The Sage Sparrows 



THANK God for the sage-brush! It is not merely that it clothes 

 the desert and makes its wastes less arid. No one needs to apologize for 

 the unclad open, or to shun it as though it were an unclean thing. Only 

 little souls do this, — those who, being used to small spaces, miss the sup- 

 port of crowding elbows, and are frightened into peevish complaint when 

 asked to stand alone. To the manly spirit there is exultation in mere space. 

 The ground were enough, the mere Expanse, with the ever-matching 

 blue of the hopeful sky, but when to this is added the homely verdure of 

 the untilled ground, the 

 cup of joy is filled. One 

 snatches at the sage as 

 though it were the sym- 

 bol of all the wild open- 

 ness, and buries his 

 nostrils in its pungent 

 branches to compass at 

 a whiff this realm of 

 unpent gladness. Prosy? 

 Monotonous? Faugh! 

 Back to the city with 



you ! You are not fit for 

 the wilderness unless 

 you love its very worm- 

 wood. 



The sage has interest 

 or not, to be sure, ac- 

 cording to the level from which it is viewed. Regarded from the super- 

 cilious level of the man-on-horseback, it is a mere hindrance to the pursuit 

 of the erring steer. The man a-foot has some dim perception of its 

 beauties, but if his errand is a long one he, too, wearies of his devious 

 course. Those who are best of all fitted to appreciate its infinite variety 

 of gnarled branch and velvet leaf, and to revel in its small mysteries, are 

 simple folk, — rabbits, lizards, and a few birds who have chosen it for 

 their life portion. Of these, some look up to it as to the trees of an ancient 

 forest and are lost in its mazes; but of those who know it from the ground 

 up, none is more loyal than the Sage Sparrow. Whether he gathers a 

 breakfast, strewn upon the ground, among the red, white, and blue, of 

 stork-bill, chickweed, and fairy-mint, or whether he explores the crevices 

 of the twisted sage itself for its store of shrinking beetles, his soul is filled 

 with a vast content. 



Here, in the springtime, he soon gets full enough for utterance, and 

 mounts the topmost sprig of a sage bush to voice his thanks. In general 



Taken in Washington 



Photo by the A uthor 



SAGE SPARROW ON NEST 



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