HOW I BECAME AN IDLER 25 



a messmate and bedfellow who had subtly crept in 

 to share the warmth of the cloak and of my per- 

 son one with a broad arrow-shaped head, set 

 with round lidless eyes like polished yellow peb- 

 bles, and a long smooth limbless body, strangely 

 segmented and vaguely written all over with mys- 

 tic characters in some dusky tint on an indetermi- 

 nate grayish-tawny ground. 



At length, about half -past three to four o'clock 

 a most welcome sound was heard the familiar 

 twittering of a pair of scissor-tail tyrant birds 

 from a neighboring willow-tree; and after an in- 

 terval, the dreamy, softly rising and falling, 

 throaty warblings of the white-rumped swallow. 

 A loved and beautiful bird is this, that utters his 

 early song circling round and round in the dusky 

 air, when the stars begin to pale; and his song, 

 perhaps, seems sweeter than all others, because 

 it corresponds in time to that rise in the tempera- 

 ture and swifter flow of the blood the inward 

 resurrection experienced on each morning of our 

 individual life. Next in order the red-billed 

 finches begin to sing a curious, gobbling, impetu- 

 ous performance, more like a cry than a song. 

 These are pretty reed birds, olive-green, buff- 

 breasted, with long tails and bright red beaks. 

 The intervals between their spasmodic bursts of 

 sound were filled up with the fine frail melody of 

 the small brown and gray crested song-sparrows. 

 Last of all was heard the long, leisurely-uttered 

 chanting cry of the brown carrion-hawk, as he 



