Where Town and Country Meet 



flute tones the purity and sweetness of the 

 one united with the smoothness and richness 

 of the other. Nearer at hand a brown 

 thrush was lifting up his less ethereal but 

 more vivacious and buoyant song, and close 

 beside him, like a kind of choir-master, a 

 chewink beat time for all the singers with 

 his clear, precise double note. A couple of 

 vireos back in the woods were bidding each 

 other a loving good morning; a robin (for 

 there is plenty of robins in the New Eng 

 land backwoods) was trilling his idyllic 

 matins from a birch top; and a song spar 

 row, like a piccolo player, pierced the chorus 

 through and through with his fine, shrill 

 cadenzas. Then there were the innumer 

 able songsters in the background, whose 

 notes could not be distinguished in the rich 

 medley a whole company of trained and 

 sympathetic accompanists, like the finest 

 orchestra in the world. Ah ! it was enough 

 to make one forget even the rare delights 

 of trout-fishing in a mountain pond girdled 

 with primeval woods. It was something 

 worth getting up at three o'clock and rid 

 ing seven miles through the damp woods to 

 hear. To me it was ample compensation 

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