It is difficult to realize the freedom of flight. Twisting and turning with perfect ease, adapting their bodies to every change of the fitful wind, these crows did not use their wings with that incessant motion that we need in using our limbs to walk, but floated, rose and fell, as if shadows rather than ponderable bodies. Until we can fly, or, rather, ride in flying-machines, we cannot hope to know much of this flight-life of birds, and it is the better part of their lives. But it was something to-day to be with even these crows in the air. Following their erratic flight from such a point of view, I seemed to be flying. We are given at times to wonder a great deal about birds, and they have equal reason to constantly consider us. Who can say what these crows thought of me? All I can offer to him who would solve the problem is that their curiosity was unbounded, and this is much if their curiosity and ours are akin. Of course they talked. Garner need not have gone to Africa to prove that monkeys talk, and no one can question that crows utter more than mere alarm-cries. A word more concerning crows. What so absurd, apparently, as this? “A single crow betokens sorrow, Two betoken mirth, Three predict a funeral, And four a birth.” Yet it is a very common saying, being repeated whenever a few, or less than five, fly over. It is repeated mechanically, of course, and then forgotten, for no one seems to worry over one or three crows as they do when a looking-glass breaks or the dropped fork sticks up in the floor. Seems to worry, and yet I strongly suspect a trace of superstition lingers in the mind of many a woman. Those who will not sit as one of thirteen at a table are not dead yet. Can it be that all this weakness is only more concealed than formerly, but none the less existent? I watched the departing crows until they were but mere specks in the sky, and heard, or fancied I heard, their cawing when half a mile away. It is ever a sweet sound to me. It means so much, recalls a long round of jolly years; and what matters the quality of a sound if a merry heart prompts its utterance?