144 May The Wren. 



feather their nests well, and have an English taste for 

 carpets and interior comfort, well knowing the value of 

 bits of. wool, and hair, and feathers. The wren has 

 another English taste also, for he likes his house to 

 be not only comfortable, but big ; and, small as he is, 

 he has large ideas in the way of architecture. I like his 

 plan of a little doorway in the side, just big enough 

 for his small person to pass through ; it is infinitely 

 more snug than the commoner system of sitting in a 

 sort of enlarged egg-cup : and, besides these advan- 

 tages, the wren's house is not easily discovered, being 

 apparently a shapeless lump of moss, though so artfully 

 shaped within. How interesting it would be if some 

 observer, like the Marquis de Cherville, could watch a 

 couple of wrens at work from the very beginning to the 

 moment of their happy house-warming, when the soft 

 clear down was all arranged snugly as a lining to the 

 wee dwelling, and just ready to receive the -wonderfully 

 tiny white eggs ! Is not this much more interesting, as 

 well as more admirably laborious, than the furnishing 

 of some house in a row run up by some speculator, with 

 balconies that you dare not step out upon for fear that 

 they should fall with you down upon the dangerous- 

 looking railings ? I think there must be an infinite 

 pleasure in building one's own house, not as rich peo- 

 ple use the words, when they say ' I am going to build,' 

 but in doing it with one's own hands a pleasure 

 founded upon the primitive depths of our original wild 

 nature. It has sometimes occurred to me to talk with 

 very poor men who really had done this with their own 



