FLOODS OF MUSIC. 141 



" Last year niethinks the bobolinks 

 Filled the low fields with vagrant tune, 

 The sweetest songs of sweetest June — 

 Wild spurts of frolic, always gladly 

 Bubbling, doubling, brightly troubling, 

 Bubbling rapturously, madly," 



Expressing himself was so great a relief to 

 my bobolink, after his unnatural gravity of de- 

 meanor, that he repeated the performance again 

 and again. I say repeated it ; I found that he 

 had two ways of beginning, but after he got into 

 his ecstasy I could think of nothing but how 

 marvelous it was, so that whether the two dif- 

 fered all through I am not sure. It was every 

 time a new rapture to me as well as to him. 

 One of his beginnings that I had time to note 

 before I was lost in the flood of melody was of 

 two notes, the second a fifth higher than the 

 first, with a "grace-note," very low indeed, be- 

 fore each one. The other beginning was also 

 two notes, the second at least a fifth lower than 

 the first, with an indescribable jerk between, 

 and uttered so softly that if I had been a little 

 further away I could not have heard it. It 

 sounded like ''tut, now." 



Seeing that I remained motionless, the bird 

 forgot altogether his uncongenial occupation of 

 watchman, and launched himself into the air 

 toward me, soaring round and round me, letting 

 fall such a flood, such a torrent, of liquid notes 



