170 WOOD NOTES WILD. 



Oriole, — Contin. 



Note. — As runs one of the beautiful legends grown about the 

 life of Saint Francis d'Assisi, the birds — to whom he preached 

 the famous sermon and gave his blessing — did not forget him 

 in the final hour. While he lay dying, the larks, his favorites, 

 gathered in great numbers over his house and sang, " When 

 his time was come, about evening, though these birds are 

 early goers to sleep, yet they came, and with an unwonted 

 cheerfulness, did express great joy." Our author, with a like 

 love for the birds, associated them with important events in 

 his life. On the night of his first marriage, when the guests 

 had gone, and bride and bridegroom were left alone, a bird 

 came to the window. It would not be driven away, and finally 

 he put out his hand and took it in. But at no period of his 

 life did the birds seem to attend him so closely as when he 

 came to lie in the sleep too deep to be reached by their minis- 

 tration. Albert Baker Cheney, his younger son, wrote from 

 the old home in Dorset certain details which may be pardon- 

 ably inserted in this connection : — 



''As we were at breakfast, early the morning of starting 

 from Franklin with the body, an oriole, the first of the season 

 — perhaps the very same father listened to last year and took 

 his notes — came and sang a long happy song in a tree close 

 by the house. We spoke of it often on the sad journey. 

 With it still in our ears, imagine our feelings when, riding 

 into the grove in Dorset, late in the afternoon, we were 

 greeted by similar strains. Though other birds were singing, 

 we heard the orioles above all the rest. But the strangest 

 part is yet to be told. The following morning, just as the 

 body was being lowered into the ground, an oriole dashed 

 into the top of a small tree, right in the midst of the people, 

 and sang throughout this most silent of all times the brightest 

 and cheeriest strains imaginable. It struck us all as very 

 nearly realizing the voices of which father spoke so often, 

 the music of the world beyond." 



