TWILIGHT BIRDS. 



COLE YOUNG RICE. 



Swallow, I follow 

 Thy skimming 

 Over the sunset skies — 

 Follow till joy is dimming 

 To sadness in my eyes. 

 And hollow seems now thy twittering 

 High up where the bittering 

 Night-blown winds arise. 



Throstle, the wassail 



Thou drinkest 

 Daily of chalice buds — 

 Wassail in which thou linkest 

 Thy notes of springtime moods — 

 Should docile thy elfish fluttering 

 Where twilight is uttering 

 Sorcery through the woods. 



Plover, thou lover 



Of moorlands 

 Drained by the surfing sea- 

 Lover of marshy tourlands, 

 What is the world to thee? 

 Nay rover, wing on unquerying 

 O'er mallows ne'er wearying 

 Over the pebbly sands! 



But sparrow, the care o' 



Thy nesting 

 Pierces thy vesper song- 

 Care o' the young thy breasting 

 Shall warm through the blue night 



long- 

 Till, an arrow, seems thy dittying. 

 Of pain to the pitying 

 Heart that knows earth's wrong. 



AWESOME TREES. 



WE made a side trip to the big 

 trees of the Mariposa group, 

 which are about one hour's ride 

 from the hotel, says a corre- 

 spondent of the Pittsburg Dispatch. If 

 the smallest of these trees could be 

 planted anywhere in Pennsylvania the 

 railroads would run excursion trains to 

 it and make money. The trees in this 

 grove are so large that it takes a good 

 while to fully appreciate the facts 

 about the size of the biggest of them. 

 The "Grizzly Giant" is thirty- four feet 

 through at the base and over 400 feet 

 high. This tree would overtop the 

 spires on the Pittsburg cathedral by 

 over 100 feet. The trunk of this tree 

 is 100 feet clear to the first limb, which 

 is twenty feet in circumference. Many 

 other trees here are very nearly as large 

 as this one, and there are 400 in the 

 grove. Through several tunnels have 

 been cut and a four-horse stage can go 

 through these tunnels on the run and 



never graze a hub. You get an ap- 

 proach to an adequate idea of their 

 size by walking off lOO yards or so 

 while the stage is standing at the foot 

 of a tree and glancing from top to bot- 

 tom, keeping the stage in mind as a 

 means of comparison. The stage and 

 the horses look like the little tin outfit 

 that Santa Glaus brought you when 

 you were a good little boy. 



These trees are no longer to be called 

 the largest in the world, however. A 

 species of eucalyptus has been found 

 in Australia as large or larger. Emer- 

 son warns us against the use of the 

 superlative, but when you are in this 

 region of the globe you can't get along 

 without a liberal use of it. He himself 

 says of Yosemite: "It is the only spot 

 I have ever found that came up to the 

 brag." And as I stood in the big tree 

 grove I remembered that some one 

 called Emerson himself "the Sequoia 

 of the human race." 



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