15.  The uproar continued the whole night; and as I was anxious to know to what distance the sound reached, I sent off a man, accustomed to perambulate the forest, who, returning two hours afterwards, informed me he had heard it distinctly when three miles distant from the spot.  Towards the approach of day, the noise in some measure subsided; long before objects were distinguishable, the pigeons began to move off in a direction quite different from that in which they had arrived the evening before, and at sunrise all that were able to fly had disappeared.

Definitions.—­5.  A-e’ri-al, belonging or pertaining to the air. 6.  A-non’, in a short time, soon. 8.  Mast, the fruit of oak and beech or other forest trees. 10.  Ren’dez-vous (pro. ren’de-voo), an appointed or customary place of meeting.  Sub’se-quent, following in time. 15.  Per-am’bu-late, to walk through.

Notes.—­The wild pigeon, in common with almost every variety of game, is becoming more scarce throughout the country each year; and Audubon’s account, but for the position he holds, would in time, no doubt, be considered ridiculous.

9.  En masse (pro. aN mas), a French phrase meaning in a body.

[Transcriber’s note:  The last Passenger Pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.  Population estimates ranged up to 5 billion, comprising 40% of the total number of birds in North America in the 19th century.]

CVI.  THE COUNTRY LIFE.

Richard Henry Stoddard (b. 1825,—­) was born at Hingham, Mass., but removed to New York City while quite young.  His first volume of poems, “Foot-prints,” appeared in 1849, and has been followed by many others.  Of these may be mentioned “Songs of Summer,” “Town and Country,” “The King’s Bell,” “Abraham Lincoln” (an ode), and the “Book of the East,” from the last of which the following selection is abridged.  Mr. Stoddard’s verses are full of genuine feeling, and some of them show great poetic power.

1.  Not what we would, but what we must,
     Makes up the sum of living: 
   Heaven is both more and less than just,
     In taking and in giving. 
   Swords cleave to hands that sought the plow,
   And laurels miss the soldier’s brow.

2.  Me, whom the city holds, whose feet
     Have worn its stony highways,
   Familiar with its loneliest street,—­
     Its ways were never my ways. 
   My cradle was beside the sea,
   And there, I hope, my grave will be.

3.  Old homestead! in that old gray town
     Thy vane is seaward blowing;
   Thy slip of garden stretches down
     To where the tide is flowing;
   Below they lie, their sails all furled,
   The ships that go about the world.

4.  Dearer that little country house,
     Inland with pines beside it;
   Some peach trees, with unfruitful boughs,
     A well, with weeds to hide it: 
   No flowers, or only such as rise
   Self-sown—­poor things!—­which all despise.