BIRD-SONGS 
turf in the bottom of the cage; but you want to stop 
your ears, it is so harsh and sibilant and penetrating. 
But up there against the morning sky, and above the 
wide expanse of fields, what delight we have in it! 
It is not the concord of sweet sounds: it is the soar- 
ing spirit of gladness and ecstasy raining down upon 
us from “heaven’s gate.” 
Then, if to the time and the place one could only 
add the association, or hear the bird through the 
vista of the years, the song touched with the magic 
of youthful memories! One season a friend in Eng- 
land sent me a score of skylarks in a cage. I gave 
them their liberty in a field near my place. They 
drifted away, and I never heard them or saw them 
again. But one Sunday a Scotchman from a neigh- 
boring city called upon me, and declared with visible 
excitement that on his way along the road he had 
heard a skylark. He was not dreaming; he knew it 
was a skylark, though he had not heard one since 
he had left the banks of the Doon, a quarter of a 
century or more before. What pleasure it gave him! 
How much more the song meant to him than it 
would have meant to me! For the moment he was 
on his native heath again. Then I told him about 
the larks I had liberated, and he seemed to enjoy it 
all over again with renewed appreciation. 
Many years ago some skylarks were liberated on 
Long Island, and they became established there, and 
may now occasionally be heard in certain localities. 
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