To Miss Eliza Scudder.
Wayland, 1864.
I wish there were not such a wall of partition between us and the animal world.
It would be so curious and entertaining to understand what they are about, and to help them in emergencies by our superior strength and wisdom.
The swallow's nest in the sitting-room chimney fell down a few days ago. Four of the little birds were dead, but one was alive and lusty, though its eyes were not yet opened.
The mother, not knowing what to do, flew up chimney, and left it to its fate.
I tried to feed it with flies on
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a pin ; but it was of no use. I did not understand its ways.
The poor little thing scrambled round with so much energy, called its mother so loudly, and manifested such a determination to live, that it made me very sorry to be unable to help it. But it was better for it to die; for if I had succeeded in bringing it up by hand, the foolish little thing would have been bewildered in all its instincts, and never have known how to bring up a family. . . . One of the pictures, “The Trumpeting Angel of Fra Angelico,” charmed me extremely.
But after all, the angels, I apprehend, are something very superior to all that.
We know as little about them and their ways as the chimney swallows know about us. Walls of partition rise up everywhere, above and below.
