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238 tented myself with Americanizing Shakespeare. "Swallows," said I,—

Swallows that come before the daffodil dares, And take the winds of March with beauty."

I could hardly recover from my excitement, which was renewed an hour afterward when, on the southern causeway, a third bird (or one of the same two) passed near us. But now see how untrustworthy a clerk a man's memory is! On reaching home I turned at once to my book of dates, and behold, it was exactly four years ago to an hour, March 23, 1897, that I saw two white-breasted swallows about a pond here in Wellesley. We had broken no "record," after all. But I imagine the Rev. Gilbert White saying, "Yes, yes; you will notice that in both cases the birds were seen in the immediate neighborhood of water." And there is no doubt that such places are the ones in which to look most hopefully for the first swallows of the year.

All this time a herring gull, a great beauty in high plumage, was sailing up and down the meadows like a larger swallow. He, too, was one of Thoreau's river friends