How Animals Talk 



in a man's ears till it deafens him or drives him 

 mad, but the exquisite living silence of nature, 

 a silence which at any moment may break into an 

 elfin ringing of bells, or into a faintly echoing 

 sound of melody, as if stars or unseen beings were 

 singing far away. 



This impression of melody is often real, not 

 illusory, and may be explained by the impact of 

 air-currents on resonant shells of wood, hundreds 

 of which fall to humming with the voice of 'cellos 

 and wind-harps; but there is another experience 

 of the solitude, more subtle but none the less real, 

 for which only the psychologist will venture to 

 give an accounting. Once in a season, perhaps, 

 comes an hour when, no matter what your plans 

 or desires may be, your mind seems intent on 

 some unrelated affair of its own. As you hurry 

 over the trail, you may be thinking of catching a 

 trout or stalking a buck or building a camp or 

 getting to windward of a corporation; meanwhile 

 your subconscious mind, disdaining your will or 

 your worry, is busily making pictures of whatever 

 attractive thing it sees, radiant little pictures, 

 sunshiny or wind-swept, which shall be reproduced 

 for your pleasure long after the important matters 

 which then occupied you are clean forgotten. 



Here is the story of one such picture, a reflection, 

 no doubt, of the primitive trait or quality called 



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