The weather changes, and it is
not till a number of days that you hear the note again, or, maybe,
see the bird darting from a stake in the fence, or flitting from one
mullein-stalk to another. Its notes now become daily more frequent;
the birds multiply; they sing less in the air and more when at rest;
and their music is louder and more continuous, but less sweet and
plaintive. Their boldness increases and soon you see them flitting
with a saucy and inquiring air about barns and outbuildings,
peeping into dove-cota and stable windows, and prospecting for a
place to nest. They wage war against robins, pick quarrels with
swallows, and would forcibly appropriate their mud houses, seeming
to doubt the right of every other bird to exist but themselves.
But soon, as the season advances, domestic instincts predominate;
they subside quietly into their natural places, and become peaceful
members of the family of birds.
So the thoughts that indicate the approach of a new era in history
at first seem to be mere disembodied, impersonal voices somewhere
in the air; sweet and plaintive, half-sung and half-cried by some
obscure and unknown poet. We know not whence they come, nor whither
they tend. It is not a matter of sight or experience. They do
not attach themselves to any person or place, and their longitude
and latitude cannot be computed.
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