ing walnuts under my trees with his hands dyed with walnut juice, as 
mine were when | was a boy; and a bluejay is stealing my acorns and 
hiding them (he is a merry thief who steals for the love of stealing, for 
he forgets where he has hid his plunder); and blackbirds are making 
tumult in the tree-tops, talking all at once, and though I do not profess 
familiarity with their dialect | catch enough to know they are planning 
to leave my woods, for which I am sorry enough. Now they take long 
gyrations and swift, framing a black cloud like gathering tempest, and 
then settle down with a choppy kind of laughter. To-night they will go 
to sleep in the tree-tops, but in the morning they will be gone; for in the 
night, down some long stream’s windings, they will have haled to a sunlit 
land where, instead of fallen leaves, flowers perfume the air. Than 
these night migrations of the birds nature has no stranger doing and no 
sadder. 
And I trudge along the highway like a tramp; but the moment I set 
foot on my farm I strut like a turkey en route to thanksgiving. I am 
here. I walked here. I knew I was walking when I was sitting in the 
Jeaf-fall and dreaming awhile. I am here. Let turnips and corn-shocks, 
planted trees and those God planted, bushes frowsy as an unkempt head, 
175 
