222 
A Basket of Chips. 
— how many doors of my storehouse are 
ready to fly open at the sound of his 
strident voice. A sturdy, solitary, inde¬ 
pendent descendant of Thor, pursuing 
his own way up or down the tree trunk, 
hammering persistently at the end of 
a broken limb, or resting quietly after 
meals composedly making his toilet, — 
all the while utterly unmoved by the 
many alarms that perhaps send com¬ 
posite bands of ti’ee and song sparrows, 
juncos, goldfinches, and other birds, from 
the field where they are feeding to seek 
shelter in his tree. I admire his isola¬ 
tion and independence as I admire the 
chickadee’s good-fellowship and sociabil¬ 
ity ; and though the harsh call that tells 
of his presence, and the clattering, scram¬ 
bling descent of the gamut, his nearest 
approach to a song, have little of musical 
beauty, they are such sounds as pro¬ 
perly harmonize with his cynical philoso¬ 
phy. How many days of solitary, un¬ 
disturbed commingling with Nature are 
bound up in those jagged-edged tones ! — 
Days spent in the heart of the wilderness, 
though but a few minutes’ walk from 
my home in the suburbs of Washington ; 
for the wilderness is not measured by 
miles, and he who seeks it in the right 
spirit will always find its heart. It needs 
not a railroad journey across a conti¬ 
nent to enjoy the charm of the primeval 
forest. It often requires but the brief¬ 
est walk to step into a domain where 
epoch and race no longer exist, — an¬ 
other world where a spell of enchantment 
seizes and enthralls us. We belong to 
no country, no age. Our identity falls 
from us like a discarded mantle, and we 
blend with our environment. 
“ I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 
To mingle with the universe.” 
In the world we have left we are tied 
by a million bonds to a particular spot 
on the earth’s surface, to a particular 
point in the earth’s history, but here, in 
the land of woodpeckers and titmice, 
there is no such bondage, and we roam 
free and untrammeled. This little purl¬ 
ing brook, this lichen-covered rock, these 
massive oaks and beeches, these dark, 
quiet pools may belong to any one of 
many ages or climes: they own no spe¬ 
cial 'master. Amid their unchanged 
beauties might meet on equal terms, as 
tenants, the savage of a prehistoric era 
and one of that noble race that shall in¬ 
herit the earth when the present era shall 
have passed into the dark gloom of bar¬ 
barism. We are in the presence of an 
eternal Now, and for the hour are one 
with it. Our occupation, even though it 
be but the gathering of chips, is trans¬ 
formed by its touch into a pursuit of 
prime importance, to which we maj'^ lend 
ourselves zealously without compromise 
of dignity. In fact, it must be confessed, 
the little local issues of ephemeral poli¬ 
tics, shifting commercial and industrial 
systems, fluctuating empires, varying re¬ 
ligions, which have such prominence in 
that remote world we have left, seem 
petty and ignoble objects of thought 
and attention in the majestic presence of 
this world of immutability we have en¬ 
tered. 
To return to our birds, — the white¬ 
breasted nuthatch has a Canadian cousin 
that spends the winter with us, whose 
breast is red, instead of white ; a trim 
little sprite, that seems designed for a 
perpetual example of staccato. He darts 
about in a series of quick, short jerks, 
uttering all the while a little 'pit-'pit-pit- 
pit-int, of very light notes, suggestive of 
dripping water. These notes he some¬ 
times expands into a hanh-hanh closely 
resembling that uttered by his cousin, 
but distinguished by a brassier sound, 
that recalls the tones of the tiny toy 
trumpet whose music used to delight our 
childish ears for a full hour of a Christ¬ 
mas morning. 
The first red-breasted nuthatch of my 
acquaintance gave me a surprise : he flew 
down to a stream to drink, and, as he 
lifted his bill skyward and chewed the 
water, after the peculiar manner of birds. 
