146 MORE POT-POURRI 



December 22nd. — After all the fine, mild weather I 

 have been mentioning, it suddenly began to freeze, with 

 hard, cold, moonlight nights. So to-day I thought of 

 my little birds. I now find it prettier and less trouble, 

 instead of hanging the string with coeoanut and suet 

 from a window or a stiff cross-bar, to arrange it in the 

 following way: I cut a big branch, lopping it more or 

 less, and push it through the hole of a French iron 

 garden -table, that I happen to have, which holds an 

 umbrella in summer. On the other side of the house I 

 stick a similar branch into the ground. On these I hang, 

 Christmas-tree fashion, some pieces of suet and a tallow 

 candle — the old 'dip' — a coeoanut with a hole cut, not at 

 the bottom as I recommended before, but in the side, 

 large enough for the Tom -tits to sit on the edge and 

 peck inside, and yet roofed enough to prevent the rain- 

 water collecting in it. They seem to have remembered 

 the feeding from last year, as they began at the piece of 

 suet at once. On the table below I used to put a basin 

 to hold crumbs and scraps from meals — rice, milk, any- 

 thing almost, for the other birds who will not eat either 

 the fat or the coeoanut. But I found this was such a 

 great temptation to the cats and dogs of the establish- 

 ment, who became most extraordinarily acrobatic in the 

 methods by which they got on to the table, that I had to 

 devise wiring the saucer of a fiower-pot and so hanging 

 it on to the most extended branch, out of reach of the 

 cleverest of Miss Pussies. If once it freezes very hard, 

 I put out bowls of tepid water. This the birds much 

 appreciate. 



December 23rd. — I have been out for a walk long 

 after da^'k — or, rather, long after sunset, for the moon 

 was shining bright in the cold indigo sky. At aU times 

 of year walking by moonlight gives me exquisite delight. 

 Is it because I have done it so rarely, or because of the 



