TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 41 
the most delicate shades of influence in order 
to get the values of nature. Even the photo- 
graph is to be caught-on no plate save the most 
sensitive. 
The other day, when I told a friend that I 
‘had discovered that the mocking-bird never 
tries to imitate the cooing of a dove, he said, 
“Why, every one knew that long ago.”— 
“Show me the record,” I demanded ; but he 
could not. ‘“ Well, what good can come of 
your discovery, even if you are entitled to the 
credit?” he rather triumphantly asked. I 
answered that the fact was suggestive ; that it 
had an artistic value. A mournful, desponding 
voice is never attractive to a vigorous, healthy 
nature. Cheerfulness and enthusiasm are 
what win followers for birds as well as men. 
The mocking-bird is a genius who catches from 
nature all its available notes, and combines 
them so asto express the last possibility of 
bird-song, rejecting the moaning of the dove 
and the thumping notes of the yellow-billed 
cuckoo, just as the true poet rejects thoughts 
and words unworthy of his lay. 
It is true that, as the times go, the artist is 
called upon to please a vitiated taste. The 
poet and the novelist must meet the demands 
of the schools and coteries. The precious 
hints and suggestions caught from the provin- 
cial lanes and wood-paths are not considered 
favorable by the metropolitan, as a rule; but 
out of these must grow, as the plant from the 
seed, the living, lasting values of all art. City 
study is book study, through which the truths 
and beauties of nature are seen at a distance, 
as if through a very delusive atmosphere. To 
test this take your books into the woods of 
