32 What Birds Have Done With Me 



"Now, watch ze me read primer book in right 

 tune," and he would unravel the tangle. Again, 

 pointing to where a fox had made a long leap; 

 "He say Adolph go buy more long leg." A duck's 

 track would call forth this, or something like it; 

 "When I try fly, fool like duck walk." 



What he did not know about every living thing 

 in the wilderness, the small boy did not think 

 worth knowing. He was always eager to initiate 

 his pupil into new mysteries,- even to the eat- 

 ing of a rye-bread sandwich, with frozen ants 

 between the slices, followed with shouts of 

 laughter that woke the echoes, when he got a 

 glimpse of the small boy's face, after swallowing 

 the first mouthful. How can I convey any ade- 

 quate idea of the perpetual delight of Adolph's 

 cabin, dug into a sharp southern slope, with only 

 two logs and the slope of its roof to mock at the 

 north wind that went howling by in impotent 

 rage? Lying on a bear skin, of a winter night, 

 before the pulsating red glory of blazing logs, 

 listening to Adolph's fiddle that told its own story 

 of life in the woods, from the earliest chirp of 

 half-awakened birds to the raucous screech of a 

 catamount; music so wonderful that it fairly sent 

 a thrill of swaying motion up among the skins of 

 animals hanging near the rooftree of the unceiled 

 room. To this, add marvelous jig dancing, French 

 songs without number, and stories without end, 



