AN IDLER ON MISSIONARY RIDGE. 19 



pretty much alike. I pass on, but not far, 

 and beside a little thicket I take up my 

 stand, and wait. It is pleasant here, and 

 patience will be rewarded. Yes, there is 

 a magnolia warbler, my second Tennessee 

 specimen ; a great beauty, but without that 

 final perfection of good taste (simplicity) 

 which distinguishes the Kentucky. I see 

 him, and he is gone, and I am not to be 

 drawn into a chase. Now I have a glimpse 

 of a thrush ; an olive-back, from what I can 

 see, but I cannot be sure. Still I keep my 

 place. A blue-gray gnatcatcher is drawling 

 somewhere in the leafy treetops. Thence, 

 too, a cuckoo fires off a lively fusillade of 

 Jcuks, a yellow-bill, by that token. Next 

 a black-poll warbler shows himself, still 

 far from home, though he has already trav- 

 eled a long way northward; and then, in 

 one of the basins of the stream (if we may 

 call it a stream, in which there is no sem- 

 blance of a current), a chat comes to wash 

 himself. Now I see the thrush again; or 

 rather, I hear him whistle, and by moving a 

 step or two I get him with my eye. He is 

 an olive-back, as his whistle of itself would 

 prove ; and presently he begins to sing, to 



