Music of the Wild by Gene Stratton-Porter

Author:Gene Stratton-Porter [Stratton-Porter, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Klassiker
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures," I quoted, when passing such a field on a scorching August day.

"He sendeth His rain to the just as well as to the unjust," quoted my critic, in reply. "You know if I were He, I would not. I would send rain only to pastures with trees in them, and burn all the remainder,"

So we agreed to keep watch as we drove across the country, making these illustrations, and see how much we could learn of the disposition of the farmers by the manner in which they provided for their stock and their birds. Soon it became apparent that the man who stripped a pasture of every tree treated his family with no greater consideration. There was scarcely a tree anywhere on his premises. In one place we counted four big stumps, all within a few rods of the house that the felled trees had shaded from noon until sunset. These trees had been cut within the past two years, and the house had stood for many. There was not a growth anywhere around it except a few scrub cedars, and not a bird note. It was bared to the burning heat.

What would it have meant to the women and children of that stopping-place, for there was no sign of home around it, to have had the tight paling-fence torn away from the few yards immediately surrounding the house; the shelter of those big trees, with an easy seat beneath them, and a hammock swinging between? I dreamed those trees were growing again and filled with bird notes, that fence down, a coat of fresh paint on the house, the implements standing in the barn lot sheltered, and one day's work spent in arranging the premises.

Into the dream would come a vision of open doors and windows, the sound of the voices of contented women, the shouts of happy children, and the chirping of many birds.

Some farms belong to men my critic calls a "tight-wad." That is not a classic expression; but if you saw the lands from which every tree had been sold, the creeks and ponds dried and plowed over, the fields enclosed in stretches of burning wire fence to allow cultivation within a few inches of it, not a bird note sounding,You would understand why the term is suitable as none other.

Even if the Almighty did give the earth to the children of men, it scarcely seems fair to Him to efface every picture and hush all song. It is difficult to realize just what would happen were most men farming by this method. But we still have left some degree of comfort because there are so many of nature's gentle men: men who see the pictures, hear the songs, and wish to perpetuate them for their children.

I know a farm that has been for three generations in the same family, passing from father to son. The home – mark the word – is on a little hill in the middle of the land, obscured by surrounding trees from the road and its dust and travel.

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