4 AN IDLER ON MISSIONARY RIDGE. 



the loss, such as it was, was mine, not his ; 

 and I have lost too much time in the way 

 of business to fret over a little lost (or 

 saved) in the way of pleasure. As for any 

 apparent lack of patriotic feeling, I suppose 

 that the noblest patriot in the world, if he 

 chanced to be also an ornithologist, would 

 notice a bird even amid the smoke of bat- 

 tle ; and why should not I do as much on a 

 field from which the battle smoke had van- 

 ished thirty years before ? 



So I reason now ; at the time I had no 

 leisure for such sophistries. Every moment 

 brought some fresh distraction. The long 

 hill — woodland, brambly pasture, and 

 shrubby dooryard — was a nest of singing 

 birds ; and when at last I climbed the 

 tower, I came down again almost as sud- 

 denly as my Louisiana friends had done. 

 The landscape, — the city and its suburbs, 

 the river, the mountains, — all this would 

 be here to-morrow; just now there were 

 other things to look at. Here in the grass, 

 almost under my nose, were a pair of Be- 

 wick wrens, hojDping and walking by turns, 

 as song sparrows may sometimes be found 

 doing; conscious through and through of 



