" Tick-Tock " Talk 



And here I am tonight at Dum- 

 biedykes musing to as little purpose 

 probably as when out there a tired, 

 barefooted, sleepy "kid" once mar- 

 veled at the whistling whippoorwills 

 when evening came. A slowly burning 

 log that never saw those scenes has 

 brought them back, and why not? 

 These trees from which our stores of 

 wood are drawn may have also har- 

 bored in their time many of those 

 self-same birds. It is now some years 

 ago, but once I heard far back in the 

 Clark farm woods near by just after 

 dark the old familiar cry, repeated 

 long and loud not less than twenty 

 times in quick succession, in accor- 

 dance with traditional whippoorwillian 

 practices. But he did not stay, this 

 courier of the air from somewhere, 

 sounding his message across the space; 

 the one and only call of its kind yet 

 heard at Dumbiedykes. 



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