One difference from the stereotyped "sensibility" of the old world
one may discover in the openness of Crevecoeur's heart; and that is
the completeness of his interest in all the humbler sorts of natural
phenomena.
Nature is, for him, no mere bundle of poetic stage-
properties, soiled by much handling, but something fresh and
inviting and full of interest to a man alive. He takes more pleasure
in hunting bees than in expeditions with his dogs and gun; the king-
birds destroy his bees - but, he adds, they drive the crows away.
Ordinarily he could not persuade himself to shoot them. On one
occasion, however, he fired at a more than commonly impertinent
specimen, "and immediately opened his maw, from which I took 171
bees; I laid them all on a blanket in the sun, and to my great
surprise fifty-four returned to life, licked themselves clean, and
joyfully went back to the hive, where they probably informed their
companions of such an adventure and escape, as I believe had never
happened before to American bees." Must one regard this as a fable?
It is by no means as remarkable a yarn as one may find told by other
naturalists of the same century. There is, for example, that undated
letter of John Bartram's, in which he makes inquiries of his brother
William concerning "Ye Wonderful Flower;" [Footnote: see "A
Botanical Marvel," in The Nation (New York), August 5, 1909.] there
is, too, Kalm's report of Bartram's bear: "When a bear catches a
cow, he kills her in the following manner: he bites a hole into the
hide and blows with all his power into it, till the animal swells
excessively and dies; for the air expands greatly between the flesh
and the hide." After these fine fancies, where is the improbability
of Crevecoeur's modest adaptation of the Jonah-allegory that he
applies to the king-bird and his bees? The episode suggests, for
that matter, a chapter in Mitchell's My Farm at Edgewood. Mitchell,
a later American farmer, describes the same king-birds, the same
bees; has, too, the same supremely gentle spirit. "I have not the
heart to shoot at the king-birds; nor do I enter very actively into
the battle of the bees. ... I give them fair play, good lodging,
limitless flowers, willows bending (as Virgil advises) into the
quiet water of a near pool; I have even read up the stories of a
poor blind Huber, who so dearly loved the bees, and the poem of
Giovanni Rucellai, for their benefit." Can the reader state, without
stopping to consider, which author it was that wrote thus - Mitchell
or Crevecoeur? Certainly it is the essential modernity of the
earlier writer's style that most impresses one, after the charm of
his pictures. His was the age of William Livingston - later Governor
of the State of New Jersey; and in the very year when a London
publisher was bringing out the first edition of the Farmer's
Letters, Livingston, described on his title-page as a "young
gentleman educated at Yale College," brought out his Philosophic
Solitude at Trenton, in his native state.
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