THE WILD PIGEON. 219 



ing to win it with piteous cries to take wing and fly with 

 her away from this threatening danger. It hardly seems 

 possible, 'that the countless millions of a few years ago 

 are now dead, and forever removed from our sight; but 

 alas! it is too true. This month, the month of April, 

 used to be the time of their coming; the season is the 

 same, the same gentle, pattering rains; the warm south 

 winds are blowing as freshly ; the budding trees are swell- 

 ing with a new life; the robins and the bluebirds have 

 long been with us; the forests, the meadows, the streams, 

 look as of old; the rivulets course as merrily through the 

 timber-lands, and lose themselves in their meanderings; 

 the sky looks the same, the same drifting clouds of white 

 tinged with blue; the wind soughing as sweetly through 

 the upland hills; the placid bosom of the Mississippi is 

 disturbed by passing steamers, rolling along in grandest 

 waves, that decrease as they are left from the boat, and 

 gradually grow smaller and smaller, until they f orm> tiny 

 crests of white foam, or whirl in spinning eddies, to be 

 dissolved in the swift current; but over the tree-tops, 

 where I have so often seen myriads of pigeons flecking 

 the sky with a deeper blue, to-day no living bird is in 

 sight. 



There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; there in the 

 depths of the forest the cares of business are forgotten, 

 and our life is renewed, sweetly rejuvenated, for we can 

 not silently commune with Nature unless becoming better 

 for it. Only yesterday, I wandered beneath the branches 

 of the sturdy trees where years ago I passed so many happy 

 hours, and the gap of twenty years was closed, and in 

 imagination I was again one of the number waiting 

 impatiently for the evening flight. Away off to the 

 south, the mild wind carried to our expectant ears the 

 faint boom of the first gun, a signal to us of the approach- 

 ing hosts; then another shot: still another, and we traced 



