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Throughout the spring, and far into the summer, I watch the domestic affairs in the eaves-trough. During the winter, at nightfall, I see little bands and flurries of birds scudding over and dropping behind the high buildings to the east. They are sparrows on the way to their roost in the elms of an old mid-city burial-ground. I not infrequently spy a hawk soaring calmly far away above the roof.
On one slope, the roof was deeply weather-stained, and, nigh the turfy eaves-trough, all velvet-napped; no doubt the snail-monks founded mossy priories there. The other slope was newly shingled. On the north side, doorless and windowless, the clap-boards, innocent of paint, were yet green as the north side of lichened pines or copperless hulls of Japanese junks, becalmed.
Sometimes eaves, instead of providing drainage and conducting rain from the roof to ground, work in the reverse. The dampened plaster of the interior side walls soon betrays this. When these spots appear it is probable that the opening where the down-spout joins the eaves-trough is clogged with leaves and small twigs.
Headforemost he dove into space, but the clutching hand found something at last the projecting hook of an old eaves-trough that had long since been removed and to this he clung fast in spite of the jerk of his arrested body, which threatened to tear away his grip. But his plight was desperate, nevertheless.
When there is no other defense for him, I fall back upon his being a bird. Any kind of a bird in the city! Any but a parrot. A pair of sparrows nest regularly in an eaves-trough, so close to the roof that I can overhear their family talk. Round, loquacious, familiar Cock Sparrow is a family man so entirely a family man as to be nothing else at all. He is a success, too.
Also, in winters of unusually heavy snowfalls and cold weather, if the eaves-troughs are hung too close to the edge of the roof or have not sufficient slope for rapid drainage, the snow on the roof melts, drips to the eaves-trough, and freezes before it can flow away. Eventually some of this moisture creeps beneath the shingles and makes ugly damp patches on the plaster beneath.
A rusty tin eaves-trough had slipped from its fastenings at the back of the house and when the wind blew it beat against the roof of a small shed, making a dismal drumming noise that sometimes persisted all through the night. When she was a young girl Henry Carpenter made life almost unbearable for Belle, but as she emerged from girlhood into womanhood he lost his power over her.
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