He had them half-way into his bag when he started, and has only to
shove them down. The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game
from his windows: what else has he windows or eyes for? It comes and
perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world
never see it _with the feathers on_. The geese fly exactly under his
zenith, and honk when they get there, and he will keep himself supplied
by firing up his chimney; twenty musquash have the refusal of each one
of his traps before it is empty. If he lives, and his game-spirit
increases, heaven and earth shall fail him sooner than game; and when he
dies, he will go to more extensive, and, perchance, happier
hunting-grounds. The fisherman, too, dreams of fish, sees a bobbing cork
in his dreams, till he can almost catch them in his sink-spout. I knew a
girl who, being sent to pick huckleberries, picked wild gooseberries by
the quart, where no one else knew that there were any, because she was
accustomed to pick them up country where she came from. The astronomer
knows where to go star-gathering, and sees one clearly in his mind
before any have seen it with a glass. The hen scratches and finds her
food right under where she stands; but such is not the way with the
hawk.
These bright leaves which I have mentioned are not the exception, but
the rule; for I believe that all leaves, even grasses and mosses,
acquire brighter colors just before their fall.
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