Bird watching; Birds; Natural history -- Outdoor books; New England
How much influence has the will in determining which of these several
tenants of a man's body shall have his turn at sightseeing? It would be
hard to answer definitely. As much, it may be, as a teacher has over his
pupils, or a father over his children; something depends upon the
strength of the governing will, and something upon the tractability of
the pupil. In general, I assume to command. As I start on my ramble I
give out word, as it were, which of the men shall have the front seat.
But there are days when some one of them proves too much both for me
and for his fellows. It is not the botanist's turn, perhaps; but he
takes his seat at the window, notwithstanding, and the ornithologist and
the dreamer must be content to peep at the landscape over his shoulders.
On such occasions, it may as well be confessed, I make but a feeble
remonstrance; and for the sufficient reason that I feel small confidence
in my own wisdom. If the flower-lover or the poet must have the hour,
then in all likelihood he ought to have it. So much I concede to the
nature of things. A strong tendency is a strong argument, and of itself
goes far to justify itself. I borrow no trouble on the score of such
compulsions. On the contrary, my lamentations begin when nobody sues for
the place of vision. Such days I have; blank days, days to be dropped
from the calendar; when "those that look out of the windows be
darkened." The fault is not with the world, nor with the eye. The old
preacher had the right of it; it is not the windows that are darkened,
but "those that look out of the windows."
A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE.
I've gathered young spring-leaves, and flowers gay.--KEATS.
I looked forward to the month with peculiar interest, as it was many
years since I had passed a November in the country, and now that it is
over I am moved to publish its praises: partly, as I hope, out of
feelings of gratitude, and partly because it is an agreeable kind of
originality to commend what everybody else has been in the habit of
decrying.
In the first place, then, it was a month of pleasant weather; something
too much of wind and dust (the dust for only the first ten days) being
almost the only drawback. To me, with my prepossessions, it was little
short of marvelous how many of the days were nearly or quite cloudless.
The only snow fell on the 11th. I saw a few flakes in the afternoon,
just enough to be counted, and there must have been another slight
flurry after dark, as the grass showed white in favorable spots early
the next morning. Making allowance for the shortness of the days, I
doubt whether there has been a month during the past year in which a man
could comfortably spend more of his time in out-of-door exercise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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