A SUMMER S PIPPIN 



dams, and utterly failed to understand the yellow 

 dog s best qualities. Altogether, it was consider 

 able of a problem with him what girls were made 

 for anyway, and you can readily understand that 

 it was too esoteric a job for me to tell him. 



It must have been about this time that the 

 following note was written down in my log-book 

 in the woods : 



&quot; Last night a pretty little black messenger 

 flew out of the night into the room. He was 

 vociferously urgent and woke me up. As I lay 

 on my back in the dim light, trying to make out 

 if he were a bat of reality or an incubus of sleep, 

 he clung to the mosquito-nettings, head down, 

 and twittered ominously and plaintively, and 

 made frightened excursions about the room, 

 knocking the breath out of his body against the 

 wall, always to come back to my canopy with an 

 alarum. What his message was I could not 

 make out, but I tried to reason with him, one 

 leg on the wakeful shore, and one on the dream 

 ful sea. I told him that even things from the 

 Night s Plutonian Shore need not be so noisy 

 and hysterical, and if he had delivered his mes 

 sage, he could go away again and leave me to 

 sleep on it. There was the open window, with 

 two or three late stars low down, looking in; 

 why not go out like a reasonable herald before 

 I got the broom ? 



&quot; But the fact is, mysterious messengers from 

 the shoreless darks are about the stupidest of 

 winged omens. As soon as I understood that 



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