98 THE FALL OF THE YEAR 



We had often heard the geese go over before, but 

 never such a flock as this, never such wild waking 

 clangor, so clear, so far -.away, so measured, swift, 

 and — gone! 



I love the sound of the ocean surf, the roar of a 

 winter gale in the leafless woods, the sough of the 

 moss-hung cypress in the dark southern swamps. 

 But no other voice of Nature is so strangely, deeply 

 thrilling to me as the honk, honk, honk of the pass- 

 ing geese. 



For what other voice, heard nowadays, of beast 

 or bird is so wild and free and far-resounding? Heard 

 in the solemn silence of the night, the notes fall as 

 from the stars, a faint and far-off salutation, like the 

 call of sentinels down the picket line — "All's well! 

 All's well!" Heard in the open day, when you can 

 see the winged wedge splitting through the dull gray 

 sky, the notes seem to cleave the dun clouds, driven 

 down by the powerful wing-beats where the travel- 

 ers are passing high and far beyond the reach of 

 our guns. 



The sight of the geese going over in the day, and 

 the sound of their trumpetings, turn the whole world 

 of cloud and sky into a wilderness, as wild and pri- 

 meval a wilderness as that distant forest of the far 

 Northwest where the howl of wolves is still heard 

 by the trappers. Even that wilderness, however, is 

 passing ; and perhaps no one of us will ever hear the 

 howl of wolves in the hollow snow-filled forests, as 



