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Bees hummed in the clover, gorgeous butterflies floated drowsily over the meadows, and far in the blue distance a meadow-lark scattered his golden notes like rain upon the fields. The world teemed with life, and yet a cold shadow, as of approaching death, darkened the souls of two who walked together in the dusty road that led from the hills to the sea.
Instead of the chipping sparrow everywhere, one sees the lazuli-painted finch, or the Rocky Mountain bluebird; in place of the American robin's song, most common of sounds in country neighborhoods on the Atlantic side of the continent, is heard the silver bell of the towhee bunting, sometimes called marsh robin, or the harsh "chack" of Brewer's blackbird; the music that opens sleepy eyes at daybreak is not a chorus of robins and song-sparrows, but the ringing notes of the chewink, the clear-cut song of the Western meadow-lark, or the labored utterance of the black-headed grosbeak; it is not by the melancholy refrain of the whippoorwill or the heavenly hymns of thrushes that the approach of night is heralded, but by the cheery trill of the house wren or the dismal wail of the Western wood-pewee.
After a time, the liquid-mellow cry of the meadow-lark, first vocal for the day, caused him to desist. He looked at the clock. It marked seven. He set aside the proofs and began a series of conversations by means of the switchboard, which he manipulated with a practiced hand. "Hello, Oh Joy," was his first talk. "Is Mr. Thayer up?... Very well. Don't disturb him.
"Your wisdom is at fault there," I said, maliciously. "Have you seen a Varick?" "No; but the partridge " "Pooh! a little creature, like a gray meadow-lark remoulded! You call it partridge, I call it quail. But I speak of the crested thunder drumming cock that struts all ruffed like a Spanish grandee of ancient times.
The moist fragrance of the earth at twilight, the sad pipings of birds by the wayside, the faint, clear notes of a wood-thrush-his favorite-from the edge of the forest, even the mid-air song of a meadow-lark above his head, were unheeded as, with face haggard with thought and travel, he turned doggedly from the road and up the mountain toward Easter's home.
Jake always had the knack of fascinating women. He could be very attractive when he wished. On a happy morning not long since June had sung of her wings. She was a meadow-lark swooping over the hills to freedom, her throat throbbing with songs of joy.
No one else was in sight just he and she in all the lovely, sunny, breeze-swept earth! He came towards her softly; called her name, but so low that she did not hear. Then a meadow-lark, disturbed, flew up with his piercing "sweet!" the stooping figure turned and he saw, in the clear sunlight, the face under the shady hat Had something in his brain snapped?
Ten minutes swiftly along the sunrise and the world is changed: from nervous exaltation of atmosphere to an air of balm and peace; from grim hills to the rolling sweep of green slopes; from a high mist of thin verdure to low wind-shaken banners of young leaves; from giant poplar to white ash and sugar-tree; from log-cabin to homesteads of brick and stone; from wood-thrush to meadow-lark; rhododendron to bluegrass; from mountain to lowland, Crittenden was passing home.
Or where the meadow-lark, in coy But calm profusion, pours The liquid fragments of his joy On old colonial shores. Professor Edward B. Reed, B.A. 1894, published in 1913 a tiny volume of academic verse, called Lyra Yalensis.
I hope I am not going to be called nervous if I tell the truth about things; when I rode into the shadow I stopped whistling a bad imitation of meadow-lark notes. A bit farther and I pulled up, looked all around, and got off and tightened the cinch a bit more.
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