162 MINOR SONGSTERS. 
FF 
another, pausing only to peer right and left 
into the crevices of the bark, in search of mi- 
croscopic tidbits. A most irksome sameness, 
surely! How the poor fellow must envy the 
swallows, who live on the wing, and, as it were, 
have their home in heaven! So it is easy for 
us to think; but I doubt whether the creeper 
himself is troubled with such suggestions. He 
seems, to say the least, as well contented as the 
most of us; and, what is more, I am inclined to 
doubt whether any except “free moral agents,” 
like ourselves, are ever wicked enough to find 
fault with the orderings of Divine Providence. 
I fancy, too, that we may have exaggerated the 
monotony of the creeper’s lot. It can scarcely 
be that even his days are without their occa- 
sional pleasurable excitements. After a good 
many trees which yield little or nothing for his 
pains, he must now and then light upon one 
which is like Canaan after the wilderness, — 
“a land flowing with milk and honey.” In- 
deed, the longer I think of it the more confi- 
dent I feel that every aged creeper must have 
had sundry experiences of this sort, which he 
is never weary of recounting for the edification 
of his nephews and nieces, who, of course, are 
far too young to have anything like the wide 
knowledge of the world which their venerable 
three-years-old uncle possesses. Certhia works 
