230 A BIRD AgQVER'S APRIL. 
times when there were still people in the world 
who loved darkness rather than light, because 
their deeds were evil; and whether, after all, 
in this as in some other respects, we might not 
wisely take pattern of the fowls of the air. 
Individually, the phcebes were almost as 
noisy as the robins, but of course their numbers 
were far less. They are models of persever- 
ance. Were their voice equal to the nightin- 
gale’s they could hardly be more assiduous and 
enthusiastic in its use. As a general thing they 
are content to repeat the simple Phebe, Phebe 
(there are moods in the experience of all of us, 
I hope, when the repetition of a name is by it- 
self music sufficient), but it is not uncommon 
for this to be heightened to Phebe, O Phebe ; 
and now and then you will hear some fellow 
calling excitedly, Phebe, Phebe-be-be-be-be, — 
a comical sort of stuttering, in which the diff- 
culty is not in getting hold of the first syllable, 
but in letting go the last one. On the 15th I 
witnessed a certain other performance of theirs, 
— one that I had seen two or three times the 
season previous, and for which I had been on 
the lookout from the first day of the month. I 
heard a series of chips, which might have been 
the cries of a chicken, but which, it appeared, 
did proceed from a pheebe, who, as I looked up, 
was just in the act of quitting his perch on the 
