118 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



have been a second quintette worthy to rank 

 with the thrushes ; the flight of one set be- 

 ing as beautiful, not to say as musical, as 

 the songs of the other. As it was, the uni- 

 versal presence of these aerial birds was a 

 continual delight to any man with eyes to 

 notice it. They glorified the open valley as 

 the thrushes glorified the woods. 



We shall never again see the like of this, 

 I fear, in our prosier Boston neighborhood. 

 Within my time within twenty years, in- 

 deed barn swallows summered freely on 

 Beacon Hill, plastering their nests against 

 the walls of the State House and the Athe- 

 naeum, and even under the busy portico of 

 the Tremont House. I have remembrance, 

 too, of a pair that dwelt, for one season at 

 least, above the door of the old Ticknor 

 mansion, at the head of Park Street. Those 

 days are gone. Now, alas, even in the sub- 

 urban districts, we may almost say that 

 one swallow makes a summer. An evil 

 change it is, for which not even the war- 

 blings of English sparrows will ever quite 

 console me. Yet the present state of things, 

 the reoccupation of Boston by the British, 



