, v 



* 



.?; ':/ 



2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



street may be sloppy with a plaster of half-melted 

 snow, while a mile out of the town all is fast bound 

 in frost; and a man may con his books or his 

 accounts unconscious of disturbance, while a full 

 gale is roaring on the distant hill-top. 



To get out of a town usually needs something 

 of a struggle, but the struggle does not last long. 

 When the noisy chaos of the station has been left 

 behind, we glide out into the fields with just that 

 sensation of calm that I imagine a duck must feel 

 when it slides softly into the water after a period 

 of waddling and quacking. We can sit back and 

 survey such part of the sky as the window of an 

 English railway carriage reveals to us ; and almost 

 at once we begin to divine that Nature is getting 

 ready. For here and there, though it is but the 

 middle of March, dark drifting curtains of filmy 

 cloud are driven slantingly along the horizon by a 

 wind from the south; and these are nothing less 

 than the forerunners of April showers. The grass 

 of the meadows is getting green, and the plough- 

 lands are red or ochreous beyond their wont; and 

 as we pass a certain familiar cutting I feel sure that 

 the sweet violets are coming into bloom in the short 

 turf above it. 



And when the half -hour of travel is over and 

 we mount to the rail way -bridge and let our eyes 

 wander in unobstructed freedom round the whole 



