710 THE GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL. 
they but the very ramparts of order, the symbolical breastworks of organized 
human industry now millenniums old! And yet, upon a wooden pedestal hard 
by sits a gull, serene, sedate, unhurried, a son of the wilderness gazing upon 
you with level eye, and rebuking by his very blue-gray calm the pomp and 
madness of men 
You have escaped for the nonce from the counting-room fetid with 
usurious plots; his business has always been conducted in the open, his many 
farings viséd by the sun, and his lodging places purified by the gentle rains 
You are con- 
cerned about 
your cloth 
ing, and you 
dress labori- 
ously for 
“the  occa- 
sion’; his 
wardrobe is 
always on his 
back, well- 
fitting, sea- 
sonable, and 
“cOTrece. 
You, poor 
human, are 
worried 
about the in- 
creased cost 
of living; 
His Opu- 
lence, the 
I the Author Gull, fares 
YOUNG BURGOMASTERS fat on what 
you squan- 
der, and yawns contentedly over a full crop. As for revels, what more giddy 
whirl than the aerial dance of the white-winged watchers, as they welcome an 
incoming steamer, or divide the cook’s largess on the churning waters! What! 
You tired-eyed galley slave of Fortune, you spent son of Ambition and dull 
Care! Consider the sea-gulls, how they fare and forget yourself—for an hour 
o1 
The gulls are mother Nature’s pledge that she has not forgotten us Che 
sparrows gibbering in the street yonder are scant c mfort to the human heart; 
outcasts they are, mere collocations of soil and smut, inane, blatant, futile 
But here. where sea meets shore, Nature deals kindly with us and sends dainti 
