A MONTH'S MUSIC. 295 



walking, to a grosbeak's notes, and asked him 

 what bird's they were. He, having a good ear 

 for matters of this kind, looked somewhat dazed 

 at such an inquiry, but answered promptly, 

 " Why, a robin's, of course." As one day after 

 another passed, however, and I listened to both 

 species in full voice on every hand, I came to 

 feel that I had overestimated the resemblance. 

 With increasing familiarity I discerned more 

 and more clearly the respects in which the songs 

 differed, and each came to have to nay ear an 

 individuality strictly its own. They were alike, 

 doubtless, as the red-eyed vireo's and the 

 blue-head's are, and yet they were not alike. 

 Of one thing I grew better and better assured : 

 the grosbeak is out of all comparison the finer 

 musician of the two. To judge from my last- 

 year's friends, however, his concert season is 

 very short the more 's the pity. 



I begin to perceive (indeed it has been dawn- 

 ing upon me for some time) that our essay is 

 not to fulfill the promise of its caption. In- 

 stead of the glorious fullness and variety of the 

 month's music (for May, in this latitude, is the 

 musical month of months) the reader has been 

 put off with a few of the more exceptional fea- 

 tures of the carnival. He will overlook it, I 

 trust ; and as for the great body of the chorus, 

 who have not been honored with so much as a 



