A BIRD MEDLEY 73 
old, your friends die or move to distant lands, 
events sweep on, and all things are changed. Yet 
there in your garden or orchard are the birds of your 
boyhood, the same notes, the same calls, and, to all 
intents and purposes, the identical birds endowed 
with perennial youth. The swallows, that built so 
far out of your reach beneath the eaves of your 
father’s barn, the same ones now squeak and chatter 
beneath the eaves of your barn. ‘The warblers and 
shy wood-birds you pursued with such glee ever so 
many summers ago, and whose names you taught 
to some beloved youth who now, perchance, sleeps 
amid his native hills, no marks of time or change 
cling to them; and when you walk out to the 
strange woods, there they are, mocking you with 
their ever-renewed and joyous youth. The call of 
the high-holes, the whistle of the quail, the strong 
piercing note of the meadowlark, the drumming of 
the grouse, — how these sounds ignore the years, 
and strike on the ear with the melody of that spring- 
time when the world was young, and life was all 
holiday and romance! 
During any unusual tension of the feelings or 
emotions, how the note or song of a single bird will 
sink into the memory, and become inseparably asso- 
ciated with your grief or joy! Shall I ever again 
be able to hear the song of the oriole without being 
pierced through and through? Can it ever be other 
than a dirge for the dead to me? Day after day, 
and week after week, this bird whistled and warbled 
in a mulberry by the door, while sorrow, like a 
