A MONTH'S MUSIC. 295 



walking, to a grosbeak's notes, and asked him 

 what bird's they were. He, having a good ear 

 for matters of this kind, looked somewhat dazed 

 at such an inquiry, but answered promptly, 

 " Why, a robin's, of course." As one day after 

 another passed, however, and I listened to both 

 species in full voice on every hand, I came to 

 feel that I had overestimated the resemblance. 

 With increasing familiarity I discerned more 

 and more clearly the respects in which the songs 

 differed, and each came to have to my ear an 

 individuality strictly its own. They were alike, 

 doubtless, — as the red-eyed vireo's and the 

 blue-head's are, — and yet they were not alike. 

 Of one thing I grew better and better assured : 

 the grosbeak is out of all comparison the finer 

 musician of the two. To judge from my last- 

 year's friends, however, his concert season is 

 very short — the more 's the pity. 



I begin to perceive (indeed it has been dawn- 

 ing upon me for some time) that our essay is 

 not to fulfill the promise of its caption. In- 

 stead of the glorious fullness and variety of the 

 month's music (for May, in this latitude, is the 

 musical month of months) the reader has been 

 put off with a few of the more exceptional fea- 

 tures of the carnival. He will overlook it, I 

 trust ; and as for the great body of the chorus, 

 who have not been honored with so much as a 



