Midsummer Memoranda 



dodge and strike to your heart's content, 

 until you have reached the fence on the 

 other side of the field and are ready to 

 take a rest on the top rail, and laugh at 

 Mr. Swallow^, as he gives you up reluctantly 

 and hies him off to his brown-speckled 

 eggs and nest of mud and feathers against 

 the rafters over the mow. 



Who has not played the game that ever 

 loved the open air? — even to three-score- 

 and-ten, it may be— and who that ever 

 played it has not felt when it was over that 

 it did him good and made him at heart 

 for a while as a child again? 



Of all the birds I knew in boyhood 

 days the Cedar Waxwing seemed the most 

 mysterious; and upon those rare occa- 

 sions when I came across his nest in the 

 dark recesses of his native tree, the find 

 never failed to give me just a little of the 

 creepy feeling a witch story produces when 

 properly told. 



Undoubtedly the fact that he seems to 

 possess no voice at all, (or, if he has any, 

 neglects entirely to make it known) had 



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