A BIRD-GAZER AT THE CANON 



though it was still too monstrous, too strange, 

 too little related to any natural feeling. He 

 should need to live on its rim for months or 

 years before it would affect him according to 

 its deserts. Nay, he should have to spend long 

 whiles down in its depths ; for though the pre- 

 sent slipperiness of the steep, snow-covered trail 

 made the descent seem an imprudent venture for 

 so chronic a graybeard, yet he did more than 

 once go down the first few zigzags, —far enough 

 to feel the awful stillness and loneliness of the 

 place, and to realize something of the power of 

 those frowning walls over the human spirit. 



At such times it was, especially, that he felt a 

 desire to come here again, in a more propitious 

 season, and to spend some days, at least, on one 

 of those lower plateaus, or on the bank of some 

 far-down stream. Birds and flowers would fill the 

 place, the canon wren would sing to him, and the 

 short, shut-in days would pass over his head like 

 a dream. Even as it was, there is no telling how 

 far down he might sooner or later have ventured, 

 the desire increasing upon him, but for a wild, 

 all-day snow-storm, which, for the remainder of his 

 stay, put all such projects out of the question. 



An hour after hearing the robin, while on his • 

 return to the hotel, he came upon another bird 

 of about the same degree of novelty, —a brown 

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