All I know is that, if
you get it, you get it very badly. You would stop Shakespeare himself,
if he were reciting a new sonnet to you, and bid him be quiet and look
half-way up the elm where the nuthatch was beating away--up and down,
like a blacksmith--at a nut or something in a knob of the tree. St
Paul might be reading out to you the first draft of his Epistle to the
Romans; you would quite unscrupulously interrupt him with a "Hush,
man! There's a tree-creeper somewhere about. Listen, there he is! If
you keep quiet, perhaps we'll be able to see him." I assure you, it is
as bad as that. As for a man who takes out a noisy dog, or who whacks
at loose stones with his stick on the road, you would regard him as a
misbehaved and riotous person and would not call him your friend.
Everything has to be subordinated to the hope of catching sight of a
hypothetical bird--which you have probably seen dozens of times
already. Truly, there is no accounting for human vices. There is,
however, at least this to be said in favour of bird-watching, that it
is the pleasantest of the vices, that it is cheaper than golf, and
does not harden the arteries like tea-drinking. And after all, if one
is going to get excited at all, one may as well get excited about the
colours and songs of birds as about most things.
XIX
THE DAREDEVIL BARBER
To roll over Niagara Falls in a barrel is an odd way of courting
death, but it seems that death must be courted somehow.
Pages:
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137