THE SECRET OP APPRECIATION. 217 



the rustling leaves speak to him, or the opening 

 flowers, or the chirping birds? He sees no transit 

 of swift wings, and the sunshine dapples the leaf- 

 carpeted ground in vain for eyes that see only the 

 ledger and day-book in the sylvan haunt. 



My own experience confirms the foregoing state- 

 ments. For several months one summer I felt 

 depressed and abstracted on account of several 

 untoward circumstances which need not be described, 

 for " every heart knoweth its own bitterness." In 

 this mood I sometimes sauntered out to my wood- 

 land haunts ; but I saw very little, and what I did 

 see bore the stamp of triteness, and seemed as dull 

 and languid as myself. My heart was otherwhere. 

 A secret, gnawing grief draws the thoughts inward, 

 and breaks the spell of the outer world, charm she 

 never so sweetly. The soul hopelessly hungering 

 for the unattainable comes almost to despise the 

 blessings within its grasp. A-lack-a-day, that any- 

 thing should ever come between the heart and its 

 gentle mistress, Nature 1 And so it was that even 

 the birds, my precious intimates, became a weari- 

 ness both to the flesh and the spirit. 



Master Chickadee was nothing but a lump of flesh 

 covered with mezzo-tinted feathers, all prose, no 

 poetry ; a creature that I had once invested with a 

 rare charm (in my own mind), but now only a lout of 

 a bird, a buffoon, whose noisy chatter broke harshly 

 into my gloomy meditations. Once I had fairly 

 revelled in the army of kaleidoscopic warblers, and 

 had called them to their faces all kinds of endearing 



