138 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



else in the whole forest. So true it is that 

 seeing or not seeing is mostly a matter of 

 prepossession. As for the birds, this was 

 their hour of after-dinner silence. I recall 

 only a golden-crowned kinglet zeeing among 

 the low evergreens about the cone. He was 

 the first one of my whole vacation trip, and 

 slipped at once into the eighty-seventh place 

 in my catalogue, the place I had tried so 

 hard to induce the brown creeper to take 

 possession of two hours before. Creeper or 

 kinglet, it was all one to me, though the king- 

 let is the handsomer of the two, and much the 

 less prosaic in his dietary methods. In fact, 

 now that the subject suggests itself, the two 

 birds present a really striking contrast : one 

 so preternaturally quick and so continually 

 in motion, the other so comparatively le- 

 thargic. Every one to his trade. Let the 

 creeper stick to his bark. Quick or slow, 

 he should still have been Number 88, and 

 thrice welcome, if he would have given me 

 half an excuse for counting him. As things 

 were, he kept out of my reckoning to the 

 end. 



" This is the best thing I have had yet." 



