Chapter XIII: To the Teacher

Let the chapter be read aloud by one pupil, with as much feeling
as possible to the paragraph beginning, “I love the sound of the
surf,” etc.; for this part is story, action, movement. Do not
try to _teach_ anything in this half. Let some other thoughtful
pupil read the next section as far as, “_Honk, honk, honk_,”
beginning the third paragraph from the end. This contains the
lesson, the moral, and if you stop anywhere to talk about
bird-protection, do it here. Let a third pupil read the rest of
the chapter. Better than a moral lesson directly taught (and
such lessons are much like doses of castor oil) will be the
touching of the child’s imagination by the picture of the long
night-flight high up in the clouds. Read them “To a Water Fowl,”
by Bryant; and also some good account of migration like that by
D. Lange (“The Great Tidal Waves of Bird-Life”) in the
_Atlantic_ _Monthly_ for August, 1909. Read to them Audubon’s
account of the wild goose, in his “Birds.”

FOR THE PUPIL

PAGE 97

_followed through our open windows_: “followed” how? Must one
have wings or a flying-machine in order to “follow” the wild
geese?

_Round and dim swung the earth below us...._: What is the
picture? It is seen from what point of view?

_the call to fly, fly, fly_: Did you ever feel the call to fly?
Ever wish you had wings? Ever start and run as Mowgli did, or
long to get up and go somewhere as the pilgrims did in the
Canterbury Tales?

PAGE 99

_in our hands to preserve_: Do you belong to the Audubon
Society, to the “Grange,” or to any of the organizations that
are trying to protect and preserve the birds? And are you doing
all you can in your neighborhood to protect them?

PAGE 100

_not in a heap of carcasses, the dead and bloody weight of mere
meat_: We may be hunters by instinct; we may love the chase, and
we may like to kill things. But do you think that means we ought
to, or that we any longer may, kill things? No; bird life has
become so scarce that even if we do want to, it is now our duty
to give over such sport in the larger interests of the whole
country, and try to find a higher, finer kind of pleasure,--as
we can in trying to photograph, or “shoot” with the camera, a
bird, getting an interesting picture in place of a dead body.

PAGE 101

_the mated pairs of the birds have flocked together_: In
domestic geese the mated pairs often live together for life; and
among the wild geese this, doubtless, is often true.

PAGE 102

_may I be awake to hear you_: In what sense “awake”?

_The wild geese are passing--southward_: the end of the autumn,
the sign that winter is here.

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

End of Project Gutenberg's The Fall of the Year, by Dallas Lore Sharp