In all the city there is no more beautiful sight than that which is contributed by the flight of pigeons. You may see them flying in one place and another, here over the towering stacks of some tall factory, there over the low roofs of some workaday neighborhood; the yard of a laborer¹, the roof of some immense office building, the eaves of a shed or barn furnishing them shelter and a point of rendezvous² from which they sail. I have seen them at morning, when the sky was like silver, turning in joyous³ circles so high that the size of a large flock of forty was no more than a hand’s breadth. I have seen them again at evening, wheeling and turning in a light which was amethystine⁴ in its texture⁵, so soft that they seemed swimming in a world of dream. In the glow of a radiant sunset, against the bosom⁶ of lowering storm clouds, when the turn of a wing made them look like a handful of snowflakes, or the shafts⁷ of the evening sunlight turned their bodies to gold, I have watched them soaring, soaring, soaring, running like children, laughing down the bosom of the wind, wheeling, shifting, rising, falling, the one idyllic⁸ note in a world of commonplace—or, perhaps more truthfully, the key central of what is a heavenly scene of beauty.