A SHARP LOOKOUT 



How gently their great wings flapped ; how 

 easy to fly when spring gives the impulse ! 

 On another occasion I saw a line of fowls, 

 probably swans, going northward, at such a 

 height that they appeared like a faint, wav- 

 ing black line against the sky. They must 

 have been at an altitude of two or three 

 miles. I was looking intently at the clouds 

 to see which way they moved, when the 

 birds came into my field of vision. I should 

 never have seen them had they not crossed 

 the precise spot upon which my eye was 

 fixed. As it was near sundown, they were 

 probably launched for an all-night pull. 

 They were going with great speed, and as 

 they swayed a little this way and that, they 

 suggested a slender, all but invisible, aerial 

 serpent cleaving the ether. What a high- 

 way was pointed out up there ! — an easy 

 grade from the Gulf to Hudson's Bay. 



Then the typical spring and summer and 

 autumn days, of all shades and complexions, 

 — one cannot afford to miss any of them ; 

 and when looked out upon from one's own 

 spot of earth, how much more beautiful and 

 significant they are ! Nature comes home to 

 one most when he is at home ; the stranger 

 and traveler finds her a stranger and a trav- 



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