

I begin my first lesson on Burroughs's Wake-Robin with a class of twenty-four high-school students in the eleventh year of their modern education. All are American born and bred, most of them being natives of the locality. All have respectable I. Q.'s safely bestowed in a pigeonhole (alack, what a nest!) in the office of the principal. The month is May, and the world is beginning to soften; mountain peaks are visible through the branches of an elm outside the window; birds of the North Atlantic States call from without.

I face these sturdy sons and daughters of the mountains with some misgivings. Is it worth while, after all, to spend time on a subject with which they must all be as familiar as they are with the grass beneath their feet?

"This is a group of essays,' I announce, trying to appear confident, 'dealing with bird life, as you have already learned from the introduction.'

A chorus of warbling from the boys' side of the room interrupts me. From

the girls comes a responsive twitter of mirth. The pie is opened - the blackbirds are running true to type. I now know what the king did with his dainty dish, after he had recovered from his first surprise: neither will I eat such half-baked creatures. I virtually wring the necks of the more melodious, and silence is restored.

'How many of you are fond of nature?' I ask platitudinously. Every hand is raised. I beam deceptively.

'What is nature?' I inquire, and am startled at the cruelty of the effect The light dies from every face. They begin to squirm uneasily and exchange grins, while a look of terror dawns on some of the timid. Hawk-like, I begin to single out victims.

'Grass and trees,' declares one. 'Flowers and bugs,' grumbles another defiantly. The word 'bugs' elicits a titter. 'Birds,' says a third hopefully.

A fourth student brings confusion upon the entire group by the mortifying reply of 'God.' Just as though this were Sunday School! The looks cast in his direction are poisonous; I follow his insult with the injury that his answer is most nearly right. Blank amazement on the faces of the majority hastens my definition of nature, for we are losing time.

The robin and the bluebird, two of our commonest birds, to whom a great deal of space is devoted in the first essay, are brought up for discussion But I have become wary, like the maid who was in the garden hanging up the clothes. Doubtless her definition of the natural order of the universe included the nose upon her face plain and simple- until ‘along came a black

bird,' and the matter presented a painful complexity.

'How many of you know the robin when you see him?' I ask. Four hands fail to respond. 'When you hear him?' I add. Only twelve students know the song of the robin. The bluebird meets with a worse fate: six students know his warble, thirteen his appearance. I deem it unfit to ask if they know the difference between the bluebird and the indigo bunting. This is no time for a fit of the blues!

An obliging robin appears in the branches of the elm at this moment, and leads the discussion. He poses, chirps, sings, summons his mate, who ogles us as brazenly as a movie star, and then the pair depart. The class is thrilled. Half of them have seen and heard a robin in a state of conscious observation for the first time. They turn to the text as though it were something more than mere under-arm ballast. We read what Burroughs says of the robin with reproachful delight. Why, they seem to ask, had n't I told them this was interesting?

I give instructions for bird notebooks. I urge personal observation, field glasses, trips to orchard and woods in twos and threes. I am called upon to explain why twenty-four people cannot enter the forest together to study the rarer songsters. The conversation turns to sandwiches, knickers, trails, and forest fires in the twinkling of an eye, and I reach out a talon to draw them back to the literary aspect of the work. Here I find wooden density, but I adopt the tactics of the woodpecker, and at length produce a few grubby ideas.

hoarse croakings of joy, my blackbirds make their week-end escape. I am a remnant, crusty and broken.

When I again face them on Monday to renew the discussion, I ask for the results of their observations. I look for signs of interest; I see nothing but signs of guilt. It was such a lovely week-end! There was a baseball game Saturday afternoon, and another (a professional game) on Sunday. Many of them had to work at home Saturday morning. Saturday evening was taken up by a movie Iwild and Eastern. Sunday morning - I discover my class are all good church members in regular attendance. All roads lead through the village, and the automobile we have always with us. The problem is before me, unsolved, to produce order out of the chaos of modern life in our small, mountainous, religious village. I arise like an avenging pagan deity hurling thunderbolts.

'Did no one hear the whippoorwill on Cedar Mountain Saturday night? He called to you on your way to the motion pictures.' I produce a picture of the whippoorwill. 'Charles, how about the Baltimore oriole in the cherry tree in your back yard, who was singing Saturday morning as I passed you at your woodchopping?' Another illustration. 'Did anyone notice the hawk above the ball grounds on Saturday afternoon?' Another picture. 'Or hear the flicker in the tree at the entrance to the grounds? Two of you took tickets at the gate, I know.' Picture. "The trees on Main Street were filled with myriads of various kinds of warblers Sunday morning — just returned from the South,' I conclude.

Hands begin to wave frantically. I am smothered with feathered anecdotes. My bolts have rent the clod and dispelled the mist - light is breaking through. Songs are recalled and properly ascribed. Strange-colored birds

that had flitted from memory are now identified by the illustrations and forever snared. An ornithological peace pervades my soul.

My blackbirds are singing a true song now, which is sweet, sweet, sweet! They are creatures of the air at last, rising on wings not man-made above the terrestrial din of Sunday baseball, moving pictures, and the thousand discords of modernity, into a purer, rarer, immortal atmosphere.

CONFESSION BY A TWO-TRACK
MIND

LIKE President Coolidge, I have my Official Spokesman and my Unofficial Observer. The former is a sober, steady-going writer whose highest dream is to write a four-volume work entitled, "The Effect of Machinery upon Human Nature and the Social Order.' If these heavy tomes take their place on library shelves along with Buckle's History of Civilization and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the Official Spokesman for the firm of I, We and Company will be completely satisfied. Whether many or few read the book is matter of indifference to him, but he has reason to believe it will be a sweet revenge upon undergraduates who get in his way in libraries.

Among the other duties of the Official Spokesman is that of making halting addresses on social and industrial themes to conventions of earnest souls who don't mind hearing such themes haltingly discussed. But even while the Official Spokesman is speaking I am painfully aware that my Unofficial Observer is sneering at him. The Unofficial Observer renders me thoroughly uncomfortable in such crises, because he makes it so devastatingly clear that in his opinion I am gadding around the country for the sake of showing off before folks. No doubt

this is why I uniformly disappoint my hearers; one can hardly sell himself unless he is sure he is worth selling.

The Unofficial Observer is not much of a provider; still he does what he can for the family in a quiet way. He writes anonymous essays and little sketches which help to fill the back pages of magazines. Sometimes the author finds in these more cause for pride than in the reasoned, factual articles shouted at the world by the Official Spokesman. These essays help

me to maintain a secret conviction that I might have been a creative literary artist if I had not become a reporter at the tender age of seventeen.

While the Unofficial Observer functions in private, his light shrouded by the bushel of anonymity, still occasionally he hears that he has written this or that. Sometimes the best of wives 'peaches,' as wives will. Recently there came one bearing praise, one whose opinion I value, but who remains consistently cold to the Official Spokesman's mighty efforts. Said he: 'My dear fellow, I seem to have underestimated you. Thought you were just one more of these confounded analysts who are treading the noble art of letters in the dust. But now I'm told you wrote this. Man alive, it's worth more than all the stale profundities you put your name to. You must do more of them; they will outlive your routine work twenty years to one. Do that, and you're made; otherwise an autographed first edition copy of your books will be worth less than fifty cents fifty years from now. There is a reaction coming in favor of quiet writing like this sketch of yours; the world grows weary of jazz, of the persevering analysis of mediocre souls which masquerades under the name of fiction, of highly seasoned sociology and all other literary abominations. Just sit in a chair, watch life slide by, and write

simply of those phases of the procession which appeal to you. Why, it's a call, like any other ministry.'

I confess I should like to follow this advice. With due allowances for the extravagances of friendship, I think the conclusion is sound. There is an audience for the still, small voice, and it is going to keep on growing in spite of Baal and Babel, Mammon and the Mob. But what becomes, then, of my investment in the Official Spokesman, that pseudo heavyweight who can be depended upon to fill editorial specifications on such themes as "The Effect of the Quota Laws upon Piecework Rates'? For the Unofficial Observer is quite unconventional in some of his views; as contrasted with the eternal verities which he finds in Man and the lesser animals, he remains unimpressed by parties, groups, institutions. What he thinks of the sovereign State would make Mr. Kellogg shiver. Actually this essay writer is no more radical than a plug hat, but when the State waxes radical, as it is in the present stage of interference with personal and family rights, it tries to destroy its critics by calling them radical. Smart young State! So I suspect that no nice captain of industry would read one of my books if I were to sign the Unofficial Observer's stuff. And mirth! What, I ask you, is likely to happen when the Mountain of Social and Industrial Uplift (slight exaggeration for the sake of preserving robust figure of speech) brings forth a flippant mouse? Crash goes the mountain and flat goes the

mouse.

So, for the time being at least, I am going to preserve the anonymous status of the Unofficial Observer. (That sentence is in the Official Spokesman's best style.) I tell myself that the Observer is going to hug the dusk for the good reason that he can do better by dark than by daylight. I tell myself he

can gather his material more easily if he walks the world unknown. He discourses frequently, you see, of innocent, naïve persons in a region where innocent, naïve persons are a little touchy on the subject of serving literary purposes. Our neighbors, I fear, would think the Observer was making game of them, whereas he loves them dearly in all their whims and crotchets and seeks to portray them, not as freaks in the national gallery, but as doers, thinkers, and be-ers richly worth recording.

But all the preceding paragraph, acutely considered, is mere rationaliz ing. The fact is that my neighbors might not object to the literary celebration of their qualities and landscapes; they might even like it and come bearing gifts of material. ‘Here's one you never heard.' Those who object could do no more than punch my face, which is nothing compared to the risks the Official Spokesman runs whenever he quotes corporation statistics. No; the real reason I do not pitch the Spokesman overboard with a millstone round his neck and hoist Observer's flag to the masthead is because I'm afraid. Afraid of the losses, afraid of the explanations, afraid that Observer might fizzle out under the weight of responsibility.

It has always been my conviction that courage is a writer's best asset. An average high-school graduate can write well enough, from the standpoints of grammar and punctuation, to satisfy any editor. Practically all human beings think interesting thoughts, if they could bring themselves to reveal the secrets of their minds. Courage is therefore the key to the editorial heart. The Official Spokesman started courageously, but has grown, I confess, hackneyed. And yet I dare not make the Unofficial Observer official. This is rank cowardice, no doubt, but what would you?

ALAYNE and Eden were in their own room. He was at his desk, and she standing beside him. He began searching through a box of stamps for a stamp that was not stuck to another one. He was mixing them up thoroughly, partially separating one from another, then in despair throwing them. back into the box, in such disorder that she longed to snatch them from him and set them to rights, if possible; but she had learned that he did not like his things put into order. He had been helping Renny to exercise two new saddle horses, and he smelled of the stables. The smell of horses was always in the house; dogs were always running in and out, barking to get in, scratching at doors to get out. Their muddy footprints were always in evidence in November.

1 'Here's a letter from New York to say they've got the proofs all right,' observed Eden. "They think the book will be ready by the first of March. Do you think that is a good time?'

'Excellent,' said Alayne. 'Is the letter from Mr. Cory?'

'Yes. He sends his regards to you. Says he misses you awfully. They all do. And he's sending you a package of new books to read.'

Alayne was delighted. 'Oh, I am so glad! I am hungry for new books. When I think how I used literally to wallow in them! Now the thought of a package of new ones seems wonderful.'

'What a brute I am!' exclaimed Eden. 'I never think of anything but my damned poetry. Why did n't you tell me you had nothing to read? Why don't you simply

1A synopsis of the preceding chapters will be found in the Contributors' Column. — THE EDITORS

jump on me when I'm stupid? Here you are, cooped up at Jalna with no amusements, while it streams November rain, and I lose myself in my idiotic imaginings!"

'I am perfectly happy, only I don't see a great deal of you. You were in town three days last week, for instance, and you went to that football match with Renny and Piers one day.'

'I know, I know. It was that filthy job I was looking after in town.'

"That did not come to anything, did it?' 'No. The hours were too beastly long. I'd have had no time for my real work at all. What I want is a job that will only take a part of my time. Leave me some leisure. And the pay not too bad. A chap named Evans, a friend of Renny's, who has something to do with the Department of Forestry, is going to do something for me, I'm pretty sure. He was overseas with Renny, and he married a relative of the Prime Minister.'

'What is the job?'

Eden was very vague about the job. Alayne had discovered that he was very vague about work of any kind except his writing, upon which he could concentrate with hot intensity.

'Eden, I sometimes wish you had gone on with your profession. You would at least have been sure of it. You would have been your own master —' 'Dear,' he interrupted, 'wish me an ill that I deserve trample on me - crush me be savage - but don't wish I were a member of that stuffy, stultifying, atrophying profession! It was Meggie who put me into it, when I was too young and weak to resist. But when I found out the effect it was having on me thank God, I had the grit to chuck it! My darling, just imagine