MY HUMMING BIRDS. 
101 
The company now began to distingiiisli fhe arc upon 
the air, and to see that it really did not lie upon the ground, 
as I had at first supposed too. This was mentioned without 
my hinting it to them myself. I never was more surprised 
in my life, nor did I ever see a . company of men more so 
than these fifteen or twenty farmers, whose whole lives had 
been spent in observing the phenomena of storms. No one 
of them had ever heard of such a thing before, nor have I 
ever met with any one who knew of one similar. I, how- 
ever, three years after this, witnessed a somewhat similar in- 
cident, in riding through the valley of the Tennessee Eiver, 
with a friend. After one of those sudden storms we saw a 
vivid rainbow, with its left limb resting in a corn-field, a 
hundred yards distant. These are facts I cannot account 
for, and I leave them to the learned. 
Faith I did bear, and most zealously was it awakened from 
the first hour that my heart leaped to the soft whirr of the deli- 
cate wings of the Hummer, as it dropped suddenly upon some 
early spring flower^ perching with half-wearied and half- 
frightened look as if just come to the strange earth from 
its long, long flight towards the north. It seemed as if it 
had found here the freshest footprints of the jubilant spring, 
and paused for love. And, now, I would think, I must 
watch, for spring will hold them warm within her bosom 
and try to hide their little nests away. Many's the hour I 
have fruitlessly spent in watching them wherever I could 
trace their flight about the gardens — for, in my simplicity, 
I supposed it impossible that they could have their nests any- 
where but amidst the flowers — but this, along with other 
poetical dreams, found the fact a more practical and wiser 
thing. 
Years passed away, leaving me still unwearied, though my 
continued want of success might have made me what the 
world calls wiser. In the meantime I had, in poring over 
the time-stained volumes of the famous old ^' Port-folio"' — ■ 
certainly the first, if not the ablest of American periodicals 
