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journey of halts. He travels at ease, as be- 

 comes a gentleman of leisure. Fifty miles 

 this week, a hundred the next and still the 

 next, soon bear him safe below the line of 

 frost. Everywhere he is grand-seigneur to 

 the tips of his wings. No plebeian flocking 

 for him. He disdains other company than 

 his own small family, even though it wear 

 his royal black and yellow. 



Not so Robin Redbreast. A true dem- 

 ocrat he, haunting your door-step, singing 

 so free from his mud nest in the fence, rear- 

 ing two, it may be three, broods each year 

 massing him, at last, with a dear five hun- 

 dred chirping fellows, for his cheery follow- 

 ing of the waning sun. As yet he has no 

 mind of it. See him sleek, full -breasted, 

 with an eye of meditative content pecking 

 about the grass. Is he not the moral of a 

 thrifty farmer who has put on his new Sun- 

 day suit to look over his bursting barns ? 

 Robin takes no shame for the pen-feathered 

 rawness of his late young brood. They are 

 in the world their own wits, legs, wings, 

 must make and keep them of it. Thus, too, 

 the farmer to his brood. Often from that 

 self-reliant school come men who make his- 

 tory no doubt, too, birds of clearest song, 

 of strongest wing. 



