WAYS OF NATURE 
One summer day a friend of mine was out there ob- 
serving them; a lark was soaring and singing in the 
sky above him. An old Irishman came along, and 
suddenly stopped as if transfixed to the spot; a look 
of mingled delight and incredulity came into his 
face. Was he indeed hearing the bird of his youth ? 
He took off his hat, turned his face skyward, and 
with moving lips and streaming eyes stood a long 
time regarding the bird. “Ah,” my friend thought, 
“if I could only hear that song with his ears!” How 
it brought back his youth and all those long-gone 
days on his native hills! 
The power of bird-songs over us is so much a mat- 
ter of association that every traveler to other coun- 
tries finds the feathered songsters of less merit than 
those he left behind. The stranger does not hear 
the birds in the same receptive, uncritical frame of 
mind as does the native; they are not in the same 
way the voices of the place and the season. What 
music can there be in that long, piercing, far-heard 
note of the first meadowlark in spring to any but 
a native, or in the “o-ka-lee” of the red-shouldered 
starling as he rests upon the willows in March? A 
stranger would probably recognize melody and a 
wild woodsy quality in the flutings of the veery 
thrush; but how much more they would mean to 
him after he had spent many successive Junes 
threading our northern trout-streams and encamp- 
ing on their banks! The veery will come early in 
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