DRAGON'S BLOOD 217 



To him who will but listen there are adventures in 

 bird-songs anywhere, any time, and any season. It 

 was but last winter that I found myself again in the 

 dawn-dusk facing a defiant hickory, armed only with 

 an axe. Let me recommend to every man who is 

 worried about his body, his soul, or his estate during 

 the winter months, that he buy or borrow a well- 

 balanced axe and cut down and cut up a few trees 

 for fire-wood. As he forces the tingling iced oxygen 

 into every cell of his lungs, he will find that he is 

 taking a new view of life and love and debt and death, 

 and other perplexing and perennial topics. 



Quite recently I read a journal that a young 

 minister kept, back in the fifties. One entry espe- 

 cially appealed to me. 



"Decided this morning that I was not the right 

 man for this church. Chopped wood for two hours 

 m Colonel Hewitt's wood-lot. Decided that this 

 was the church for me and that I was the man for 

 this church. " 



On this particular morning, I heard once more the 

 wild dawn-song of the Carolina wren, full of liquid 

 bell-like overtones. As I listened, my mind went back 

 to another wren-song. I had been hunting for the 

 nest of a yellow palm warbler in a little gully in the 

 depths of a northern forest. The blood ran down my 

 face from the fierce bites of the black-flies, and the 

 mosquitoes stung like fire. Suddenly, from the side of 

 the tiny ravine, began a song full of ringing, glassy 

 notes such as one makes by running a wet finger rap- 

 idly on the inside of a thin glass finger-bowl. Listen- 



