Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1887 — A Virginia Tradition. [ARTICLE]

A Virginia Tradition.

Once in the life of every man he hears the seven whistlers’ call. They are strange birds on whom mortal eyes have never rested, the whistle of whose wings Sometimes falls upon the startled ear. And there is always a portent of something momentous for good or evil, even though they may not “dree their weird” for weeks after the se en whistlers’ call. Like all porthhts theif coming is mostly in the gloaming. For then, after all, is the “witching hour.” There is in the quiet ot a se eluded country side in the "twilight hush which comes down from the moan,' tain and the twilight shadows which fall from the heavens a mystical significance of another world, and of the flimsy structure of the veil intervening, which is to be found at no other hour of the twenty-four. It is then, by some lonely wood pond, or in some valley circled by the woods, that this hush is broken by a faint, far but -distinct note in the air, not on earth or in the sky overhead, taken up and repeated six times, and ever growing clearer and more, distinct, and finally pealing away with a rush of wings and a sound of passing like that which in ail the Mediterraneanlsles signaled the death of “the Great Pan” when Christ was born. —Boston Globe.