DUCKS.
THE duck is a person who seldom gets his deserts. Some centuries ago Chaucer blasted his character, and he has never since got it properly repaired. This is hard, for there is much solid worth in the duck, and his gait is inimitable. The Magnanimous Man was known by his going; so also is the duck. Independence, the inquiring mind, the deliberation of one whose reflections are worth the name, consideration for the solidarity of the flock that stragglers would impair, and a profound study of the doctrine of the main chance,—all this is expressed in the decorous waddle of the duck. The cock, though a personable bird, is a braggart and a booby; but the duck is a humourist ; his inimitable complacency cannot be ruffled because he sees through the shows of things, and the gleam in his beady eye tells you so.
The present writer is a slave to a brigade of Aylesbury ducks, called collectively Billy. And Billy—collective—tyrannises over his owner with the remorseless tyranny of the so-called dumb animal. But there is that in the character of Billy which deserves eulogy, for the wisdom of ages has not yet exhausted the merits of the duck. We all know the goose. In history, and in letters too, he has left his mark. He saved the Capitol ; he winged victorious shafts at Crecy and at Agincourt; he winged other shafts than those before the steel pen was invented; he is of vast importance in fairy-lore; and in the ancient lay of Gudrun he was touched with an exquisite homely pathos when the Sagaman told how the geese in the home-field fell a-screaming as the Queen wept for Sigurd slain on her knees. But the possibilities of the duck are also numerous, and there is no sweeter creature alive than a duckling lately hatched. The alacrity, the intelligence, the charming clumsiness, of his every movement, the abundant vitality in his minute person, the lovely colouring and the sweet, happy voice, make a young duckling one of the most charming creatures on earth. In the young beauty of green branches and blue sky and delicate blossoms the yellow beads of a toddling brood add a perfect note to the mysterious tune that Spring plays on the Pan-pipes. Or at the other end of the year's march you may rejoice if you have the fortune to see a late-hatched brood of golden ducklings among the deeper gold of drifted October leaves nestling together in the smiling sweet contentment peculiar to these little creatures, who are never querulous, never quarrel, and never grumble at their food. Now and then a pair of splay orange-coloured feet will go paddling over the crackling leaves, and some enthusiast will overbalance his small, unsymmetrical person in a desperate attempt to catch a belated wasp; and then you have got another of Nature's harmonies.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy, ducks as well as men; but it cannot be pretended that the domestic duck grown up into the shades of the prison-house is an exalted character. Indeed, he is a materialist, and where dinner is concerned he is certainly greedy. But he is of a type for which an unheroic world that is always demanding heroism is seldom
sufficiently grateful. He is very like the average man. Let us be thankful for the ordinary man. Without him the extraordinary would not be. The domestic duck derives immediately from the wild duck, or mallard, who
abounds in our marshes and river-lands. A charming creature he is, and a singularly clever one, as you can judge from the cunning hiding-places he chooses for his nest : sometimes half-a-mile from the water, to evade the vigilance of foxes, who judge that his breeding-place should be near his feeding-place, and whose calculations are thus baffled by his astuteness. Sometimes, though essentially not a roosting bird, he will even nest in a tree, and thus be obliged to carry his young somehow to the water whither instinct drives the parents with the new-fledged brood. And in distinction from the barnyard duck, who is a regular Mormon, the mallard is
monogamous, even to keeping one mate for life, so certain authorities maintain. Sad it is that the duck should have
declined upon materialism in his days of prosperity; but it is a phenomenon not confined to ducks. Modern man also has cast away certain romantic virtues of old time,--perhaps they are too cumbrous for a hurrying life, like the armour of the period. It was the domestic duck that Chaucer knew, not the mallard, who, being himself a "changeless lover," would not have flouted the "true turtle" pleading in praise of constancy. "Well jested,' quoth the duck, by my hat'!" And his
argument was reasonable. Ideals are uncomfortable things, said he; take the thing that you get most comfort out of :-- "Yea quack,' yet quoth the duck, both well and fair, There be more stars, God wotteth, than a pair."
It may be that a sense of humour is not alliays compatible with the highest virtue, and the duck has a humorous eye; but looking into it, you may misdoubt him for a rascal!
But he is a pleasing bird, and has his merits. He is, more- over, a bit of a Socialist; that is to say, he is collectively greedy. This is probably a wild trait, for individual greedi- ness appears to be a vice of civilisation. Give a savage child by Lake Nyasa a biscuit, and if he has nineteen companions standing by, he will break his biscuit into twenty bits instead of devouring it alone, like Greedy Dick of nursery fame. Ducks feed together, sleep together, steal together, play together, live harmoniously in a flock. Whom be knows and what he is used to the duck tolerates; but no strangeness will he suffer. Go through an unknown doorway or along an un- familiar track he will not except under dire compulsion, and then only with loud protesting and reproach. In like manner many householders, mistrusting the snares of experiment, refuse to change the scene of their yearly holiday; and like the average man, too, the duck is a slave to prejudice,—what he does not like is wrong, and what he does not understand is much worse. The present writer knew a drake suspected of murdering a meritorious hen solely because he objected to her colour. It was unlike his family's, so he slew her. At any rate, after a life of persecution from this drake the unfortunate hen was found a draggled corpse floating in the duck pond, while the suspected murderer, with a weird gleam in his inscrutable eye, swam round and round quacking to himself in an undertone. But in spite of prejudice, ducks are wise creatures. You see it in their habits, their games, their stringent code of etiquette. They have a tolerance born of wisdom. The drakes in a flock seldom or never fight as cocks will fight; they will persecute strangers, but they tolerate their kind.
It may be doubted whether the tame duck ever pines after the wild, free life of the mallard whom he hears so often pass- ing overhead. He has acquired enough philosophy to know when he is comfortable, and you could fancy his eye gleaming with a subtle malice as he considered the difference between the beautiful wild freedom of the mallard who depends on cunning and courage for very life, and the comfortable, safe, humdrum existence that brings him his own daily corn in a bucket. Ducks are not as unlike men as men suppose. "There be more stars, God wotteth, than a pair," is no un- common rule of life among human mortals. Has the mallard the better part ? He suffers terrors and persecutions, he must be often cold and sometimes starving, few of the ordered certainties of existence fall to his share, his lot is poverty, and all his wealth is freedom,— " A pilgrim bold in Nature's care, And all the long year through the heir Of joy or sorrow."
Twice every day, all the year round, a flock of wild duck grosses a certain hill, flying between two reservoirs about seven miles apart. In the winter the flock is enormously increased by hosts.of immigrants coming to winter. They are always exact to time by the sun. In the grey light immedi- ately before sunrise or after sunset they pass over a certain chestnut in the home-field, flying high up in a V-shaped body well out of gun-shot, for they know our hilltop holds foes, though how they manage to estimate the carrying power of a gun is a mystery; but know it they do, and will not even scatter when fired at, but go past like a flash, with a swift whistling of wings as their wedge cleaves the air. And if the ducks below in the field .should quack, from high overhead comes a shrill, attenuated " qu-a-a-a-k," as kindred answers kin, distant so far within the swathes and fetters of civilisation. So the deep-down irrational instinct in the heart of man leaps out sinnetimes, responsive to the imperious silent call of wild Nature. The homeless joy of free elements is the inheritance of these wild creatures, and the sophisticated may desire but he will not claim it. He has learned the difference between wealth, and poverty, and it is all over with his freedom of choice; he is burdened with goods and shackled to expediency; he will never again trtist the kindly seventies of Nature.
. The wild duck's richest inheritance is his poverty. Give him wealth and he is poor. He has acquired the sense of humour, but the revenues of. his soul have shrunk. Some of the keenest joys, and possibly certain of the purest virtues, disappear when life becomes too comfortable. How much do we lose by. the exchange ?
. The sexton's wife in the village of W— has a new sister- in-law, a delicate girl hardly able to work for herself, who had been left a widow with two babies. She married again shortly, "and there was folks," said Mrs. Hawke, "as did say her hadn't ought hey' wed again. And sure her might hey' gone on the Parish. But there'm Ben willin' to keep her, so where be the raison on it F say I." "Yea quack " There was much sound sense in her reply !
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