tract of sprout-land which is watched over by a 

 few large pines ; at the north, behind the house 

 and garden, runs a wall of chestnut and oak, 

 which ten years ago would have been cut but 

 for some fortunate legal complication. Such 

 is the character of the whole neighborhood. 

 Patches of wood and swamp, pastures, orchards, 

 and gardens, cut in every direction by roads and 

 paths, and crossed by one tiny stream— this is 

 the circle of the thirty-six. 



Not one of these nests is beyond a stone's 

 throw from a house. Seven of them, indeed, are 

 in houses or barns, or in boxes placed about 

 the dooryards ; sixteen of them are in orchard 

 trees ; and the others are distributed along the 

 roads, over the fields, and in the woods. 



Among the nearest of these feathered neigh- 

 bors is a pair of bluebirds with a nest in one of 

 the bird-boxes in the yard. The bluebirds are 

 still untamed, building, as I have often found, in 

 the wildest spots of the woods ; but seen about 

 the house, there is something so reserved, so 

 gentle and refined in their voice and manner as 

 to shed an atmosphere of good breeding about 

 the whole yard. What a contrast they are to 

 [126] 



