286 A MONTH’S MUSIC. 
able to take care of herself, would have thought 
him deficient in earnestness. At any rate, the 
wood wagtail is not the only bird whose court- 
ship has the appearance of a scrimmage ; and I 
believe there are still tribes of men among whom 
similar practices prevail, although the greater 
part of our race have learned, by this time, to 
take somewhat less literally the old proverb, 
‘“* None but the brave desérve the fair.” Love, 
it is true, is still recognized as one of the pas- 
sions (in theory at least) even among the most 
highly civilized peoples; but the tendency is 
more and more to count it a tender passion. 
While I am on the subject of marriage I may 
as well mention the white-eyed vireo. It had 
come to be the 16th of the month, and as yet 
I had neither seen nor heard anything of this 
obstreperous genius; so I made a special pil- 
grimage to a certain favorite haunt of his— 
Woodcock Swamp — to ascertain if he had ar- 
rived. After fifteen minutes or more of wait- 
ing I was beginning to believe him still absent, 
when he burst out suddenly with his loud and 
unmistakable Chip-a-weé-o. ‘* Who are you, — 
now?” the saucy fellow seemed to say, “ Who 
are you, now?” Pretty soon a pair of the 
birds appeared near me, the male protesting his 
affection at a frantic rate, and the female re- 
pelling his advances with a snappish determina- 
