A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

into no bluejay’s head. Now, on top of all this,

there’s another thing; a jay can out-swear any gentleman

in the mines. You think a cat can swear. Well, a cat can;

but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his

reserve-powers, and where is your cat? Don’t talk to ME–I

know too much about this thing; in the one little particular

of scolding–just good, clean, out-and-out scolding–

a bluejay can lay over anything, human or divine.

Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry,

a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason

and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal,

a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is

an ass just as well as you do–maybe better. If a jay

ain’t human, he better take in his sign, that’s all.

Now I’m going to tell you a perfectly true fact about

some bluejays.

CHAPTER III

Baker’s Bluejay Yarn

[What Stumped the Blue Jays]

“When I first begun to understand jay language correctly,

there was a little incident happened here. Seven years ago,

the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands

his house–been empty ever since; a log house, with a plank

roof–just one big room, and no more; no ceiling–nothing

between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday

morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin,

with my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills,

and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees,

and thinking of the home away yonder in the states,

that I hadn’t heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay

lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says,

‘Hello, I reckon I’ve struck something.’ When he spoke,

the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof,

of course, but he didn’t care; his mind was all on the

thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof.

He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the

other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug;

then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink

or two with his wings–which signifies gratification,

you understand–and says, ‘It looks like a hole,

it’s located like a hole–blamed if I don’t believe it IS

a hole!’

“Then he cocked his head down and took another look;

he glances up perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings

and his tail both, and says, ‘Oh, no, this ain’t no fat thing,

I reckon! If I ain’t in luck! –Why it’s a perfectly

elegant hole!’ So he flew down and got that acorn,

and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting

his head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face,

when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening

attitude and that smile faded gradually out of his

countenance like breath off’n a razor, and the queerest

look of surprise took its place. Then he says, ‘Why, I

didn’t hear it fall!’ He cocked his eye at the hole again,

and took a long look; raised up and shook his head;

stepped around to the other side of the hole and took

another look from that side; shook his head again.

He studied a while, then he just went into the Details–

walked round and round the hole and spied into it from every

point of the compass. No use. Now he took a thinking

attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back

of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally says,

‘Well, it’s too many for ME, that’s certain; must be

a mighty long hole; however, I ain’t got no time to fool

around here, I got to “tend to business”; I reckon it’s

all right–chance it, anyway.’

“So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped

it in, and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick

enough to see what become of it, but he was too late.

He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised