MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 13 



Twice have the crow-blackbirds attempted a settlement in 

 my pines, and twice have the robins, who claim a right of 

 pre-emption, so successfully played the part of border- 

 ruffians as to drive them away, to my great regret, for 

 they are the best substitute we have for rooks. At Shady 

 Hill (now, alas ! empty of its so long loved household) they 

 build by hundreds, and nothing can be more cheery than 

 their creaking clatter (like a convention of old-fashioned 

 tavern-signs) as they gather at evening to debate in mass 

 meeting their windy politics, or to gossip at their tent-doors 

 over the events of the day. Their port is grave, and their 

 stalk across the turf as martial as that of a second-rate 

 ghost in Hamlet. They never meddled with my corn, so 

 far as I could discover. 



For a few years I had crows, but their nests are an 

 irresistible bait for boys, and their settlement was broken 

 up. They grew so wonted as to throw off a great part of 

 their shyness, and to tolerate my near approach. One very 

 hot day I stood for some time within twenty feet of a 

 mother and three children, who sat on an elm bough over 

 my head, gasping in the sultry air, and holding their wings 

 half-spread for coolness. All birds during the pairing 

 season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft 

 nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding organ repetition 

 and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very 

 comical as a lover, and to hear him trying to soften his 

 croak to the proper Saint Preux standard has something 

 the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson. 

 Yet there are few things to my ear more melodious than 

 his caw of a clear winter morning as it drops to you filtered 

 through five hundred fathoms of crisp blue air. The 

 hostility of all smaller birds makes the moral character of 

 the crow, for all his deaconlike demeanour and garb, some 

 what questionable. He could never sally forth without 

 insult. The golden robins, especially, would chase him as 

 far as I could follow with my eye, making him duck 

 clumsily to avoid their importunate bills. I do not believe, 

 however, that he robbed any nests hereabouts, for the 



