Piebald - “Worries Of a Winter Walk”
William Dean Howells labels the civilization that he distinguishes as ‘Piebald.’ He illuminates, “The other winter, as I was taking a morning walk down to the East River, I came upon a bit of our motley life, a fact of our piebald civilization, which has perplexed me from time to time, ever since, and which I wish now to leave with the reader, for his or her more thoughtful consideration.” The emblematic ‘piebald’ typifies an assorted sophistication whose impression cuts across manifold generations which are personified in the ‘young girl’ and the old females that he beholds shipping coal. The fledgling girl denotes the new generation whereas the old womenfolk depict the long-standing generation both of whom are constituents of the heterogeneous refinement.
Birds - “Summer Isles of Eden”
Birds are riveting constituents of ‘Summer Isles of Eden.’ William Dean Howells witnesses, “In whatever way you walk, at whatever hour, the birds are sweetly calling in the way-side oleanders and the wild sage-bushes and the cedar-tops. They are mostly cat-birds, quite like our own; and bluebirds, but of a deeper blue than ours, and redbirds of as liquid a note, but not so varied, as that of the redbirds of our woods. How come they all here, seven hundred miles from any larger land? Some think, on the stronger wings of tempests, for it is not within the knowledge of men that men brought them.” The birds endow the daintiness of the wilderness for they epitomize a bosom association with the wilderness. They are not deterred by the desolate setting of their habitation because it is a distinctive Eden for them. Mother Nature is accommodating of all the birds, regardless of their discrepancies which occasion a superb backdrop.
