IN THE HEMLOCKS 



lishes a sympathy, an understanding, between itself 

 and the listener. 



I descend a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks 

 through a large sugar-bush. When twenty rods 

 distant, I hear all along the line of the forest the 

 incessant warble of the red-eyed vireo, cheerful 

 and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. 

 He is one of our most common and widely dis- 

 tributed birds. Approach any forest at any hour 

 of the day, in any kind of weather, from May to 

 August, in any of the Middle or Eastern districts, 

 and the chances are that the first note you hear will 

 be his. Rain or shine, before noon or after, in the 

 deep forest or in the village grove, when it is too 

 hot for the thrushes or too cold and windy for the 

 warblers, it is never out of time or place for this 

 little minstrel to indulge his cheerful strain. In 

 the deep wilds of the Adirondacks, where few birds 

 are seen and fewer heard, his note was almost con- 

 stantly in my ear. Always busy, making it a point 

 never to suspend for one moment his occupation to 

 indulge his musical taste, his lay is that of industry 

 and contentment. There is nothing plaintive or 

 especially musical in his performance, but the sen- 

 timent expressed is eminently that of cheerfulness. 

 Indeed, the songs of most birds have some human 

 significance, which, I think, is the source of the 

 delight we take in them. The song of the bobolink 

 to me expresses hilarity; the song sparrow's, faith; 

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