Birds' Courtship and Marriage 197 



of the house to bury perfectly good tulip bulbs, 

 and forced him to resurrect the same and store 

 them away for future use. 



Jumping many attractive little hurdles, so to 

 speak, just turn your opera glasses upon Mr. S. 

 Hill Crane and myself as in the soft Spring 

 weather we turn our unequal steps in the direc- 

 tion of the Big Marsh, he, in pursuit of experience 

 and I, in the pursuit of knowledge. We both got 

 what we went for; he got a wife and I, knowledge 

 of what it means to be best man at a high-up 

 wedding. It was both an old and a new cam- 

 paign, but no listening post was needed ; you could 

 not even escape the soft nothings he whispered 

 to the South wind before she paused in her cloud, 

 as though saying to herself, "Why not a little 

 home of my own close to the gushing heart of the 

 Big Marsh ?" 



Not all lunatics are lovers, but all lovers are 

 lunatics, and the crazy things that fool bird did 

 I am afraid to tell for I am not sure whether I 

 saw things or dreamed them. It's easier to think 

 that I really got what I am about to tell from 

 "Alice in Wonderland" than from the Big Marsh, 

 where my father used to buy standing grass for 

 fifty cents an acre, when I was a boy. A good 

 wife always comes at your call and as she came 

 at his from the first, I knew what kind of a wife 

 she was going to be. He had no claim check upon 



