RED LEAF DAYS 187 



feeding, chasing each other playfully about, 

 as if life were nothing but holiday. Little 

 they know of the future. And almost as 

 little know we. Blessed ignorance ! It 

 gives us all, birds and men alike, many a 

 good hour. If my playmate of long ago had 

 foreseen that he was to die at twenty, he 

 would never have been the happy boy that I 

 remember. Those few bright years he had, 

 though he had no more. So much was saved 

 from the wreck. 



Thoughts of this kind come to me as I re- 

 call an exhilarating half hour of our recent 

 stay in Franconia. It was on the first morn- 

 ing, immediately after breakfast. We were 

 barely out of the hotel yard before we turned 

 into a bit of larch and alder swamp by the 

 shore of Gale Eiver. We could do nothing 

 else. The air was fuU of chirps and twit- 

 ters, while the swaying, feathery tops of the 

 larches were alive with flocks of whispering 

 waxwings, the greater part of them birds 

 of the present year, still wearing the stripes 

 which in the case of so many species are 

 marks of juvenility. If individual animals 

 still pass through a development answering 



