72 CHICKAMAUGA. 



with a song of the oddest and meanest, 

 two syllables, the first a mere nothing, and 

 the second a husky drawl, in a voice like 

 the blue golden-wing's. Insignificant and 

 almost contemptible as it was, a shabby ex- 

 pression of connubial felicity, to say the 

 least, I counted myself happy to have heard 

 it, for novelty covers a multitude of sins. 



The yellow-throated warblers were hardly 

 less interesting than the blue-wing, though 

 they threw me into less excitement. For 

 a long time I heard them without heeding 

 them. From the day of my arrival in Chat- 

 tanooga I had been surrounded by indigo- 

 birds in numbers beyond anything that a 

 New England mind ever dreams of. As a 

 matter of course they were singing here on 

 Snodgrass Hill, or so I thought. But by 

 and by, as the lazy notes were once more 

 repeated, there came over me a sudden sense 

 of difference. "Was that an indigo-bird?" 

 I said to myself. " Was n't it a yellow- 

 throated warbler?" I was sitting among 

 the tops of the pine-trees ; the birds had 

 been droning almost in my very ears, and 

 without a thought I had listened to them as 

 indigo-birds. It confirmed what I had writ- 



