ve me
special joy. On fine days they flew high--so high they were but faint
lines against the shining clouds.

I learned to imitate their cries, and often caused the leaders to turn,
to waver in their course as I uttered my resounding call.

The sand-hill crane came last of all, loitering north in lonely easeful
flight. Often of a warm day, I heard his sovereign cry falling from the
azure dome, so high, so far his form could not be seen, so close to the
sun that my eyes could not detect his solitary, majestic circling sweep.
He came after the geese. He was the herald of summer. His brazen,
reverberating call will forever remain associated in my mind with
mellow, pulsating earth, springing grass and cloudless glorious May-time
skies.

As my team moved to and fro over the field, ground sparrows rose in
countless thousands, flinging themselves against the sky like grains of
wheat from out a sower's hand, and their chatter fell upon me like the
voices of fairy sprites, invisible and multitudinous. Long swift narrow
flocks of a bird we called "the prairie-pigeon" swooped over the swells
on sounding wing, winding so close to the ground, they seemed at times
like slender air-borne serpents,--and always the brown lark whistled as
if to cheer my lonely task.

Back and forth across the wide field I drove, while the sun crawled
slowly up the sky. It was tedious work and I was always hungry by nine,
and famished at ten. Thereafter the sun appeared to stand still. My
chest caved in and my knees trembled with weakness, but when at last the
white flag fluttering from a chamber window summoned to the mid-day
meal, I started with strength miraculously renewed and called,
"_Dinner!_" to the hired hand. Unhitching my team, with eager haste I
climbed upon old Queen, and rode at ease toward the barn.

Oh, it was good to enter the kitchen, odorous with fresh biscuit and hot
coffee! We all ate like dragons, devouring potatoes and salt pork
without end, till mother mildly remarked, "Boys, boys! Don't 'founder'
yourselves!"

From such a meal I withdrew torpid as a gorged snake, but luckily I had
half an hour in which to get my courage back,--and besides, there was
always the stirring power of father's clarion call. His energy appeared
superhuman to me. I was in awe of him. He kept track of everything,
seemed hardly to sleep and never complained of weariness. Long before
the nooning was up, (or so it seemed to me) he began to shout: "Time