She made special pets of the birds,
locating nest after nest, and immediately projecting herself
into the daily life of the occupants. "No one," she says, "ever
taught me more than that the birds were useful, a gift of God for
our protection from insect pests on fruit and crops; and a gift of
Grace in their beauty and music, things to be rigidly protected.
From this cue I evolved the idea myself that I must be extremely
careful, for had not my father tied a 'kerchief over my mouth when
he lifted me for a peep into the nest of the humming-bird, and did
he not walk softly and whisper when he approached the spot? So I
stepped lightly, made no noise, and watched until I knew what a
mother bird fed her young before I began dropping bugs, worms, crumbs,
and fruit into little red mouths that opened at my tap on the nest
quite as readily as at the touch of the feet of the mother bird."
In the nature of this child of the out-of-doors there ran a fibre
of care for wild things. It was instinct with her to go slowly, to
touch lightly, to deal lovingly with every living thing: flower,
moth, bird, or animal. She never gathered great handfuls of frail
wild flowers, carried them an hour and threw them away. If she
picked any, she took only a few, mostly to lay on her mother's
pillow--for she had a habit of drawing comfort from a cinnamon pink
or a trillium laid where its delicate fragrance reached her with
every breath. "I am quite sure," Mrs. Porter writes, "that I never
in my life, in picking flowers, dragged up the plant by the roots,
as I frequently saw other people do.
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