NATURE LEAVES 



Yesterday friends took us to Claremont, a ride 

 of thirty miles, in their automobile. The day was 

 all sun and sky above, and all fresh green earth be- 

 low, with a line of snow-white peaks behind dark 

 near-by mountain barriers on the horizon. After 

 a week or more of cloud and rain, how we enjoyed 

 the brightness and the sunshine! Especially did 

 that line of white peaks cut off by that dark moun- 

 tain wall in front of them draw and hold my eye. 

 Over the top of the highest one, San Antonio, we 

 could see the snow lifted by the west wind and car- 

 ried high in the air over on the east side. It was like 

 a thin, white flame, swaying, flickering, sinking 

 and falling, but clinging tenaciously to the moun- 

 tain-peak. Thus have I seen this frost flame stalk 

 across my native hills in midwinter. All the time we 

 were speeding through orange-groves yellow with 

 fruit, along improved lands red with the new fur- 

 row, and past wild, unclaimed places spotted with 

 the bloom of many flowers. 



I think the bird I most want to take home 

 with me, and establish in our towns and villages, 

 is the blackbird, Brewer's blackbird, one of 

 the best-mannered, best-dressed, best-groomed birds 

 I ever saw. He is like a bit of polished ebony moving 

 quietly over your lawn. His coat has the same rich 

 iridescent hues as that of our crow blackbird, and 

 he has the same yellow eye, but he is much less in 

 size and much more graceful in form and movement, 

 119 



