238 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
set. Last winter I was walking across a frozen 
marsh where in late summer the blue blind gentian 
hides. The long tow-colored grass of the tussocks 
streamed out before a stinging wind which howled 
at me like a wolf. I crept through thickets to the 
centre of a little wood, until I was safe from its fierce 
fingers among the close-set tree-trunks. There I 
found the last-year’s nest of a wood thrush built on 
a bit of bleached newspaper. Pulling out the paper, 
I read on it in weather-faded letters, ‘‘ Votes for 
Women!” There was no doubt in my mind that 
the head of that house was a thrushigist. That is 
probably the reason too why Father Thrush takes 
his turn on the eggs. 
Once in the depths of a swamp in the Pocono 
Mountains I was hunting for the nests of the northern 
water thrush, which is a wood-warbler and not a 
thrush at all. That temperamental bird always 
chooses peculiarly disagreeable morasses for his 
home. In the roots of an overturned tree by the side 
of the deepest and most stagnant pool that he can 
conveniently find, his nest is built, unlike his twin- 
brother, the Louisiana water thrush, who chooses 
the bank of some lonely stream. On that day, while 
ploughing through mud and water and mosquitoes, 
I came upon a wood thrush’s nest beautifully lined 
with dry green moss, with a scrap of snowy birch- 
bark for its marker. 
The song of the wood thrush is a strain of wood- 
wind notes, few in number, but inexpressibly true, 
mellow, and assuaging. “Cool bars of melody — 
