CHARACTER IN FEATHERS. 69 
stoics in the world. Epictetus declared with an 
oath that he should be glad to see one.! To 
take everything as equally good, to know no 
difference between bitter and sweet, penury and 
plenty, slander and praise,—this is a great 
attainment, a Nirvana to which few can hope 
to arrive. Some wise man has said (and the 
remark has more meaning than may at once 
appear) that dying is usually one of the last 
things which men do in this world. 
Against the foil of the butcher-bird’s stolid- 
ity we may set the inquisitive, garrulous tem- 
perament of the white-eyed vireo and the yel- 
low-breasted chat. The vireo is hardly larger 
than the goldfinch, but let him be in one of his 
conversational moods, and he will fill a smilax 
thicket with noise enough for two or three cat- 
_birds. Meanwhile he keeps his eye upon you, 
and seems to be inviting your attention to his 
loquacious abilities. The chat is perhaps even 
more voluble. Staccato whistles and snarls 
follow each other at most extraordinary inter- 
vals of pitch, and the attempt at showing off is 
sometimes unmistakable. Occasionally he takes 
to the air, and flies from one tree to another; 
teetering his body and jerking his tail, in an 
1 This does not harmonize exactly with a statement which Em- 
erson makes somewhere, to the effect that all the stoics were stoics 
indeed. But Epictetus had never lived in Concord. 
