90 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



bobbing, and a winter wren (invisible, of 

 course) sings from a thicket at my elbow. 

 A jolly songster he is, with the clearest and 

 finest of tones — a true fife — and an irre- 

 sistible accent and rhythm. A bird by him- 

 self. This fellow hurries and hurries (am I 

 wrong in half remembering a line by some 

 poet about a bird that " hurries and precipi- 

 tates "?), ^ till the tempo becomes too much 

 for him ; the notes can no longer be taken, 

 and, like a boy running down too steep a 

 hill, he finishes with a slide. I think of 

 those pianoforte passages which the most 

 lightning-like of performers — Paderewski 

 himself — are reduced to playing ignomini- 

 ously with the back of one finger. I know 

 not their technical name, if they have one, — 

 finger-nail runs, perhaps. I remember, also, 

 Thoreau's description of a song heard in 

 Tuckerman's Ravine and here in the Fran- 

 conia Notch. He could never discover the 

 author of it, but pretty certainly it was the 

 winter wren. " Most peculiar and memo- 



1 No, the line is Coleridge's : — 



" the merry nightingale 

 That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates 

 With fast thick warble his delicious notes." 



