258 East and West 
magnolias, in short, is to me one magnolia, 
and it is this one I meet wherever I may be; 
this one I look for year after year and greet 
with the same affection felt for his ancestor 
twenty years ago. 
Human friendships, alas, are fraught with 
vicissitude and with change—one of the 
saddest things of this life, which finds its 
justification only in the stern necessities of 
our spiritual evolution. We outgrow our 
friends or they outgrow us. Those misun- 
derstandings and disappointments which 
make some cynical, some insincere, and fill 
others with despair, do not disturb our sylvan 
friendships. For the best part of my life— 
assuredly the best—I have loved the song- 
sparrow in his numerous embodiments, his 
various reincarnations. He has been to me 
the same song sparrow through all these 
years, though my sympathy and understand- 
ing have enlarged. So have I loved the 
bluebird and the robin, the oriole and the 
catbird. They have not changed but I have. 
Just here, perhaps, is the greatest charm of 
our companionship with birds; they hold us by 
some subtle power to impressions and feelings 
which they first aroused. They never grow 
old; though all else slips into the sere and 
