NATURE IN LITTLE 



Country people are now much more friendly to 

 the crow than they were in my Boyhood. He is not 

 so black as he was painted. The farmers have 

 learned that he is their friend, for all his occasional 

 corn-pulling and chicken-stealing. His is the one 

 voice you are pretty sure to hear wherever your walk 

 leads you. He is at home and about his own business. 

 It is not his grace as "a flyer that pleases us; he is 

 heavy and commonplace on the wing — no airiness, 

 no easy mastery as with the hawks; only when he 

 walks is he graceful. How much at home he looks 

 upon the ground — an ebony clod-hopper, but in 

 his bearing the lord of the soil. He always looks 

 prosperous; he always looks contented; his voice 

 is always reassuring. The farmer may be disgruntled 

 and discouraged, his crows are not. The country is 

 good enough for them; they can meet their engage- 

 ments; they do not borrow trouble; they have not 

 lived on the credit of the future; their acres are not 

 mortgaged. The crow is a type of the cheerful, suc- 

 cessful countryman. He is not a bird of leisure; he 

 is always busy, going somewhere, or policing the 

 woods, or saluting his friends, or calling together the 

 qlans, or mobbing a hawk, or spying out new feed- 

 ing-grounds, or taking stock of the old, or just 

 cawing to keep in touch with his fellows. He is very 

 sociable; he has many engagements, now to the 

 woods, now to the fields, now to this valley, now to 

 the next — a round of pleasure or duty all the day 

 119 



