The Story of Scraggles Part 3

But I did not get well; and I did _so_ want to be well and strong. I was as happy with my human friends as I could be, and I wanted to live with them a long time. When I heard them say I was a very sick bird it used to put a great fear in my heart that I was going to die, and then I would snuggle up close to Fessor's hand that he might know I wanted to live.

Here Scraggles' story as written by herself comes to an end. The Fessor now tells the pathetic remainder of the interesting tale.

_Chapter XII_

_Scraggles' Last Day_

It was Thursday, August 3, 1905. We (that is, Scraggles and I) had had a good day together. We went out and I dug worms for her, and she seemed happy and improving in health and appearance. During the day she followed me out to the bath-room and all around several times, and when I went to lie down and read she came and insisted upon my holding her, or allowing her to sit on my hand. When I moved to turn the page she jumped upon my sleeve and hopped up to my shoulder and neck, where she stayed for half an hour or more. This was a new trick, learned only a few days before, and several times she hopped up from my desk, when I put her off the paper as I wrote, and perched quite contentedly on my shoulder or squatted on the back of my neck.

Several times during the day she had begged to be taken up and had fussed around my pencils, and once or twice had fought my pen as I wrote. Placing her on my lap, she snuggled down there contentedly until some movement disturbed her. Once, and the only time I knew her to do it, she tried to fly up from my lap to the desk. When she failed she looked up with such a queer expression that I could not help putting down my hand for her, into which she immediately hopped.

We had had a good two hours together after lunch, when I put her down, and soon she was hopping about the room. After feeding herself she came and perched in her usual place on my foot, but I must have forgotten her for a moment. My brain was much occupied with an important chapter of my book, and jumping up hastily I stepped to the book-case to the left of my desk to consult some volume, and almost as soon as I did so looked around to see where Scraggles was. I looked towards her sand bath and the food saucers, then to her little tree, but she was not to be seen. Then, as I often did, I tilted back my chair to see if she was at my feet, and to my intense distress I saw her there dead, on the bear skin I used as a rug.

There are some griefs that seem puerile. I suppose mine will over this poor, scraggedy, helpless little bird, yet I felt at that moment as I have felt often since, that there are many men I could far better spare than her,--many men with whom two months' daily a.s.sociation would teach me less than did this little, raggedy, ailing song-sparrow. Her cheerfulness, her courage, her dauntlessness, her self-reliance, her perfect trust and confidence, her evident affection, were all lessons to remain in memory. After she had once given her trust, it never failed. I could handle my books, moving them to and fro over her, placing them anywhere near her, and there was not the slightest evidence of fear; and if anything did alarm her and she could get into my hand and feel its firmness around her, all tremors ceased. With her tiny head protruding from the clenched hand, her bright eyes looking now this way, now that, she watched intently, but without fear, confident in the protecting power of her big friend. And I felt the trust, the confidence reposed in me, the affection, and it drew from me a response totally at variance with the size of the tiny creature.

We buried her where she and I had gone daily, I to dig, she to eat whatever I found that she liked. My daughter lined the little grave appropriately with the beautiful white blossoms known as bird-cages,--lace-like, delicate, and exquisite,--and as we crumbled the earth over her tiny feathered little body, need I be ashamed to confess that tears fell, even as they do now as I write?

_Chapter XIII_

_How the Story of Scraggles came to be Written_

The book I was writing when Scraggles came to me was "In and Out of the Old Missions of California." These interesting buildings were founded by Saint Francis of a.s.sisi, whose love for the birds and lower animals has already become almost a proverb. It was just as I was finis.h.i.+ng one of the last chapters of the book that Scraggles' life went out. Was it not singular that, while dealing with a subject so intimately a.s.sociated with this great lover of birds, one of these tiny, helpless, feathered sisters should claim my protecting love?

There are those who will see in this more than the mere outward facts,--and I shall not be concerned or disturbed if they do.

The writing of the book was so bound up with the short life of Scraggles that, like an inspiration, I felt I must dedicate it to her.

In two minutes after the thought came into my mind I had penned the following dedication, which was published and now appears in my book exactly as I wrote it:

TO SCRAGGLES

MY PET SPARROW AND COMPANION

Saint Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order, without whom there would probably have been no missions in California, regarded the birds as his "little brothers and sisters." Just as I began the actual writing of this book I picked up in the streets a tiny song sparrow, wounded, unable to fly, and that undoubtedly had been thrust out of its nest. In a short time we became close friends and inseparable companions. Hour after hour she sat on my foot, or, better still, perched, with head under her wing, on my left hand, while I wrote with the other.

Nothing I did, such as the movement of books, turning of leaves, etc., made her afraid. When I left the room she hopped and fluttered along after me. She died just as the book was receiving its finis.h.i.+ng pages. On account of her ragged and unkempt appearance I called her Scraggles; and to her, a tiny morsel of animation, but who had a keen appreciation and reciprocation of a large affection, I dedicate this book.

When I read this to some of my friends they were moved to tears and wanted to know more about Scraggles. As I told the story, others desired to hear it. Then in a lecture on "The Radiant Life" I told it again, and thousands were touched to tears by the simple narrative of the sweet little bird's beautiful and trustful life.

Fortunately, my familiarity with the camera had made me desire to make some photographs of Scraggles some three weeks before her death. My daughter and I made several, and then a friend came and made two or three others, so that now we feel really blessed in possessing these counterfeit presentments of the little creature.

When our friends saw these photographs they desired copies of them; and when, after the publication of "In and Out of the Old Missions,"

strangers began to write both to my publishers and myself for "further particulars about Scraggles," I felt that I ought to give to others some of the joy and delight and benefit I and mine had in our intercourse with her.

Dear little Scraggles! I little thought when I first saw you struggling to get away from me, as if afraid I might devour you, that we should so soon become such inseparable friends. It was a sudden impulse that led me to pick you up and take you home, and though the loving hearts there welcomed you, they realized better than I did the trouble you would be. But somehow that did not deter us from making you one of us, and you soon recognized the relations.h.i.+p. Our a.s.sociation was short, as men reckon time, but time really has very little to do with life.

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives, Who thinks most, feels the n.o.blest, acts the best."

So in the short three months you were with me we lived your lifetime together; and though my life is stretching out into further time, and your body is buried, you, dear little Scraggles, still live on with me. I don't know, and I care less, what the psychologists say about birds having souls, and I am equally indifferent as to what the theologians say of there being a heaven for birds, or birds entering the heaven of human beings. This I do know, that in my own soul, far more real than the demonstrable propositions of life, such as that two and two make four, is the certain a.s.surance that my soul and Scraggles' will meet when my body and soul are severed.

So sleep, content and serene, dear little Scraggles, in your tiny and flower-embowered resting-place. You know full well in your tiny, but love-filled heart that just so soon as I have met all the human loved ones in the soul-life, I shall seek for you, and seek until I find, for I shall want you even in heaven. My heaven will be incomplete without you. I believe absolutely with Browning, that

"There shall be no lost good, What was, shall live as before!"

So in the life of the future, with understanding and love made sweeter by clearer knowledge, we shall love on; for of all great things that abide forever "the greatest is love."