BASHFUL DRUMMERS. 



He goes but to see a noise that he heard. 



SHAKESPEARE. 



AT the back of my father's house were 

 woods, to my childish imagination a bound- 

 less wilderness. Little by little I ventured 

 into them, and among my earliest recollec- 

 tions of their sombre and lonesome depths 

 was a long, thunderous, far-away drumming 

 noise, beginning slowly and increasing in 

 speed till the blows became almost contin- 

 uous. This, somebody told me, was the 

 drumming of the partridge. Now and then, 

 in open spaces in the path, I came upon 

 shallow circular depressions where the bird 

 had been dusting, an operation in which I 

 had often seen our barnyard fowls compla- 

 cently engaged. At other times I was 

 startled by the sudden whir of the bird's 

 wings as he sprang up at my feet, and went 

 dashing away through the underbrush. I 

 heard with open-mouthed wonder of men 

 who had been known to shoot a bird thus 



