Against a sky as blue as that of Venice two snow-white pigeons were flying straight down the street toward their companions. A swarthy Italian stood with the birds almost under his feet, but, save the dark face of the street-vender, the pigeons and the perfect sky, the picture involuntarily imaged in Miss Selwyn's mind was all away and awry.
Here was no stately tower, remote and solitary as a recluse in a worldly throng; no Byzantine temple delighted her eye with its warm and gracious humanity of suggestion. The vast sunny space of the Venetian square, with its columned coffee-houses and shops, was in spirit and in truth far removed from here. St. Mark's, and the place where the dream of a moment had arisen in an impressionable mind, might have been on two different planets, so opposed were they in every outline, spirit and detail—save one: the fluttering, flying, eager, unafraid pigeons.
The sun shot side glances down through the thoroughfare and really did some good on this day, because this was the day of the Nazarene, and even the money-seekers on this day had abandoned in their affairs the consumption of bituminous coal. That is why on Sunday, in one of the greatest cities in the world, the air is clear and the breath better. That is one reason why, on Sunday, the American cousins of the "pigeons of St. Mark's" come fluttering from somewhere about the city, from only the Maker of them knows where, and dip downward out of the ether trustingly to the feet of the passer-by, be he thug or preacher.
Miss Selwyn had never heard of the vast flock of doves which dwell in security among the towering buildings of the city. Their wings flash across wide darkling streets all day, welcome to every careworn man who watches, for a moment, their graceful flight. They were here before her now—there, parading strutting, looking up hopefully toward the men about them, each eagerly seeking the next flip of the corn. They were—and are to-day—because of some gracious instinct in humanity, the best casual street exemplification of what is best in human nature.
They dripped and dropped from somewhere almost simultaneously. There was one who strutted the most struttingly and whose only really justifiable claim was that from crown to midway of his body he had such iridescent purple as all the shell-opening fishermen of Tyre and Sidon never devised half-way. There was another one, a quaint little maiden, who will probably marry some English nobleman of the birds, snow-white, with strange geometrical lines crisscross about her back, and who was almost duplicated by a dozen or two others of her breed. There were two rufous things, the red of whose top and back lapsed into a white beneath, almost as exquisitely as blends the splendid red hair of a woman into the ever accompanying white of the skin beneath. There were little drizzled things, pert, like bantams, off-breeds which had introduced themselves into the community. And there was nothing but just a tossing about among those beautiful creatures upon the pavement there, nothing but an Oliver Twistish clamor for "more" from those who stood above them, to whom they were doing more good than they could know.
On week days the pigeons fly out in foraging parties to the railway yards and the neighborhood of the huge grain elevators. They can be seen glancing above the tall buildings, far flying, specks of gleaming light, along the hollow spaces above the streets as they go and come from their feeding places. The crowded masses of wagons, street cars, carriages, horses and hurrying people keep the pigeons from the street where they are most at home together for six days. But on the seventh, when the burden of labor is lifted or a brief space from the shoulders of toiling mankind, the pigeons rally in force upon one of the most busy, prosaic, care-breeding corners in the great spreading city by the lake. And every Sunday come, as surely, men and boys to feed the air-travelers and look at them with the worship all men feel for natural beauty and grace.
"HE WAS UNCONSCIOUS AS A CHILD"
Miss Selwyn had chanced upon this unique function, the pigeons' Sunday banquet. Here were no appealing graces of architecture and Venetian balm of atmosphere. The rough pavement on which the yellow corn was scattered was a contrast to the smooth and perfect floor of the great Piazza. On one side was the inevitable American drug store, plain, matter-of-fact, yet giving, by its crimson and purple window globes, the only touch of pure color in that part of the street. Across the way was a hotel. A clothing store, with its paraphernalia of advertisement, occupied another corner. It was Clark and Madison Streets.