Part 3

Whether from artificial conditions of life, or, as I am now convinced by greater experience of his kind, because he suffered from the loss of Billy (after whose death he never recovered his spirits), his hind legs became partially paralysed. He now ran with difficulty; but his eyes were as bright and his intelligence was as quick as ever, and his fore feet were as dexterous. His attachment to me increased as the malady progressed, and though from habit he always scolded a little when my wife approached him, he showed a great deal of affection for her toward the end, which was clearly approaching. Vacation had come again, and I took him once more with me to the Black Forest, hoping that his mysterious intelligence might find some consolation in his native air.[6] He was evidently growing weak, and occasionally showed impatience as if in pain; but for the most of the time he rested quietly in my pocket, and was most happy when I gave him my hand for a pillow, and at night he would seek out the hand, and lay his head on it with a curious persistence which showed a distinct pleasure in the contact, sometimes, though rarely, licking the fingers, for he was even then far more reserved in all his expressions of feeling than Billy. At times he would sit on the window-bench, and scan the landscape with something of the old eagerness that used to give me so much pain, snuffing the mountain air eagerly for a half-hour, and then nod to go into my pocket again; and at other times, as if restless, would insist, in the way he had made me understand, that, like a baby, he wanted motion, and when I walked about with him he grew quiet and content again. At home he had been very fond of a dish of dried rose-leaves, in which he would wallow and burrow, and my wife sent him from Rome a little bag of them, which he enjoyed weakly for a little. But in his last days the time was spent by day mostly in my pocket, and by night on my bed with his head on my hand. It was only the morning before his death that he seemed really to suffer, and then a great restlessness came on him, and a disposition to bite convulsively whatever was near him, so that when the spasm was on him I gave him a little chloroform to inhale till it had passed, and then he lay quietly in my hand until another spasm came on, and when he breathed his last in my pocket, I knew that he was dead only by my hand on his heart. I buried him, as I had wished, in his native forest, in his bed of rose-leaves, digging a grave for him under a great granite boulder. He had survived his companion little more than six months, and if the readers of my little history are disposed to think me weak when I say that his death was to me a great and lasting grief, I am not concerned to dispute their judgment. I have known grief in all its most blinding and varied forms, and I thank God that He constituted me loving enough to have kept a tender place in my heart “even for the least of these,” the little companions of two years; and but for my having perhaps shortened their innocent lives, I thank Him for having known and loved them as I have. I cannot to this day decide if I wronged them even unintentionally in depriving them of their liberty, and introducing them to an artificial life. I possibly shortened their lives, but probably made them in the main happier than a wild and hunted life could have made them. Billy lived without care or unsatisfied desire, and died without pain. He loved me above all things, and who knows what love might have been to his little heart? Hans I rescued from a far more bitter form of imprisonment, and I would fain believe that the intensity of his life with me and Billy—the freedom from that fear which haunts the lives of all hunted creatures—compensated him for what he lost in the wild wood. And I will hope that this history will awaken in some sympathetic hearts a tenderness to the wild creatures, which shall, in the great balance of gain and loss, weigh down the little loss of one poor beastie, sacrificed, not intentionally, to the good of his fellows. And this is, after all, the noblest end even of our human lives—to die that others may live.

Amongst the many letters I have received, called out by their story told in the _Century_, not a small proportion express a vivid faith in the immortality of animals, and it is known that Luther and Agassiz, amongst others, so believed. At first thought it seemed to me fanciful, for where shall it end? But when I think of Billy and Hans I cannot conceive of them as no longer existing. Has the love my heart still holds for them—little thread though it be, running into the eternal world—been merely a floating spider’s thread, attached at my end and flying loose at the other? While my heart beats it will always respond to the memory of that little creature who first taught me what universal love was: shall the love endure and the object of it perish? Problems, these, left to the later wisdom—truths to be gathered in other fields than those that Death garners on! Let no one scorn my passionate attachment for my pet squirrels. Love does not measure itself by the dimensions of the object, but by the capacity of the loving heart—the measure is the giver’s; the reciprocity only is measured by the abilities of the object, and Billy and Hans gave me all they had. Measured in the Divine measure, the difference between theirs and mine was perhaps not much—that of the Father must make them both but as dust-motes in the sun. But Billy first made me understand Him and our place in His creation. To me he is a dear part of my knowledge of the Eternal Life, and I can no more dismiss him from the place he holds than I could my first-born. In this feeling I can face serenely the derision of a world. He taught me that Life is one, and Love one, and that the shades and distinctions we make are only the result of alloys of the pure metal—alloys with self and sense, the Love—the pure gold—being God’s very self become evident. He who has felt it fully knows that it embraces all His creatures.

This is my Religion, and the only article of my Creed. I will not urge it on others—I hold it for myself.

NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES OF THIS BOOK PRINTED ON VAN GELDER HAND-MADE PAPER AND THE TYPE DISTRIBUTED IN THE MONTH OF APRIL MDCCCCXIV

Footnote 1:

I have seen my squirrels bite off small dry twigs of the fir to make their nest, but never a green twig excepting the tip. In my own wood I have never found a green twig bitten off by them.

Footnote 2:

I am sorry to question the entire accuracy of this. I have never been able to see anything opposed to Mr. Mutch’s statement, nor have I ever been able to make my squirrels eat eggs, raw or cooked, but it is probable that real starvation will drive them to it.

Footnote 3:

It is not a caterpillar, but the pine-beetle, a tiny insect which burrows in the pith of the small twigs and kills them. The squirrel may eat the young tip or nibble the bark of a young twig, but he never bites the branch off.

“PINES AND PINE-BEETLES

“_To the Editor of ‘The Times’_

“SIR,—In your paper of Saturday, p. 13, under the heading of ‘Pines and Squirrels,’ your correspondent mentions that he believes I could probably give the history of the insect, which he notices the attacks of, as causing much injury to pine shoots, which injury is popularly ascribed to mischief caused by squirrels.

“From the main points of Mr. Stillman’s description it is presumable that this injury is caused by the infestation especially known as the ‘pine-beetle,’ the _Hylurgus piniperda_, scientifically. This beetle goes through its early life between the bark and wood of felled or sickly pines or fallen boughs, and when the beetles leave their place of development they fly to the shoots and tunnel them.

“Consequent on this injury a high wind brings them down in great numbers, and some may be recently tunnelled and still have the beetles within, or some may be of much older date.

“Without having a specimen I cannot speak with certainty, but the only point that differs in your correspondent’s description of the attack from that of the _H. piniperda_ is his mention of the tunnelling being done by a grub. Should this not be from his own observation, but merely from the general appearance, I should say the damage was certainly that of ‘the pine-beetle.’—Yours, etc.,

“ELEANOR A. ORMEROD, F. E. S.”

“Torrington House, St. Albans, _Sept. 19_.”

Footnote 4:

This idea that a squirrel’s teeth grow too long from not gnawing hard food is, I think, a mistake, as Billy’s never grew beyond their proper form, nor did Hans’s. Billy used to sharpen his teeth by grinding them together. I have often heard the process going on as he lay by my ear on my pillow at night. The cases known of long teeth requiring cutting off were probably due to the breaking of the opposing tooth.

Footnote 5:

My wife adds the following Note:—“In this bend of the curtain they would lie asleep the whole day in cold weather after having dragged over them their woollen and fur covers. They would scrape the wool from the former to line the nest with, and in this soft retreat passed most of their time. But Billy had a remarkable hearing, and even when asleep would recognise the sound of the nut-cracker, and, grunting with pleasure, rouse himself and come out of the nest, take a nut and greedily eat it, paring off the hull with his teeth before commencing to eat. Hans was slower to leave his comfortable bed, and would scold and mutter for some time before he came out, but when Billy had reached his second nut, Hans would arrive, claiming his share of the feast. He was not so greedy as Billy, and often refused the nut after coming out for it, and went back scolding as if at having been disturbed unreasonably.

“The tastes of the two were very different. Hans was particularly fond of pomegranate, and would gnaw away the bitter rind to get at the kernels within. Billy, refusing pomegranates, would gladly eat apples, which Hans never touched. Neither would eat strawberries, which squirrels are accused of stealing.”

Footnote 6:

On my way north I stopped at Zurich, and at the restaurant, one day, when he was on the bench which served as seat for the common table, a strange lady came in and sat at the other end of it, when Hans went off to make acquaintance with her, as if she might possibly be his mistress; and as, like all squirrels I have known, he was not disposed to be friendly with strangers, it was evident that he thought her his mistress.

Transcriber’s note:

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.

2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.

3. The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.