AN IDLEB ON MISSIONARY RIDGE. 21 



and a perfect light, facing me and singing, 

 a lovely chorister. Looking at him, I catch 

 a flutter of yellow and black among the 

 leaves by the streamlet ; a Kentucky warbler, 

 I suspect, but I dare not go forward to see, 

 for now the thrushes are in chorus again. 

 By and by he comes up from his bath, and 

 falls to dressing his feathers: not a Ken- 

 tucky, after all, but a Canadian flycatcher, 

 my first one here. He, too, is an exquisite, 

 with fine colors finely laid on, and a most 

 becoming jet necklace. While I am admir- 

 ing him, a blue yellow-back begins to prac- 

 tice his scales — still a little blurred, and 

 needing practice, a critic might say — some- 

 where at my right among the hillside oaks ; 

 another exquisite, a beauty among beauties. 

 I see him, though he is out of sight. And 

 what seems odd, at this very moment his 

 rival as a singer of the scale, the prairie war- 

 bler, breaks out on the other side of me. 

 Like the chat and the indigo-bird, he is 

 abundantly at home hereabout. 



All this woodland music is set off by 

 spaces of silence, sweeter almost than the 

 music itself. Here is peace unbroken ; here 

 is a delicious coolness, while the sun blazes 



