CHAPTER IX 



THE BUZZARD OF THE BEAR SWAMP 



NO, I do not believe that any one of you ever 

 went into a swamp to find a turkey buzzard's 

 nest. Still, if you had been born on the 

 edge of a great swamp, as I was, and if the great- 

 winged buzzards had been soaring, soaring up in 

 your sky, as all through my boyhood they were 

 soaring up in mine, then why should you not have 

 gone some time into the swamp to see where they 

 make their nests these strange cloud-winged crea- 

 tures ? 



Boys are boys, and girls are girls, the world over; 

 and I am pretty sure that little Jack Horner and 

 myself were not the only two boys in all the world 

 to do great and wonderful deeds. Any boy with a 

 love for birds and a longing for the deep woods, 

 living close to the edge of the Bear Swamp, would 

 have searched out that buzzard's nest. 



Although I was born within the shadows of the 

 Bear Swamp, close enough to smell the magnolias 

 along its margin, and lived my first ten years only a 

 little farther off, yet it was not until after twice 

 ten years of absence that I stood again within sight 



