Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-12-06
THE TOPICAL TALKER.
A Flighi with the Rocks Over American
River HIIIs, EnalIsh Giades and Gar.
dens, and Home Again.

FIiEhi with the Rocks over American
River Hills, EnalIsh GIades and Gar.
| dens, and Hcme Again.
SOMETHING was said in THE DISPATCH the
other day about crows being good weather
prophets, but not half enough credit was given
them, Besides, II am not mistaken. the
writer meant rocks rather than crows. Rocks
! are gregarious in their habits living together
in colonies of hundreds, or even thousands.
while crows prefer to have individual homes
But rocks are called crows as often as not by
most people, and it is their habit Of foretelling
changes in the weather which has been SO often
remarked
There is q rookery among the trees on a lofty
| bluff above the Ohio river which has often
given me amusement to watch. The rocks
there, as their fellows all over the world, per-
form regular evolutions at daybreak and sun
set, and they are wont to move out to observe
the weather at any time of day when some
warning indiscernible to man OF approaching
atmospheric change is az hand. When you see
rocks wheeling slowly around and around in
the air, high above the tops of the tallest trees
on a fine summer day. you may be certain that
astorm Is approaching, And in a storm there
is no more sure sign of the weather clearing up
than these lofty gyrations of the crows.
80
rocks have always seemed most interesting to
me. AS a schoolboy 1 remember watching
them performing their morning exercises in
great grove Of elms in the park, glimpse of
which could be had from our dormitory WIN
dows. They had good deal better time than
1 had, used to think; free to fly where they
pleased, and safe from any danger more for
midabIe than the missiles hurled from slings
in the neighboring playground, which wall of a
height which in those days appeared to me STU
pendous-I suppose it was l6 feet high-divided
from the park. The old dowager to whom the
park and the turreted house behind the elms
belonged was devoted to her rocks, and would
allow no one to harm them. No tender rook-
lets CAME from that rookery to roosr in pies.
Tom Hughes makes one Of his characters in
"Tom Browns Sehooldays'' tell how the rocks
in the Rugby school ground used to have call
ing over or prayers when the locking-up bell
rang, and remember how regularly the rocks
used to come home from their foraging expedi-
tions just as the sun was sinking every evening
when / was staying awhile two years ago
within sight of the historic trees in Lord North
brooks park, near Micheldeyer There must
have been q couple Of thousand rocks
in that great rookery, and flying in regular
squadrons. with distances properly preserved,
officers in front and on the fanks. they would
take ten minutes in passing over the old-fash-
ioned garden where was dividing my atten-
ton between the landscape and pipe Of birds
eye.
RooKs-The word recalls hundred pleasant
things to me- A house all gables; gables all
roses and honey suckles, or black satin-glossed
ivy; house whose mellow red roof and
weather beaten chimneys rise from nest of
green toward sky of softest sunniest blue and
o1O NJ diva
ing on the comb of the roof And not only the
sight of the vine-wrapt house and the summer
sky. the beds of sweetwilliam and stocks, the
hoIlyhocks, like sentries. mounted by
the crazy gate, and the squares
of green and pasture land between
the hithermost hedge of box and the blue
green woods that close the picture in, but the
scent of the honeysuokles and the migponette,
the sound of an old skye terrier whining wist-
fully at ay feet the patter Of beech nut shells
two saucy squirrels are tossing to the ground,
all come back to me, at no more potent sum-
mons than single word.
Why the millionaire with his princely cottage
in Florida or his hotel in Southern California,
his villa at Cannes, or what not, can't do better
than this. 1t takes days or weeks to get to
those delightful scenes, but one can look out
on treeless hills and cold gray skies in Allie
gheny county and then in a second, if imagina-
tion and memory are willing, conjure up the
loVeliest rural scenes, the warmest skies, and
all the odors and sounds the senses crave for.