"But," says my learner, "if I go out of the house, I don't get into the out of doors at all, but into a city street!"

Look there—in the middle of the street! What is it? An English sparrow? An English sparrow:  Make a long and careful study of the sparrows that nest about you. If you live in the country try to drive them away from the bluebird house and the martin-boxes. The author does not advise boys and girls to do any killing, but carefully pulling down a sparrow's nest with eggs in it—if you are sure  it is a sparrow's nest—is kindness, he believes, to the other, more useful birds. Yet only yesterday, August 17th, he saw a male sparrow bring moth after moth to its young in a hole in one of the timbers of a bridge from which the author was fishing. It is not easy to say just what our duty is in this matter.") ?> Yes, an English sparrow—six English sparrows. Are they not a part of the out of doors? And look up there, over your head—a strip of sky? Yes—is not a strip of blue sky a part of the out of doors?

Now let me tell you how I learned an outdoor lesson one night along a crowded city street.

It was a cold, wet night; and the thick, foggy twilight, settling down into the narrow streets, was full of smoke and smell and chill. A raw wind blew in from the sea and sent a shiver past every corner. The street lights blinked, the street mud glistened, the street noises clashed and rattled, and the street crowds poured up and down and bore me along with them.

I was homesick—homesick for the country. I longed to hear the sound of the wind in the pine trees; I longed to hear the single far-away bark of the dog on the neighboring farm, or the bang of a barn-door, or the clack of a guinea going to roost. clack of a guinea going to roost:  The guinea-fowl as it goes to roost frequently sets up a clacking that can be heard half a mile away.") ?> It was half-past five, and thousands of clerks were pouring from the closing stores; but I was lonely, homesick for the quiet, the wideness, the trees and sky of the country.

Feeling thus, and seeing only the strange faces all about me, and the steep narrow walls of the street high above me, I drifted along, until suddenly I caught the sound of bird voices shrill and sharp through the din.

I stopped, but was instantly jostled out of the street, up against a grim iron fence, to find myself peering through the pickets into an ancient cemetery in the very heart of Boston. an ancient cemetery in the very heart of Boston:  The cemetery was the historic King's Chapel on Tremont Street, Boston. Some of the elm trees have since been cut down.") ?>

As I looked, there loomed up in the fog and rain overhead the outlines of three or four gaunt trees, whose limbs were as thick with sparrows as they had ever been with leaves. A sparrow roost! Birds, ten thousand birds, gone to roost in the business section of a great city, with ten thousand human beings passing under them as they slept!

I got in behind a big waste-barrel by the iron fence and let the crowd surge past. It was such a sight as I had never seen. I had seen thousands of chimney swallows go to roost in the deserted chimneys of a great country house; I had many a time gone down at night to the great crow-roost in the pines at Cubby Hollow; Cubby Hollow:  a small pond near the author's boyhood home, running, after a half-mile course through the woods, into Lupton's Pond, which falls over a dam into the meadows of Cohansey Creek.") ?> but I had never stumbled upon a bird-roost on a crowded city street before!

The hurrying throng behind me thinned and straggled while I waited, watching by the iron fence. The wind freshened, the mist thickened into fine rain that came slanting down through the half-lighted trees; the sleeping sparrows twittered and shifted uneasily on the limbs.

The streets were being deserted. It was going to be a wild night on the water, on the water:  What water is it that surrounds so large a part of the City of Boston?") ?> and a wild night in the swaying, creaking tops of these old elm trees. I shivered at the thought of the sparrows sleeping out in such a night as this, and turned away toward my own snug roost hardly two blocks away.

The night grew wilder. The wind rattled down our street past a hundred loose shutters; the rain slapped against the windows, and then stopped as a heavy gust curled over the line of roofs opposite. I thought of the sparrows. Had they been driven from the tossing limbs? Could they cling fast in such a wind, and could they sleep?

Going to the window I looked down into the street. Only the electric light at the corner showed through the blur of the storm. The street was empty.

I slipped into my coat and went out; not even a policeman was in sight. Only the whirling sheets of rain, only the wild sounds of the wind were with me. The lights flared, but only to fill the streets with fantastic shadows and to open up a yawning cavern in every deep, dark doorway.

Keeping in the lee of the shuttered buildings, the shuttered buildings:  Along some of the streets, especially in the wholesale district, the heavy iron shutters, closed against the high walls of the buildings, give the deserted streets a solemn, almost a forbidding aspect.") ?> I made my way to the sparrow roost. I shall never forget the sight! Not a sparrow had left his perch, but every bird had now turned, facing the wind—breasting the wind, I should say; facing the wind:  like an anchored boat, offering the least possible resistance to the storm.") ?> for every head was under a wing, as near as I could make out, and every breast was toward the storm. Here, on the limbs, as close as beads on a string, they clung and rocked in the arms of the wind, every one with his feathers tight to his body, his tail lying out flat on the storm.

Now there is the outdoor lesson I learned, and that is how I learned it. And what was the lesson? Why, this: that you are not shut away from Nature even in the heart of a great city; that the out of doors lies very close about you, as you hurry down a crowded city street. out of doors lies very close about you, as you hurry down a crowded city street:  Opportunities for watching the wild things, for seeing and hearing the things of nature, cannot be denied you even in the heart of the city, if you have an eye for such things. Read Bradford Torrey's \"Birds on Boston Common,\" or the author's \"Birds from a City Roof\" in the volume called \"Roof and Meadow.\"") ?>