The Yankee, with his proverbial thriftiness and forecast, appears entirely to lose these gifts when it comes to the proper and sensible management of woodlands. Can he not understand that it is more profitable to keep a lean or thin soil that will grow nothing well but wood, growing wood instead of worthless weeds? The crop is one which is slow in coming to the harvest, but it is a sure one, and is every year becoming a more valuable one. It breaks the fierceness of the winds, and keeps the springs from drying up, and is a comfort to the eye, whether in the greenness of the leaf or the barrenness of the bough, and under its protecting arms live and breed the grouse, the quail and the hare, and in its shadowed rills swim the trout.
The way to the woods is blurred with a mist of driven snow that veils the portal of the forest with its upblown curtain, and blots out all paths, and gives to the familiar landmarks a ghostly unreality. The quietude of the woods is disturbed by turbulent voices, the angry roar and shriek of the wind, the groaning and clashing of writhing, tormented trees. Over all, the sunned but unwarmed sky bends its blue arch, as cold as the snowy fields and woods beneath it.
In such wild weather you are not tempted far abroad in quest of old acquaintances of fields and woods, yet from the inhospitable woods some of them come to you. Among them all, none is more welcome than that feathered atom of life, the chickadee. With the same blithe note that welcomed you to his woodland haunts in spring, in summer, and in autumn, when he attended you with such charming familiarity, amusing you with pretty acrobatic feats, as he flitted now before, now beside, now above you, he hails you now, and asks that hospitality be extended to him.
Set forth a feast of suet on the window-sill, and he will need no bidding to come and partake of it. How daintily he helps himself to the tiniest morsels, never cramming his bill with gross mouthfuls as do his comrades at the board, the nuthatch and the downy woodpecker! They, like unbidden guests, doubtful of welcome or of sufferance even, make the most of time that may prove all too brief, and gorge themselves as greedily as hungry tramps; while he, unscared by your face at the window, tarries at his repast, pecking his crumbs with leisurely satisfaction. You half expect to see him swept from your sight like a thistledown by the gusty blast, but he holds bravely to his perch, unruffled in spirit if not in feathers, and defies his fierce assailant with his oft-repeated challenge.