The handsome
birds had not seen Scotch boys before and made a desperate
screaming as if we were robbers like themselves; though we left the
eggs untouched, feeling that we were already beginning to get rich,
and wondering how many more nests we should find in the grand sunny
woods. Then we ran along the brow of the hill that the shanty stood
on, and down to the meadow, searching the trees and grass tufts and
bushes, and soon discovered a bluebird's and a woodpecker's nest, and
began an acquaintance with the frogs and snakes and turtles in the
creeks and springs.
[Illustration: MUIR'S LAKE (FOUNTAIN LAKE) AND THE GARDEN MEADOW
Sketched from the roof of the Bur-Oak Shanty]
This sudden plash into pure wildness--baptism in Nature's warm
heart--how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us,
wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal
grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. Here without
knowing it we still were at school; every wild lesson a love lesson,
not whipped but charmed into us.
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