The animistic faculty and its survival in us—A boy's animism and its persistence—Impossibility of seeing our past exactly as it was—Serge Aksakoff's history of his childhood—The child's delight in nature purely physical—First intimations of animism in the child—How it affected me—Feeling with regard to flowers—A flower and my mother —History of a flower—Animism with regard to trees—Locust trees by moonlight—Animism and nature-worship—Animistic emotion not uncommon —Cowper and the Yardley oak—The religionist's fear of nature— Pantheistic Christianity—Survival of nature-worship in England— The feeling for nature—Wordsworth's pantheism and animistic emotion in poetry
CHAPTER XVIII THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER
Mr. Trigg recalled—His successor—Father O'Keefe—His mild rule and love of angling—My brother is assisted in his studies by the priest— Happy fishing afternoons—The priest leaves us—How he had been working out his own salvation—We run wild once more—My brother's plan for a journal to be called The Tin Box—Our imperious editor's exactions—My little brother revolts—The Tin Box smashed up—The loss it was to me
CHAPTER XIX BROTHERS
Our third and last schoolmaster—His many accomplishments—His weakness and final breakdown—My important brother—Four brothers, unlike in everything except the voice—A strange meeting—Jack the Killer, his life and character—A terrible fight—My brother seeks instructions from Jack—The gaucho's way of fighting and Jack's contrasted—Our sham fight with knives—A wound and the result—My feeling about Jack and his eyes—Bird-lore—My two elder brothers' practical joke
CHAPTER XX BIRDING IN THE MARSHES
Visiting the marshes—Pajonales and juncales—Abundant bird life—A coots' metropolis—Frightening the coots—Grebe and painted snipe colonies—The haunt of the social marsh hawk—The beautiful jacana and its eggs—The colony of marsh trupials—The bird's music—The aquatic plant durasmillo—The trupial's nest and eggs—Recalling a beauty that has vanished—Our games with gaucho boys—I am injured by a bad boy—The shepherd's advice—Getting my revenge in a treacherous manner—Was it right or wrong?—The game of hunting the ostrich
CHAPTER XXI WILD-FOWLING ADVENTURES
My sporting brother and the armoury—I attend him on his shooting expeditions—Adventure with golden plover—A morning after wild duck— Our punishment—I learn to shoot—My first gun—My first wild duck—My ducking tactics—My gun's infirmities—Duck-shooting with a blunderbuss—Ammunition runs out—An adventure with rosy-bill duck— Coarse gunpowder and home-made shot—The war danger comes our way—We prepare to defend the house—The danger over and my brother leaves home