A Tramp Abroad
as any low white people could have done. They craned their necks and
laughed at me (for a raven CAN laugh, just like a man), they squalled
insulting remarks after me as long as they could see me. They were
nothing but ravens--I knew that--what they thought of me could be a
matter of no consequence--and yet when even a raven shouts after you,
“What a hat!” “Oh, pull down your vest!” and that sort of thing, it
hurts you and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it with
fine reasoning and pretty arguments.
Animals talk to each other, of course. There can be no question about
that; but I suppose there are very few people who can understand them.
I never knew but one man who could. I knew he could, however, because he
told me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted miner who had
lived in a lonely corner of California, among the woods and mountains,
a good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the
beasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translate
any remark which they made. This was Jim Baker. According to Jim Baker,
some animals have only a limited education, and some use only simple
words, and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; whereas,
certain other animals have a large vocabulary, a fine command of
language and a ready and fluent delivery; consequently these latter talk
a great deal; they like it; they are so conscious of their talent,
and they enjoy “showing off.” Baker said, that after long and careful
observation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays were the
best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said he:
“There's more TO a bluejay than any other creature. He has got more
moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and,
mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. And
no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out
book-talk--and bristling with metaphor, too--just bristling! And as for
command of language--why YOU never see a bluejay get stuck for a word.
No man ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing: I've
noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that uses
as good grammar as a bluejay. You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well,
a cat does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to
pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar
that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the NOISE
which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's
the sickening grammar they use. Now I've never heard a jay use bad
grammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are as ashamed as a
human; they shut right down and leave.
“You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--but he's got
feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps; but otherwise
he is just as much human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's
gifts, and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole
ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay
will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and
four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise. The
sacredness of an obligation is such a thing which you can't cram into
no bluejay's head. Now, on top of all this, there's another thing; a
jay can out-swear any gentleman in the mines. You think a cat can swear.
Well, a cat can; but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his
reserve-powers, and where is your cat? Don't talk to ME--I know too much
about this thing; in the one little particular of scolding--just good,
clean, out-and-out scolding--a bluejay can lay over anything, human or
divine. Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry,
a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and
discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor,
a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. If
a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. Now I'm going
to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays.”
CHAPTER III
Baker's Bluejay Yarn
[What Stumped the Blue Jays]
“When I first begun to understand jay language correctly, there was a
little incident happened here. Seven years ago, the last man in this
region but me moved away. There stands his house--been empty ever since;
a log house, with a plank roof--just one big room, and no more; no
ceiling--nothing between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday
morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat, taking
the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves
rustling so lonely in the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder in
the states, that I hadn't heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay
lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, 'Hello, I
reckon I've struck something.' When he spoke, the acorn dropped out of
his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn't care; his
mind was all on the thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof.
He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to
the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up with
his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings--which signifies
gratification, you understand--and says, 'It looks like a hole, it's
located like a hole--blamed if I don't believe it IS a hole!'
“Then he cocked his head down and took another look; he glances up
perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings and his tail both, and
says, 'Oh, no, this ain't no fat thing, I reckon! If I ain't in luck!
--Why it's a perfectly elegant hole!' So he flew down and got that
acorn, and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting his
head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face, when all of a
sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude and that smile faded
gradually out of his countenance like breath off'n a razor, and the
queerest look of surprise took its place. Then he says, 'Why, I didn't
hear it fall!' He cocked his eye at the hole again, and took a long
look; raised up and shook his head; stepped around to the other side of
the hole and took another look from that side; shook his head again. He
studied a while, then he just went into the Details--walked round and
round the hole and spied into it from every point of the compass.
No use. Now he took a thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and
scratched the back of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally
says, 'Well, it's too many for ME, that's certain; must be a mighty long
hole; however, I ain't got no time to fool around here, I got to “tend
to business”; I reckon it's all right--chance it, anyway.'
“So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried
to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it,
but he was too late. He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he
raised up and sighed, and says, 'Confound it, I don't seem to understand
this thing, no way; however, I'll tackle her again.' He fetched
another acorn, and done his level best to see what become of it, but he
couldn't. He says, 'Well, I never struck no such a hole as this before;
I'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.' Then he begun
to get mad. He held in for a spell, walking up and down the comb of the
roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got
the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose and cussed himself
black in the face. I never see a bird take on so about a little thing.
When he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for half a
minute; then he says, 'Well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole, and
a mighty singular hole altogether--but I've started in to fill you, and
I'm damned if I DON'T fill you, if it takes a hundred years!'
“And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work so since you was
born. He laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns
into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most
exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped to
take a look anymore--he just hove 'em in and went for more. Well, at
last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. He comes
a-dropping down, once more, sweating like an ice-pitcher, dropped his
acorn in and says, 'NOW I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time!'
So he bent down for a look. If you'll believe me, when his head come up
again he was just pale with rage. He says, 'I've shoveled acorns enough
in there to keep the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one
of 'em I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two
minutes!'
“He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his
back agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions and
begun to free his mind. I see in a second that what I had mistook for
profanity in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say.
“Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops
to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him the whole circumstance,
and says, 'Now yonder's the hole, and if you don't believe me, go and
look for yourself.' So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and
says, 'How many did you say you put in there?' 'Not any less than
two tons,' says the sufferer. The other jay went and looked again. He
couldn't seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays
come. They all examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell
it over again, then they all discussed it, and got off as many
leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could
have done.
“They called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty soon this
whole region 'peared to have a blue flush about it. There must have been
five thousand of them; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping
and cussing, you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his eye to
the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery
than the jay that went there before him. They examined the house all
over, too. The door was standing half open, and at last one old jay
happened to go and light on it and look in. Of course, that knocked the
mystery galley-west in a second. There lay the acorns, scattered all
over the floor.. He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. 'Come here!'
he says, 'Come here, everybody; hang'd if this fool hasn't been trying
to fill up a house with acorns!' They all came a-swooping down like a
blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took a glance, the
whole absurdity of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him
home and he fell over backward suffocating with laughter, and the next
jay took his place and done the same.
“Well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop and the trees for
an hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain't any
use to tell me a bluejay hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know
better. And memory, too. They brought jays here from all over the United
States to look down that hole, every summer for three years. Other
birds, too. And they could all see the point except an owl that come
from Nova Scotia to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on
his way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny in it. But then he
was a good deal disappointed about Yo Semite, too.”
CHAPTER IV
Student Life
[The Laborious Beer King]
The summer semester was in full tide; consequently the most frequent
figure in and about Heidelberg was the student. Most of the students
were Germans, of course, but the representatives of foreign lands
were very numerous. They hailed from every corner of the globe--for