AN IDLER ON MISSIONARY RIDGE. 1 



a great singer ; but to my Northern ears the 

 wood thrush carried the day with his voice. 



Having climbed the Ridge again, — 

 though climbing might be thought rather 

 too laborious a word for so gradual a slope, 

 — and started down on the side toward the 

 city, I came to a patch of blackberry vines, 

 in the midst of which sat a thrasher on her 

 nest, all a mother's anxiety in her staring 

 yellow eyes. Close by her stood an olive- 

 backed thrush. There, too, was my first 

 hooded warbler, a female. She escaped me 

 the next instant, though I made an eager 

 chase, not knowing yet how common birds 

 of her sort were to prove in that Chatta- 

 nooga country. 



In my delight at finding Missionary Ridge 

 so happy a hunting-ground for an opera-glass 

 naturalist, I went thither again the very 

 next morning. This time some Virginia 

 veterans were in the car (they all wore 

 badges), and when we had left it, and were 

 about separating, — after a bit of talk about 

 the battle, of course, — one of them, with 

 almost painful scrupulosity, insisted upon as- 

 suring me that if the thing were all to be 

 done over again, he should do just as before. 



