A MONTH'S MUSIC. 295 
walking, to a grosbeak’s notes, and asked him 
what bird’s they were. He, having a good ear 
for matters of this kind, looked somewhat dazed 
at such an inquiry, but answered promptly, 
“ Why, a robin’s, of course.” As one day after 
another passed, however, and I listened to both 
species in full voice on every hand, I came to 
feel that I had overestimated the resemblance. 
With increasing familiarity I discerned more 
and more clearly the respects in which the songs 
differed, and each came to have to my ear an 
individuality strictly its own. They were alike, 
doubtless, —as the red-eyed vireo’s and the 
blue-head’s are, — and yet they were not alike. 
Of one thing I grew better and better assured : 
the grosbeak is out of all comparison the finer 
musician of the two. To judge from my last- 
year’s friends, however, his concert season is 
very short — the more’s the pity. 
I begin to perceive (indeed it has been dawn- 
ing upon me for some time) that our essay is 
not to fulfill the promise of its caption. In- 
stead of the glorious fullness and variety of the 
month’s music (for May, in this latitude, is the 
musical month of months) the reader has been 
put off with a few of the more exceptional fea- 
tures of the carnival. He will overlook it, I 
trust; and as for the great body of the chorus, 
who have not been honored with so much as a 
