148 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



had traveled it was in May. Then every 

 tree had its bird, and every bird a voice. 

 Now it was August — the year no longer 

 young, and the birds no longer a choir. 

 And when birds are neither in tune nor 

 in flocks, it is almost as if they were absent 

 altogether. It seemed to me, when I had 

 walked a mile, that I had never seen Fran- 

 conia so deserted. 



An alder flycatcher was calling from a 

 larch swamp; a white-throated sparrow 

 whistled now and then in the distance ; and 

 from still farther away came the leisurely, 

 widely spaced measures of a hermit thrush. 

 When he sings there is no great need of a 

 chorus ; the forest has found a tongue ; but 

 I could have wished him nearer. A solitary 

 vireo, close at hand, regaled me with a sweet, 

 low chatter, more musical twice over than 

 much that goes by the name of singing, — 

 the solitary being one of the comparatively 

 few birds that do not know how to be un- 

 musical, — and a sapsucker, a noisy feUow 

 gone silent, flew past my head and alighted 

 against a telegraph pole. 



Wild red cherries (^Pruims Pennsylvor 



