THE GUN 109 



The young woodcock were just out, the neatest little 

 things. We know with what sober but perfect finish 

 the bars and trifling figures, brown and black, are 

 wormed and worked together on the full-grown 

 woodcock ; in the toy bird fresh from its shell this 

 process is beginning. The egg-searcher at Woburn 

 had scarcely seen anything prettier than these chicks. 

 He told me they looked like " striped velvet." By 

 velvet he meant to express an idea of their softness. 

 For simile and image you would not go to an egg- 

 searcher or game-watcher. Yet this man's few and 

 slow words, with homeliest phrasing eked out by 

 hand show, bring before one the nesting-place amid 

 the dead oak leaves and the tufts of grass, and 

 the chicks. His words make pictures. What is 

 the secret of this eloquence in many a field or 

 down worker, who has no book-learning nor taste 

 in words ? Probably it lies in sincerity ; in this 

 and the sense of intimacy with wild life which such 

 men convey to us in their homespun speech. The 

 egg- seeker unconsciously paints 



" The thing as he sees it, 

 For the God of things as they are." 



No sooner does art come in, and the jugglery of 

 words and phrases, than sincerity is in danger. Some- 

 thing of it may go even in the conscientious pursuit of 

 " the right word." The least suspicion of artistry in 

 these intimates of Nature and the charm would be lost. 



