144 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



audible through it all. Listening for it and hearing it, 

 and sometimes catching a glimpse of the small restless 

 creature among the deep green foliage near my seat, a 

 curious mental change would come over me. The sense 

 of dissatisfaction, of disharmony, would pass away; the 

 pavilion, the kiosks, the gravelled walks and offensive 

 flower-beds, the well-dressed invalids and idlers, the 

 artificiality of the scene, with big hotel buildings for 

 background, would be to me something illusory — a mental 

 picture which I could dismiss from my mind at any 

 moment, or an appearance which would vanish at a 

 breath of wind or on the coming of a cloud over the 

 sun. The people sitting and moving about me had no 

 real existence; I alone existed there, with a willow wren 

 for companion, and was sitting not on an iron chair 

 painted green but on the root of an old oak or beech 

 tree, or on a bed of pine needles, with the smell of pine 

 and bracken in my nostrils, with only that wandering 

 aerial tender voice, that gossamer thread of sound, float- 

 ing on the silence. 



This is doubtless an extreme example of the power of 

 expression, and could perhaps only be experienced by 

 one whose chief pleasure from childhood has been in 

 wild birds and who delights in bird voices above all 

 sounds. But expression is not everything: there is a 

 charm in some sounds so great that we love them from 

 the first time of hearing, when they are without associa- 

 tions with a happy past; and in such cases we can sup- 

 pose that the emotional expression, if it exists at all, is 



