NATURE LEAVES 
Yesterday friends took us to Claremont, a ride 
of thirty miles, in their automobile. The day was 
all sun and sky above, and all fresh green earth he- 
low, with a line of snow-white peaks behind dark 
near-by mountain barriers on the horizon. After 
a week or more of cloud and rain, how we enjoyed 
the brightness and the sunshine! Especially did 
that line of white peaks cut off by that dark moun- 
tain wall in front of them draw and hold my eye. 
Over the top of the highest one, San Antonio, we 
could see the snow lifted by the west wind and car- 
ried high in the air over on the east side. It was like 
a thin, white flame, swaying, flickering, sinking 
and falling, but clinging tenaciously to the moun- 
tain-peak. Thus have I seen this frost flame stalk 
across my native hills in midwinter. All the time we 
were speeding through orange-groves yellow with 
fruit, along improved lands red with the new fur- 
row, and past wild, unclaimed places spotted with 
the bloom of many flowers. 
I think the bird I most want to take home 
with me, and establish in our towns and villages, 
is the blackbird, — Brewer’s blackbird, — one of 
the best-mannered, best-dressed, best-groomed birds 
Iever saw. He is like a bit of polished ebony moving 
quietly over your lawn. His coat has the same rich 
iridescent hues as that of our crow blackbird, and 
he has the same yellow eye, but he is much less in 
size and much more graceful in form and movement, 
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