SCRAPING ACQUAINTANCE. 133 
which are inexplicable to ourselves, and once in 
a very great while, perhaps, it would puzzle even 
our next-door neighbors to render a complete ac- 
count of our motives. 
Whatever the robin meant, however, and no 
doubt there was some good reason for his con- 
duct, he had given my curiosity the needed 
jog. Now, at last, I would do what I had often 
dreamed of doing, — learn something about the 
birds of my own region, and be able to recognize 
at least the more common ones when I saw them. 
The interest of the study proved to be the 
greater for my ignorance, which, to speak 
within bounds, was nothing short of wonderful ; 
perhaps I might appropriately use a more fash- 
ionable word, and call it phenomenal. All my 
life long I had had a kind of passion for being 
out-of-doors; and, to tell the truth, I had been 
so often seen wandering by myself in out-of-the- 
way wood-paths, or sitting idly about on stone 
walls in lonesome pastures, that some of my 
Philistine townsmen had most likely come to 
look upon me as no better than a vagabond. 
Yet I was not a vagabond, forall that. I liked 
work, perhaps, as well as the generality of peo- 
ple. But I was unfortunate in this respect: 
while I enjoyed in-door work, I hated to be in 
the house ; and, on the other hand, while I en- 
joyed being out-of-doors, I hated all manner of 
