Ximbere tbc /IDocMng=l)(r& Sings 



But back to our songsters. 



An English artist, who tramped with 

 me awhile in the Gulf-coast country, was 

 so captivated with the singing of the 

 mocking-birds in the orchards around Bay 

 St. Louis that he would sometimes stand 

 and listen in a rapture of delight. He 

 afterward wrote me that the one haunting 

 memory of our country — " a memory," to 

 quote him, " which I can never lose, and 

 for which nothing in the world would I 

 lose" — was of the "bird-songs heard on 

 that April morning when we sat upon the 

 fence behind the sleepy old village and 

 smoked our last pipe together." He often 

 told me that the nightingale was not to 

 be compared, as a singer, to our famous 

 bird. I tried hard to give him the dis- 

 tinguished pleasure of hearing the drop- 

 ping-song, but the effort failed. 



Among the hundreds who have written 

 to me about mocking-birds, the Hon. 

 Theodore Roosevelt is the only one who 

 mentions having heard the dropping-song. 

 He heard it near Nashville, in the night- 

 time. " I was immensely struck," he 

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