BOYHOOD AND BIEDS. 69 



a nest, mine was the luck of all the rest of the would-be rob- 

 bers. But, perseverance has its reward. 



One day I had paused near the " sink-hole spring" to hear 

 my favorite mocker sing by day -light, for variety when, 

 instead of a song, I saw what ? A splendid pair of mock- 

 ing birds, disporting themselves gaily along the fences and 

 in the grass of the very slip of meadow in the corner of 

 which I made my usual nightly couch ! 



I drew a long breath. What a discovery ! How tame 

 they are ! It must be some mysterious sympathy ! The 

 male must be that magnificent bird I have listened to so 

 many nights with rapture, and never seen ! Hah ! these 

 have a black mark under the eye ; the Southern bird I re- 

 member has not that mark in the plates of it that 1 have seen. 

 This must be a new variety ! I have heard my uncle and 

 father, who have been to New Orleans, describe the Southern 

 bird. It certainly has no such mark as this, which resembles 

 that under the eye of the Red-Bird ; and from what they 

 have told me of its singing, it cannot be near equal to this 

 glorious creature. My mother, though, has described the 

 bird in northern Kentucky, where she knew it, and from 

 what she has told me, this must be the very one. It must be 

 this same wonderful bird I have been listening to ! 



O, how happy I was ! I crouched down beside the fence 

 for fear I might chance to startle them, and gazed in eager, 

 anxious admiration. What a handsome bird ! It seems 

 rather shorter, though, than I expected from the appearance 

 of those at a distance ; and there is the white bar across the 

 wings. But, somehow or other, the wings do not seem so 

 wide, nor the stripe so broad ; its neck, too, disappoints me ; 

 it appears much shorter and thicker than I supposed. But, 

 that's easily enough accounted for in the fact, that it must 

 require a very powerful neck to emit such loud sounds. But 

 it is a lovely bird, with that light, gray plumage so delicately 

 marked on the breast, and looks so warlike with the black 

 mark under its eye ! Ah ! I see its bill is very hooked ; it 



