SPRING 93 



and sure enough, a Tennessee's voice was 

 one of the first to greet me. This fellow 

 sang as a Tennessee ought to sing, I said to 

 myself. By which I meant that his song 

 was clearly made up of three parts, just as I 

 had kept it in memory; whereas the birds 

 near the hotel, as well as the one on the 

 Bethlehem road, divided theirs but once. 

 No great matter, somebody will say ; but a 

 self-respecting man likes to have his recollec- 

 tions justified, even about trifles, particularly 

 when he has confided them to print. 1 



The swamp had begun well with its old 

 eulogist ; but better things were in store. I 

 passed an hour or more in the woods, for the 



1 So I was relieved to find all the Franconia white- 

 throated sparrows introducing their sets of triplets with 

 two not three longer single notes. That was how I 

 had always whistled the tune ; and I had been astonished 

 and grieved to see it printed in musical notation by Mr. 

 Cheney, and again by Mr. Chapman, with an introductory 

 measure of three notes : as if it were to go, " Old Sam, 

 Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody," instead of, as I re- 

 membered it, and as reason dictated, " Old Sam Pea- 

 body, Peabody, Peabody." I am not intimating that Mr. 

 Cheney and Mr. Chapman are wrong, but that my own 

 recollection was right, a very different matter, as my 

 present experience with Tennessee warblers was sufficient 

 to show. 



