22 THE RING OF NATURE 



in this double dusk. The blackbirds are known by 

 their 'plaining ' tut, tut,' seldom to-day breaking 

 into the ' weech-a-weech-a-weech ' that they give 

 when through the clear air they see man coming. 

 The linnets are known by their tinkling chirrup 

 that sounds like forced cheerfulness, but the other 

 birds are vocally too silent for us to know what 

 they are. 



There is nothing like these January days for 

 giving us the pleasure of intense and satisfiable 

 hunger. The civilized man who sits down to a 

 dinner of many courses with the remark that he is 

 famished, and then deliberates over the selection 

 of his hors-d'oeuvre, simply uses the exaggeration 

 that is one of the curses of civilization. He has 

 probably never known what hunger is. Neither 

 do I contend that the hunger established on a ten- 

 mile walk is comparable with that of a man six days 

 without food, though that also a man ought to 

 know before he speaks on the subject. 



The usual hour for luncheon has scarcely gone 

 by when the man tramping in the open air is 

 assailed by a feeling not quite in the region of the 

 stomach, but behind the region of the solar plexus, 

 known in old boxing parlance as the ' bread basket ' 

 but to-day as the ' mark.' It is the grand ter- 

 minus of all our radiating activities gastronomi- 

 cal, physical, and perhaps spiritual. I believe it is 

 a good sign of physical wholeness that hunger soon 

 attacks us there. It takes you like a crisis of life 



