NATURE AND NATURAL HISTORY 



mendous vitality, Roosevelt had also had the gift 

 of length of days, our debt to him would doubtless 

 have been even greater than it is. Surely the gift of 

 length of days is neither a wage nor a reward of 

 merit. You have it, or you do not have it, and the 

 Eternal is indifferent. It is hard 'to kill a man who 

 has it, and it cannot be bestowed upon a man who 

 has it not. How vain to try to find anything like 

 our prudence, our economies, our foresight in the 

 ways of Nature ! Nature is a spendthrift and a miser, 

 both at the same time. 



§ 

 Nearly every season, in early fall, after days of 

 wind and cloud and rain, there comes one of those 

 still, clear, breathless mornings — the first fall 

 hush in nature. Every sound by man or beast stands 

 out on the great background of silence. The distant 

 barking of a dog, or lowing of kine, or cawing of 

 crows, carries far. The very air seems resonant. I 

 hear the clucking or chucking of a chipmunk far off. 

 Then the call of a solitary robin* strikes my ear. A 

 moment later from the orchard conies the bur-r-r-r-r 

 of a red squirrel. Then I hear the scream of the 

 jay in the beech-woods. The slightest sound breaks 

 the great stillness as a pebble starts the ripples on 

 a smooth surface of water. The fog in the valley 

 barely stirs, like a half -awakened sleeper. It has not 

 energy enough to creep up the hip. A few mornings 

 ago it wallowed up to our doorstep and lay down 

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