FLOODS OF MUSIC. 141 



" Last year methinks the bobolinks 

 Filled the low fields with vagrant tune, 

 The sweetest songs of sweetest June 

 Wild spurts of frolic, always gladly 

 Bubbling, doubling, brightly troubling, 

 Bubbling rapturously, madly." 



Expressing himself was so great a relief to 

 my bobolink, after his unnatural gravity of de- 

 meanor, that he repeated the performance again 

 and again. I say repeated it; I found that he 

 had two ways of beginning, but after he got into 

 his ecstasy I could think of nothing but how 

 marvelous it was, so that whether the two dif- 

 fered all through I am not sure. It was every 

 time a new rapture to me as well as to him. 

 One of his beginnings that I had time to note 

 before I was lost in the flood of melody was of 

 two notes, the second a fifth higher than the 

 first, with a "grace-note," very low indeed, be- 

 fore each one. The other beginning was also 

 two notes, the second at least a fifth lower than 

 the first, with an indescribable jerk between, 

 and uttered so softly that if I had been a little 

 further away I could not have heard it. It 

 sounded like "tut, now." 



Seeing that I remained motionless, the bird 

 forgot altogether his uncongenial occupation of 

 watchman, and launched himself into the air 

 toward me, soaring round and round me, letting 

 fall such a flood, such a torrent, of liquid notes 



