Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1908 — False Dawn. [ARTICLE]

False Dawn.

There Is one hour of the night between midnight and morning—two o'clock, to be' accurate —when all nature is astir. The cowboys and the shepherds and the old country folk tell us about it This hour is heralded by the rooster crowing, not this time to announce the hour of dawn, but as though he were a watchman speeding the course of nfght. Cowboys assert that the entire herd of cattle wake up and walk about and lie down and rest in a new lair. The sheep rouse themselves and crop the grass, the birds stir in their nests, the cowboys’ horses and the shepherd’s dogs open their eyes, too, to look for a moment at the stare and become for the time being mere animals in nature's flock; yet there Is no accounting for the inaudible summons, the gentle touch of nature that recalls all the sleepers to life at precisely the same hour. Even to those deepest read in these arcana this rythmical nightly resurrection remains a mystery.