How to Pretend

'T is the fashion where I estivate to know the birds or else to pretend to. For the conscientious this is a hard prescription which entails suffering. The anguish, for The anguish, for example, that the true bird student, old in experience, feels over the hopelessness of ever knowing the multitudinous to Know the Birds warblers apart, though all out of proportion to the space occupied in the universe by these tiny creatures whose flittings are not even visible to the untrained eye, is genuine. It serves to warn the lightminded not to take ornithology seriously; to join the pretenders who acquire the art of jumping to conclusions in social exchange with bird-lovers. The ungodly result is that they are quite as likely to be correct as the honest inquirers.

To pretend successfully is merely a matter of keeping one's eyes and ears open and using common sense. Begin with robinsanything biggish hopping about, with rather rude manners toward bird and man, is a robin. If you cannot see one, but hear a persistent note, called by the amiably disposed cheerful, it is his voice proclaiming indifference to the weather and you. The other familiar bird is the sparrow. But if you are not in the city it is not an English sparrow. There only is found this poor little pest which never hears a good word for itself unless the winter is so cold and dreary that any suggestion of feathers is warming to the soul. In the country, ninety times out of a hundred, you are listening to a song sparrow. A spontaneous burst of gladness, if it opens with three notes all alike, is his. Be sure to count three notes! He may try to fool you give only two-hesitate then the last then the ripple of joy. I have known him-the rascal!-to suppress one of the three. But you assume it. There are over thirty other sparrows and it might be just your luck, walking with a bird shark, to come upon one of them. Never mind! There are easy keys. A sparrow chipping is a chipping sparrow. A sharp-tailed is a sharp-tailed; a black-throated, a blackthroated. It is very simple. Catch a

glimpse of two white tail-feathers, you have a vesper. A scale running down softly in the bushes is the song of the field. If a sparrow without special markings, his note unfamiliar, flits across the road, be a man! Call him a swamp, fox, or tree, according to impulse. You are quite as likely to be right as your earnest companion. But be firm! Only he who knows hesitates.

Why want to know all the birds? You don't people. Friends are enough at close range; celebrities from afar. Books and opera-glasses, hours crouching in silent semblance of rocks and trees, are very well for those who like them. But a good playing knowledge (nicer than working) of the little creatures that one loves more romantically for not knowing them all by name, may be acquired in an upright position. It is not inhibited by conversation or other human pursuits.

There are simple rules. If something sitting on a telephone-wire is wiggling its tail, it is a phoebe. If it keeps its tail still, it is a pewee. But did you ever know it to? If it is ever so much smaller, don't peer into the sun's rays! Call it a chebec! Especially if it says something not in the least like that, for it is named for its note. No bird says what is attributed to it by the authorities. Some vandal from Boston undoubtedly was conscientious in nicknaming the silver-tongued, white-throated sparrow "Peabody." Scarcely a bird has escaped a misnomer. If your phoebe is larger than usual and flashes a white breast, he is a kingbird. To make sure, isn't he picking a fight with some much bigger bird? Of course, if the bird chats while jerking his tail, he is a chat.

Miauing and crude attempts to mimic other bird-songs identify the catbird. But if you are in a berry pasture and a grove of pines is near, he is a brown thrasher instead. The books state that the latter sings better. Your opinion is not asked. And about the robin, by the way! He may not be a robin. He may be a red-eyed vireo; he has only to be more monotonous, sing high in the tree

and keep exasperatingly out of sight. The oriole can speak like a robin too, only more vociferously. But he is known by a marvellous flash of burnished brass and his incorrigible habit of feeding gluttonously upon worms in their cosey nest.

A disagreeable squawk heralds the fact that a flicker is to infest some tree with his malodorous abode. But a large bird showing a white rump in flying is not necessarily he. It may be a meadow-lark. You will not see the latter so often, but the contrast is made strong by his sweet, long-drawn two syllables. A hawk! Of course! No other bird shakes out his wings lightly and then just gets on and rides. Night-hawks (not hawks) you know by their snore. A barrel of noise in a pint of bird is a wren-well enough once in a way, but warranted to get on the nerves of the weary-hearted to whom life is not one grand hullabaloo. The bluebird is blue; the indigo bunting bluer. That which shrieks like a jay is one. The chickadee really says so. There again is a chance to be delightfully cheated. One bitter February morning I opened a sunny window and admitted the startling greeting, "Phoebe!" It was that of the chickadee, with intonation far more melodious than the copy. The gurgling, rollicking chortle of bobolinks becomes as familiar as the robin's word of cheer. If telephone-wires are in sight you can teach your youngest to count to a hundred in barn swallows or in goldfinches. There are handy guides to woodpeckers and their kin. If they creep up trees, they are they, unless they are creepers. But if they do it upside down, they are nuthatches. These do not include that woodchuck I once saw waddling down a trunk. A woodchuck is not a bird, but a titmouse is. A sprague pipit I never saw. Should I know it from a fall pippin? I think I should. Hammering, when there is no one else about, means a woodpecker. The downy or the hairy? No matter! Nobody ever seems to be able to say which is which without warning. You will not see much red in plumage. If you do, it is the coat of the scarlet tanager. Thrushes you will distinguish by song rather than suit. If a strain sends you down on your knees as instinctively as if you had entered a cathedral, the hermit is singing. The wood-thrush's song is the same, only you listen standing. "Fairy sleigh-bells" are rung by the Wilson thrush, or veery,

and, different though he is, he never forgets that he is a thrush. When you are waiting upon these wood songsters, probably you will be rudely interrupted by the rasping call, "Teacher! Teacher!" The ovenbird demands attention. Don't hunt for his fascinating roofed house on the ground—that is, if you would really like to see it. If you don't look, you may come across it. Nests can be as perverse as other things. The only way to find them is to cast a casual glance in among the vegetation, assuring yourself the while that the idea of search is remote from your mind. By that method the chances are that you will find a rare onesay, on a pine bough, a brown thrasher's, with five bluish eggs thickly dotted with brownish red; or, on the ground, a bobolink's, or a meadow-lark's carefully arched over. These are elusive, but not uncommon when one is not looking. The most satisfactory is the night-hawk's, because he doesn't build any. The eggs lie on a rock and look so much like it-as does the young birdthat they seldom are noticed. Probably it is not given to every one, as it was to me, to watch a baby night-hawk emerge from its shell into the light and warmth of a summer's day on this earth.

The medley of bird-songs readily resolves itself to those who listen just because they like to. It is not necessary to study if you are constitutionally out of sympathy with book learning; too lazy to carry guides and opera-glasses; too near-sighted or weakeyed to enjoy gazing at birds in their inevitable position, between you and the sun. More than a speaking acquaintance comes, like many another good thing in this life, in the course of ordinary living. Even the bird sharks never learn the names or songs of all of them. It is to be hoped that such an achievement is impossible. No more surprises from the little creatures whisking by! No more doubt whether you are viewing a pine siskin or a pipsissewa! Yes, one of these is a flower. But which? The eternal question!

Ponce de Leon cannot be considered overfoolish when he made his search for the fountain of eternal youth. Water seems to have the property of prolonging the lives of its dwellers. For how many years whales live nobody can say with certainty, but the opinion of naturalists, based on the layers of bone in the jaws of certain large species, is that the longevity of whales may be upward of four hundred years. And we know that some fresh-water fishes, carp and pike, attain a marvellous length of life. The petted carp in the monastery ponds of Europe have been known to rival the elephant in longevity and to have lived for one hundred and fifty years.

Anglers, particularly salmon and trout fishermen, are mostly a wet race. A Spanish proverb asserts that "he who catches trout has wet feet." It may be somewhat fanciful to affirm that soggy extremities lead to longevity, but if you search the records for long lives you will find that in Great Britain, and here also, on this side of the Atlantic, length of days has been granted to many of those who were ardent fishermen. Walton himself died in his ninetieth year, and there is an extensive list of English trout and salmon fishermen who lived beyond the age granted to most men. Doctor Nowell, whom Walton refers to as a lover of angling, lived to ninety-five, "having neither his eyesight, his hearing, or his memory impaired." Thomas Parr is frequently referred to as one of the longest of English lives. Somewhat legendary is the one hundred and fiftytwo years accredited to that ancient gentle

the amazing life of Henry Jenkins. At a court of justice Jenkins gave his testimony and made oath to the age of one hundred and twenty years. Evidence was at hand that Jenkins was in excellent health and that during the preceding fishing season he had daily wielded a heavy salmon rod, and salmon rods in those days were ponderous wands. Doctor Bethune states that Jenkins "lived to the age of one hundred and ninety-six years."

In America we have the "Father of American pisciculture," Doctor Theodatus Garlick, who died in his eighty-first year. The list of long lives among American anglers could be extended indefinitely, including the actor Joseph Jefferson, the writer William C. Prime, angling editor William C. Harris, Henry Ward Beecher, Grover Cleveland, etc., etc. The writer of this article had recently the pleasure of accompanying a clergyman on a fishing trip who, in descending into a rugged ravine, remarked: “A man upward of eighty-eight has to be more careful than you youngsters." And a skilful fly fisherman in Ulster County, New York, was met near the streamside, and, in answer to an inquiry as to his age said, "I have fished this stream for sixty years and I am now in my ninetieth year."

Aside from the rather fanciful suggestion that wet feet bring longevity, there are sounder reasons why anglers are granted long lives. The man who spends his vacations at fashionable resorts, lounging indolently on the porches of hotels and at cards or billiards at night, or dancing into the small hours, is not laying up a store of future health. The fisherman rises early; he is at his sport before the dew has evaporated from the streamside grasses. Throughout the long day he is in the open air, and so absorbed in his pleasant labors that every trouble and vexation has passed from his mind. While not overstrenuous, his exercise is constant, and the purest air is found at the margin of river, lake, or sea. He returns to his hostelry or camp with a digestion which is equal to baked beans and fried salt pork, and before ten o'clock he has dropped into dreamless slumber. Could any physician suggest a more recuperative recreation?

There are other paths to health connected with angling and which are not generally considered. The sport is one that becomes so much a part and parcel of the angler that

minor exhibits, including our own easy utterance when temper is let loose, we realize afresh that anger-articulate anger

The True Xanthippe?

Nor has what has been said a tithe of all that can be said concerning the healthfulness of the sport of angling. When other men affirm that it is impossible for them to leave the daily grind of their tasks, the angler laughs in his sleeve and somehow conjures a "day off" now and then or boldly slips away for a full week or month at a time. Fishing compels her devotees to drop everything and follow the gentle mistress.

She will not be denied. Her flowing watery garb holds enchantments that compel. Perforce the angler packs his grip and buys his railroad ticket, and his daily place among men is vacant until he returns, his face browned, his eyes sparkling, and his heart, mind, and spirit refreshed.

This I know is an age of petrol, dusty roads, and "carriages without horses"- -an age when the favored multitude take their exercise by proxy of swiftly turning wheels, and their air more or less mixed with the dirt of roads or, in cities, polluted with the gases of the motor. There are a minority, however, who, if they use wheels, use them to deliver their persons and rods beside some sweet running water, some sky-reflecting lake, or near where the surf pounds white upon the seaside rocks. These are they who, perhaps unknowingly, are laying up for themselves a store of years, and, when old age proves a burden, will have, in the words of dear old Walton,

"A quiet passage to a welcome grave."

She did not know, poor dear, when she gave herself up to the joy of anger, that she was going down through the ages as the typical scold, but even if she had known she might have thought the game worth the candle. Not hers the silent, torturing rage which leads to mad deeds; nor yet the blind fury which reckons neither words nor deeds. No; Xanthippe, as I picture her, was an artist in words, an artist dumb and imprisoned until Socrates set off the dynamite which burst her bonds.

"Anger warms the invention," says Poor Richard, in his sententious way, "but overheats the oven." Doubtless our Xanthippe often had to regard ruefully the results of that overheated oven; and it was not with intention that she stimulated her intellect with so destructive a fire. But the anger which quickens the intellect, loosens the tongue, and enlarges the vocabulary is too great a relief to be easily foregone by the person who, in the ordinary humdrum of life, is more or less tongue-tied. To feel not only the satisfaction of visiting wrath upon the individual who deserves it, but to experience the far greater joy of rapid, lucid thought, accompanied by an ability to clothe that thought in the most effective, the most trenchant words-who could resist the temptation? And so Xanthippe piled phrase upon phrase, not so much, we may guess, with a desire to give pain as because of a sort of intoxication in her power over words. To be mistress of words, able to articulate, to fit the phrase aptly, may surely have been worth braving the criticism of the neighbors, worth even a posthumous illrepute. True, it was hard on Socrates. It is always hard on the one who sets the dynamite off and cannot retreat to a safe distance. But then, Socrates had his own intellectual diversions which Xanthippe did not share. Also, he has had the sympathy of posterity.