BOYHOOD AND BIKDS. 55 



mate gratification to that which, they have afforded me in 

 the act of recalling them, I may perhaps be pardoned for 

 making as nearly as is possible " a free breast of it !" 



I must therefore be permitted to confess, after my own 

 fashion, one of the first, of the many droll troubles, in which 

 the Hunter-Naturalist in the earlier stages of his experiences 

 and development is liable to be involved. 



While yet a boy, I had one, out of a number of sisters, 

 who, being nearest my own age, became naturally my espe 

 cial playmate. She had dark lustrous eyes, delicate features, 

 and a form lithe, supple and elastic as that of a she wild-cat ; 

 and like that creature also, possessed a marvellous facility of 

 ascension that is, she had a faculty of ascending, by that 

 indefinite process called " climbing," the uttermost boughs 

 of plumb trees, apple trees, cherry trees, pears trees, &c., 

 &c., as also the tops of fences, barns, houses and such 

 like! 



She was, hence and therefore, quite generally christened 

 " Tom-boy" but, if ever any vulgar sense of that phase was 

 misapplied, it was in this instance, as characterizing a severe 

 audacity that, as it was above fear or thought of evil, never 

 dreamed in its pride of the possibility of misconstruction. 



She was fearless, because God had gifted her thus in her in- 

 nocence that she dreaded not his Justice ! 



She was my dainty compeer and companion in many an 

 enthusiastic forage into the wild domains of Nature. 



I shall proceed to relate one of the most memorable of 

 these in which she assisted me, as only her sex could have 

 done, in relation to some young " MOCKING BIKDS IN A 



STRANGE NEST ": 



It must be premised that, at the settlement of Kentucky, 

 the mocking bird ( Turdus polyglotim} was not known in the 

 land as a resident ; but that, when the war-whoop had ceased 

 to affright the silence, and the ring of the deadly rifle given 

 way to the peaceful clang of scythes, whetted by mowers in 

 the broad, green, smiling meadows, then the king of song- 



