PREFACE. 
Undoubtedly the thing we love and cherish wmost 
about the little wild-wood singer is his song. The 
music from the Robin sitting alone and apparently 
eheerless on the bare branch of the elm beside the road 
is at least a most welcome message with the true ring of 
springtime about it, even though the meadow is bare of 
any green thing, and the sky too dull and gray to sug- 
gest the advent of the gentler season. The calendar 
saysit is March, but as far as appearances go it might 
just as well be grim November—except for the presence 
of the Robin. But fortunately appearances are dis- 
counted in a country where the poet has most aggra- 
vatingly sung: 
‘‘The spring comes slowly up this way.” 
As though we did not know that without being told as 
much in verse! The factis, it really does not come at all 
as the poets would have it, either early or late. That 
familiar line of the old English poet, 
“Come, gentle spring, ethereal mildness, come” 3; 
is entirely unrelated to the order of things in the 
northern United States ; here our spring is mostly made 
up of sentiment connected with extended lists of sing- 
ing birds and of hurriedly blooming wild flowers; all the 
rest is weather—and plenty of it! January thaws, 
February snow-flurries, March gales, July heat, Decem- 
ber frosts, August thunder-showers, and November 
skies! Allis out of order except the birds; they come 
in regular procession, and sing, day in and day out, in 
spite of the weather and apparently without a thought 
of the preposterous disagreements of the climate and 
the weather bureau! 
But the songs, what of them! why is the singer re- 
corded in all the books, but never—or hardly ever—his 
song? Well, the question is a difficult one to answer 
without finding fault with some one, so it would be best 
+g make this little volume furnish the response. Here 
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