65 
THE NIGHT-HAWK 
Night-hawks are here* Their busy, buying notes 
come down into the dusty, noisy, electric-lighted 
crevices we call streets to tell us that it is really 
summer* The Night-hawk whistles as if he held a 
live bee in his bill and was calling friends to par- 
take of the repast* It is passing strange that these 
birds never become thoroughly reconciled to a city, 
though they return and invade it again and again* 
Its gases and other exhalations, its swarming bipeds, 
its hideous wires, glaring lights, and torturing noises 
that drive out even nature herself, do not repel these 
airy visitors* They renounce the free life open before 
them and go down among our clean-shaven lawns, 
trimmed shade trees, smoking chimneys, and dusty 
roofs, trying by the force of example to lead us into 
better ways. Birds are not self-sufficient, idealistic, 
colonising reformers, retiring from the by-law-ridden 
world to live a perfect life apart. They are aggressive 
agitators, forcing their offensively perfect ways into 
the factory-made life they pity but cannot elevate* 
Why do they not shake the dust of the city from their 
wings i But so many things are strangely at variance 
with the universal love of ease and ownership ! 
