OIiver Herford. [Headpiece for Herford’s poem “The Artful Ant” as it appeared in 1891 in the children’s magazine St. Nicholas, vol. XVIII, no. 4.] Drawing, 1891, Harvard Art Museums.
Once on a time an artful Ant
Resolved to give a ball,
For tho’ in stature she was scant,
She was not what you'd call
A shy or bashful little Ant.
(She was not shy at all.)
She sent her invitations through
The forest far and wide,
To all the Birds and Beasts she knew,
And many more beside.
(“You never know what you can do,”
Said she, “until you 've tried.”)
Five-score acceptances came in
Faster than she could read.
Said she: “Dear me! I’d best begin
To stir myself indeed!”
(A pretty pickle she was in,
With five-score guests to feed!)
The artful Ant sat up all night,
A-thinking o’er and o’er,
How she could make from nothing, quite
Enough to feed five-score.
(Between ourselves I think she might
Have thought of that before.)
She thought, and thought, and thought all night,
And all the following day,
Till suddenly she struck a bright
Idea, which was— (but say!
Just what it was I am not quite
At liberty to say.)
Enough, that when the festal day
Came round, the Ant was seen
To smile in a peculiar way,
As if— (but you may glean
From seeing tragic actors play
The kind of smile I mean.)
From here and there and everywhere
The happy creatures came,
The Fish alone could not be there.
(And they were not to blame.
“They really could not stand the air,
But thanked her just the same.”)
The lion, bowing very low,
Said to the Ant: “I ne’er
Since Noah’s Ark remember so
Delightful an affair.”
(A pretty compliment, although
He really wasn’t there.)
They danced, and danced, and danced, and danced;
It was a jolly sight!
They pranced, and pranced, and pranced, and pranced,
Till it was nearly light!
And then their thoughts to supper chanced
To turn. (As well they might!)
Then said the Ant: “It’s only right
That supper should begin,
And if you will be so polite,
Pray take each other in.”
(The emphasis was very slight,
But rested on “Take in.”)
They needed not a second call,
They took the hint. Oh, —yes,
The largest guest “took in” the small,
The small “took in” the less,
The less “took in” the least of all.
(It was a great success!)
As for the rest—but why spin out
This narrative of woe?—
The Lion took them in about
As fast as they could go.
(And went home looking very stout,
And walking very slow.)
And when the Ant, not long ago,
Lost to all sense of shame,
Tried it again, I chance to know
That not one answer came.
(Save from the Fish, who “could not go,
But thanked her all the same.”)
Antoine-Louis Barye. Lion Sleeping. Watercolor on wove paper, lined, 1810-75, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
HERFORD, OLIVER. “THE ARTFUL ANT,” IN ARTFUL ANTICKS, 4-9. NEW YORK: THE CENTURY CO., 1897.
Contexts
In a Life Magazine issue from November 1894, editor Robert Bridges noted that, in Artful Anticks, “when [Oliver Herford] makes rhymes about a kitten, a dormouse, a spider, or a crocodile, you are absolutely certain that he has put himself on such friendly terms with each animal that he is not only able to reveal the quirks of its mind, but draw a picture of them. That is why grown folks will get as much fun out of this book as children.”
Herford was a well-known poet, humorist writer, and illustrator.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
artful: Skilfully adapted for the accomplishment of a purpose; ingenious, clever. Hence: cunning, crafty, deceitful.
festal: Characteristic of a feast; (hence also) joyous or celebratory in tone; (of a person or group) in a festive or holiday mood.
five-score: Rarely used for “a hundred” (from Shakespeare).
Maria Sibylla Merian. Spiders, Ants and Hummingbird on a Branch of a Guava. Colored copper engraving from Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, Plate XLIII, 1705, Wikimedia. Public Domain.
A big black spider, homed in my tulip bed,
So that her children might be comfortably fed.[1]
She wove her dainty web, with such cunning art,
Around every stamen in the tulip’s heart,
That never a bee, called by the colours gay,
Lived to hunt honey on another fair day.
STRATTON-PORTER, GENE. “THE SPIDER’S TRAP,” IN MORNING FACE, 29. NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY, 1916.
[1] Although all spiders wrap their eggs with silk to keep them protected, only a few species like cellar spiders, crab spiders and wolf spiders, among others, actively guard these egg sacs from predators. Upon hatching, most spiderlings are left to survive on their own.
Contexts
In her introduction to the 1996 anthology Coming Through the Swamp: The Nature Writings of Gene Stratton Porter, Sydney Landon Plum reveals that, after the commercial success of Gene Stratton-Porter’s 1909 novel A Girl of the Limberlost, the author and conservationist talked Doubleday, Page & Company into publishing once nature work for each of her subsequent novels. Morning Face, a collection of prose and poems published by Doubleday in 1916, probably saw the light as a result of this agreement. Most of the book’s illustrations are photographs by the author herself, an accomplished self-taught photographer. In fact, according to Plum, Stratton Porter “ardently supported the use of photography for nature study as a substitute for the common practice of killing scores of the natural subjects in order to study them.” As evident in the quatrain that serves as the dedication of Morning Face, Stratton-Porter had a juvenile audience in mind for this book, although one can also make the case that, by identifying herself with the “little girl with a face of morning,” she is also extending her appeal to the inner children within readers of all ages:
One little girl with a face of morning, a wondering smile her lips adorning, wishes her pictures and stories to share, so she sends them to children, everywhere.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
stamen: Botany. The male or fertilizing organ of a flowering plant, consisting of two parts, the anther, which is a double-celled sac containing the pollen, and the filament, a slender footstalk supporting the anther.
Resources for Further Study
A list of 26 common spiders found in the United States.
Kathryn Aalto’s “The Legend of Limberlost,” available through the Smithsonian Magazine‘s website, offers a portrait of Stratton-Porter that emphasizes her love of nature and her conservationist efforts.
Gene Stratton-Porter’s Cabin at Wildflower Woods is a museum open to the public in Rome City, Indiana. Stratton-Porter designed the cabin, which was completed in 1914 and sits on 148 acres of fields, woods, and gardens.
Contemporary Connections
Did you know that March 14 is National Save a Spider Day in the United States? Of about 50,000 different kinds of spiders in the world,
Original 1940 woodcut for “In the Grass,” by Lois Mailou Jones. Public Domain.
Sometimes I lie in meadow grass,
And watch all kinds of insect pass
In brown and red and gray.
Some very busy ants speed by
With white crumb bundles stacked up high,
All hastening one way.
Each hurries with his heavy load
Up what I call the Cricket Road,
It looks so cool and dark.
There’s pleasant millet growing there,[1]
And wisps of fox-grass everywhere[2]
That I use as a cane
To push along some lazy bug,
That lags without a load to lug
Along the insect land.
And bugs keep coming on and on—
New bands before the old have gone.
Sometimes one comes alone.
A grasshopper quick, proud and lean
Leaps to the millet, tall and green,
And takes it for this throne.
Sometimes a beetle blunders past
Or stops awhile, then starts out, fast,
As though he’d heard a call.
Sometimes a soft green worm drags by,
Then winds beneath a millet sky,
And can’t be seen at all.
Each worm and bug moves on its way.
Some tap the grass, as though in play.
But I like best the ants’ long strong
Returning from their marketing.
Newsome, Effie Lee. “In the Grass.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 9-10.
[1] Millet is an ancient type of grass often grown for its grain. Newsome imagines herself down in the grass with the insects, so the millet seems like a forest.
[2] Foxtail grasses, considered a weed, can reach as much as three feet tall. The seeds are dangerous for livestock to eat.
Contexts
Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature. This poem, like many others in The Envious Lobster, whimsically enacts a natural history lesson, while it encourages children’s imagination.
Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).
Grasshopper, colored pring, late 17th-early 18th century. Attributed to Maria Sybilla Merian (1647-1717). Public Domain.
Johnny Greenjacket, a grasshopper, gay,
Gave a great banquet one midsummer day.
The geese were all present, some quail and a pheasant—
This part is unpleasant—
While waiting for dinner, just after the toast,
The guests became hungry,
And ate up their host.
Newsome, Effie Lee. “Johnny Greenjacket.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 10.
Contexts
Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature. This poem, like many others in The Envious Lobster, whimsically enacts a natural history lesson.
Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).
Albert Lubaki. Untitled. Watercolor, c. 1929, Fabrice Gousset/Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris. Public Domain.
At daybreak Monday morning we had finished our breakfast by candle light and with staff in hand we marched northeast for Lukunga. [1]
In two days we sighted the Mission Compound. Word had reached the missionaries (A. B. M. U.) that foreigners were approaching, and they came out to meet and greet us. [2] We were soon hurried into their cool and comfortable mud houses. Our faithful cook was dismissed, for we were to take our meals with the missionaries.
Mr. Hoste, who is at the head of this station, came into our room and mentioned that the numerous spiders, half the size of your hand, on the walls were harmless. “But,” said he, as he raised his hand and pointed to a hole over the door, “there is a nest of scorpions; you must be careful in moving in or out, for they will spring upon you.”
Well, you ought to have seen us dodging in and out that door. After supper, not discrediting the veracity of the gentleman, we set to work, and for an hour we spoiled the walls by smashing spiders with slippers.
The next morning the mission station was excited over the loss of their only donkey. The donkey had been feeding in the field and a boa-constrictor had captured him, squeezed him into pulp, dragged him a hundred yards down to the river bank, and was preparing to swallow him.[3] The missionaries, all with guns, took aim and fired, killing the twenty-five-foot boa-constrictor. The boa was turned over to the natives and they had a great feast. The missionaries told us many tales about how the boa-constrictor would come by night and steal away their goats, hogs, and dogs.
The sand around Lukunga is a hot-bed for miniature fleas, or “jiggers.” [4] The second day of our stay at Lukunga our feet had swollen and itched terribly, and on examination we found that these “jiggers” had entered under our toe nails and had grown to the size of a pea. A native was called and with a small sharpened stick they were cut out. We saw natives with toes and fingers eaten entirely off by these pests. Mr. Hoste told us to keep our toes well greased with palm oil. We followed his instructions, but grease with sand and sun made our socks rather “heavy.”
The native church here is very strong spiritually.
The church bell, a real big brass bell, begins to ring at 8 A. M. and continues for an hour. The natives in the neighborhood come teeming by every trail, take their seats quietly, and listen attentively to the preaching of God’s word. No excitement, no shouting, but an intelligent interest shown by looking and listening from start to finish.
In the evening you can hear from every quarter our hymns sung by the natives in their own language. They are having their family devotions before retiring.
Our second day’s march brought us to a large river. Our loads and men were ferried over in canoes. Mr. Lapsley and I decided to swim it, and so we jumped in and struck out for the opposite shore. On landing we were told by a native watchman that we had done a very daring thing. He explained with much excitement and many gestures that the river was filled with crocodiles, and that he did not expect to see us land alive on his side. We camped on the top of the hill overlooking N’Kissy and the wild rushing Congo Rapids. It was in one of these whirlpools that young Pocock, Stanley’s last survivor, perished.
In the “Pool” we saw many hippopotami, and longed to go out in a canoe and shoot one, but being warned of the danger from the hippopotami and also of the treacherous current of the Congo River, which might take us over the rapids and to death, we were afraid to venture. A native Bateke fisherman,[5] just a few days before our arrival, had been crushed in his canoe by a bull-hippopotamus.[6] Many stories of hippopotami horrors were told us.
One day Chief N’Galiama with his attendant came to the mission and told Dr. Simms that the people in the village were very hungry and to see if it were possible for him to get some meat to eat.
Dr. Simms called me and explained how the people were on the verge of a famine and if I could kill them a hippopotamus it would help greatly. He continued to explain that the meat and hide would be dried by the people and, using but a little at each meal, would last them a long time. Dr. Simms mentioned that he had never hunted, but he knew where the game was. He said, “I will give you a native guide, you go with him around the first cataract about two miles from here and you will find the hippopotami.” I was delighted at the idea, and being anxious to use my “Martini Henry” rifle and to help the hungry people, I consented to go.[7] In an hour and a half we had walked around the rapids, across the big boulders, and right before us were at least a dozen big hippopotami. Some were frightened, ducked their heads and made off; others showed signs of fight and defiance.
At about fifty yards distant I raised my rife and let fly at one of the exposed heads. My guide told me that the hippopotamus was shot and killed. In a few minutes another head appeared above the surface of the water and again taking aim I fired with the same result. The guide, who was a subject of the Chief N’Galiama, sprang upon a big boulder and cried to me to look at the big bubbles which were appearing on the water; then explained in detail that the hippopotami had drowned and would rise to the top of the water within an hour.
The guide asked to go to a fishing camp nearby and call some men to secure the hippopotami when they rose, or else they would go out with the current and over the rapids. In a very short time about fifty men, bringing native rope with them, were on the scene and truly, as the guide had said, up came the first hippopotamus, his big back showing first. A number of the men were off swimming with the long rope which was tied to the hippopotamus’ foot. A signal was given and every man did his best. No sooner had we secured the one near shore than there was a wild shout to untie and hasten for the other. These two were securely tied by their feet and big boulders were rolled on the rope to keep them from drifting out into the current.
The short tails of both of them were cut off and we started home. We reported to Dr. Simms that we had about four or five tons of meat down on the river bank. The native town ran wild with delight. Many natives came to examine my gun which had sent the big bullets crashing through the brain of the hippopotami. Early the next morning N’Galiama sent his son Nzelie with a long caravan of men to complete the work. They leaped upon the backs of the hippopotami, wrestled with each other for a while, and then with knives and axes fell to work. The missionaries enjoyed a hippopotamus steak that day also.
Before the chickens began to crow for dawn I was alarmed by a band of big, broad-headed, determined driver ants.[8] They filled the cabin, the bed, the yard. There were millions. They were in my head, my eyes, my nose, and pulling at my toes. When I found it was not a dream, I didn’t tarry long.
Some of our native boys came with torches of fire to my rescue. They are the largest and the most ferocious ant we know anything about. In an incredibly short space of time they can kill any goat, chicken, duck, hog or dog on the place. In a few hours there is not a rat, mouse, snake, centipede, spider, or scorpion in your house, as they are chased, killed and carried away. We built a fire and slept inside of the circle until day.
We scraped the acquaintance of these soldier ants by being severely bitten and stung. They are near the size of a wasp and use both ends with splendid effect. They live deep down in the ground and come out of a smoothly cut hole, following each other single file, and when they reach a damp spot in the forest and hear the white ants cutting away on the fallen leaves, the leader stops until all the soldiers have caught up. A circle is formed, a peculiar hissing is the order to raid, and down under the leaves they dart, and in a few minutes they come out with their pinchers filled with white ants. The line, without the least excitement, is again formed and they march back home stepping high with their prey.
The small White Ants have a blue head and a white, soft body and are everywhere in the ground and on the surface. They live by eating dead wood and leaves.[9]
We got rid of the driver ants by keeping up a big fire in their cave for a week. We dug up the homes of the big black ants and they moved off. But there was no way possible to rid the place of the billions of white ants. They ate our dry goods boxes, our books, our trunks, our beds, shoes, hats and clothing. The natives make holes in the ground, entrapping the ants, and use them for food.[10]
The dogs look like ordinary curs, with but little hair on them, and they never bark or bite. I asked the people to explain why their dogs didn’t bark. So they told me that once they did bark, but long ago the dogs and leopards had a big fight, the dogs whipped the leopards, and after that the leopards were very mad, so the mothers of the little dogs told them not to bark any more, and they hadn’t barked since.[11]
The natives tie wooden bells around their dogs to know where they are. Every man knows the sound of his bell just as we would know the bark of our dog.
There are many, many kinds of birds of the air, all known and called by name, and the food they eat, their mode of building nests, etc., were familiar to the people. They knew the customs and habits of the elephant, hippopotamus, buffalo, leopard, hyena, jackal, wildcat, monkey, mouse, and every animal which roams the great forest and plain, – from the thirty-foot boa-constrictor to a tiny tulu their names and nature were well known.
The little children could tell you the native names of all insects, such as caterpillars, crickets, cockroaches, grasshoppers, locusts, mantis, honey bees, bumble bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, goliath beetles, stage beetles, ants, etc.
The many species of fish, eels and terrapins were on the end of their tongues, and these were all gathered and used for food. All the trees of the forest and plain, the flowers, fruits, nuts and berries were known and named. Roots which are good for all maladies were not only known to the medicine man, but the common people knew them also.
SHEPPARD, WILLIAM HENRY. “ANIMAL LIFE IN THE CONGO,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 135-42. NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
[1] Lukunga is a district of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital.
[2] ABMU is the acronym for the American Baptist Missionary Union, an international missionary society founded in 1814.
[3] Boa constrictors are endemic to the Americas, not Africa. The biggest snake in Africa is the African Rock Python, which can reach a length of 20 to 30 feet.
[4] The chigoe flea, commonly known as jigger, causes a painful infestation that included borrowing under the host’s skin. Originally from the South America and the Caribbean, jiggers spread to Africa at the end of the 19th century.
[5] The Teke or Bateke people are a Bantu Central African ethnic group mainly located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The word “teke” means “to buy.”
[6] Male hippopotami are called bulls and female hippopotami are called cows. They are very territorial.
[7] The British Empire adopted the Martini-Henry rifle in 1871 and kept it in service for 47 years. This firearm is sometimes referred to as a weapon of Empire.
[8] Driver ants, which belong to the genus Dorylus, hunt together for prey in massive swarm raids. Due to their ferocity, they effectively “drive” many animals before them.
[9] White ants are not ants at all, but termites, social insects that build large nests and, due to the damage the cause to wooden structures, are widely classified as pests.
Clusters. 1884-85, Popular Science Unknown. Single Termite Mounds or in Clusters. 1884-85, Popular Science Monthly. Public Domain.
[10] Yes, termites are edible! A good source of protein, fat and minerals, they probably figured in our ancestors’ diet and many people eat them today.
[11] The Basenji is a very old breed of dog hound native to central Africa. Although known as “the barkless dog,” they do produce yodel-like vocalizations.
Contexts
Sheppard’s essay was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “to the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
cur: A dog: now always depreciative or contemptuous; a worthless, low-bred, or snappish dog. Formerly (and still sometimes dialectally) applied without depreciation, especiallyto a watchdog or shepherd’s dog.
Visit the collection of William Henry Sheppard’s papers a the Presbyterian Historical Society’s website.
Texts written by and about Sheppard at the Log College Press’s website, which collects writings from American presbyterians from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Dust Jacket for Gladiola Garden, 1940. By Loïs Mailou Jones.
Mother Mud-dauber hurries all day,[1]
Bringing wet mud for her halls,
Her funny little walls.
What will she hide inside?
Guess, if you have not tried.
The spiders she stings,
Which can’t run away.
She puts them alive in her cells,
And they stay.
Then she lays an egg in each little cell,
And closes it with mud, and closes it well.
When the eggs come open on some fine day
There’ll be spider dinners waiting
In the pleasantest way.[2]
Newsome, Effie Lee. “Mother Mud-Dauber Wasp.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 21.
[1] Mud-dauber wasps come in several different varieties and colors, but many are beneficial in the garden, where they eliminate pests. The females build the nests, which look like concrete rectangles and are often attached to walls or ceilings, or under eaves.
[2] These wasps are natural predators of spiders, and poisonous black widow spiders are among their favorite prey. Many are quite beautiful.
Blue mud-dauber wasp. Courtesy University of Florida Extension.
Contexts
Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature. Whimsically using the mother-offspring relationship, this poem teaches natural history about insects that children may initially find fearsome or repugnant.
Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).
Original illustration for “Insect Folk,” 1940. Woodcut print by Loïs Mailou Jones. Public Domain.
I only have to lift a stone
Up from the soft gray ground
To start the gayest insect folk
To bustling all around.
And often when I peel the bark
From off some brown old tree
A host of small white bugs trots out
Almost immediately.
They seem to have all sorts of plans,
And everywhere to go.
And off they rush, one after one,
Like autos in a row.
Newsome, Effie Lee. “Insect Folk.” Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1940, 4.
Contexts
Newsome worked among the many celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anne Spencer, many of them poets. Among her noteworthy contributions to that movement was her writing and editing for W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine, The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As John Claborn points out, Du Bois’s political goals embraced the idea of access to natural spaces, and the magazine featured environmental writing by such notable authors as Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and Hughes. Newsome contributed to and edited “The Little Page” (“Whimsies for the Younger Folk”), where much of her work emphasized nature.
Anonymous. Reading of Newsome’s poem, “The Bronze Legacy.” The illustrations for Gladiola Garden were done by prominent Black artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998).
Detail of oil painting of insects. Jan van Kessel the elder, 17th century. Public domain.
There was a little grasshopper
Forever on the jump;
And as he never looked ahead
He often got a bump.
His mother said to him one day
As they were in the stubble,
“If you don’t look before you leap,
You’ll get yourself in trouble.”
The silly little grasshopper
Despised his wise old mother,
And said he knew what best to so,
And told her not to bother.
He hurried off across the fields,
An unknown path he took,
When oh! he gave a heedless jump,
And landed in a brook.
He struggled hard to reach the bank,
A floating straw he seizes,
When quickly a hungry trout drops out,
And tears him all to pieces.
MORAL. Good little boys and girls, heed well
Your mother’s wise advice;
Before you move, look carefully;
Before you speak, think twice.
Tulalip Indian Boarding School, 1917. Courtesy Aurelia Celestine.
Anonymous. “The Conceited Grasshopper.” The Youth’s Companion 3, no. 1 (August 1881): 57.
Contexts
Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the tribe’s website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.
Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.
Like many contributions to Native American newspapers, this poem was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. This poem suggests the kind of didactic texts students were expected to compose.
Marr, Carolyn J. “Assimilation Through Education: Indian Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest,” University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection. This article includes historical contexts and features “A Typical Daily Schedule.”
———. “Between Two Worlds: Experiences at the Tulalip Indian Boarding School, 1905-1932,” Hibulb Cultural Center & Natural History Preserve.
Contemporary Connections
“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.
“The School Girl.” Portrait of Charlotte Elizabeth Crawford. 1920. From the cover of the ninth volume of The Brownies’ Book. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., http://www.loc.gov/item/22001351/.
O HAPPY little grasshopper [1]
In shirt of lettuce-green,
With wings as thin as isinglass [2]
And sprightly legs and lean!
O little leaping grasshopper,
I watched you spring and pass,
And found that though your name sounds so,
You don't just jump on grass.
You sped right by Parnassus grass [3]
To land on daddy's knee;
Then made my tie a boulevard,
As we sat by the tree.
I saw you pass some fox grass once [4]
And light––snap!––on a rose:
So, after all, one's not known by
The name one's parents chose.
Lee, Mary Effie. “The Grasshopper.” The Brownies’ Book, ed. W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, no. 9, New York, N.Y.: DuBois and Dill, September 1920. 286. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/22001351/>.
[1] Grasshopper: any of a group of jumping insects (suborder Caelifera) that are found in a variety of habitats. Grasshoppers occur in greatest numbers in lowland tropical forests, semiarid regions, and grasslands. They range in color from green to olive or brown and may have yellow or red markings.
[2] Isinglass: a semitransparent whitish very pure gelatin prepared from the air bladders of fishes (such as sturgeons) and used especially as a clarifying agent and in jellies and glue.
[3] Parnassus grass: this perennial herbaceous wildflower consists of a tuft of basal leaves, from which one or more flowering stalks develop. The blades of the basal leaves are oval in shape and entire (toothless) along their margins.
[4] Likely fox grass: foxtail weed (Setaria) has wide leaf blades, much like the turf grass in which it may grow. The base of the leaves has fine hairs and the stem rises from a collar at the base of the leaf.
Contexts
Later known as Effie Lee Newsome, Mary Effie Lee was born in Philadelphia and was famous for writing nature and children’s poems during the Harlem Renaissance. Lee worked for The Crisis Magazine, the monthly publication of the NAACP, where W. E. B. Du Bois worked as her editor. From 1925 until 1929, Lee edited a column in The Crisis called “The Little Page”. In her column, it was Lee’s job to carry out Du Bois’s goal for The Brownies’ Book: to encourage young Black children to feel pride for their race.
See Wonders: the Best Children’s Poems of Effie Lee Newsome (Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 1999) and Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers (The Associated Publishers, 1940) for other works by Mary Effie Lee.
Resources for Further Study
Biology of Grasshoppers. Eds. R. F. Chapman and Anthony Joern. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Canada, 1990.
