A Paradise of Birds 



fountains of song, pouring forth floods of sweet 

 notes over the broad Fox River meadows in 

 wonderful variety and volume, crowded and 

 mixed beyond description, as they hovered on 

 quivering wings above their hidden nests in 

 the grass. It seemed marvelous to us that birds 

 so moderate in size could hold so much of this 

 wonderful song stuff. Each one of them poured 

 forth music enough for a whole flock, singing 

 as if its whole body, feathers and all, were made 

 up of music, flowing, glowing, bubbling melody 

 interpenetrated here and there with small scin- 

 tillating prickles and spicules. We never became 

 so intimately acquainted with the bobolinks as 

 with the thrushes, for they lived far out on the 

 broad Fox River meadows, while the thrushes 

 sang on the tree-tops around every home. The 

 bobolinks were among the first of our great 

 singers to leave us in the fall, going apparently 

 direct to the rice-fields of the Southern States, 

 where they grew fat and were slaughtered in 

 countless numbers for food. Sad fate for singers 

 so purely divine. 



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