76 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
felicitous effort within my knowledge of similar descriptive litera- 
ture. What keenness of perception, subtle appreciation of tone 
quality, and literary art are embodied in that remarkable para- 
graph! How does it revive that eager anticipation quickened 
by the first notes of the song—a prelude promise which Bob 
never fulfils—that 
“Single note, so sweet and low, 
Like a full heart’s overflow; 
But which we fail to hear again.” 
“J hear the note of the bobolink concealed in the top of an 
apple-tree behind me. Though this bird’s full strain is ordinarily 
somewhat trivial, this one seems meditating a strain as yet un- 
heard in meadow or orchard. Paulo majora canamus. He is 
‘just touching the string of his theorbo, his glassichord, his water- 
organ—and one or two notes globe themselves and fall in liquid 
bubbles from his tuning throat. It is as if he touched his harp 
‘within a vase of liquid melody, and when he lifted it out the 
notes fell like bubbles from the trembling strings. Methinks they 
are the most liquidly sweet and melodious sounds I ever heard. 
They are as refreshing to my ear as the first distant tinkling and 
gurgling of a rill to the thirsty man. Oh never advance further 
in your art, never let us hear your full strain, sir! But away he 
‘launches, and the meadow is all bespattered with melody.” 
It matters not that the English dictionary affords us no ti- 
dings of the “glassichord” or “ water-organ.” The dictionary is 
inadequate to the occasion, for these are the veritable instruments 
of the bobolink prelude as truly as that last line is the epitome of 
the musical cascade which follows. 
But it was reserved for Florence Percy to give us our rol- 
licking, “devil-may-care Bob” as we all know him—an inter- 
preter who, presenting the bird under the character of “the tell- 
tale,” has infused the very mischief of that “wild and saucy song” 
into her page. Who that has noted that suggestive, self-suffused, 
ecstatic strut of the gay Romeo, as with drooping wings and 
