82 IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 



away from home ; but in the one case he has 

 nothing but his own safety to consult, while in 

 the other he is thinkincf of those whose lives 



o 



are more to him than his own, and whose hid- 

 ing-place he is every moment on the alert to 

 conceal. 



In Massachusetts we do not expect to find 

 sparrows in deep woods. They belong in fields 

 and pastures, in roadside thickets, or by fence- 

 rows and old stone-walls bordered with bar- 

 berry bushes and alders. But these white- 

 throats are children of the wilderness. It is 

 one charm of their music that it always comes, 

 or seems to come, from such a distance, — from 

 far up the mountain-side, or from the inaccessi- 

 ble depths of some ravine. I shall not soon for- 

 get its wild beauty as it rose out of the spruce 

 forests below me, while I w-as enjoying an 

 evening promenade, all by myself, over the 

 long, flat summit of Moosilauke. From his 

 habit of singing late at night this sparrow is in 

 some places known as the nightingale. His 

 more common name is the Peabody bird ; while 

 a Jefferson man, who was driving me over the 

 Cherry Mountain road, called him the Peverly 

 bird, and told me the following story : — 



A farmer named Peverly was walking about 

 his fields one spring morning, trying to make 

 up his mind whether the time had come to put 



