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Mrs. Sparrowgrass and I have concluded to try
it once more: we are going to give the country
another chance. After all, birds in the spring are
lovely. First, come little snow birds, avant-cour
riers of the feathered army; then, blue-birds, in
national uniforms, just graduated; perhaps, from
the ornithological corps of cadets, with high honors
in the topographical class; then follows a detachment
of flying artillery—swallows; sand-martens,
sappers, and miners, begin their mines and countermines
under the sandy parapets; then cedar
birds, in trim jackets faced with yellow—aha,
dragoons! And then the great rank and file of
infantry, robins, wrens, sparrows, chipping-birds;
and lastly—the band!

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“From nature's old cathedral sweetly ring
The wild bird choirs—burst of the woodland band,
—who mid the blossoms sing;
Their leafy temple, gloomy, tall, and grand,
Pillared with oaks, and roofed with Heaven's own hand.”
There, there, that is Mario. Hear that magnificent
chest note from the chesnuts! then a crescendo,
falling in silence—à-plomb!

Hush! he begins again with a low, liquid
monotone, mounting by degrees and swelling
into an infinitude of melody—the whole grove
dilating, as it were, with the exquisite epithalamium.

Silence now—and how still!

Hush! the musical monologue begins anew; up,
up, into the tree-tops it mounts, fairly lifting
the leaves with its passionate effluence, it trills
through the upper branches—and then dripping
down the listening foliage, in a cadenza of matchless
beauty, subsides into silence again.

“That's a he cat-bird,” says my carpenter.

A cat-bird? Then Shakespeare and Shelly have
wasted powder upon the sky-lark; for never such
“profuse strains of unpremeditated art” issued
from living bird before. Sky-lark! pooh! who

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would rise at dawn to hear the sky-lark, if a cat-bird
were about, after breakfast?

I have bought me a boat. A boat is a good thing
to have in the country, especially if there be any
water near. There is a fine beach in front of my
house. When visitors come, I usually propose to
give them a row. I go down—and find the boat
full of water; then I send to the house for a dipper;
and prepare to bail; and, what with bailing
and swabbing her with a mop, and plugging up
the cracks in her sides, and struggling to get the
rudder in its place, and unlocking the rusty padlock,
my strength is so much exhausted that it is
almost impossible for me to handle the oars. Meanwhile,
the poor guests sit on stones around the beach,
with woe-begone faces. “My dear,” said Mrs.
Sparrowgrass, “why don't you sell that boat?”

“Sell it? ha! ha!”

One day, a Quaker lady from Philadelphia paid
us a visit. She was uncommonly dignified, and
walked down to the water in the most stately
manner, as is customary with Friends. It was
just twilight, deepening into darkness, when I set
about preparing the boat. Meanwhile our Friend
seated herself upon something on the beach. While

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I was engaged in bailing, the wind shifted, and I
became sensible of an unpleasant odor; afraid that
our Friend would perceive it too, I whispered Mrs.
Sparrowgrass to coax her off, and get her further
up the beach.

“Thank thee, no, Susan, I feel a smell hereabout,
and I am better where I am.”

Mrs. S. came back, and whispered mysteriously,
that our Friend was sitting on a dead dog, at which
I redoubled the bailing, and got her out in deep
water as soon as possible.

Dogs have a remarkable scent. A dead setter
one morning found his way to our beach, and I
towed him out in the middle of the river; but the
faithful creature came back in less than an hour—
that dog's smell was remarkable, indeed.

I have bought me a fyke! A fyke is a good
thing to have in the country. A fyke is a fish-net,
with long wings on each side; in shape like a
night-cap with ear-lappets; in mechanism like a
rat-trap. You put a stake at the tip end of the
night-cap, a stake at each end of the outspread
lappets; there are large hoops to keep the night-cap
distended, sinkers to keep the lower sides of
the lappets under water, and floats, as large as

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musk-melons, to keep the upper sides above the
water. The stupid fish come down stream, and
rubbing their noses against the wings, follow the
curve towards the fyke, and swim into the trap.
When they get in they cannot get out. That is
the philosophy of a fyke. I bought one of Conroy.
“Now,” said I to Mrs. Sparrowgrass, “we shall
have fresh fish, to-morrow, for breakfast;” and
went out to set it. I drove the stakes in the mud,
spread the fyke in the boat, tied the end of one
wing to the stake, and cast the whole into the
water. The tide carried it out in a straight line.
I got the loose end fastened to the boat, and found
it impossible to row back against the tide with the
fyke. I then untied it, and it went down stream,
stake and all. I got it into the boat, rowed up, and
set the stake again. Then I tied one end, to the
stake, and got out of the boat myself, in shoal water.
Then the boat got away in deep water; then I had
to swim for the boat. Then I rowed back and untied
the fyke. Then the fyke got away. Then I
jumped out of the boat to save the fyke, and the
boat got away. Then I had to swim again after
the boat, and row after the fyke, and finally was
glad to get my net on dry land, where I left it for

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a week in the sun. Then I hired a man to set it,
and he did; but he said it was “rotted.” Nevertheless,
in it I caught two small flounders and an
eel. At last, a brace of Irishmen came down to
my beach for a swim, at high tide. One of them,
a stout, athletic fellow, after performing sundry
aquatic gymnastics, dived under and disappeared
for a fearful length of time. The truth is, he had
dived into my net. After much turmoil in the
water, he rose to the surface with the filaments
hanging over his head, and cried out, as if he had
found a bird's nest: “I say, Jimmy! be gorra
here's a foike?” That unfeeling exclamation to
Jimmy, who was not the owner of the net, made
me almost wish that it had not been “rotted.”

We are worried about our cucumbers. Mrs. S.
is fond of cucumbers, so I planted enough for ten
families. The more they are picked, the faster they
grow; and if you do not pick them, they turn
yellow, and look ugly. Our neighbor has plenty,
too. He sent us some one morning, by way of a
present. What to do with them we did not know,
with so many of our own. To give them away was
not polite; to throw them away was sinful; to eat
them was impossible. Mrs. S. said, “Save them

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them for seed.” So we did. Next day, our neighbor
sent us a dozen more. We thanked the messenger
grimly, and took them in. Next morning,
another dozen came. It was getting to be a serious
matter; so I rose betimes the following morning, and
when my neighbor's cucumbers came, I filled his
man's basket with some of my own, by way of
exchange. This bit of pleasantry was resented by
my neighbor, who told his man to throw them to
the hogs. His man told our girl, and our girl told
Mrs. S., and, in consequence, all intimacy between
the two families has ceased; the ladies do not
speak even, at church.

We have another neighbor, whose name is
Bates; he keeps cows. This year our gate has
been fixed; but my young peach-trees, near the
fences, are accessible from the road; and Bates's
cows walk along that road, morning and evening.
The sound of a cow bell is pleasant in the twilight.
Sometimes, after dark, we hear the mysterious curfew
tolling along the road, and then, with a louder
peal, it stops before our fence, and again tolls itself
off in the distance. The result is, my peach-tress
are as bare as bean-poles. One day, I saw Mr.
Bates walking along, and I hailed him: “Bates,

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those are your cows there, I believe.” “Yes, sir—
nice ones, ain't they?” “Yes,” I replied, “they
are nice ones. Do you see that tree there?”—and
I pointed to a thrifty peach; with about as many
leaves as an exploded sky-rocket. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, Bates, that red-and-white cow of yours,
yonder, ate the top off that tree: I saw her do it.”
Then I thought I had made Bates ashamed of
himself, and had wounded his feelings, perhaps too
much. I was afraid he would offer me money for
the tree, which I made up my mind to decline, at
once. “Sparrowgrass,” said he, “it don't hurt a
tree a single mossel to chaw it, ef it's a young
tree. For my part, I'd rather have my young
trees chawed than not. I think it makes 'em grow
a leetle better. I can't do it with mine, but you
can, because you can wait to have good trees, and
the only way to have good trees is to have 'em
chawed.”

I think Mrs. Sparrowgrass is much improved by
living in the country. The air has done her good.
The roses again bloom in her cheeks, as well as
freckles, big as butter-cups. When I come home
in the evening from town, and see her with a dress
of white dimity, set off by a dark silk apron, with

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tasteful pockets, and a little fly-away cap, on the
back of her head, she does look bewitching. “My
dear,” said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, one evening, at tea,
“what am I?”

The question took me at an unguarded moment,
and I almost answered, “A beauty;” but we had
company, so I said, with a blush, “A female, I
believe.”

“Nonsense,” she replied, with a toss of the
“know-nothing” cap; “nonsense; I mean this:—
when I was in Philadelphia, I was a Philadelphian;
when in New York, a New-Yorker; now
we live in Yonkers, and what am I?”

“That,” said I, “is a question more easily asked
than answered. Now, `Yonker,' in its primary
significance, means the eldest son, the heir of the
estate, and `Yonker's' is used in the possessive
sense, meaning `the Yonker's,' or the heir's estate.
If, for instance, you were the owner of the town,
you might, with propriety, be called the Yonkeress.”

Mrs. Sparrowgrass said she would as soon be
called a tigress!

“Take,” said I, “the names of the places on the
Hudson, and your sex makes no difference in

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regard to the designation you would derive from a
locality. If, for instance, you lived at Spuyten
Devil, you would be called a Spuyten-Deviller!”

Mrs. Sparrowgrass said nothing would tempt her
to live at Spuyten Devil.

“Then,” I continued, “there is Tillietudlem—
you'd be a Tillietudlemer.”

Mrs. Sparrowgrass said, that, in her present
frame of mind, she didn't think she would submit
to it.

“At Sing Sing, you would be a Sing-Singer; at
Sleepy Hollow, a Sleepy Hollower.”—

Mrs. Sparrowgrass said this was worse than any
of the others.

“At Nyack, a Nyackian; at Dobb's Ferry, a
Dobb's Ferryer.”—

Mrs. Sparrowgrass said that any person who
would call her a “Dobb's Ferryer,” was destitute
of a proper sense of respect.

“You might be a Weehawkite, a Carmansvillan,
a Tubby Hooker.”—

Mrs. Sparrowgrass, quite warm and indignant,
denied it.

“A Tarrytownian—a Riverdalean.”

Mrs. Sparrowgrass said she thought a village on

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the tip-top of a hill could not be called River-dale
with any show of reason.

“A Simpson's Pointer—a Fordhammer.”

“A what?”

“A Fordhammer.”

Mrs. Sparrowgrass said she thought, at first, I
was getting profane. “But,” she added, “you do
not answer my question. I live at Yonkers, and
what am I?”

“That,” said I, “Mrs. Sparrowgrass, is a question
I cannot answer, but I will make it a public
matter through these pages.”

“What is the proper, local, or geographical
appellation by which an inhabitant of Yonkers
should be known?”

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