Though Our Farmer Emphasises His Plainness, And Promises The Readers
Of His Letters Only A Matter-Of-Fact Account Of
His pursuits, he has
his full share of eighteenth-century "sensibility." Since he is,
however, at many removes from the
Sophistications of London and
Paris, he is moved, not by the fond behaviour of a lap-dog, or the
"little arrangements" carters make with the bridles of their
faithful asses (that they have driven to death, belike), but by such
matters as he finds at home. "When I contemplate my wife, by my
fire-side, while she either spins, knits, darns, or suckles our
child, I cannot describe the various emotions of love, of gratitude,
or conscious pride which thrill in my heart, and often overflow in
voluntary tears ..." He is like that old classmate's of
Fitzgerald's, buried deep "in one of the most out-of-the-way
villages in all England," for if he goes abroad, "it is always
involuntary. I never return home without feeling some pleasant
emotion, which I often suppress as useless and foolish." He has his
reveries; but they are pure and generous; their subject is the
future of his children. In midwinter, instead of trapping and
"murthering" the quail, "often in the angles of the fences where the
motion of the wind prevents the snow from settling, I carry them
both chaff and grain: the one to feed them, the other to prevent
their tender feet from freezing fast to the earth as I have
frequently observed them to do." His love of birds is marked: this
in those provinces of which a German traveller wrote: "In the thrush
kind America is poor; there is only the red-breasted robin. ...
There are no sparrows. Very few birds nest in the woods; a solemn
stillness prevails through them, interrupted only by the screaming
of the crows." It is good, after such a passage as this has been
quoted, to set down what Crevecoeur says of the bird kingdom. "In
the spring," he writes, "I generally rise from bed about that
indistinct interval which, properly speaking, is neither night nor
day:" for then it is that he enjoys "the universal vocal choir." He
continues - more and more lyrically: "Who can listen unmoved, to the
sweet love-tales of our robins, told from tree to tree? Or to the
shrill cat birds? The sublime accents of the thrush from on high,
always retard my steps, that I may listen to the delicious music."
And the Farmer is no less interested in "the astonishing art which
all birds display in the construction of their nests, ill provided
as we may suppose them with proper tools; their neatness, their
convenience." At some time during his American residence he gathered
the materials for an unpublished study of ants; and his bees proved
an unfailing source of entertainment. "Their government, their
industry, their quarrels, their passions, always present me with
something new," he writes; adding that he is most often to be found,
in hours of rest, under the locust tree where his beehive stands.
"By their movements," says he, "I can predict the weather, and can
tell the day of their swarming." When other men go hunting game, he
goes bee-hunting.
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