FROM AN ORNITHOLOGIST'S YEAR BOOK. 



THE HEART OF A DRYAD, 

 I. 



It was an oak wood. A few hickories with white and fuscous and black, as a 

 and chestnuts grew there, but the oaks brooding creature should be that sits all 

 ruled; great of girth, brawny of limb, day long amid the play of fleeting light 

 with knotted muscles like the figures of and shade upon constant color. But both 

 Michael Angelo or Tintoretto's workmen were beautiful in their strong and dart- 

 in his painting of the Forge of Vulcan. As ing flight, and their labors of love, 

 to coloring, the oaks were of the Venetian The mother alone fashioned the nest, 

 painter's following, every oak of them ! weaving it strongly of grasses and bark, 

 In summer they were "men in green," of fibre, hair and string, and lashing it 

 rich, vigorous green, with blue shadows firmly near the end, a hanging cradle for 

 between the rustling boughs ; in early au- the wind to rock at will and safely, and 

 tumn, though russet in the shadow, the beautifully adorned with a fantastic pat- 

 sunshine showed them a deep and splen- tern of green oak leaves, woven across, 

 did crimson, pouring through them like a and aiding to conceal the nest itself. The 

 libation to the gods of the lower earth, eggs, four to six, were white, but marked 

 and to the noble dead, for the Dryad had with strange characters, sometimes dis- 

 a heart for heroes and all oak-like men. tinct, sometimes obscure, a hieroglyphic 



Immediately before the great winds of black or fuscous lines, over which the 



came, stripping them bare, and dashing mother brooded patiently for many days, 



silver cymbals to wild airs of triumph, But the male oriole was not indifferent, 



they wore a sober brown, but it put on a even while the young were in the egg. 



glow, as of bronze or heated metal after He did not fear to expose himself upon an 



a rain, when the sun's rays smote them upper branch, where he could watch un- 



with shining spears smiting aslant with tiringly over the safety of the beloved 



unwonted glittering. Under the moon nest and all day long, in bright or cloudy 



or after a freeze they were all clad in steel, weather, floated down to his silent mate 



armor of proof, and mighty was the tu- a song of courage and tenderness, 



mult, as of meeting swords, when the Ah, no shepherds in far-off Arcady 



great boughs swung, and the long icicles ever piped more sweetly to their beloved 



fell upon ice below. than this winged lover ! His note is wild 



But these days were far off. It was and free, a touch of anxious pleading per- 

 summer, and a crystal brook slipped from haps in the brooding song that one does 

 level to level, singing its sweet water- not catch in the first triumphant cry of 

 song, and bringing cool water to bathe joy with which he flashes upon our sight 

 the feet of the oak which the Dryad loved in April, but inexpressibly sweet and 

 and decked with green garlands. The liquid. It is essentially music of the pipes, 

 orioles loved it, flashing here and there like the soft airs blown by lips of happy 

 with rich red gold or flame-like orange children upon reeds cut from the brook- 

 on breast and wings and soft, velvety side in the first joyous days of spring, but 

 black on head and shoulders, splendidly it is different in its airy quality, as if a 

 beautiful as some tropic flower, they melody, unfinished, were floating far 

 chose the end of an oak bough to hang above our heads ! They are loving house- 

 their pensile nest. The male oriole holders, and, if undisturbed, will return, 

 shone in the sun, but his mate glowed year after year, to the same next, 

 with a duller hue, an orange veiled with Happy is the Dryad that dwells in an 

 gray, and mottled and spotted or splashed oak where the orioles build and sing ! 



Ella F. Mosby. 



193 



