288 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of 

 many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the 

 fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows com- 

 ing home from pasture. 



I would thus from time to time take advice of the 

 birds, correct my human views by listening to their 

 volucral (?). He is a brother poet, this small gray bird 

 (or bard), whose muse inspires mine. His lay is an idyl 

 or pastoral, older and sweeter than any that is classic. 

 He sits on some gray perch like himself, on a stake, per- 

 chance, in the midst of the field, and you can hardly 

 see him against the ploughed ground. You advance step 

 by step as the twilight deepens, and lo ! he is gone, and 

 in vain you strain your eyes to see whither, but anon 

 his tinkling strain is heard from some other quarter. 

 One with the rocks and with us. 



Methinks I hear these sounds, have these reminis- 

 cences, only when well employed, at any rate only when 

 I have no reason to be ashamed of my employment. 

 I am often aware of a certain compensation of this kind 

 for doing something from a sense of duty, even uncon- 

 sciously. Our past experience is a never-failing capital 

 which can never be alienated, of which each kindred 

 future event reminds us. If you would have the song 

 of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let 

 your life be in harmony with its strain to-day. 



I ordinarily plod along a sort of whitewashed prison 

 entry, subject to some indifferent or even grovelling 

 mood. I do not distinctly realize my destiny. I have 

 turned down my light to the merest glimmer and am 

 doing some task which I have set myself. I take in- 



