fields in the South? Was he the same lithe, 

 merry-hearted beau then as now ? " I do not 

 know. But I do know that, in the thirty and 

 three years since Mr. Burroughs asked the ques- 

 tion, Bobolink has lost none of his nimbleness, 

 nor forgotten one bubbling, tinkling note of his 

 song. Yet in his autumn journey South, from 

 the day he reaches the ripe reeds of the Jersey 

 marshes till he is lost in the wide rice-lands of 

 Georgia, his passage is through a ceaseless, piti- 

 less storm of lead. Dare he return to us in 

 spring? and can he ever sing again? He will 

 come if May comes forgetting and forgiving, 

 dressed in as gay a suit as ever, and just as full 

 of song. 



There is no marvel of nature's making equal 

 to the miracle of her temper toward man. How 

 gladly she yields to his masterful dominion ! 

 How sufferingly she waits for him to grow out 

 of his spoiled, vicious childhood. The spirit of 

 the bobolink ought to exorcise the savage out 

 of us. It ought, and it does slowly. 



We are trying, for instance, to cow the savage 

 in us by law, to restrain it while the birds are 

 breeding; but we hardly succeed yet. The 



