AN OUTDOOR LESSON 



77 



The street lights blinked, the street mud 

 the street noises clashed and rattled, and the street" 

 crowds poured up and down and bore me alonj 

 with them. 



I was homesick homesick for the country, 

 longed to hear the sound of the wind in the pine 

 trees ; I longed to hear the single far-away bark of the 

 dog on the neighboring farm, or the bang of a barn- 

 door, or the clack of a guinea going to roost. It was 

 half-past five, and thousands of clerks were pouring 

 > from the closing stores; but I was lonely, homesick 

 for the quiet, the wideness, the trees and sky of the 

 country. 



Feeling thus, and seeing only the strange face 

 all about me, and the steep narrow walls of the street 

 high above me, I drifted along, until suddenly I 

 caught the sound of bird voices shrill and sharp' 

 through the din. 



I stopped, but was instantly jostled out of the 

 street, up against a grim iron fence, to find myself 

 peering through the pickets into an ancient ceme-' 

 tery in the very heart of Boston. 



As I looked, there loomed up in the fog and rain; 

 overhead the outlines of three or four gaunt trees, 

 whose limbs were as thick with sparrows as they 

 ever been with leaves. A sparrow roost ! Birds, ten* 

 thousand birds, gone to roost in the business section 

 of a great city, with ten thousand human beings 

 passing under them as they slept ! 



