Mar., 1913 
WILLI AIM LEON DAWvSON— A BIOGRAPHY 
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and which he has no intention of parting with ; deriving his pleasure from the 
faulty attempts of others less fortunately situated, along the same line of study. 
The mistakes sometimes made from a too hasty acceptance of fii'st impressions 
seem of small moment compared with what may be endured through the peculiar 
temperament of this type of student. “It is better to play ball, even if you make 
a wild throw once in awhile, than it is to sit on the bleachers and carp at the 
players”. 
ALLAN BROOKS— KN APPRECIATION 
By WILLIAM LEON DAWSON 
WITH PORTRAIT 
B rooks is sitting right now at the great north window of our studio at 
“Los Colibris”, whither we have succeeded in luring him for the winter. 
His high stool is drawn up to a large work table, where he is alternately 
poring- over a handful of bird-skins and sketching with swift, deft fingers an im- 
aginary spray full of very real Warblers. He doesn’t in the least suspect what I 
am going to do to him, and I am feeling somewhat guilty as well as verv solemn 
in this most traitorous act of friendship. It is perfectly certain though that I 
shall catch it when he does find out, for he is, above all things else, a modest man, 
and would shrink from even the mellow light of The Condor's pages. 
Along the east wall of the studio stretches a length of burlap whereon are 
hung the latest products of the artist’s skill, and I slip over once in a while to 
gloat over them all, or to make moues at the latest arrival, with all the easy as- 
surance and something of the honest pride of the family doctor. Just now the 
Dwarf Hermit Thrush is paying court to a Flammulated Screech Owl, and the 
Elegant Tern is considering whether the Allen Hummer hard l)v would not make 
an elegant mouthful. In my opinion he would, for he is a c|uivery morsel of fire, 
alive in every iridescent vane. And it is first of all because these birds live, live 
and breathe and flaunt their feathers in our faces, that the life story of their re-cre- 
ator is worth telling. 
Allan Brooks was born of English parents on the 15th day of February, 
1869, in Ettawah, India. His father, William Edwin Brooks, was a civil engi- 
neer in charge of construction on the East Indian Railway. Ornithology was the 
father’s hobby, and young Allan took to it almost from infancy. Although he 
was removed at the age of five to the home land, as practically all European chil- 
dren must be to escape the unaccustomed diseases of a deadly climate, he remem- 
bers vividly many of the Indian birds, and articles in Stray Feathers, to which his 
father was a leading- contributor. 
Left to the various mercies of seven maiden aunts, the vouthful Allan chewed 
and eschewed the catechism, attended school, robbed birds’ nests, and early an I 
irrevocably decided against matrimony. While other boys were playing- cricket, 
he was roaming the hills, and by the time his fellows had mastered hazing- he had 
learned the birds of England. 
In 1881 the father returned to England after twenty-eight years’ service in In- 
dia, and almost immediately thereafter conducted his family of six members to On- 
tario, where Allan’s mother died. The next six years were divided between farm- 
work, school, and the formation of an e.xtensive collection of bird-skins. By rare 
good fortune there was at hand a full kit of brushes and water-colors, a heritage of 
the father’s reallv creditable but self-depreciated years of effort. Young Allan 
