Note* of tbe 1Rtrbt 



a few sweet notes of a wood-thrush, some migrat- 

 ing minstrel dreaming of the dead summer. I 

 forgot the moonlit river when I heard this song. I 

 made a cushion of whatever was available, and, ly- 

 ing on my back, looked up at the moon and the 

 fleecy clouds that passed by and over it, and 

 thought of wood-thrushes as I had known them in 

 the days gone by. I could picture every nook and 

 corner of the farm where I was a boy, and again I 

 went after the cows at sunset, passing along the 

 narrow path among the hillside oaks, along the 

 greenbrier thicket that few birds even could pene- 

 trate, and then out into the open meadows to the 

 lone hickories where the cattle congregated at 

 noontide. There was not a bird of all that country 

 that I did not know. The chewinks scolded as I 

 neared their nests, the song-sparrows chirped an 

 alarm as I approached, the peewees rose to the 

 higher branches in the tall trees, and how the cat- 

 birds fretted ! I was not their enemy. I had never 

 robbed their nests, and yet they were all sore afraid 

 for the simple reason that I was a boy, and they 

 had cause, they thought, to mistrust me on general 

 principles. A little later, when I came trudging 

 back, loitering long after the last cow had passed, 

 there was one bird that had confidence, and young 

 as I was, it held me by its marvelous song, the 

 wood-thrush, tn the gloaming, when the woods 

 and every field were deserted by man , when the 

 tireless songsters of the sunny day were all wearied 

 5 65 



