10 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
the wood thrush, which, besides the veery or Wilson 
thrush, was the only one that I had supposed could 
be found in that Connecticut township. The song, 
however, had a more ethereal quality, and I listened 
in vain for the drop to the harsh bass notes which 
always blemish the strain of the wood thrush. In- 
stead, after three arpeggio notes, the singer’s voice 
went up and up, with a sweep that no human voice 
or instrument could compass, and I suddenly real- 
ized that I was in the presence of one of the great 
singers of the world. For years I had read of the song 
of the hermit thrush, but in all my wanderings I 
had never chanced to hear it before. 
Lafcadio Hearn writes of a Japanese bird whose 
song has the power to change a man’s whole life. 
So it was with me that midsummer evening. Some 
thing had been added to the joy of living that could 
never be taken from me. Since that twilight I have 
heard the hermit thrush sing many times. Through 
the rain in the dawn-dusk on the top of Mount 
Pocono, he sang for me once, while all around a choir 
of veerys accompanied him with their strange minor 
harp-chords. One Sunday morning, at the edge of a 
little Canadian river, I heard five singing together on 
the farther side. ‘‘Ah-h-h, holy, holy, holy,’ their 
voices chimed across the still water. In the woods, 
in migration, I have heard their whisper-song, which 
the hermit sings only when traveling; and once on a 
May morning, in my back yard, near Philadelphia, 
one sang for me from the low limb of a bush as 
loudly as if he were in his mountain home. 
