Another boy, our dear naturalist, also lives far away. His able, merry brothers were the most practical creatures; so was he, too, but in another way. He turned, a little grave-eyed child, to out-of-doors, as a duck takes to water, caring for birds and beasts with a pure passion, as absorbed in watching their ways as were the other boys in games and food. It was nothing to him to miss a meal, or two, if a turtle’s eggs might be hatching. He had very little to help him, for his father, a very fine man, a master builder, failed in health early; but he helped himself. He found countless little out-of-the-way jobs; he mounted trout or partridges for older friends, caught bait, exchanged specimens through magazines, etc., to keep himself out of doors, and to buy books and collecting materials. By the time he was twelve he had a little taxidermy business; and with the growth of technical skill, the finer part, the naturalist’s seeing eye for infinite difference—the shading of the moth’s wing, the marking of the wren’s egg—grew faster yet; and with it the patient reverent absorption in the whole.
People come to him now for accurate and delicate knowledge. His word gives the authority which for so long he sought; and, at least once, he has been sent by his Government to bring back a report of birds and fishes, and to plant his country’s flag on a lone coral island.
The other night we went to a play given by some of the school children. Their orchestra played with spirit; and from the first we grew absorbed in watching a little boy who played the bass drum. The bass drum! He played the snare-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, a set of musical rattles, and I do not know how many extraordinary things attached to hand or feet, as well. Our northern music is choked in the sand of over-business, prisoned by northern stiffness, but shy, stiff, awkward though it may be, the divine thing is there, as groundwater is present where there is land; and nothing can keep our children from buying (generally with their own earnings) instruments of one sort or another, and picking up lessons.
I know this little boy. His father is a laborer, a slack man, down at heels, but kind and indulgent. The boy is a chubby little soul, and he accompanied the showy rag-time as Bach’s son might have played his father’s masses, with a serious, reverent absorption, his little unconscious face lighting up at any prettier change in the rag-time. They live in a tiny cottage, and are well-fed, but very untidy. As the humming bird finds honey, this child had somehow picked up odd pennies to buy, and found time to master, his extraordinary collection of instruments, and he sat playing as if in Heaven. Surely we had seen yet another manifestation of the Power, which, together with the bright fields of golden-rod and daisies, plants also the hidden lily in the woods.