162 MINOR SONGSTERS. 



another, pausing only to peer right and left 

 into the crevices of the bark, in search of mi- 

 croscopic tidbits. A most irksome sameness, 

 surely ! How the poor fellow must envy the 

 swallows, who live on the wing, and, as it were, 

 have their home in heaven ! So it is easy for 

 us to think ; but I doubt whether the creeper 

 himself is troubled with such suggestions. He 

 seems, to say the least, as well contented as the 

 most of us ; and, what is more, I am inclined to 

 doubt whether any except " free moral agents," 

 like ourselves, are ever wicked enough to find 

 fault with the orderings of Divine Providence. 

 I fancy, too, that we may have exaggerated the 

 monotony of the creeper's lot. It can scarcely 

 be that even his days are without their occa- 

 sional pleasurable excitements. After a good 

 many trees which yield little or nothing for his 

 pains, he must now and then light upon one 

 which is like Canaan after the wilderness, 

 *' a land flowing^ with milk and honey." In- 



O .' 



deed, the longer I think of it the more confi- 

 dent I feel that every aged creeper must have 

 had sundry experiences of this sort, which he 

 is never weary of recounting for the edification 

 of his nephews and nieces, who, of course, are 

 far too young to have anything like the wide 

 knowledge of the world which their venerable 

 three-years-old uncle possesses. Certhia works 



