IN AN OLD GARDEN 255 



throwing out those soft, round, modulated whistled 

 notes, just as an idle cigarette-smoker blows rings 

 of blue smoke from his lips ; and now they have 

 flown away to the fields so that I can listen to 

 the others, 



A thrush is making music on a tall tree beyond 

 the garden hedge, and I am more grateful for 

 the distance that divides us than for the song; 

 for, just now, he does not sing so well as some- 

 times of an evening, when he is most fluent, and 

 a listener, deceived by his sweetness and melody, 

 writes to the papers to say that he has heard the 

 nightingale. Just now his song is scrappy, com- 

 posed of phrases that follow no order and do not 

 fit or harmonize, and is like a poor imitation of 

 an inferior mocking-bird's song. 



Between the scraps of loud thrush-music I 

 listen to catch the thin, somewhat reedy sound of 

 a yellow-hammer singing in the middle of the ad- 

 joining grassy field. It comes well from the open 

 expanse of purpling grass, and reminds me of a 

 favourite grasshopper in a distant sunny land. O 

 happy grasshopper! singing all day in the trees 

 and tall herbage, in a country where every village 

 urchin is not sent afield to "study natural his- 



