BIRD-SONGS 
woods, then one feels that it merits all the fine things 
that can be said of it. 
One of our popular writers and lecturers upon 
birds told me this incident: He had engaged to 
take two city girls out for a walk in the country, to 
teach them the names of the birds they might see 
and hear. Before they started, he read to them 
Henry van Dyke’s poem on the song sparrow, — 
one of our best bird-poems, — telling them that the 
song sparrow was one of the first birds they were 
likely to hear. As they proceeded with their walk, 
sure enough, there by the roadside was a sparrow 
in song. The bird man called the attention of his 
companions to it. It was some time before the un- 
practiced ears of the girls could make it out; then 
one of them said (the poem she had just heard, I 
suppose, still ringing in her ears), ‘“‘ What! that 
little squeaky thing?” The sparrow’s song meant 
nothing to her at all, and how could she share the 
enthusiasm of the poet? Probably the warble of 
the robin, or the call of the meadowlark or of the 
highhole, if they chanced to hear them, meant no 
more to these girls. If we have no associations with 
these sounds, they will mean very little to us. Their 
merit as musical performances is very slight. It is as 
signs of joy and love in nature, as heralds of spring, 
and as the spirit of the woods and fields made audi- 
ble, that they appeal to us. The drumming of the 
woodpeckers and of the ruffed grouse give great 
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