A LOWLAND TRILLER. 97 



Yet tlie weather was so cold that, although I 

 was warmly clad, my hands and feet were tin- 

 gling before I reached home. 



On the same day I saw one of these birds 

 fly down to the stream amid the bushes, hop to 

 the edge of the ice, and take a long drink, 

 looking up at me in a cunning way and saying 

 with his beady black eyes, " A bird must drink 

 in cold weather as well as in warm." How 

 red his little bare feet looked on the ice ! 



On the 2d and 3d of March the snow 

 lay nearly half a foot deep on the ground and 

 the wind howled dismally about the house, but 

 a brave little sparrow living at the pond on the 

 commons trilled " his psalm to the wintry sky " 

 as if it were a pleasant day in June. Ah, this 

 son ouster is a hero and deserves a sonnet ! 



Not all song sparrows belong to the tribe 

 of '^country cousins," as one writer has said. 

 While they are not be found in the heart of 

 the city, some of them love the suburbs. Not 

 Ave rods from the street on which I live a 

 number of these birds make their dwelling 

 about the bush-fringed basins on the commons, 

 where they construct their nests and rear their 

 young. Almost every morning on my way 

 down town I hear a song sparrow rehearsing 

 his matins right in the midst of a cluster of 



