SOUNDS. 
139 
live songsters. All climates agree with brave Chan¬ 
ticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. 
His health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits 
never flag. Even the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific 
is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never 
roused me from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, 
cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there 
was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the churn, 
nor the spinning wheel, nor even the singing of the ket¬ 
tle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to 
comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost 
his senses or died of ennui before this. Hot even rats 
in the wall, for they were starved out, or rather were 
never baited in, — only squirrels on the roof and under 
the floor, a whippoorwill on the ridge pole, a blue-jay 
screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck 
under the house, a screech-owl or a cat-owl behind it, a 
flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and 
a fox to bark in the night. Hot even a lark or an 
oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever visited my clear¬ 
ing. Ho cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the 
yard. Ho yard! but unfenced Hature reaching up to 
your very sills. A young forest growing up under 
your windows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines 
breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch-pines 
rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of 
room, their roots reaching quite under the house. In¬ 
stead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale, —* a 
pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind 
your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front- 
yard gate in the Great Snow, — no gate — no front- 
yard, — and no path to the civilized world ! 
