Where Town and Country Meet 



flute tones the purity and sweetness of the 

 one united with the smoothness and richness 

 of the other. Nearer at hand a brown 

 thrush was lifting up his less ethereal but 

 more vivacious and buoyant song, and close 

 beside him, like a kind of choir-master, a 

 chewink beat time for all the singers with 

 his clear, precise double note. A couple of 

 vireos back in the woods were bidding each 

 other a loving good morning; a robin (for 

 there is plenty of robins in the New Eng- 

 land backwoods) was trilling his idyllic 

 matins from a birch top; and a song spar- 

 row, like a piccolo player, pierced the chorus 

 through and through with his fine, shrill 

 cadenzas. Then there were the innumer- 

 able songsters in the background, whose 

 notes could not be distinguished in the rich 

 medley a whole company of trained and 

 sympathetic accompanists, like the finest 

 orchestra in the world. Ah ! it was enough 

 to make one forget even the rare delights 

 of trout-fishing in a mountain pond girdled 

 with primeval woods. It was something 

 worth getting up at three o'clock and rid- 

 ing seven miles through the damp woods to 

 hear. To me it was ample compensation 

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