hunter's love of an eagle. 207 



on the tall pine, or wildly cradled as the mighty 

 fabric bends and sways to the blast. He has become 

 attached to them, and hence requests every one who 

 visits him not to touch them. I verily believe he 

 would like to shoot the man who should harm one 

 of their feathers. They are his companions in that 

 solitude — proud occupants of the same wild home, 

 and hence bound together by a link it would be hard 

 to define, and yet which is strong as steel. If that 

 pine tree should fall, and those eagles move away to 

 some other lake, he would feel as if he had lost a 

 friend, and the solitude become doubly lonely. 



Thus it is — you cannot by any education or expe- 

 rience, drive all the poetry out of a man — it lingers 

 there still, and blazes up unexpectedly — revealing the 

 human heart with all the sympathies, attachments, 

 and tenderness that belong to it. 



He, however, one day came near losing his bold 

 eagle. He was lying at anchor, fishing, when he saw 

 his favorite bird high up in heaven, slowly sweeping 

 round and round in a huge circle, evidently awaiting 

 the approach of a fish to the surface. For an hour or 

 more, he thus sailed with motionless wings above the 

 water, when all at once he stopped and hovered a mo- 



