THE CURLEW CALL 169 
And now I hear it in an utterly unanticipated 
locality. I am elate as if saluted by a voice I 
thought was dead. Enough! Yet not once did 
I hear my curlew call, but twice, thrice, four, 
five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven times! 
What a happy count it was, though I mislike 
arithmetic. 
O happy day, a memory fitted to make a gray 
heart glad with sunlight and a sad heart swift 
with song. 
The church hour draws near and I hear the 
church bell calling across the pasture, and I 
take my backward path toward that holy habi- 
tation of prayer and consecration and the love 
of God. But through the voices of the choir, 
and the rapturous melody of the hymns of God, 
I heard the voices of dead summers in the curlew’s 
call; for all the things that God has done are fit 
cooperants of the house of God. 
And in my golden Book of Days I write down 
“God’s June Sunday when I heard the Curlew 
Call.” 
