If I Could Only Get Off The Ground Like That Heavy Bird And Rise
As High, Then The Blue Air Would Make Me As Buoyant And Let Me Float
All Day Without Pain Or Effort Like The Bird!
This desire has
continued with me through my life, yet I have never wished to fly in a
balloon or airship, since I should then be tied to a machine and have
no will or soul of my own.
The desire has only been gratified a very
few times in that kind of dream called levitation, when one rises and
floats above the earth without effort and is like a ball of
thistledown carried by the wind.
My favourite red willow was also the chosen haunt of another being, a
peregrine falcon, a large handsome female that used to spend some
months each year with us, and would sit for hours every day in the
tree. It was an ideal tree for the falcon, too, not only because it
was a quiet spot where it could doze the hot hours away in safety, but
also on account of the numbers of pigeons we used to keep. The pigeon-
house, a round, tower-shaped building, whitewashed outside, with a
small door always kept locked, was usually tenanted by four or five
hundred birds. These cost us nothing to keep, and were never fed, as
they picked up their own living on the plain, and being strong fliers
and well used to the dangers of the open country abounding in hawks,
they ranged far from home, going out in small parties of a dozen or
more to their various distant feeding-grounds.
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