176 PEPACTON 



her mail; but instead of a short and pleasant cut 

 across the fields, as there would have been in Eng- 

 land, she was obliged to take the highway and face 

 the dust and the mud and the staring people in 

 their carriages. 



She complained, also, of the absence of bird voices, 

 so silent the fields and groves and orchards were, 

 compared with what she had been used to at home. 

 The most noticeable midsummer sound everywhere 

 was the shrill, brassy crescendo of the locust. 



All this is unquestionably true. There is far 

 less bird music here than in England, except possi- 

 bly in May and June, though, if the first impres- 

 sions of the Duke of Argyle are to be trusted, there 

 is much less even then. The duke says: "Although 

 I was in the woods and fields of Canada and of the 

 States in the richest moments of the spring, I heard 

 little of that burst of song which in England comes 

 from the blackcap, and the garden warbler, and the 

 whitethroat, and the reed warbler, and the common 

 wren, and (locally) from the nightingale." Our 

 birds are more withdrawn than the English, and 

 their notes more plaintive and intermittent. Yet 

 there are a few days here early in May, when the 

 house wren, the oriole, the orchard starling, the 

 kingbird, the bobolink, and the wood thrush first 

 arrive, that are so full of music, especially in the 

 morning, that one is loath to believe there is any- 

 thing fuller or finer even in England. As walkers, 

 and lovers of rural scenes and pastimes, we do not 

 approach our British cousins. It is a seven days' 



