122 OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
By the time ordinary people are up, the birds will 
have settled down to the business of the day. Their 
dresses and coats are brushed, and their hats and bon- 
nets are on “straight.” 
The drip, drip, of the hydrant, or the babble of the 
brook do not tell what they saw an hour ago. The 
old sun, looking down steadily in your face, never 
hints at sights that made him smile so out of the 
corner of his eye when he first got up at call of the 
birds. 
It is a very odd thing that the birds have to wake 
the sun every morning in California. Look about you 
early and see how it is where you live. 
“Get up, old Sun! get up, old Sun!” they all scream 
at once, and they keep right on making as much noise 
as they can, until the lazy old fellow is fairly out of 
bed. Tell your friends, if they do not believe this, 
that they and old Sol himself had better take to get- 
ting up earlier in the morning. 
That is a queer old proverb, “Early birds get the 
worms.” You have all heard it, and it tells the truth. 
Did you ever see the ground all covered with tiny 
little mounds of fresh earth in the morning when it is 
damp? Angle-worms do not like the sunshine; they 
will die if exposed to it. So they come up to the sur- 
face of the ground in the night, while we and the sun 
are asleep, just to get a bit of fresh air and to look 
around the world. If they do not hurry back to their 
home in the ground, they will get surprised by the 
