OUT ALONE. 149 



thing to eat. The singer, embarrassed by their 

 demands, would sometimes dive into the nearest 

 bushes, followed instantly by the persistent beg- 

 gars, and in a moment fly off, the infants still 

 in his wake. But he always managed in some 

 way to elude them. Perhaps he fed them or 

 conducted them back to their mother, for in a 

 few minutes he appeared again on the birch and 

 resumed his music. 



On one occasion I met one of these spruce 

 young thrushes, evidently out on his travels 

 alone for the first time. He was in a state 

 of great excitement, jerked himself about, 

 " huffed " at me, then flew with some difficulty 

 into a tree, where he stood and watched me in a 

 charmingly naive and childlike manner, utterly 

 forgetting that part of his education which bade 

 him beware of a human being. 



After passing the home of the thrashers, on 

 my usual morning walk toward the north, my 

 next temptation to linger came from a fern-lined 

 path to the spring, abode of other Young Amer- 

 icans. The path itself was extremely seductive, 

 narrow, zigzagging through a small forest of the 

 greenest and freshest of ferns, so luxuriant that 

 they were brushed aside in passing, and closed 

 behind as if to conceal one's footsteps. Shrubs 

 and trees met overhead ; here and there a bloom- 

 ing dogbane or an elder, " foamed o'er with 



