Woodland Sounds 
it is the ringing of horses’ iron-shod hoofs upon the distant, 
hard turnpike, now the hum of the country trolley car, 
now the frenzied barking of dogs in hot pursuit of a 
rabbit, now the sharp concussion of the wood chopper’s 
ax and its quick following echo. That sound, like a bung 
drawn suddenly from a barrel, is the discharge of a far-off 
hunter’s gun, mellowed by distance. There is in these 
humble noises the raw material of real poetry; as we heed 
them and let them sink into our consciousness they reach to 
the red earth in us, the Adamic part, which finds a zest in 
all rural sights and sounds, and which lingers in most of 
us an inheritance from a time before cities were. 
We may have thought when we came into our wood 
that it was deserted of life, but we do not sit long on our 
log before we find company. There are sparrows among 
the dry leaves that strew the brook side, and they are busy 
rustling them in their search for seeds or whatnot, keeping 
up a monotonous melancholy chirp the while, that works 
on one’s feelings. A woodpecker makes his way up the big 
chestnut in front of us, hammering melodiously as he goes, 
and when he gets high enough, backs methodically down 
again. Perhaps, too, we shall have a sight of that most 
charming of our winter birds—the nuthatch, which like 
the woodpecker also picks a living from tree bark. It 
should be tonic to sluggards to watch this little bird en¬ 
gaged in getting dinner. Industriously it searches for 
insect eggs in every likely crevice from root up and then 
turning about it descends headfirst over the same route 
to make sure it missed nothing. This odd way of 
coming down a tree trunk is a characteristic of the 
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