OUR PET HERONS. 
[Reprinted from the “ Cornhill Magazine ” by permission of Mrs. Archibald 
Little and Messrs. Smith, Rider 4* Co.~\ 
My goodness ! if I siiouid look ugly ! ” — Balzac. 
’E used to watch them every evening, the fair white herons 
in an irregular scalene triangle, winging their way down 
the great river to the lofty trees behind the colossal 
gilded Buddha, amid whose branches they roosted. Before that 
colossal Buddha every upcoming junk tied up to the shore, and 
captain and crew climbed the long straight flight of steps, then 
knelt and burnt at least one fragrant incense stick in gratitude for 
safe deliverance from half sunk jagged rock and frothing rapid. In 
contemplation of the many dangers by which we are surrounded 
in a state of nature, it is impossible for any man to believe that he 
delivers himself therefrom by his own skill; thus naturally the 
heart wells out with love and thankfulness to One wiser and more 
powerful, Who has guided his steps. And the outcome is an 
anthropomorphic or Pantheistic worship—fresh flowers with the 
dew upon them in Ceylon, lighted candles and tall white lilies in 
the south of Europe, crackers and burnt incense sticks in China. 
In the leafy sanctuary behind the protecting image—for it was 
certainly thanks to the Buddha the trees had been spared to reach 
maturity—the birds slept safely, and each day we watched them 
homing and thereby knew the hour of the evening. 
In London there are so many things to tell the time by—the 
mounting of the guard at St. James’s Palace, the twelve o’clock 
calling of the evening papers, the hour of the last ’bus, even in 
some parts the rich tones of Old Ben. But in our distant home, 
without omnibuses and evening papers, without House of Commons 
and disciplined soldiery, no one all the day long does anything at 
a fixed time. And the one thing that marked the hours for us 
was that flight of herons. So each day my husband would call 
me to the window : “ There they are again. See what o’clock it 
is.” And the birds were right to the minute. We could have 
set our watches by them, allowing always for the changes of the 
seasons. The herons passing was an excuse for looking out at the 
view generally across the grand half-mile-wide river, clear and 
blue in winter, chocolate-coloured and some ninety feet higher than 
its winter level in summer; noting the brilliant evening lights upon 
