Page:The Yellow Book - 05.djvu/85

Rh shouting soldiery, that possesses land and air so completely, with such an entire indifference, too, towards ourselves, our conceits, and our aspirations.

Here it is again, this lesson in modesty that nature is eternally dinning into us; and the completeness of one's isolation in the midst of all this sounding vitality cannot fail to strike home to the most self-centred. Indeed, it is evident that we are entirely superfluous here; nothing has any need of us, nor cares to know what we are interested in, nor what other people have been saying of us, nor whether we go or stay. Those rooks up above have their own society and occupations, and don't wish to share or impart them; and if haply a rook seems but an insignificant sort of being to you, be sure that you are quite as insignificant to the rook. Nay, probably more so; for while you at least allot the rook his special small niche in creation, it is more than doubtful whether he ever troubles to "place" you at all. He has weightier matters to occupy him, and so long as you refrain from active interference, the chances are that for him you simply don't exist.

But putting birds aside, as generally betraying in their startled, side-glancing mien some consciousness of a featherless unaccountable tribe that may have to be reckoned with at any moment, those other winged ones, the bees and their myriad cousins, simply insult one at every turn with their bourgeois narrowness of non-recognition. Nothing, indeed, could be more unlike the wary watchful marches of the bird-folk than the bustling self-centred devotion to business of these tiny brokers in Nature's busy mart. If you happen to get in their way, they jostle up against you, and serve you right; if you keep clear of the course, they proceed serenely without so much as a critical glance at your hat or your boots. Snubbed, hustled, and ignored, you feel, as you retire from the unequal contest, that the scurrying alarm of bird Rh