VII 
THE BLUEBIRD 
Wee Nature made the bluebird she wished 
to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so 
she gave him the color of the one on his back and 
the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained 
that his appearance in spring should denote that the 
strife and war between these two elements was at 
an end. He is the peace-harbinger; in him the 
celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast 
friends. He means the furrow and he means the 
warmth; he means all the soft, wooing influences 
of the spring on the one hand, and the retreating 
footsteps of winter on the other. 
It is sure to be a bright March morning when 
you first hear his note; and it is as if the milder in- 
fluences up above had found a voice and let a word 
fall upon your ear, so tender is it and so prophetic, 
a hope tinged with a regret. 
“Bermuda! Bermuda! Bermuda!” he seems 
to say, as if both invoking and lamenting, and, 
behold! Bermuda follows close, though the little 
pilgrim may be only repeating the tradition of his 
race, himself having come only from Florida, the 
Carolinas, or even from Virginia, where he has 
