THE BITTERN 71 
he was fairly out of the grass, standing in plain 
sight upon his hay platform. 
Once in position he fell to pumping in earnest, 
and kept it up for more than an hour, while two 
enthusiasts sat upon the railway embankment, 
twelve or thirteen rods distant, with opera-glasses 
and note-books, scrutinizing his every motion, 
and felicitating themselves again and again on 
seeing thus plainly what so few had ever seen at 
all. What would Thoreau have given for such 
an opportunity ? 
“The stake-driver is at it in his favorite 
meadow,’ he writes in his journal, in 1852. “TI 
followed the sound, and at last got within two 
rods, it seeming always to recede, and drawing 
you, like a will-o’-the-wisp, farther away into the 
meadows. When thus near, I heard some lower 
sounds at the beginning like striking on a stump 
or a stake, a dry, hard sound, and then followed 
the gurgling, pumping notes fit to come from a 
meadow. 
“This was just within the blueberry and other 
bushes, and when the bird flew up, alarmed, I 
went to the place, but could see no water, which 
makes me doubt if water is necessary to it in 
making the sound. Perhaps it thrusts its bill so 
deep as to reach water where it is dry on the 
surface.” 
