The Masters of Melody. 99 



Of all our New Jersey birds, the wood-thrush is 

 held to be the chief singer. It is heresy to think 

 otherwise ; and, having said this, what remains to 

 be said ? That marvel, the rose-breasted grosbeak, 

 the cat-bird in May, the long-tailed thrasher, the 

 wrens, the crested tit, and all the long list of summer 

 birds stand out more or less prominently, but can 

 never climb to the eminence reached by the wood- 

 thrush. You doubtless think so, so does your neigh- 

 bor, as also the community behind him. It may be 

 true, but I do not believe it. I object to the melan- 

 choly that permeates the whole song. A poet once 

 wandered as far as my house, and, after sitting in 

 the shade of the old oaks for half the afternoon, 

 remarked, '* Your thrushes have been calling in vain 

 for Geraldine, dear Geraldine. I do wish she would 

 come or else that the birds would forget her." 

 There was something in the way he put it that ex- 

 pressed more than the crankiness of a poet. There 

 is a sadness that will tell at last upon even a soured 

 old man, and the thrush's song comes within this 

 category. Yet how we should miss them if the birds 

 failed to come ! This, however, I have never known 

 them to do. There are old apple-trees in the lane 

 whereon they have nested for half a century ; there is 

 a springy hollow, filled with grape-vines, greenbrier, 

 and sumac, that has always been a summer home 

 to them ; a seckel-pear-tree that has weathered the 

 storms of half the last century and all of this still 

 affords them shelter as the sun goes down, when their 

 sweet, sad song is heard above all others, — a song as 



