How I became an Idler. 2 5 



mented and vaguely written all over with mystic 

 characters in some dusky tint on an indeterminate 

 greyish-tawny ground. 



At length, about half-past three to four o'clock, 

 a most welcome sound was hoard — the familiar 

 twittering of a pair of scissor-tail tyrant birds from 

 a neighbouring willow-tree ; and after an interval, 

 the dreamy, softly rising and falling, throaty 

 warblings of the white-rumped swallow. A loved 

 and beautiful bird is this, that utters his early song 

 circling round and round in the dusky air, when the 

 stars begin to pale ; and his song, perhaps, seems 

 sweeter than all others, because it corresponds hi 

 time to that rise in the temperature and swifter flow 

 of the blood — the inward resurrection experienced 

 on each morning of our individual life. Next in 

 order the red-billed finches beo-in to sino- — a curious, 

 gobbling, impetuous performance, more like a cry 

 than a song. These are pretty reed birds, olive- 

 green, buff-breasted, with long tails and bright red 

 beaks. The intervals between their spasmodic 

 bursts of sound were filled up with the fine frail 

 melody of the small brown and grey crested song- 

 sparrows. Last of all was heard the long, leisurely- 

 uttered chanting crj'- of the brown carrion-hawk, as 

 he flew past, and I knew that the morning was 

 beautiful in the east. Little by little the light began 

 to appear through the crevices, faint at first, like 

 faintly-traced pallid lines on a black ground, then 

 brighter and broader until I, too, had a dim twilight 

 in the cabin. 



