some think dull, but I think droll, his fondness for his own kind and 
apparent ability to get along with his wife’s folks, his choppy. short 
flights, like an inexpert rower rowing hard over tumbling waters, his 
higher flights, sometimes graceful as the soaring hawk, and all but as 
swift, his sure home comiug at the night, sometimes with wild 
speed and sometimes slowly as if in his long journey of the day he had 
grown wing-weary, his steadfast love for home; for wherever he may 
have been by daylight, home he comes by twilight; and if you have ever 
heard him calling across the evening sky glorious with sunset, and wing- 
ing his way as if he might cross a continent, and then all of a sudden 
he gyrates like a cyclone funnel—for he has gotten home,—if you have 
seen this, your heart must have been touched as well as your eye grati- 
fied, for if everybody knew enough to come home at night wherever they 
may have been by day, the world would have more laughter, and sweeter 
mirth, and more heaven before heaven were journeyed to. No, I like 
the crow and his independence of me and my liking (for he ignores me 
as he struts along my field as if he paid taxes instead of myself). When 
I speak to him, he deigns no reply, but walks on with his proprietary 
air; he does not know me and apparently does not want to. Who has 
set his black mind against me, I can not tell, but certain it is he will 
not be friends with me (some people think he is wise in that, but my 
judgment is he makes a mistake). I donot like to be ignored, even by 
a crow; however, I like him so well he is welcome to his impertinent 
mien. He survives, no thanks to others. Nobody seems to love him; 
but he is indifferent. He does not sulk nor hide, he never runs to 
shelter like the rabbits, nor hides in the hedge rows like the quail, but 
affects the open, flies low over your head, talks to himself sometimes 
while he swaggers across the sky, lights among your corn shocks, grows 
priggish before your very eyes, snubs you, neither laughs nor giggles, but 
is always solemn as a hired mourner, propitiates nobody except himself. 
He is brave as a soldier and sometimes as truculent ; but winter, spring, 
summer, autumn, here he is, sometimes by himself walking along like a 
preacher concocting his sermon, sometimes with a few intimate friends 
like a bevy of girls after a party, and like the girls all talking at once, 
sometimes, especially in autumn or winter, in great conventions noisy 
as stump orators and as indefinite in destination,— here he stays, and 
here he lives despite his foes; and to be brief, I like him, and I feel 
proud with what I hope is Scriptural pride, that so stately a gentleman 
condescends to help me farm. I like that part immensely. 
190 
