SOUNDS. 
125 
berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild 
bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson 
hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the 
tender limbs. 
As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks 
are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild 
pigeons, flying by twos and threes athwart my view, or 
perching restless on the white-pine boughs behind my 
house, gives a voice to the air; a fishhawk dimples the 
glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink 
steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a 
frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight 
of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the 
last half hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, 
now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a 
partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the 
country. For I did not live so out of the world as that 
boy, who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east 
part of the town, but ere long ran away and came home 
again, quite down at the heel and homesick. He 
had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; 
the folks were all gone off; why, you couldn’t even hear 
the whistle ! I doubt if there is such a place in Mas¬ 
sachusetts now: — 
“ In truth, our village has become a butt 
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o’er 
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is — Concord.” 
The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a 
hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go 
to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, 
