Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 172, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1918 — A Study in Monogamy [ARTICLE]

A Study in Monogamy

By JANE OSBORNE

(Copyright, 1918, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) It was just before Philip Lewis’ last college vacation that his celebrated old uncle, James Devridge, told him in his blunt, quaint way that he was strongly of the opinion that he —Philip —was a lazy, loafing, worthless specimen of humanity, . and utterly unworthy of being James Devrldge’s sole heir, as had been that distinguished man’s original Intentions. On the charge of never having done anything in life that he had not been made to do, Philip mentioned the fact, not at all boastfully but only In selfdefense, that he had brought d'/wn various prizes for his amateur photography. “Yes, but what value has it been — pictures of pretty girls and horses or something of that sort,” muttered the • old scientist. “If you could get photographs of birds that would do to illustrate this book I’ve been working over, they might count for something.” “Give me a chance," challenged the nephew. “What sort of pictures do you want?” “Read the manuscript and find out,” was the uncle’s answer. “The book is a study of monogamous habits among the birds of eastern North America. It Is not a popular work at all. I doubt if you can make head or tall of it. It requires a scientific point of view, and that you don’t possess.” “I’ll try it,” said the nephew, and the day after work at college was over he started off to a little cabin in the northern mountain country of New England, where his uncle had In years past done considerable observation of bird life, there to get the photographs the uncle had assured him he couldn’t get, Philip was perfectly confident of his lenses and his caffltjtaa and his photography. The thing that troubled him was knowing what sort or'pictures to take. For the first three days of bis stay In the woods country rile read the duplicate manuscript his uncle had given him. Frankly he was not very much encouraged. Then he yearned for a letup of his solitude, and with characteristic bluntness asked the old countryman who drove the stage that passed his door twice' a day whether there were any nice girls in the neighborhood. “There is only one good-looker,” said the old man, who seemed to have made careful observations, “and she’s queer. You wouldn’t like her and she wouldn’t have anything to do with you, neither. She lives alone In the summer in a shack in the woods next to yours. She’s awful queer. But she do be good looking.” “How’s she queer?” queried Philip. “Powerful queer—that’s how queer. She sometimes sets a whole day at a time under a bush In the gully, and one day I seen her setting way up in the tip-top of a tree. Well, she was there when I went down in the morning and still there when I come home in the afternoon. Don’t know how she got there, but there she was. And she goes around with opera glasses, just as if she thought there was a show going on, and she whistles and chirrups to herself, and —well, there’s no doubt ljut she’s queer,”, concluded the old man with a significant tapping of the side of his own head, as if to Indicate where the weakness lay. Philip needed no further proof. He believed the old man had exaggerated the matter, bu£ he had no doubt of the young woman’s dementia. One day—while still reading his uncle’s manuscript, hoping to find a clue as to what his photographs should be —he saw the strange young lady, sitting not In the top of one of her own trees, but In the top of one of the trees very near to his own shack. He looked at her from the safety of his shack and then assuming a perfectly confident air and a cheerful whistle, ventured out and began to walk noisily about the tree. “Oh, please tread softly," said the strange young lady. “I think they are settling here in this tree. If you disturb them they may go off again. Please go away, won’t you?” Philip withdrew and .did not return till later in the day, when the young lady descended very quietly. “I think they are located,” she told him. “They are in the next tree —two thrushes. I watched them In my own trees and then they came over here. I can watch them beautifully from this other tree that I was sitting in. I hope you don’t mind.” “Why, please, were you watching just thoSb thrushes?” he asked her, and she told him that If he would let her stay and eat lunch with him in his shack instead of having to tramp back the half mile to her own, she would take time to tell him. It was In his little cabin dining room over a rustic sort of luncheon that Philip prepared for them —coffee, smoky of aroma, but delicious to the appetite, sharpened by woods air, sliced ham, dry biscuits and cheese —that the girl explained. “' “Well, you see, I am making a study of monogamy among birds —that is, I want to get a little data that will be of some value in establishing the fact that thrushes either are are not monogamous—that is, that they do or don’t mate for life. Last year I worked hard all summer. I studied the birds from the tree tops and from under the hedges. No one knows how long I sat silently so as not to disturb them, and I trapped some of them long enough to fasten little bracelets on

their ankles. I knew that if the same birds came back to these trees this year and mated with the same mates, then I would have some small fact to contribute, to this great study. And now two of the birds with my bracelets have ome back and I think they are the mates of last year. Once they get settled for nesting I can get closer to them and find out. You know, James Devridge, the greatest of all bird students and One of the greatest scientists of the day, has made a special study of this. I read everything he writes, and I heard him lecture once. He said that he didn’g have anywhere near enough data qp the subject of monogamy and that anyone’ who would seriously go about it to collect it might feel that she was making a real contribution to science. So I made up my mind to do it. That is much better than frittering one’s time away dancing or loafing at a summer resort. I’ve got quite a lot of data, and some day Pm going to take |t to Mr. Devridge and tell him it is my contribution to science.” “Then —you understand what the old fellow is getting at in those books of his?” “Oh, yes, indeed. He’s just finished a new book on bird monogamy. lam so impatient to read it. It must be wonderful.” “Here is a bargain,” safd Philip, draining the coffee pot for a last cup of coffee to offer to his companion. “I’ll let you read that wonderful book if you’ll tell me what it Is about” And that led very easily to telling the girl the predicament he was in. It was in mid-summer that James Deveridge came up to the mountain camp to visit his nephew. “At least you have stayed here,” he said. “I don’t know what you have been doing, but I thought you would have given up long before this.” Philip lost no time in showing his uncle what he had been doing. There were hundreds of photographs that no eyes save those of Philip and Alice Gerry had ever fallen upon before. The negatives had been developed and the pie* tures had been printed in the shack. Of this detail of the process Philip was a past master. What amazed the uncle was that the pictures were so entirely what he wanted. “They are the most . wonderful pictures I have ever seen,” said the old man, tears, coming into his usually hard old eyes, “It is as if I had suddenly found you, my nephew. It has always been my grief that no ope of my own has been interested in the work I do. But you must be interested or you could not have done these pictures. They are as good in their way as anything I ever did.” A little later Alice Gerry, dressed in her usual tree-climbing attire, slipped into the shack and came straight over to the old man’s Side. “I’ve always longed to meet you,” she said with a timidity that indicated her admiration better than any elaborate compliments she might have expressed would have done, “I’ve been getting together a few notes to give you on my own observations. I have always wondered if you would accept them.” There was just a little disappointment in the old man’s as he took the girl’s hands insß*Ws. “Then the pictures were not my nephew’s work—and you, like the others who understand my work, will go away from me and leave me alone. I had hoped my nephew took the pictures.” “He did take them,” the girl assured him. “He took every one and took most of them alone. I just showed him at first and then he became as enthusiastic as I —■” “And, anyway,” interrupted the nephew, who perhaps had never appreciated his eccentric old uncle as much before as he should have, “Alice is going to be your niece. We were just waiting to ask your blessing.” And in truly patriarchal fashion the white-haired old man stood and raised his hands in benediction.