THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION. 257) 
the rustling leaves speak to him, or the opening 
flowers, or the chirping birds? He sees no transit 
of swift wings, and the sunshine dapples the leaf- 
carpeted ground in vain for eyes that see only the 
ledger and day-book in the sylvan haunt. 
My own experience confirms the foregoing state- 
ments. For several months one summer I felt 
depressed and abstracted on account of several 
untoward circumstances which need not be described, 
for “every heart knoweth its own bitterness.” In 
this mood I sometimes sauntered out to my wood- 
land haunts; but I saw very little, and what I did 
see bore the stamp of triteness, and seemed as dull 
and languid as myself. My heart was otherwhere. 
A secret, gnawing grief draws the thoughts inward, 
and breaks the spell of the outer world, charm she 
never so sweetly. The soul hopelessly hungering 
for the unattainable comes almost to despise the 
blessings within its grasp. A-lack-a-day, that any- 
thing should ever come between the heart and its 
gentle mistress, Nature! And so it was that even 
the birds, my precious intimates, became a weari- 
ness both to the flesh and the spirit. 
Master Chickadee was nothing but a lump o/ flesh 
covered with mezzo-tinted feathers, all prose, no 
poetry ; a creature that I had once invested with a 
rare charm (in my own mind), but now only a lout of 
a bird, a buffoon, whose noisy chatter broke harshly 
into my gloomy meditations. Once I had fairly 
revelled in the army of kaleidoscopic warblers, and 
had called them to their faces all kinds of endearing 
