150 BIRD-LAND ECHOES. 



From the rambler's point of view, no harm has 

 been done. The face of nature was changed, but 

 not marred, for we have many thickets, many ra- 

 vines and fields and woodland tracts, but none too 

 much water ; and who that loves a quiet country 

 stroll but holds dear the bushy shores of a pond, 

 its outlet, and the grassy reaches of the wide mead- 

 ows ? Fields and forests are alike shut in, as it were, 

 but the true out of doors is near water, which opens 

 up to us a new world. At this favored spot even 

 winter deals kindly with us, granting all its gifts and 

 withholding dreariness. These meadows and the 

 mill-pond are always at a wedding and never at a 

 funeral. It is a place whereat we have the heart 

 to laugh, but not to mourn. But I speak only for 

 myself. All my life I have heard the meadow-lark 

 singing in dulcet tones, "/ see you you can't see 

 me;" but my eyes were sharp enough to find this 

 one perched away up on an old oak that overlooked 

 miles of the surrounding country. The miller says 

 that his meadow-larks sing better than mine, and I 

 have been sitting at an open window of the mill to 

 determine if that be true. It may be. These mill- 

 pond larks have a fancy for a tall hickory that rises 

 sixty feet above the water, and there is nothing to 

 interrupt their music as it floats towards me. I am 

 half persuaded that the miller is right. Is bird- 

 music sweeter for travelling over water? Do the 

 ripples free it of imperfections ? I should certainly 

 have envied the old man his larks had I none nearer 

 home, but there are few weeks in the year that 



