32 A Walk from 



The American has read and heard of all this from 

 his youth up to the day of setting his foot, for the first 

 time, on English ground. He has tried to believe it, 

 as in things seen, temporal and tangible. But in doing 

 this he has to contend with a sense or suspicion of un- 

 reality a feeling that there has been great poetical 

 exaggeration in the matter. A patent fact lies at the 

 bottom of this incredulity. The forefathers of New 

 England carried no wild birds with them to sing about 

 their cabin-homes in the New World. But they found 

 beautiful and happy birds on that wild continent, as 

 well-dressed, as graceful in form and motion, and of as 

 fine taste for music and other accomplishments, as if 

 they and their ancestors had sung before the courts of 

 Europe for twenty generations. These sang their sweet 

 songs of welcome to the Pilgrims as they landed from 

 the " May-Flower." These sang to them cheerily, 

 through the first years and the later years of their 

 stern trials and tribulations. These built their nests 

 where the blue eyes of the first white children born in 

 the land could peer in upon the speckled eggs with 

 wonder and delight. What wonder that those strong- 

 hearted puritan fathers and mothers, who 



" Made the aisles of the dim wood ring 

 " With the anthems of the free," 



should love the fellowship of these native singers of the 



