THE MELANCHOLY 

 CRANE 



THE melancholy crane lived in a 

 marsh which stretched away to the 

 river on the west of a wide ex- 

 panse of wet prairie. He was a heron, as a 

 matter of fact, but the hunters and people 

 who frequented those waste places called him 

 a crane, and he was entirely too disconsolate 

 to deny it. He was tall and gaunt, and he 

 lived on frogs and fish and snails, and any- 

 thing else in the creeping and swimming line 

 that came to his notice. His plumage was 

 of a greenish blue, and his wings were broad 

 and capable of carrying his ungainly form 

 easily over the marshes. 



His favorite haunt was a spot in the marsh 

 where seldom, if ever, the foot of the hunter 

 penetrated, and where the spirit of solitude 

 dreamed and slept through the long, golden 

 days of early September. There the winds 

 came creeping past the tall grasses and ruf- 

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