264 East and West 
their irresistible clarion, I go West to find the 
thrashers singing on the mountains and to 
hear in the ravines and from the temple-like 
buttes that melting voice of the cafion wren 
—to find myself among friends again. 
Some birds like some people are destined 
to be our friends, others, acquaintances 
merely, lacking those qualities that fit them 
to be companionable to us. What shy friend- 
ship this is; how charmingly sylvan these 
clandestine meetings with little birds. Much 
of the charm of this society, of course, lies in 
the fact that it 7s so shy and sylvan, but much 
is due to the birds’ gift of expression. They 
are a lovable race. Dwellers in an Eden 
which has never been closed to them, in 
their company we are permitted to enjoy 
some of its pristine charm, if we can keep 
ourselves and our self-assertiveness in the 
background and become for the time merged 
in the atmosphere of the bird world. 
Fairies, you will remember, were fond of 
children—perhaps because they were accepted 
by them on their own terms. It is one of the 
chief qualifications in virtue of which we re- 
ceive the entrée to the society of the woods 
that we should be little if at all aggressive, 
assertive, important: that we should, be very 
