220 IN BIRD LAND. 
companions of the winter, which had come back 
from their summer vacation in the north. How 
glad I was to salute them and welcome them home! 
Their trig little forms, sprightly motions, confident 
air of comradery, and merry trills were a joy to me. 
And then I could not help wondering if any of them 
might be the same birds I had met during the early 
summer on one of the green mountains of Canada, 
where I had spent a day of rapturous delight. In 
the same sequestered angle, autumn though it was, 
the phcebe bird brought back reminiscences of 
spring, with his cheery whistle; while farther down 
the valley his shy relative, the wood-pewee, com- 
plained dulcetly that winter was coming to drive 
him from his pleasant summer haunts. Every 
sound, whether joyful or sad, struck a responding 
chord in my heart, because Nature had my undi- 
vided thought. 
When the mind is distracted by sorrows it can- 
not shake off, it boots little that the chirp of the 
chestnut-sided and cerulean warblers is sharp and 
penetrating; that the call of the black-throated 
green, black-throated blue and myrtle warblers is 
somewhat harsh; that the Maryland yellow-throat 
expresses his alarm or disapproval in a note still 
lower in the scale and quite rasping ; that the Black- 
burnian and parula warblers tilt about far up in the 
tree-tops, as if they scorned the ground; that the 
black-throats and creepers dance airily about in the 
bushes or lower branches of the trees, come con- 
fidingly near you, a tiny interrogation point dangling 
