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From this little distance the many fires, with the black forms of men passing to and fro before the crimson rays, made weird and satanic effects. He lay down in the grass. The blades pressed tenderly against his cheek. The moon had been lighted and was hung in a treetop. The liquid stillness of the night enveloping him made him feel vast pity for himself.

Or the phœbe-bird, with her sweet April call and mossy nest under the bridge or woodshed, or under the shelving rocks; or the brown thrasher mocking thrush calling half furtively, half archly from the treetop back in the bushy pastures: "Croquet, croquet, hit it, hit it, come to me, come to me, tight it, tight it, you're out, you're out," with many musical interludes; or the chewink, rustling the leaves and peering under the bushes at you; or the pretty little oven-bird, walking round and round you in the woods, or suddenly soaring above the treetops, and uttering its wild lyrical strain; or, farther south, the whistling redbird, with his crest and military bearing, these and many others should be full of suggestion and inspiration to our poets.

Throwing another glance at the robin still singing on the treetop overhead, the boy took from his pocket a mouth-organ, threw back his head, squared his elbows out from his sides to give him the lung room he needed, and in obedience to a sharp word of command after a preliminary tum, tum, tum, struck up the ancient triumph hymn in memory of that hero of the underground railroad by which so many slaves of the South in bygone days made their escape "up No'th" to Canada and to freedom.

Above the wilderness on a dead treetop, the perch of an eagle now flashing like a yellow weather-vane, a thrush poured the spray-like far-falling fountain of his notes over upon the bowed woods. Beneath him the dull green domes of the trees flashed as though inlaid with gems, white and rose.

With a word to Brutus, which made the dog lie down and keep perfectly quiet, John would steal forward softly and peer through a screen of bushes, or into a treetop, and watch the housekeeping of some shy brother beast or bird. Once he flung himself flat on the ground, and lay for a long time eagerly watching the antics of a beetle.

At one place we crossed a dip in the ground and a ditch, and the trench was built up with sandbags up to the ditch and there was a plank. Overhead there were stars, and now and then a sort of blaze thing they send up lit up the edges of the trench and gave one a glimpse of a treetop or a factory roof far away. Then for a time it was more difficult to go on because you were blinded.

Oh, what a fine view Jimmie had, but he didn't dare frisk around as Billie and Johnnie did, for he was a trifle dizzy. Then, after he had been up there some time, he thought he had better go down, for the wind was blowing the treetop, and he wasn't used to it. So, after Billie and Johnnie had sung their song again, Jimmie started for the ground.

By turning about, twisting and doubling, there was always a way down. Of a sudden the clouds parted; a long bar of sunshine touched the green forest far below me, focused for a moment upon a single treetop, then vanished as though the shutter of a celestial camera has snapped shut. At last I came to a ledge beneath which the sheer cliff dropped away into unfathomable snowy depths.

Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing! "Rock-a-by baby in the treetop," for instance. What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee!

The call was still hot upon his lips when his two companions entered the aerostat, gripping tight the hand-rail as Professor Featherwit sent the vessel afloat with reckless haste. As by a miracle they escaped disaster through rushing into a bushy treetop, and that fact served to steady the aeronaut's nerves.