LEAF AND TENDRIL 



and field, and allows no subtile flavor of the night 

 or day, of the place and the season, to escape him. 

 His senses are so delicate that in his evening walk 

 he feels the warm and the cool streaks in the air, his 

 nose detects the most fugitive odors, his ears the 

 most furtive sounds. As he stands musing in the 

 April twilight, he hears that fine, elusive stir and 

 rustle made by the angleworms reaching out from 

 their holes for leaves and grasses; he hears the 

 whistling wings of the woodcock as it goes swiftly 

 by him in the dusk; he hears the call of the kill- 

 dee come down out of the March sky; he hears 

 far above him in the early morning the squeaking 

 cackle of the arriving blackbirds pushing north; 

 he hears the soft, prolonged, lulling call of the little 

 owl in the cedars in the early spring twilight; he 

 hears at night the roar of the distant waterfall, and 

 the rumble of the train miles across the country 

 when the air is "hollow;" before a storm he notes 

 how distant objects stand out and are brought 

 near on those brilliant days that we call "weather- 

 breeders." When the mercury is at zero or lower, 

 he. notes how the passing trains hiss and simmer 

 as if the rails or wheels were red-hot. He reads the 

 subtile signs of the weather. The stars at night 

 forecast the coming day to him; the clouds at 

 evening and at morning are a sign. He knows there 

 is the wet-weather diathesis and the dry-weather 

 diathesis, or, as Goethe said, water affirmative 

 8 



