which means in plainer prose that chickadee does not 

 sing a while in June and then fly away and leave us. 

 He stays the year around; he is constant and faithful 

 in his friendship, though I sometimes forget. 



He cannot sing with bobolink. But suppose I could 

 have only one of the birds ? As it is, I get along for 

 more than half the year without bobolink, but what 

 would my out-of-doors be without chickadee ? There 

 is not a single day in the year that I cannot find him, 

 no matter how hot, or cold, how hard it rains or snows. 

 Often he is the only voice in all the silent woods, the 

 only spark of life aglow in all my frozen winter world. 



I was crunching along through the January dusk 

 toward home. The cold was bitter. A half-starved 

 partridge had just risen from the road and fluttered 

 off among the naked bushes, — a moment of sound, a 

 bit of life vanishing in the winter night of the woods. 

 I knew the very hemlock in which he would roost ; 

 but what were the thick, snow-bent boughs of his 

 hemlock, and what were all his winter feathers in 

 such a night as this.? — this vast of sweeping winds 

 and frozen snow ! 



The road dipped from the woods into a meadow, 

 where the winds were free. The cold was driving, 



75 



