Professional and Amateur. 103 



I have mentioned the pewees. The more fa- 

 miHar one is known to everybody, and it is delightful 

 to hear its cheery call, often during the blustering 

 days of March, coming as the bird does before the 

 sharpest eyes can detect the slightest change in the 

 weather beyond the later setting of the sun. At 

 home there are always pewees in the open wagon- 

 shed, a pair under the floor of the bridge in the 

 lane, and another pair on the top of one of the 

 pillars of the north porch. These birds come as 

 surely as the seasons ; they are fixtures like the 

 growths of weeds in the fields and of weedy thoughts 

 in ourselves. The thought is, of course, a silly one, 

 but I have often fancied one particular pair to be the 

 same that I watched with wonder almost half a cen- 

 tury ago. Pewees, like Tennyson's brook, come and 

 go forever, whatever men may do. But over the 

 garden fence, along the hill-side with its wonderful 

 old oaks, and about the three beeches there lives all 

 summer long the quiet, meditative, methodical, un- 

 obtrusive, plainly dressed, yet dear, delightful wood- 

 pewee. No one can speak ill of such a bird. Even 

 the bee-keeper will not say that it raids upon his 

 hives. Perhaps it does, but I guess nobody cares ; 

 and I would willingly raise bees for its benefit rather 

 than not have it within sight and hearing. It is a bird 

 of the big woods rather than of the sproutlands, yet if 

 there are old trees near your house, this pewee will 

 come almost as close to you as ever did its cousin that 

 is nesting on your front porch. But it is better to go 

 to some birds than have them come to you. Door- 



