A Last Year's Bird's Nest 209 



first year in the country and I am not even sure 

 that I had ever heard of one. When I first saw 

 the Robins flying about with grass and straw in 

 their mouths, I pondered upon it but certainly 

 did not arrive at the right explanation, for, on 

 recovering from having been thrown from the 

 back of an unbroken colt, I resumed my usual duty 

 as a cow-herd, I suddenly saw the nest, not as 

 high as my head and containing four wonderfully 

 blue eggs Robin's egg blue there is no other 

 color just like it. I afterward saw some of the 

 wonders of architecture that man has erected on 

 this earth, I saw diamonds and other precious 

 stones, confronted many of the wonders of Crea- 

 tion, but nothing ever astounded, awed, enthralled 

 me like that first nest with its sky-blue eggs. It 

 has been said that every circus is but a duplica- 

 tion of our first circus and so every other nest 

 among the thousands I have seen has but in a 

 greater or less degree, reflected the wonder of 

 that first nest a house not made with hands. 

 Wood-peckers building their nests in the very 

 heart of oaks, turning bill and head into chisel 

 and hammer and beating carpenters at their own 

 kind of work, impressed me greatly, but some 

 way it did not seem quite so wonderful as the 

 perfectly round nest made of grass and mud, 

 with its blue eggs under the blue sky. I did not 

 believe the man who first told me of the Bal- 



