“THE LAST AMERICAN ” 289 
bullet in among the chickens) falls upon his liv- 
ing prey and kills like a bolt from the blue. But 
the bald eagle, in his serene strength, his majestic 
beauty of flight—preys upon dead fish. At least, 
he preys upon them when he can, in summer. 
Hunger, or the demands of his young, may drive 
him to other offal, or even to killing. But he is, 
nonetheless, driven to it. His nature is not 
pugnacious; his instincts may be vulturine, but 
they are pacific. Not Jove’s thunderbolts but a 
carrion pickerel should be represented in his 
talons, were we realists in our art. 
But we are not realists. Man lives by symbols. 
His imagination transcends facts. See, Baldy 
rises suddenly from his perch on the cliff side, and 
with a kind of barking scream, cac-cac-cac, and a 
few air-stirring beats of those vast wings, more 
than six feet from tip to tip, leaps upward, banks, 
ascends on a spiral, and is now overhead, against 
the blue! Look at him now, and do not marvel 
that man has placed the thunderbolts of Jove 
within his yellow talons, or carved his form upon 
a nation’s shield! Against the sky he is outlined 
with sharp distinctness, the outer feathers of his 
