29S I GO A-FISHING. 



smile on his face as he bowed and disappeared toward 

 the cloisters. 



Many a time, in the northern forests, of a Sunday even- 

 ing when the wind is high among the pines, I hear the 

 sound of the organ at Monte Casino. 



As I write that sentence it occurs to me that some 

 reader, not familiar with forest life, may regard it as a 

 pure imagination when one says that the sound of the 

 wind is like distant music. But it is no imagination. In 

 our city lives we are, without knowing it, in a constant 

 noise. There is no moment of day or night in New York 

 when the air is not vibrating with sound. The innumer- 

 able occupations of men, the wheels on pavements, the 

 very voices of many thousands in ordinary conversation, 

 keep up a constant disturbance of the atmosphere, so that 

 what we call silence in the city, or stillness, is only com- 

 parative. A good illustration of this is found when one 

 goes out of town by rail, carrying with him the city noise 

 in the roar of the train, until he is set down at a country 

 station, and the engine drags away the last of the sounds 

 of the town, leaving him on the platform in the country 

 stillness. The ear is at rest for the first time in weeks or 

 months, and the silence is wonderful. 



For this reason in town we do not often notice the pe- 

 culiar tones of the wind, although sometimes they are re- 

 markable enough as the air is broken into vibrations by 

 chimneys and the corners of window-casings. The voices 

 of the wind are so various in the forest that, notwithstand- 

 ing all which has been written of them, I am persuaded 

 the thousandth part has not been told of their wonderful 

 power. ^Eolian notes are the subject of innumerable 

 poems, and no one has written of the country without 

 reference to them. But it is not alone in melody and 



