344 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



toil of making the fireside over again; the birds gather 

 some hair and bits of moss, and form a new nest on 

 a bough. But who shall say that the fact of sorrow 

 was not as real, and proportionately as poignant, in the 

 one case as in the other? I know that it is, for I have 

 been among them, and have seen their pitiful grief; 

 and perhaps, in their brief sorrow and steadfast facing 

 of the future, they are wiser than we, who brood some- 

 times for years over our misfortunes. Let us not be- 

 little their grief because it is little, and because they 

 are little. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? 

 and not one of them shall fall on the ground without 

 your Father." Is that not tragedy which was implied 

 even there, in that saying of our Lord's of centuries 

 ago? 



Sometimes the nests of birds are not put together 

 very compactly or securely, and a strong wind or a 

 storm may loose them from their moorings, and either 

 dash them to the ground, or so move them from their 

 supporting network of twigs that the eggs will roll and 

 fall, or that the raising of a brood becomes a serious 

 matter and at the least a precarious business. I have 

 noticed this especially in the case of the flimsy nests of 

 the turtle dove, which are little more than a few twigs 

 massed together on a bough. 



I once found and prevented what might have been 

 a very terrible little tragedy by happening to notice 

 a robin acting rather singularly in the top of a pear-tree 

 in our yard. It had been fluttering in the tree for two 

 days, but I had thought it was building its nest, and 

 that its mate was bringing the bits of straw for it to 

 weave. But this day it fluttered and acted very piti- 



