THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



enjoys what the man tries to understand. Lucky is 

 he who can get his grapes to market and keep the 

 bloom upon them, who can carry some of the fresh- 

 ness and eagerness and simphcity of youth into his 

 later years, who can have a boy's heart below a 

 man's head. 



The birds have always meant much to me; as a 

 farmboy they were like a golden thread that knit 

 the seasons together. In early manhood I turned to 

 them with the fondness of youth, reinforced with an 

 impetus obtained from literature. Books, especially 

 the poets, may do this for a man; they may con- 

 secrate a subject, give it the atmosphere of the ideal, 

 and hft it up in the field of universal interest. They 

 seem to have done something like that for me in 

 relation to birds. I did not go to books for my 

 knowledge of the birds, except for some technical 

 knowledge, but I think literature helped to endow 

 them with a human interest to me, and relate them 

 to the deeper and purer currents of my life. What 

 joy they have brought me! How they have given 

 me wings to escape the tedious and the deadening! 

 I have not studied them so much as I have loved 

 them; at least, my studies have been inspired by 

 love. 



How much more easily and surely knowledge 



comes through sympathy than through the knowing 



faculties! It is as if I had imbibed my knowledge 



of the birds through the pores of my skin, through 



12 



