CHAPTER VIII 



IN GOD'S ACRE 



People who are striving for effect sometimes call burial- 

 grounds "cities of silence." That's all well enough, perhaps, 

 poetically, but in May and June cemeteries are anything but 

 silent. The songsters found out long ago that a meed of 

 protection was given them inside cemetery walls that was 

 given nowhere else. Sentiment is of course largely respon- 

 sible for this, for no matter how active may be the nest-rob- 

 bing proclivities of the small boy, he withholds his hand in 

 the graveyard. The birds throng in the city parks during the 

 migrations, but it is in the city cemeteries that they make 

 their homes. Oakwoods, Rose Hill, and Graceland, in Chi- 

 cago, resound with song all through the birds'* courtship sea- 

 son. Nearly every tree and shrub in these burial-places holds 

 the home of a songster. In late June young robins and 

 bronzed grackles in hundreds are scattered all over the lawns. 

 The catbirds and brown thrashers are in every thicket, and 

 the wood thrush tinkles his twilight bell on every side. Birds 

 that in other places are shy and timid in the cemeteries 

 become familiar and fearless. 



Graceland cemetery is wholly within the city of Chicago. 

 Within its limits birds can be found that seldom are found 

 elsewhere. The cardinal grosbeaks are rare enough in north- 

 ern Illinois. I have seen only one pair in a wild state in the 

 vicinity of Chicago and this pair I found in Graceland ceme- 

 tery. The male made a perch of the tip of a towering tree, 



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