courtship, he makes a stronger appeal 

 to the sympathies than almost any other 

 bird, although in his ordinary hum-drum 

 life he never attracts much attention ex- 

 cept that of the man with the gun, and 

 so he has never entered into our thoughts 

 and literature as the more conspicuous 

 and domestic birds, as the robin and blue- 

 bird and swallow. It is more than likely, 

 too, that his very plainness, which makes 

 his everyday life so inconspicuous also, 

 by way of recompense, makes him so 

 conspicuous during his wooing. Homely 

 lovers are always the most interesting. 

 They know they can count very little on 

 their good looks to help them, and so 

 have to get down to strenuous effort. 

 The gaudy jay, the flaming oriole and the 

 brilliant red bird never have to do the 

 hard work that the woodcock, so pathet- 

 ically homely, does. Really during those 

 charmed evenings when we hear him sing 

 we fall to wishing she would refuse him 

 or put him off indefinitely. Then we 

 might have him singing all the year ; that 

 is, if he didn't pine away and die. 



There is such a bit of humanness about 

 it all that we almost feel he is akin to 

 ourselves, and when we see how at the 

 touch of the True Romance his common- 



place life is lifted up into the heights of 

 splendid song, it makes us think of what 

 has happened again and again in our own 

 race. We are reminded of the sonnets 

 of Petrarca and the Divina Comedia, and 

 I know not of how many other things. 

 Not only us, but as that splendid invo- 

 cation to the True Romance has said : 



"Devil and brute, Thou dost transmute 

 To higher, lordlier show, 

 Who art in sooth that lovely Truth 

 The careless angels know." 



If only for the sake of that brief sea- 

 son, our legislators should enroll his 

 name among that of our songbirds and 

 protect him all the year round. For even 

 if he is a juicy morsel the jail is good 

 enough for the sort of man who would 

 deliberately sell his right to hear the 

 woodcock's evening hymn for a mess of 

 pot pie. 



After the courting business is all over, 

 what a sad relapse comes to our friend, 

 the serenader! Here he is human, too, 

 or rather he is here too humari. He gives 

 up his habits of soaring and of song. 

 He goes down to the marsh, sticks his 

 bill into the soil for a root and grows, 

 after the fashion of a plant. 



H. Walton Clark. 



THE BEAUTIFUL MOTHER. 



Along the marshy river's winding shefen 

 The egret flies her ample nest to make, 

 By levee's narrow path or shallow lake. 



On some warped limb, where ragged old oaks lean. 



Below, the glist'ning wave in flow serene. 



The willow shadows, where the low reeds quake. 

 The crushed canoe forgotten in the brake, 



A nd, wide afield alfalfa's living green. 



The little egret, stranger of the Spring ! 



The rare white heron with the phantom wing ! 

 Among the reeds she stands with love-warm breast ; 



The keen plume-hunter waits, his spoil tO' gain ; 

 Blood stains the sand, and on the warped limb's nest 



The motherless and starving cry in vain. 



— Lillian H. 



Shuey. 



175 



