NATURE'S MEMORIAL DAY 193 



below. Through the distance they can hear the 

 bugle calls of thrushes, and with trained ears thus 

 know in what formation the advance will be made 

 and when. Well may they feel the old-time thrill 

 of desperate conflict as the advance sweeps up 

 their hill and the misty gray legions swarm over 

 it until the fight must need be hand to hand. Yet 

 rarely does a day pass without final victory for 

 the blue. The misty legions fall back and vanish 

 before the flashing cavalry of the sun and the 

 blue battalions of the clear sky swarm forth and 

 drive the enemy in full retreat before them. Thus 

 to them again out of the shades may come Gettys- 

 burg, or Antietam, or Port Hudson. 



I like best, though, to think of them here as 

 resting in camp with no thought of battles past 

 or to come, the mists that rise meaning no more 

 than the smoke of comrades' campfires, the bird 

 bugle calls only those of the day's routine. From 

 a hundred treetops they may hear the robins sound 

 the reveille. From their hilltop these bugle notes 

 should wake even the soundest sleepers. No 

 other bird is so well fitted for this call. There is 

 a sprightly persistence in the robin's song of a 



