A SHADOW 243 
own level and seems always to have its natural 
and proper margin. Out of doors how children 
mingle with nature, and seem to begin just 
where birds and butterflies leave off! Leigh 
Hunt, with his delicate perceptions, paints this 
well: “The voices of children seem as natural 
to the early morning as the voice of the birds. 
The suddenness, the lightness, the loudness, 
the sweet confusion, the sparkling gayety, 
seem alike in both. The sudden little jangle 
is now here and now there; and now a single 
voice calls to another, and the boy is off like 
the bird.” So Heine, with deeper thoughtful- 
ness, noticed the “intimacy with the trees” 
of the little wood-gatherer in the Hartz Moun- 
tains ; soon the child whistled like a linnet, and 
the other birds all answered him ; then he dis- 
appeared in the thicket with his bare feet and 
his bundle of brushwood. “Children,” thought 
Heine, “are younger than we, and can still re- 
member the time when they were trees or birds, 
and can therefore understand and speak their 
language ; but we are grown old, and have too 
many cares, and too much jurisprudence and 
bad poetry in our heads.” 
But why go to literature for a recognition of 
what one may see by opening one’s eyes? Be- 
fore my window there is a pool, two rods 
square, that is haunted all winter by children, 
