CHAPTER II 



A Gift of the Birds 



THE following year, one morning in early 

 spring, my father called me to him to ask 

 whether I should like to have as a gift the 

 most beautiful thing ever made by man. Of 

 course I eagerly assured him that I should like it 

 very much indeed. Then he told me that he had 

 something for me even finer and more precious than 

 anything man ever had made or ever could make : 

 a gift straight from the hands of the Creator. He 

 then proceeded formally to present me with the 

 personal and indisputable ownership of each bird 

 of every description that made its home on his 

 land. Undoubtedly the completeness of this gift 

 was influenced by his experience with the hawk. 

 Before that time if he had been making such a gift 

 I think he undoubtedly would have reserved the 

 right to exterminate the hawks that preyed on the 

 fields and poultry, the owls that infested the barns 

 and chicken houses, and very probably, too, the 

 woodpeckers, which seemed to take even more of 

 the cherries than did the robins, orioles, or tanagers. 

 That he made the gift complete, with no reserva- 

 tions, proved that he had learned to regard my 



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