Thornton Burgess and the Nature Study Movement

TWB feeding a squirrel. New England Homestead, February 25, 1905

Reading Kevin Armitage's recent book, The Nature Study Movement: The Forgotten Popularizer of America's Conservation Ethic, I was struck by how many Nature Study themes informed the work of Thornton Burgess, from theories of recapitulation and the promotion of gardening to the encouragement of direct observation of nature, birds in particular. I placed TWB as a second-generation Nature Study proponent--influenced by but not directly involved in the movement during its initial years. I was mistaken.

By 1904, Burgess was the "Young Folks' Editor" at the New England Homestead. During this period he instituted an "Outdoors Club" and, foreshadowing his bird sanctuary campaign work at the People's Home Journal, established a correspondence feature, "Friends of our Native Birds." Children were asked to write in with lists of birds they had observed (and gently scolded for their lack of close observation when they would list things such as "brown hawk" or "woodpecker.") They were also asked to write about what they had done for birds, such as putting out food or building houses (or removing house sparrow nests). Readers of this blog will remember that this "help the birds" theme runs through the rest of TWB's career, from his Bedtime Story "personal letters" to the Green Meadow Club, through the various incarnations of the Radio Nature League.

The key text is from December 24, 1904, p. 22 (TWB has a credited Christmas poem on the same page). Following a column on bird study by Lee A. Stafford (about whom the internet is silent), Burgess writes "A Plea for our Feathered Friends."

It begins:

In an apple-tree on the edge of an old orchard which the Young Folks' Editor visits frequently, is fastened by means of wire a suet bone with plenty of suet clinging to it. In another tree in the same orchard hangs a big lump of suet would around with string to prevent some greedy fellow from taking more than his just share at a time. Thither every day come a host of grateful little bird folk and after thoroughly searching the trees for insect eggs and hidden larvae, they complete their meal on the suet. And the Young Folks' Editor knows that, no matter how severe the winter, his little guests will weather it safely, for with full stomachs to keep up the life heat they can withstand almost any weather.

He proposes a club:

Now let us get down to work. Let us band ourselves together informally as "Friends of our Native Birds," until a better name suggests itself. All you have to do is to put out food for the birds and then drop a card to the Young Folks' Editor, this office, telling what you have done. Your name will then be added to the roll and published. This is for older folks as well as boys and girls...

Note, this is a clear model for the Radio Nature League "silver star" membership some 20 years later. Even the hard-sell model of solicitation is familiar:

WHO WILL BE FIRST from his or her county to be enrolled? Think of the suffering you can relieve at no trouble to yourself. ...DON'T DELAY. Think of the vivacious beauty of the plainest of our songsters and then picture to yourself that happy little sprite perishing miserably of starvation and exposure. Don't delay, girls and boys! Did you ever have the cold nip your fingers and toes until you cried? Then think of the little birds who cannot help themselves. If they have enough to eat they will keep warm. Won't you help in this great work? GET OTHERS TO HELP. Don't stop with your own efforts. Get all of your friends to do likewise. When they are also feeding the birds, send in their names to be added to the roll. Let us see what town will lead in this good work. Begin now. Don't postpone.

And thus Burgess effectively begins his first of many nature study clubs.

Note, I am extremely grateful for Michael Dowhan's TWB magazine bibliography, which lists almost all the New England Homestead articles credited to Burgess under his various pseudonyms (with page numbers!) Dowhan, however, does not list uncredited material, which means that much of Burgess's writing as "Young Folks' Editor" goes unmentioned.

Thornton Burgess and the Springfield Homestead

The Springfield Homestead shared some content with the New England Homestead but overall they were very different publications. The New England Homestead was an agricultural paper, covering commodity prices and new farming technologies. The Springfield Homestead was an urban weekly, with local news (including sports and arts) coverage. What they shared was some material in the "home" section, the section Thornton Burgess came to edit.

Burgess reportedly contributed to many sections of the Springfield Homestead, including stories on bicycle races and baseball games, as well as photography. As most of the stories in the paper lack bylines, it is difficult to say which ones we should credit to Burgess. Most of Burgess's credited contributions were in the form of verse. By 1900 he was a highly visible writer with the occasional short story or essay to his credit as well. In 1903, for example, he wrote a long three-part series on outdoor recreation.

I've pulled a few pieces of particular significance.

The first is an early effort from May 23, 1896, titled "A Sorrowful Tale." I think it is intended to be comic but its callous tone is very different from what one expects from Burgess.

Three little mice one day at play
Away from the hole in the wall did stay
Away from the hole and the home inside
Where safe from danger they all could hide.

Three little kittens espied the mice,
And together they purred, "Oh aren't they nice!"
And wrong though it be, for it couldn't be right,
Each little mouse disappeared from sight.

Three little dogs, they call the hounds
Saw three little cats out of bounds
Then each little dog caught a miniature cat
And shook her to death as she would a rat.

Three little boys on mischief bent
Caught three little dogs with sly intent
To each little dog tail they tied a can
And laughed at the way the little dogs ran.

Three big papas down the street
Met three little boys in full retreat
And soon three sticks in a [st...dly] way (I can't read my notes)
Beat rat a tat tat that pleasant day.

Three little mice are now no more.
Three little cats have gone before.
Three little dogs each nurse a tail.
And three little boys in sorrow wail.

While ultimately a poem about the sorrowfulness of a cycle of cruelty, its light nursery-rhyme form seems ill-chosen for scenes of kittens shaken to death and the like, unless Burgess is intentionally using the form ironically....

Here's one from later on (1900) that's somewhat more ambitious, using Burgess's experience as an angler to draw a metaphor for the con-games of contemporary life. It is useful for our purposes because it provides a connection between his favorite outdoor activity and the world of advertising and promotion. It is titled, "The Point of the Hook."

At a bend in the stream where the willows grew tall
And the waters ran slow and were deep
Where there came to our ears the sound of a fall
And we heard through the pines the soft sweep
Of the sweet summer wind; there we fished for the trout
My young nephew Jack Sully and I.
I did not catch a fish, but the lad pulled them out
Till I envious, said with a sigh:

I am tired, Jackie dear, the monotony's great;
Here I sit without ever a bite
I have not caught a fish, while you have six or eight,
Now please cast on this subject a light.
From the bed of the stream Nephew Jack drew back his bait
Just a glance and twas back in the brook.
"My dear uncle," he said, "you'll e'er sit here and wait
If you don't hide the point of your hook."

Then I fell in a muse and neglected to fish
As an angler I failed of success
But to be angled for I was all one could wish
And to having been caught I confess
Quite a number of times; there was once, young and green,
I contracted a ten dollar book,
For the agent who caught me did up his work clean--
He had hidden the point of his hook.

On another occasion the most charming girl
I had, up to that period known
Set my pulse a flutter, my brain in a whirl,
And my heart being down at her throne;
She accepted my homage and helped spend my cash
She repaid with a smile or a look,
Then she married another--my heart went to smash--
She had well hid the point of her hook.

There's been real estate men, each a promise of wealth,
Patentees having each a sure thing
Who have angled for me with precision and stealth
And who at the right moment would fly
Their bait to this gudgeon, seemed they knew I would bite,
So their bait cast they down in my nook
And they caught me and so did some brokers all right.
For each man hid the point of his hook.

There's for me consolation, I'm not all alone
Than the fishers, the fished-for are more,
It's a fact--when before them a fine bait is thrown
There are always keen bites galore
Among men and women, and the reason they do
Like the foolish young trout in the brook
Is the fact that they cannot, from their point of view,
'Neath the bait see the point of the hook.

In 1900 Burgess also wrote a three-part series of "interviews" with "MacDougal" the Scotsman. This character, written entirely in Scottish brogue, was a shrewd and frank talker on such issues as fashion and cruelty towards animals. The latter occasioned a poem, excerpted below

Wha shows no mercy tae his beast;
Wha hae for such no thocht,
Wha ill na see the misery
Wi' which their lives are fraught,
Iss no the man a care taken
He dinna love his fellow men
For he wah gies the beastie pain
Though thochtless it may be,
Hae no a heart that's great enough
His neighbor's want tae see.

If you can make it through the dialect, you'll see MacDougal voicing an opinion that Burgess held strongly (and which also helped fuel the Nature Study movement of this era). That is, the ability to sympathize with members of the animal kingdom was a sign of one's ability to sympathize with other humans.

Next: Burgess, civic poet

New England Homestead Bird Work

Burgess's work for Country Life in America seems to have stimulated a renewed interest in writing about wildlife, especially birds. (Or he had material left over, not used in Country Life, that he could reuse for New England Homestead). I've scanned in five articles from this period and embedded them below (as always, please click to see readable images).

"How the Birds Walk" (Feb 22, 1902) is actually a piece about the pleasures of nature study, using observations of bird walking behavior as an example. "Who has eyes to see will find countless pleasures tramping abroad at all seasons of the year." This is a perspective associated with John Burroughs, particularly.

"The Queer Ways of a Queer Chap," (March 8, 1902) is about the way Common ("Maryland") Yellowthroats sometimes nest in skunk cabbage--a little bit of nature lore wrapped in an interesting package. Note the characterization of the bird as a "chap" or "litle fellow."

"Treasures in the Old Swamp" expands the visit to the swamp to include other nature study topics. The chickadee and the yellowthroat make reappearances. (Note: love of the swamp is an old dividing line between hunters (swamp lovers) and observers looking for conventional natural beauty).
May 10, 1902

Burgess discovers the nest of a hummingbird in "What the Apple Tree Held"
(May 17, 1902). Note the enthusiasm in his June Country Life installment for bird nest hunting generally.

Finally, "The Passing of the Birds," could be a fragment taken directly from the September calendar, with its emphasis on the transition of seasons.
September 27, 1902


Tomorrow: Feathered Soldiers

Burgess the romantic

 

 This post is simply to counteract the impression that Burgess's earliest writing was all in the "boy adventure" vein. In fact, Burgess was a versatile writer who explored a variety of genres (I have even come across an apparently unpublished pulp science fiction piece in his archives at BU). 

 His writing could be quite sentimental, though rarely gushy (the Yankee reserve in his makeup, no doubt).

 Here is a story first appearing in the New England Homestead in 1902, later reprinted in the Locomotive Engineers Journal (1907).  

[UPDATE: Note that the trailing arbutus, or mayflower, was Burgess's favorite flower and he would work to preserve it and other wildflowers when it appeared to be disappearing from New England.] 

 My favorite in this mode is an 1899 New England Homestead story by "Waldo," "A Thanksgiving Romance." It is too long to post here, but it is essentially an extremely improbable tale of long separated lovers miraculously reunited during a holiday feast. The boy adventure was a specialty, for sure, but Burgess could write a soap opera when he wanted to. 

 Tomorrow: Burgess is hired to write about nature.

Burgess's own boy

 

 Thornton Burgess's son, Thornton Burgess III, was born in 1906; his mother, with whom his father had been married for less than a year, died in childbirth, or as Burgess would later write "gave her life for his." Burgess was devasted. He himself had not known his father, who had died when he was still an infant. The ideal father figure is a topic of several of Burgess's early works. 

 Here's a short essay from New England Homestead (Nov 13, 1897)

   

 In short, fathers should be "comrades" to their sons, not just authority figures. 

This theme is put into verse in Good Housekeeping (1900).

 

Finally, in a 1901 poem in New England Homestead, Burgess fleshes out his theory of child-rearing:

   

 "Better lead a boy than drive him," a philosophy which we've already seen articulated in his Boy Scout/adventure work. 

 Burgess loved his son, featuring him, in fact, in a 1908 Good Housekeeping photo essay on the benefits of fresh air for young children.

   

 

Later in life, Burgess, however would express regret that he had failed to be the father-comrade he had so idealized. And Thornton W. Burgess III, as detailed in Frances Meig's book, My Grandfather, Thornton W. Burgess, would eventually become estranged from his father. 

Tomorrow: Burgess's bedtime stories: the origin myth

Burgess's earliest boy adventure stories

As noted yesterday, Burgess was well-positioned to write Boy Scout stories. Some 15 years previously, he had been a participant (as "Waldo") in the children's section of the New England Homestead and had written a series of adventure stories for boys. I've scanned one of the stories, from June 27, 1896, and will feature it here today in its entirety. As a bonus, I've also included a short boy's craft-oriented piece Burgess contributed to the New England Homestead the previous week. I think the setting of the story is particularly significant, an ideal small town, a community of supportive villagers, hard-working, courageous, and fun-loving boys. Note: it is a "Fourth of July" story.
(I apologize for the disparity in the column widths--to really read the story you will probably have to click on each text image one by one.)


This was during the bicycle craze, a topic of built-in interest. Note the work ethic (reflecting Burgess's own childhood).

Note the traditional values (the boy's aren't allowed to ride on the Sabbath).

The boys plan an adventure, which the mother resists, but the father encourages.

The resourceful boys are able to fix their own flat tire, and the adventure continues with a snake fight (a gratuitous kill, very much unlike later Burgess).

Here comes the climax. Hardworking adventurous boys become heroes.

Here would be a line or two cut off in the photocopying process.

Despite the loss of the bicycle, justice is served. The boys' heroism is recognized and then celebrated during the Fourth of July parade.



The "two Jays" would be ideal Boy Scouts.

Also, as promised, a little craft project--a "Fourth of July Kite," complete with American flag tail. Burgess would submit a few more of these diagram pieces to New England Homestead. This kind of thing would be the hallmark of the Ernest Seton Thompson Woodcraft books.


Burgess would provide a few more boy's adventure stories over the next few months: "Camp Ephraim, at Sunnyside," about a boy's Cape Cod camping trip (July 18, 1896); "The Voyage of the Arctic Tern," about a sailing expedition--also featuring Cape Cod (August 29, 1896); and "Gerald's Moose," discussed in a previous post (November 14, 1896).

Tomorrow: Burgess's own boy

Burgess shoots a moose, with a camera

In an 1896 Burgess short story in New England Homestead titled, "Gerald's Moose," a couple of boys on a hunting expedition compete to see who can bag the first buck and who can spot the first moose. Gerald curses his inability to shoot a deer ("Gerald had as yet killed nothing but a fox and was thoroughly discouraged") but does manage to squeak out a victory in the moose spotting contest.

By 1903 the gun has been swapped for a camera (though Burgess and his companion are still packing revolvers) and the moose spotting has been captured for perpetuity. Here's the story, "Photographing a Moose at Home," in National Magazine, complete with Burgess photos.

The climax features some actual moose-human interaction (Burgess tries the hand-feeding trick) and some celebration of good light conditions.

We boldly stood our ground while he came near enough to sniff contemptuously at some bread held out on my hand. Afterward he obliged us with every pose we could desire, so that I don’t think we claim too much in saying that we have one of the finest sets of photographs of a moose, at home in his native wilderness, ever taken. Sun, surroundings and every condition were seemingly perfect.

Thus Burgess participates in the development of a new hunting story genre--the photo adventure. And this provided a way for Burgess to incorporate the natural scene ("sun, surroundings") into the product of hunting itself.

The vogue for wildlife photography seems to have emerged in the mid 1890s. The Keartons, two British brothers, were perhaps the most celebrated in this field. I've embedded one of their books, Wild Life at Home (1899), (which clearly informs the title of Burgess's moose article.) The Keartons made wildlife photography appear like a great adventure and the book is full of the ingenious devices they created in order to get the shots they wanted.

The Keartons also, however, explicitly tout the virtues of photography over hunting.

…I speak as a man who knows well the joys of shooting the lordly grouse and circumventing the wily trout, and I unhesitatingly say that this new and bloodless form of sport beats them both in point of downright interest. To pit one’s skill and ingenuity against the shyness and cunning of a wild bird, or summon the courage and endurance to descend to its home in the face of some dizzy ocean cliff, is in itself a feat which calls for the very best hunting instincts of the human race…

Frank M. Chapman of the Museum of Natural History and publisher of Bird-Lore, was inspired by the Keartons and wrote about his own Bird Studies with a Camera (1900).

He also extends the Keartons' argument in favor of photography to make it explicitly anti-hunting.

As a onetime sportsman, who yielded to none in his enjoyment of the chase, I can affirm that there is a fascination about the hunting of wild animals with a camera as far ahead of the pleasure to be derived from their pursuit with shotgun or rifle as the sport found in shooting Quail is beyond that of breaking clay " Pigeons." Continuing the comparison, from a sportsman's standpoint, hunting with a camera is the highest development of man's inherent love of the chase.
The killing of a bird with a gun seems little short of murder after one has attempted to capture its image with a lens. The demands on the skill and patience of the bird photographer are endless, and his pleasure is intensified in proportion to the nature of the difficulties to be overcome, and in the event of success it is perpetuated by the infinitely more satisfactory results obtained. He does not rejoice over a bag of mutilated flesh and feathers, but in the possession of a trophy—an eloquent token of his prowess as a hunter, a talisman which holds the power of revivifying the circumstances attending its acquisition.

One wonders if Burgess's wildlife photo activity was an influence in turning him away from hunting once and for all.

Burgess was a keen photographer and would write a number of articles related to this interest. In his autobiography he explains that very early on in his career as a Phelps Publishing Co. office boy, the Springfield Homestead's photographer would use him to lug his camera equipment around. He would soon be taking photos himself and dispensing technical advice, as in this 1898 New England Homestead piece, focused on taking good photos for engraving.


Burgess would later use his forum at Good Housekeeping to advocate the household and recreational use of the camera. One article, in 1903, offers a personification of his camera as his "compact little comrade" and offers some insight into the extent of Burgess's outdoorsmanship:

This same camera has been with me on many another cruise on long wheeling tours, tramping across country, to many a mountain top where the climb was hard work, hunting and fishing, snowshoeing and botanizing.

It also features a little dissembling on Burgess's part in its depiction of a happy "W.B.T." household ("baby's laugh and Bobby's first pants")--Burgess's son wouldn't arrive for a few more years.


Note that Burgess can't resist talking again about his "first interview with the king of the forest."

The moose photos, finally in a prominent place in Burgess's dining room, also lead off a 1908 article about the virtue of the vacation camera.



This article is special because it provides a glimpse of Burgess's own photography, from quiet landscapes to shots of "young naturalists" to a dramatic piece of photojournalism (view from the "bowsprit"). In his future career as a dedicated nature communicator, Burgess would use his photographs in his columns and his lectures.

Tomorrow: Burgess covers the seafood beat

Talking guns

 

New England Homestead, November 13 1897 

Thornton Burgess loved to go hunting when he was young. He admits as much in his autobiography. What he doesn't say is that his interest in hunting persisted well into his adult years. Nevertheless, one can already see him distancing himself from the activity in his early writing. 

 In 1897, we see this column of advice for "young sportsmen" (AKA hunters). It begins with the following striking assertion: "Every boy over fifteen should be taught the use of a gun, and how to care for it." (If you click on the image below you should be able to read the whole article). For rural kids in the late 1800s, hunting could be taken for granted, thus gun safety was paramount.

   

At the same time, it is clear that Burgess is a knowledgeable authority, with some very specific safety tips, including:

Never get into a wagon with a loaded gun. Never drag a loaded gun by the muzzle through thick underbrush.

It is also clear that Burgess sees hunting as something governed by regulations: "Never shoot quail on the ground. Obey all game laws to the letter." And is guided by a conservation sensibility: "Never hunt for market; that is what is making game scarce." This last one was one of Hornaday's chief issues. 

 Burgess did, however, write two published essays that essentially romanticized hunting. These appeared in the "sportsman" magazine, Recreation. (One of the essays was published in the same issue as "When the Scoters Fly"). The first, from 1898, features Burgess and a companion hunting yellow-legs and plover in a Cape Cod marsh. 

 The second, from 1899, features Burgess and a companion ("the taxidermist") hunting ducks outside of Springfield.  Both of them tell essentially the same story in similar ways. In both, Burgess seems more interested in describing the natural scene than actually shooting anything. And in both, his companion shows an uncanny ability to communicate with waterfowl, only to let the guns have the final word. 

 Here's the scene from the Cape Cod story. His companion has set up some decoys and is now going to outwit the yellow-legs by mimicking their communication patterns:

Faint, from far up the marsh, sounds the whistle of a yellow-leg. In an instant George is alert and the little tin whistle that hangs about his neck is brought into play. Call for call he gives and now there are several…More and more plaintive and seductive grow his calls….

Burgess goes as far to represent what the birds believe his companion is "saying."

Then the little tin whistle begins to talk to itself in an indescribably contented undertone. Such a breakfast, and so much of it! There is not a place on the marsh like this! What fools they are not to come.

Finally, the seduction is achieved.

Past they swing back of us and then catching sight of the decoys, suddenly turn and with shrill whistles that fill all the air, set their wings and drop down. As well bunched they drop their long legs and the tips of the long wings meet overhead, the two guns speak and speak again.

Burgess uses the same language in the second story

From out the intense blackness in mid-river comes a subdued, inquiring, “quack.” “Quack,” responds the taxidermist, decidedly. Again comes the query; again the decided answer…The taxidermist’s gun speaks, and with a whistle of wings, the ducks above us leave the rice, while a still, black form drifts to our feet.

Even guns can be included in Burgess's communication system. At the same time, there are hints that Burgess is looking for justifications. In the Cape Cod story, he makes it clear that the shooting victims are for eating (that this is not shooting simply for the sake of sport).

With regret we finally gather up the decoys and plod homeward while the day is still young, the charm of the early morning weaving a spell that the promise of a royal dinner of broiled plover alone can break.

In the Springfield story, he suggests that the shooting part is peripheral to the actual experience of hunting:

Was it not enough just to be tramping away from human habitation and sound of human life, along with dear old Mother Nature, breathing her gloriously pure air, basking in her sunshine, listening to the lap of water and the twitter of sparrows in the hedge. Was not this, after all, the real charm of hunting?

Indeed, you don't even need to shoot something for "hunting" to be a success:

Many a night have we returned empty-handed, but the hunts were none the less enjoyable. Indeed, I am inclined to think the pleasure was the greater, in that the shy black fellows had outwitted us, and we knew that next time we must be still more alert.

[UPDATE: "Sportsman" was a very important category for Burgess, to be distinguished from "hunter." This will be discussed in a future post.] 

Tomorrow: Burgess shoots a moose, with a camera

New England Homestead Table Talk

Some of Burgess's first published work can be found in the pages of the New England Homestead, a weekly Phelps publication targeted at Eastern U.S. farmers. While he would also contribute short stories, verse, puzzles and the like, during his first year of contribution (1896) Burgess (as "Waldo") was an active participant in a correspondence feature titled, "The Children's Table." Here is a letter from May 16. Burgess is responding to a letter written by a Children's Table favorite, "Hoot Owl."

Hoot Owl responds.

The blue jay vs. house sparrow debate would continue for a few more exchanges. Here Burgess responds to another writer but can't help getting in another dig at the house sparrow.


I think it is significant that this early in his writing career (he was 22 at the time), Burgess chose to focus on wildlife topics, particularly bird conservation. (The house sparrow, like the house cat, would be a chief villain in the eyes of Bird-Lore, and Burgess would name him "Bully" in his bedtime stories). And he can already speak with authority on the behavior of blue jays and the nesting habits of purple martins (as well as associated anthropology--"Even the Indians and the negroes of the south..."). And he is encouraging readers to work together on a project--the construction of a bird list (as far as I can tell, this project was never completed).

The context for this writing is also interesting. The Children's Table was a correspondence club not a "letters to the editor" section. Farm children were encouraged to send names and addresses to a central location and these would be shared among members--correspondence could flow publicly to the pages of the Homestead or privately between members (a kind of letters-based social medium). A wide range of topics were discussed and many children, following the lead of "Hoot Owl," would adopt pen names, such as "Screech Owl" and "Mermaid."

Some of these discussions revolved around conservation, such as this letter from "a Prairie Girl" calling for girl readers to form a society against the plume trade (the first lasting Audubon society had been established in Massachusetts earlier that year.)


More common were stories of hunting such as this pair of particularly blood-thirsty tales, reflecting the kinds of attitudes that Burgess would later confront (though note that even Burgess at this time urged violence against the house sparrows).


...



Tomorrow: Talking guns

A Chickadee break

From Good Housekeeping (1901). 

 Seen any good bird poetry in Good Housekeeping lately?

   

Probably not. Here's a companion piece, titled "Tom and Phebe" from the following year that appeared in the New England Homestead.

There are some little friends of mine with whom I wish everyone would become acquainted. I write "would" instead of "could" because almost anyone with the inclination can if they will make the first advances. These little friends of mine are very social and will meet you halfway. They are demure little people in black and gray, with grayish white vests, and wear black caps. Learned men of science have a funny way of saddling the smallest creatures with the longest names, as if to make amends for their lack of stature. So to science then these little people are known as Parus Atricapillus, but I, being familiar with them, know them as Tom and Phebe, while you probably know them as blackcapped titmouse or chickadee.

 Now it is out, and doubtless you are saying, "Pooh! I know the chickadees!" Do you? Very likely some of you do, but I think that I am safe in asserting that more do not. Have you ever conversed with them? Have you ever talked with them or let them talk to you? 

 Of all the feathered folk who spend the winter in the north, these little roly-poly downy gymnasts are the happiest, brightest and most social. Always busy, they are always merry. Every twig and branch must be thoroughly inspected by those tiny, bright, beadlike eyes for the minute eggs and larvae which help to constitute their diet. 

 How rapidly they flit now in the weeds and now hanging head downward and taking a sip of water from the drop on the tip of the tiny icicle pendent from a twig! And all the time their cheerful "chicadee-dee-dee-dee" greets you. Now they are too busy to more than chirp, and anon one stops long enough to catch his breath and chirrup just the suggestion of a lay, a little throaty apology for a song which somehow always seems to me like the bubbling over of joyousness from a full heart. But if you would know more of Tom Titmouse, whistle softly two notes high pitched, with the first note rising: "Phebe" or "pee-wee." Instantly Tom will reply and if it be toward the mating season he will become so much in earnest that you will not be able to keep up with him and he will come so close that you can almost put your hand on him. By calling him regularly every day and putting out a few cracked nuts or a bit of suet or a bone with a little meat left on, he will soon admit you to good fellowship and will unhesitatingly feed from your hand.

 Of all the birds who gladden our long winters there is none of so cheery a disposition as the chickadee. No matter how cold the day, he will come out to greet you as you walk and chase away the bugbear of depression. I am never lonely when one of these feathered sprites is within calling distance.

Note the persistent Burgess themes of "knowing"/making familiars of wild animals, communicating with them, naming them. Since Emerson, the cheerfulness of the chickadee in the most hostile environments has been a common topic of poetry; here Burgess is simply voicing a familiar refrain. At a personal level, though, I find interesting Burgess's reference to depression and loneliness (and how communion with chickadees is a remedy). 

Tomorrow: New England Homestead Table talk