Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/14

 at the present time, children ten or twelve years of age know very much more about nature, the coming of the seasons, the wild flowers, and the migrations of the birds, than do their parents.

That about twenty volumes of these animal stories recently published should have come from the pen of one without eyesight seems at first thought a contradiction of facts, but with the reading of Clarence Hawkes' autobiography, "Hitting the Dark Trail," which has just found its way into French, this marvel is made plain.

Beethoven produced some of his best symphonies after he lost his sense of hearing. He was able to do this because the laws of music and harmony were firmly established in his soul while he could still hear. So it was with Clarence Hawkes.

For the first fourteen years of his life he not only was possessed of a pair of very keen eyes, that took in everything about him in the field and woods, but he also had the gift of remembering and correlating the things he saw. So