232 Bird - Lore 



evasive fulfilment. The difference is alone in the means we employ. Because 

 we lose sight of this fact we think we do not understand one another's interests. 



A friend of mine who can be lifted to the seventh heaven and all the en- 

 chantment therein by classical music, has no patience with what he calls my 

 ornithological nonsense. He sees nothing in birds worthy a full-blooded man's 

 serious attention. I, on the other hand, fail to find in music the nearest ap- 

 proach to my visions. A scholarly friend of mine who cannot understand what 

 he considers my foible, is noticeably patient with me when I talk of birds. 

 And I, with equal charity, endure his animation over ancient ruins and the 

 meager records of perished nations. 



That hermit, Henry Thoieau, pondering upon life and nature, wrote "I 

 long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove and am still on their 

 trail. Many the travelers I have spoken to concerning them, describing their 

 tracks and the calls they answer to. I have met one or two who have heard 

 the hound and the tramp of the horse and have even seen the dove disappear 

 behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had 

 lost them themselves." 



When we pass from the simplicity of childhood to complexities and cramp- 

 ing realities of maturity we seem to lose something in one of those thousands 

 of blind alleys we mistook for the highway. Later we suspect the loss and begin 

 the search for what we believe to have been our greatest treasure. Some seek 

 to recover this treasure in the exhilaration of i)rofound study, others in the 

 ecstasy of music, still others in art, or the solemnity of worship. Some by 

 one means and some by another. Some even in the glad-free-life of the wild 

 birds in God's out-of-doors. Then there be many who in the mad rush of 

 commercial life and the social whirl, never miss the lost treasure, and are never 

 tantalized with the desire to search for this elusive element of life. 



1J 



