THE PHCEBE. 5 



and even the younger people who now visit the spot 

 will sometime die too, but if the state, which now 

 owns the ponds, leaves the bridge and the trees and 

 bushes on its banks, I feel sure that every springtime 

 the Phoebe's note will be heard in the last days of 

 March, and the pretty moss-covered nest will be built 

 under the bridge. 



The young birds will learn to fly off and catch 

 insects on the wing, and will snap their tails too, as 

 their parents do ; and some day, when their parents 

 die, they will come and build nests under the bridge. 

 No one knows when they first came to this spot, nor 

 how long they will continue to return. 



Note. — It was my happy privilege to live for seven years in the cot- 

 tage upon the estate to which the ponds belonged before Massachusetts 

 made a present of them to all its nature-loving citizens. 



It must have been this same Phoebe who called to me from the pine 

 grove across the street so often in its plaintive way. Once when I was 

 ill I took turns in fancying, first, that Phoebe was lost and wished to 

 be found ; and, second, that some one was staying away too long and 

 must be called home to ease an anxious heart. But the note is hardly 

 like a call ; it sounds more like a sweet, loving memory that takes this 

 way of expressing itself. How glad I should have been then to know 

 that I was living at the ancestral home of this ancient family ! 



J. H. S. 



