THE WAYS OF ROOKS near a rookery once, and studied their ways and character. There were several nests in one big elm tree, a sturdy-looking tree, and apparently a favourite with the rooks. One year, for a purpose I could not divine, all the nests in this tree were deserted, and fresh ones built in another elm near by. Within a few months after its desertion by the rooks the former tree was blown down in an exceptionally heavy gale, though, till the gale came, it had shown no signs of weakness. Other big trees in the same wood were laid low at the same time, but not one of those that the rooks inhabited was damaged even in branch.
The weather was simply perfect, the sky overhead was as blue as a June sea; it was a joy to be in the country on such a day, when earth seemed a veritable Paradise, and pain and death a bad dream. There is a virtue at times in the art of forgetting! for, when the world looks so fair, one desires to be immortal! "Around God's throne," writes Olive Schreiner, "there may be choirs and companies of angels, cherubim and seraphim rising tier above tier, but not for one of them all does the soul cry aloud. Only, perhaps, for a little human woman full of sin that it once loved." So there may be golden cities in Paradise paved with priceless gems, yet not for these does my soul hunger, but for the restful green fields and the pastoral peacefulness of our English Arcadia, with its musical melody of wandering streams and sense of untold repose. Did not Mr. Andrew Carnegie, the American millionaire, who once drove through the heart of England from
