238 THE SIERRA HERMIT THRUSH. 
WHEN asked to name the best songster of Washington, I answer, un- 
hesitatingly, the Hermit Thrush. It is not that the bird chooses for his home 
the icy slopes and stunted forests of the high Cascades, tho that were evidence 
enough of a poetic nature. It is not for any marked vivacity, or personal 
charm of the singer, that we praise his song; the bird is gentle, shy, and un- 
assuming, and it is only rarely that one may even see him. It is not that he 
excels in technique such conscious artists as the Catbird, the Thrasher, and the 
Mockingbird; the 
mere comparison is 
odious. The song of 
the Hermit Thrush 
is a thing apart. It 
is sacred music, not 
secular. Having 
nothing of the dash 
and abandon of 
Wren or Ouzel, least 
of all the sportive 
mockery of the 
Long-tailed Chat, it 
is the pure offering 
of a shriven soul, 
holding —_ acceptable 
converse with high 
heaven. No voice of 
solemn-pealing — or- 
gan or cathedral 
choir at vespers ever 
hymns the parting 
day more fittingly 
than this appointed 
chorister of the eter- 
nal hills. Mounted 
SIERRA HERMIT THRUSH. on the chancel of 
some low - crowned 
fir tree, the bird looks calmly at the setting sun, and slowly phrases his worship 
in such dulcet tones, exalted, pure, serene, as must haunt the corridors of 
memory forever after. 
You do not have to approve of the Hermit Thrush,—nor of Browning, 
nor of Shelley, nor of Keats. The writer once lost a subscription to “The Birds 
of Washington, Patrons’ Edition, De Luxe, Limited to One Hundred Copies” 
and all that, you know, because he ventured to defend Browning. ‘No; I do 
