GEESE 211 



grey-lags as they flew past the house. Their voices, 

 softened by distance, sounded not unpleasantly, 

 reminding me of the clanging of church bells in 

 the heart of a large town." 



It is a fact, I think, that to many minds the mere 

 wildness represented by the voice of a great wild 

 bird in his lonely haunts is so grateful, that the 

 sound itself, whatever its quality may be, delights, 

 and is more than the most beautiful music. A 

 certain distinguished man of letters and Church 

 dignitary was once asked, a friend tells me, why 

 he lived away from society, buried in the loneliest 

 village on the dreary East coast ; at that spot 

 where, standing on the flat desolate shore you look 

 over the North Sea, and have no land between you 

 and far Spitzbergen. He answered, that he made 

 his home there because it was the only spot in 

 England in which, sitting in his own room, he could 

 listen to the cry of the pink-footed goose. Only 

 those who have lost their souls will fail to under- 

 stand. 



The geese I have described, belonging to the 

 three old women, could fly remarkably well, and 

 eventually some of them, during their flights down 

 stream, discovered at a distance of about eight 

 miles from home the immense, low, marshy plain 



