<3ra00 10 (Sreen 



standing under an oak but under a wild cherry- 

 tree, and it was raining down the immature fruit 

 that rattled wherever it struck like rain-drops upon 

 leaves. Had I been in my tent and half asleep, 

 how readily would I have insisted that we had a 

 shower in the night. The imagination makes sport 

 of us, at times, when we pose as interpreters of nature. 

 This may not please us, when its victims, but what 

 opportunity it affords to criticize our neighbors. 



Birds, like men, give way to business as the 

 day waxes old, and now, although early, the chirp 

 of occupation took the place of the thanksgiving 

 song, and the cat-bird whined because the day was 

 already hot. One little white-eyed greenlet tried 

 to forget it was warm, and worked itself into a 

 fever with overmuch reiteration. So, too, the red- 

 starts felt that they must sing the death-song of 

 every fly they swallowed ; but the music proper 

 of the day was done. 



It is Thoreau, I think, who, in " Walden," re- 

 cords : 



The Harivansa says : "An abode without birds is like a 

 meat without seasoning." Such was not my abode, for I 

 found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds ; not by hav- 

 ing imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. 

 I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly 

 frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder 

 and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or 

 rarely, serenade a villager the wood-thrush, the veery, 

 the scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whippoorwill, and 

 many others. 



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