SPRING 105 



tance, this too familiar ditty loses every other 

 one of its notes, and is easily mistaken for 

 something else, — especially if something 

 else happens to be on a man's mind, — as I 

 had found to my chagrin on more than one 

 occasion. Eye and ear both are never more 

 liable to momentary deception than when 

 they are most tensely alert. 



Meanwhile, nothing had been heard of the 

 Tennessee, and it became evident that he 

 had moved on. The customary water thrush 

 was singing at short intervals ; gayly di^essed 

 warblers darted in and out of the low ever- 

 greens, almost brushing my elbows, much to 

 their surprise ; and an olive-sided flycatcher 

 kept up a persistent pip-pijj. Something 

 was troubling his equanimity ; I had no idea 

 what. It had been one of my special enjoy- 

 ments, on tliis vacation trip, to renew my 

 acquaintance with him and his humbler rela- 

 tive, the alder flycatcher, — the latter a com- 

 monplace body, whose emphatic quay-queer 

 had now become one of the commonest of 

 sounds. The olive-side, by the bye, for all 

 his apparent wildness, did not disdain to visit 

 the shade trees about the hotel ; and once a 



