feathers, scold to himself, and then crawl duti- 

 fully in upon the eggs. 



I knew how he felt. It is not in a cock spar- 

 row to enjoy hatching eggs. I respected him ; 

 for though he grumbled, as any normal husband 

 might, still he was "drinking fair" with Mrs. 

 Sparrow. He built and brooded and foraged 

 for his family, if not as sweetly, yet as faithfully, 

 as his wife. He deserved his blessed abundance 

 of children. 



Is he songless, sooty, uninteresting, vulgar? 

 Not if you live on a roof. He may be all of 

 this, a pest even, in the country. But upon my 

 roof, for weeks at a stretch, his is the only bird 

 voice I hear. Throughout the spring, and far 

 into the summer, I watch the domestic affairs in 

 the eaves-trough. During the winter, at night- 

 fall, I see little bands and iiurries of birds 

 scudding over and dropping behind the high 

 buildings to the east. They are sparrows on the 

 way to their roost in the elms of an old mid- 

 city burial-ground. 



I not infrequently spy a hawk soaring calmly 

 far away above the roof. Not only the small 

 ones, like the sharp-shinned, but also the larger, 

 [12] 



