Where Town and Country Meet 



all the landscape, and the breeze had just 

 enough frost in it to be delicious to the nos- 

 trils, as well as bracing. The song-sparrows 

 were lifting up their sweet thank-offerings 

 everywhere, by altars of bush and stone, 

 and now and then I heard the clarion of the 

 robin from some neighboring orchard. On 

 a fence post sat a solitary bluebird, but he 

 was silent depressed, apparently, at having 

 arrived so long before his fellows. It would 

 be some days yet, I imagined, before I 

 should hear his jubilant strain. 



Straggling crows were drifting south- 

 ward, overhead, scolding me with harsh, 

 suspicious caws. The crow is the most 

 "canny" and sophisticated of all our wild 

 birds. He suspects all mankind, and even 

 womankind, of carrying guns up their 

 sleeves, and being banded in a perpetual 

 league to lay him low. No range, however 

 long, seems to promise him immunity from 

 the deadly bullet, and he starts his hoarse 

 alarmist cry if he spies a human figure a 

 mile away. 



Before I came to the edge of the woods 

 I was in a glow from exercise, and the 

 blood coursed in my veins like liquid fire. 

 24 



