2o6 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



courage up, but to keep his too great good 

 spirits properly down ; transmuting his surplus 

 energy to music that other creatures may share 

 his happiness. Who, I wonder, can think his 

 walk barren of attraction that has been saluted 

 by a chickadee ? Probably this has happened, 

 but it is well to lend a patient ear to every bird 

 that flies. Birds are not people, remember, and 

 are in some things their superiors. There are 

 those in this world who have judged and spoken 

 hastily to unassuming people and lost thereby 

 that for which they have been laboring half their 

 lives. With but very few exceptions none, 

 with some people our chickadee is the dearest 

 of all the hundreds of birds that crowd about 

 our home, and there should be no lack of com- 

 pany nor ground for complaint ; no excuse for 

 loneliness on the rambler's part if even but one 

 of these birds greets him in the woods or by the 

 wayside. Christmas jollity extends over the 

 whole winter with the chickadee. We make 

 much of it to-day, and at most pick the bones 

 of yesterday's turkey to-morrow. Why Christ- 

 mas at all, if it preaches no sermon we can re- 

 member ? The spirit of the day in us, it seems 



