MOCKING BIRD 117 



and weeds, lined with fine rootlets, and usually 

 set in a thicket or tangle of brush. The four or 

 five eggs are bluish green, with markings of red- 

 dish brown. 



Mr. George Cable, one of our most delightful 

 Southern novelists, has thus humorously de- 

 scribed the November behavior of the two favor- 

 ite birds in Louisiana : 



"Only an adventitious China-tree here and 

 there had been stripped of its golden foliage, and 

 kept but its ripened berries with the red birds 

 darting and fluttering around them like so many 

 hiccoughing Comanches about a dramseller's 

 tent. And here, if one must tell a thing so pain- 

 ful, our old friend the mocking bird, neglecting 

 his faithful wife and letting his home go to 

 decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day, 

 tasting the berries ' rank pulp, stimulating, stimu- 

 lating, drowning care, you know, — 'Lost so 

 many children, and the rest gone off in ungrate- 

 ful forgetfulness of their old hardworking 

 father'; yes, and ready to sing or fight, just as 

 any other creature happened not to wish ; and 

 going home in the evening scolding and swagger- 

 ing, and getting to bed barely able to hang on 

 to the roost. It would have been bad enough, 

 even for a man ; but for a bird — and a mocking 

 bird!" 



