THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 
along the street, now upon the ground, now upon a 
bush, nervous and hurried as usual, uttering its 
sharp chip, and showing the white in its tail. The 
sight gave me a real home feeling. It did me more 
good than the medicine I was taking. It instantly 
made a living link with many past springs. Any- 
thing that calls up a happy past, how it warms the 
present! There, too, that same day I saw my first 
meadowlark of the season in a vacant lot, flashing 
out the white quills in her tail, and walking over the 
turf in the old, erect, alert manner. The sight was 
as good as a letter from home, and better: it had a 
flavor of the wild and of my boyhood days on the 
old farm that no letter could ever have. 
The spring birds always awaken a thrill wherever 
Iam. The first bobolink I hear flying over north- 
ward and bursting out in song now and then, full of 
anticipation of those broad meadows where he will 
soon be with his mate; or the‘first swallow twitter- 
ing joyously overhead, borne on a warm southern 
breeze; or the first high-hole sounding out his long, 
iterated call from the orchard or field — how all 
these things send a wave of emotion over me! 
Pleasures of another kind are to find a new bird, and 
to see an old bird in a new place, as I did recently in 
theold sugar-bush where I used tohelp gather and boil 
sap asa boy. It was the logcock, or pileated -wood- 
pecker, a rare bird anywhere, and one I had never, 
seen before on the old farm. I heard his loud cackle 
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