BIRD-SONGS 
the morning, and again at sundown, and perch above 
your tent, and blow his soft, reverberant note for 
many minutes at a time. The strain repeats the 
echoes of the limpid stream in the halls and corri- 
dors of the leafy woods. 
While in England in 1882, I rushed about two or 
three counties in late June and early July, bent on 
hearing the song of the nightingale, but missed it by 
a few days, and in some cases, as it seemed, only by 
a few hours. The nightingale seems to be wound up 
to go only so long, or till about the middle of June, 
and it is only by a rare chance that you hear one 
after that date. Then I came home to hear a nightin- 
gale in song one winter morning in a friend’s house 
in the city. It was a curious let-down to my en- 
thusiasm. A caged song in a city chamber in broad 
daylight, in lieu of the wild, free song in the gloam- 
ing of an English landscape! I closed my eyes, 
abstracted myself from my surroundings, and tried 
my best to fancy myself listening to the strain back 
there amid the scenes I had haunted about Hasle- 
mere and Godalming, but with poor success, I sus- 
pect. The nightingale’s song, like the lark’s, needs 
vista, needs all the accessories of time and place. 
The song is not all in the singing, any more than 
the wit is all in the saying. It is in the occasion, the 
surroundings, the spirit of which it is the expression. 
My friend said that the bird did not fully let itself 
out. Its song was a brilliant medley of notes, — no 
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