WHAT I HAVE DONE WITH BIRDS 



through entirely new country; there were hills and hollows to 

 which I was not accustomed, and all May was in each intoxicating 

 breath of spring air, in the Lark's note o'erhead, and in every 

 whitening corner of the old snake fences outlining my way. 



A passing farmer directed me to McCollum's, and, standing 

 in my carriage, I could see a corn-field with a small swamp in one 

 corner. r I turned from the broad highway and drove up a narrow 

 country road such as one reads of, but seldom finds. Crisp, thick 

 grass grew to the wheel-tracks, big oaks and maples locked 

 branches overhead, while every fence-corner was a blanket of 

 bloom above and a carpet of bloom below. 



The corn-field, mellow with alternate freezing and thawing, 

 outlined in symmetrical rows by the brown stubble of last year's 

 crop, green splotched with rank upspringing mullein, thistle, dog- 

 fennel and smartweed, drowsed in the warm sunshine. It was 

 inclosed by a snake fence, so old that it had become a thing of 

 great beauty and most interesting. There must have been a time 

 when that fence shone with the straw colors of newly-split timber 

 and gave off sappy odors. Now, it was blacker than the bark 

 of great trees that had grown from the acorns and beechnuts the 

 squirrels had dropped in its corners ; and it was hoary with the lint 

 that wasps and Orioles love to gather in nest-building, and gay 

 with every endless shade of gray and green that ever harmonized 

 in the crimpled face of a lichen. There were places where the old 

 fence stoutly bore up its load of bitter-sweet and woodbine, wild 

 grape and blackberry; again it slid down dejectedly, as if the 

 years were heavy upon it, and the wood, soggy with earth's damp- 

 ness, grew tiny ferns, mosses and brilliant fungus. 



I almost forgot the bird of which I had dreamed, in my de- 

 light over the fence. Every rail of it was a tenement. Some 

 housed woodworms, ants and beetles ; hollow ends and knot-holes 

 sheltered brooding Linnets and Pewees; small mud-plastered 



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