Charles Abbott - Outings At Odd Times

John Blank is one of those unfortunates who desire to be thought a genius. To float with the current is beneath his dignity. Uz Gaunt described him well as one who persists in looking toward the west to see the sun rise. Knowing my love for the open fields, this would-be genius has kindly treated me, of late, to innumerable accounts of recent observations of beasts, birds, reptiles, and wild life’s less noble forms, and certainly the man has remarkable powers in one direction – he can misinterpret admirably. “Think of it!” he exclaimed excitedly; “here it is December, and I have heard a frog croak! It was not a springtime croak, of course, but a cry of pain, and I believe a musk-rat dug it out of its winter quarters, and the sound I heard was a cry of pain.” It is a wonder that he did not hear the musk-rat’s chuckle over a good dinner, also. Here we have three assumptions – that frogs never sing in winter; that they habitually hibernate; and that musk-rats dig them out of the mud. The aforesaid John Blank had lived forty-odd years on a farm, and did not know that frogs voluntarily sang or croaked during mild winter days. Like many another, finding that it is cold in December, he turns his back on winter sunshine.

Here are some statistics concerning frogs in winter. Previous to Oct. 20, 1889, there had been white frost, some chilly days as well as nights, and yet the frogs sang merrily on that date. There was frost, snow, and ice during the following week, and then these same frogs were again in full chorus; and later, in November, as late as the 19th, they rattled and piped, not only in the sheltered marshes, but among the wilted stalks of lotus in an exposed upland field. Then a long interim, when I was constantly in town, but at noon, December 19, I heard them again, and on Jan. 12, 1890, frogs of at least two species were croaking; and, too, bees were about, snakes were sunning themselves, turtles crawled from the mud, and salamanders squatted on dead oak leaves in the full glare of an almost midsummer sun. When John Blank was told of this he looked his name; but he was not disconcerted. “Did you ever examine the marshes in winter?” I asked.

“Certainly not,” he replied, and added: “What’s to be found in frozen mud, cold water, and about dead grass?”

“More life than you ever saw in midsummer,” was the impatient reply, and with this I moved off.

Blank maintained his reputation and declined to take a hint. “Did you ever see wild violets at Christmas?” he asked. I laughed, and assuming good-nature, said, “Come along,” and started with the conceited nuisance to a sheltered meadow. The grass was not dead, although Christmas was at hand; there were even green leaves on the sassafras sprouts; the water was not cold, although its surface had been frozen; the mud was very soft. Clustered about the roots of a noble tulip tree were claytonias in bloom; in the moist meadows were pale-blue violets, and beyond, exposed to the sweep of every chilly breeze from the west, were houstonias, and scattered here and there were single dandelions. “This,” I remarked, “is no unusual matter, referable to midwinter, and ought to be familiar to you; but you have probably not looked in the proper places for these things”; and, taking my cue from dear old Uz Gaunt, added, “don’t look in the west to see the sun rise.”

Then, pleading an engagement with solitude, I bade John Blank “Good-morning.”

The landscape lightened as the bore disappeared. And how an hour’s outing with nature soothes the irritation of an unwelcome interview! If I were an editor, I would have a cage of frogs, with a bit of green moss and a pool of water like that now at my elbow. To this I could turn for mental refreshment the moment the retiring intruder faced the door of the sanctum. There is nothing so reviving as to contemplate a frog, or, better yet, a tree-toad. Here is one from Florida that takes the world philosophically. When it is too cool on the shady side of his home he creeps to the sunny side; and as the sun will not stand still, the toad moves with it; This seems too trivial to mention, but really is not. There are people in my neighborhood who growl because the sun does not shine through the north windows, and more than one old farmer who persists in shivering in the wagon-house, under protest, of course, while the woodshed is warm and sunny. There is a chance for every man born in the world, but this same world is not to be molded to every crank’s convenience. Even my tree-toad knows that a fly may be on the wrong side of the glass for him; although it took months of vain bumping of his precious head before the idea reached his brain, and even now he sometimes forgets the lesson so painfully learned. On the other hand, there is little reason to believe that John Blank will look in the sunny meadows next year for belated blossoms. If he finds one by accident in a corner of a cold upland field, it will be heralded as a great discovery.

There is another tree-toad in the frog-pen that is a happy philosopher. Of late, either the food offered is not the proper sort, or the creature habitually fasts at this time of year, which is not improbable. Be this as it may, there is no giving way to despondency because of an empty stomach, and when his companions are taking noonday naps, or recalling the outer world that once they knew, this little fellow, from the door of his mossy cave, or perched upon a dead twig near by, sings merrily. There are doubtless some who would be stupid enough to declare it the cry of despair; but there is no trace of trouble in the sound; no tremulous quaver as though fraught with grief. It is the clear, joyous exultation of supreme content, as we hear it in the woods during bright October days. Again, perhaps those gifted with an ear for music would call the tree-toad’s song a “squeak.” This matters not, for when that tree-toad pipes his single note, I take an outing. My study walls vanish; the hillside and meadow, the winding creek, rolling field, and shady orchard are again, as of old, the playground of my rambling life.

The winters seemed colder, whether they were or not, when I was a boy; and some thirty years ago there was one Christmas week when it seemed as if the glacial period had suddenly returned. There was snow on the ground, and thick blue-black ice on the creeks and flooded meadows. One had not to take a circuitous route to reach whatever point he wished, and this to the boys of the neighborhood made the outdoor world more attractive. Not an old hollow tree, even, in the treacherous swamps, but could now be reached, and so the home of every owl, coon, or opossum, was at every boy’s mercy. What, then, if it were cold! Boots and overcoat were equal to every need, and the wide and wild world was before us. There was a skeleton in my closet, nevertheless. Christmas was approaching, but never a sign of it within the walls of the old farm-house. For years it had come and gone with scarcely a mention made of the fact; and now, having heard something of holiday festivities from city cousins, I vowed I would revolutionize the family custom in one respect. But how? A hundred plans came as if by magic, but each was handicapped by impracticability – a condition of affairs that is very common to most men’s maturer years. It must be a secret, of course. The opposition would prove formidable indeed if the matter were openly discussed. Never a Christmas had been celebrated for a full century in the old house, and why now? But I was determined, and so it came about that I had a merry Christmas.

It was a simple matter, after all; and how often it happens that, after days of puzzling over the impossible, an easy solution of a difficulty comes at the proper moment! When it was time to act, all was plain enough. On one plea or another, I went from house to house, as if the call was by mere accident, and made known my wishes to a judicious member of each family visited. All agreed to broach the subject, and so it resulted that two or more members of five families, each group in blissful ignorance of his neighbor’s movements, determined to spend the day with my grandfather. It was the first surprise party in that staid Quaker neighborhood, and never before so merry a Christmas. Of course the originator was all innocence; but the puzzled expression on his grandfather’s face and the perplexity of the women-folk were fun indeed to him. “There’s company coming,” I remarked, as a carriage turned in the lane. “Sure enough!” remarked my aunt, who, turning to her sister, added, “And there is almost nothing for dinner.” I grinned. Before the first carriage drove up to the house, a second was in sight, and the third was not far behind.