OUR FOREST CHORISTERS. 171 



entation. Had he been an Italian bird, Ovid would 

 have had a plaintive tale to tell about him. He is so fa- 

 miliar as often to pursue a ily through the open windows of 

 my library. 



18. There is'something inexpressibly dear to mo in these 

 old friendships of a lifetime. There is scarce a tree of 

 mine but has had, at some time or other, a happy home- 

 stead among its boughs, to which can I not say, 



" Many light hearts and wings, 

 Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers." 

 My walk under the pines would lose half its summer 

 charm were I to miss that shy anchorite, the Wilson's 

 thrush, nor hear in haying-time the metallic ring of his 

 song, that justifies his rustic name of scythe-ivhet. 



19. I protect my game as jealously as an English squire. 

 If anybody had oologized a certain cuckoo's-nest I know of, 

 it would have left a sore place in my mind for weeks. I 

 love to bring these aborigines back to the mansuetude they 

 showed to the early voyagers, and before they had grown 

 accustomed to man and his savage ways. And they repay 

 your kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate ever to 

 breed contempt. I have made a Penn-treaty with them, 

 preferring that to the Puritan way with the natives, which 

 converted them to a little Hebraism and a great deal of 

 Medford rum. If they will not come near enough to me 

 — as most of them will — I bring them close with an opera- 

 glass, a much better weapon than a gun. I would not, if 

 I could, convert them from their pretty pagan ways. 



20. The only one I sometimes have savage doubts about 

 is the red squirrel. I think he oologizes. I know he eats 

 cherries, and he gnaws off the small ends of the pears to 

 get the seeds. He steals the corn from under the noses of 

 my poultry. But what would you have ? He will come 

 down upon the limbs of a tree I am lying under till he is 

 within a yard of me. He and his mate will scurry up and 



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