12 IN BIRD LAND. 



immaculateness of the sky, or the purity of a wood- 

 land flower, rebukes one, gives one a keen sense of 

 one's sins, and makes one long for absolution ; or 

 when the pensive moaning of the wind through the 

 gray, branchless trees on a winter's day forces on 

 the mind a prevision of a judgment about to be 

 visited upon one's misdoings. Yet this is seldom 

 my own experience while idling in out-of-the-way 

 places. Usually I feel soothed and comforted, or, 

 at most, a sort of glad melancholy steals over me, 

 which is as enchanting as a magician's spell ; while 

 I often win exhilaration from the whispering breezes, 

 as if they carried a tonic on their pulsing wings. 



On the spring morning on which my friend so 

 studiously avoided Nature's by-paths, my stint of 

 labor for the day was soon despatched, and then, 

 flinging my lunch-bag over my shoulders, I hurried 

 across the fields, anxious to put a comfortable dis- 

 tance between myself and bothering human tene- 

 ments. By noon I had reached a green hollow at 

 the border of a woodland, where Nature, to a large 

 extent at least, has had her own sweet way. Here, 

 on the grassy bank of a rivulet, I sat down to eat my 

 luncheon. The spring near by filled my cup with 

 ale that sparkles, but never burns ; that quenches 

 thirst, but never creates it. Not a human habita- 

 tion was in sight ; nothing but the tinkling brook, 

 the sloping hills, the quiet woods, and the overarch- 

 ing sky. The haunt was not without music. The 

 far-away cadences of the bush-sparrows on the hill- 

 side filled the place like melodious sunshine. A 



