Suddenly, from far off in the air toward the great salt lake, there was the sound of flapping wings.  It grew louder.  Some of the people looked up, startled.  They saw, like a white cloud rising from the lake, a flock of sea gulls flying toward them.  Snow-white in the sun, with great wings beating and soaring, in hundreds and hundreds, they rose and circled and came on.

“The gulls! the gulls!” was the cry.  “What does it mean?”

The gulls flew overhead, with a shrill chorus of whimpering cries, and then, in a marvellous white cloud of outspread wings and hovering breasts, they settled down over the cultivated ground.

“Oh! woe! woe!” cried the people.  “The gulls are eating what the crickets have left! they will strip root and branch!”

But all at once, someone called out,—­

“No, no!  See! they are eating the crickets!  They are eating only the crickets!”

It was true.  The gulls devoured the crickets in dozens, in hundreds, in swarms.  They ate until they were gorged, and then they flew heavily back to the lake, only to come again with new appetite.  And when at last they finished, they had stripped the fields of the army of crickets; and the people were saved.

To this day, in the beautiful city of Salt Lake, which grew out of that pioneer village, the little children are taught to love the sea gulls.  And when they learn drawing and weaving in the schools, their first design is often a picture of a cricket and a gull.

THE NIGHTINGALE[25]

A long, long time ago, as long ago as when there were fairies, there lived an emperor in China, who had a most beautiful palace, all made of crystal.  Outside the palace was the loveliest garden in the whole world, and farther away was a forest where the trees were taller than any other trees in the world, and farther away, still, was a deep wood.  And in this wood lived a little Nightingale.  The Nightingale sang so beautifully that everybody who heard her remembered her song better than anything else that he heard or saw.  People came from all over the world to see the crystal palace and the wonderful garden and the great forest; but when they went home and wrote books about these things they always wrote, “But the Nightingale is the best of all.”

At last it happened that the Emperor came upon a book which said this, and he at once sent for his Chamberlain.

“Who is this Nightingale?” said the Emperor.  “Why have I never heard him sing?”

The Chamberlain, who was a very important person, said, “There cannot be any such person; I have never heard his name.”

“The book says there is a Nightingale,” said the Emperor.  “I command that the Nightingale be brought here to sing for me this evening.”

The Chamberlain went out and asked all the great lords and ladies and pages where the Nightingale could be found, but not one of them had ever heard of him.  So the Chamberlain went back to the Emperor and said, “There is no such person.”