65 



THE NIGHT-HAWK 



Night-hawks are here* Their busy, buzzing notes 

 come down into the dusty, noisy, electric-lighted 

 crevices we call streets to tell us that it is really 

 summer. The Night-hawk whistles as if he held a 

 live bee in his bill and was calling friends to par- 

 take of the repast ♦ It is passing strange that these 

 birds never become thoroughly reconciled to a city, 

 though they return and invade it again and again. 

 Its gases and other exhalations, its swarming bipeds, 

 its hideous wires, glaring lights, and torturing noises 

 that drive out even nature herself, do not repel these 

 airy visitors. They renounce the free life open before 

 them and go down among our clean-shaven lawns, 

 trimmed shade trees, smoking chimneys, and dusty 

 roofs, trying by the force of example to lead us into 

 better ways. Birds are not self-sufficient, idealistic, 

 colonising reformers, retiring from the by-law-ridden 

 world to live a perfect life apart. They are aggressive 

 agitators, forcing their offensively perfect ways into 

 the factory-made life they pity but cannot elevate. 

 Why do they not shake the dust of the city from their 

 wings 'i But so many things are strangely at variance 

 with the universal love of ease and ownership I 



