FRIENDS IN FEATHERS 



which I was not accustomed, while all May was in each intoxi- 

 cating breath of spring air, in the Lark's note o'erhead, and in 

 every whitening corner of the old snake fences outlining my way. 



A passing farmer directed me to McCollum's, and standing in 

 my carriage, I could see a corn-field with a small swamp in one 

 corner. I turned from the broad highway to drive up a nar- 

 row country road such as one reads of, but seldom finds. Crisp, 

 thick grass grew to the w r heeltracks, big oaks and maples locked 

 branches overhead, while every fence-corner was a blanket of 

 bloom above and a carpet of bloom below. 



The corn-field, mellow with alternate freezing and thawing, 

 outlined in symmetrical rows by the brown stubble of last year's 

 crop, green splotched with rank upspringing mullein, thistle-, 

 dog-fennel and smart weed, drowsed in the warm sunshine. It 

 was enclosed by a snake fence, so old that it had become a thing 

 of great beauty and most interesting. There must have been a 

 time when that fence shone with the straw colours of newly- 

 split timber giving off sappy odours. Now, it was blacker than the 

 bark of big trees that had grown from the acorns and beech-nuts 

 the squirrels had dropped in its corners ; while it was hoary with the 

 lint that wasps and Orioles love to gather in nest-building, and 

 gay with every endless shade of gray and green that ever harmo- 

 nized on the crimpled face of a lichen. There were places where 

 the old fence stoutly bore up its load of bitter-sweet and wood- 

 bine, wild grape and blackberry; again it slid down dejectedly, as 

 if the years were heavy upon it, while the wood, soggy with 

 earth's dampness, grew tiny ferns, mosses and brilliant fungi. 



I almost forgot the bird of which I had dreamed, in my delight 

 over the fence. Every rail of it was a tenement. Some housed 

 woodworms, ants and beetles; hollow ends and knot-holes 

 sheltered brooding Sparrows and Pewees; small mud-plastered 

 spots marked the walled-in families of boring wasps. Garter 



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