Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/42

24 bushy tract, where fire has blackened everything, a chewink speaks his name, and then falls to repeating a peculiarly jaunty variation of the family tune. Dignity is hardly the chewink's strong point. Now a field sparrow gives out a measure. There is an artist! Few can excel him, though many can make more show. Like the vesper sparrow, he has a gift of sweet and holy simplicity. And what can be better than that? Overhead, hurrying with might and main toward the woods, flies a crow, with four kingbirds after him. Perhaps he suffers for his own misdeeds; perhaps for those of his race. All crows look alike to kingbirds, I suspect.

This, and much beside, while I rest in the shade of a pine, taking the beauty of the clouds and listening to the wind in the treetops. The best part of every ramble is the part that escapes the notebook.