144 A BOBOLINK RHAPSODY. 



off toward home, musing, as I went, upon the 

 bobolink family. I had not once seen or heard 

 the little mates. Were they busy in the grass 

 with bobolink babies? and did .they enjoy the 

 music as keenly as I did ? How much I "wanted 

 to know"! How I should like to see the nests 

 and the nestlings ! What sort of a father is the 

 gay singer? (Some of the blackbird family are 

 exemplary in this relation.) Does he drop his 

 part of poet, of reveler of the meadows, I won- 

 der, and come down to the sober prose of stuff- 

 ing baby mouths? Are bobolinks always this 

 jolly, delightful crowd? Are they never quarrel- 

 some? Alas! it would take much more than 

 one day, however sunny and however long, to 

 tell all these things. 



At the edge of the meadow I sat down again, 

 hoping for one more song, and then came the 

 crown of the whole morning, the choicest re- 

 served for the last. A bird sailed out from 

 behind the daisies, passed over my head, and de- 

 livered the most bewitching rhapsody I had yet 

 heard. Not merely once did he honor me, but 

 again and again without pausing, as if he in- 

 tended to fill me as full of bobolink rapture as 

 he was himself. His voice was peculiarly rich 

 and full, and, what amazed me, his first three 

 notes were an exact reproduction of the wood- 

 thrush's (though more rapidly sung), including 



