The Russet-backed Thrushes 
cover, and reveals itself 
only as a flitting shade and 
a haunting voice. Now and 
then a brown gleam does 
cross some open space in 
the forest, but the action 
is hasty and the necessity 
much regretted. 
Those who have not 
heard or clearly distin¬ 
guished the incomparable 
Hermit are likely to give 
to this bird a high place 
for its song. There is 
nothing, perhaps, very re¬ 
markable about the song as 
music, but when it comes 
from the cool twilight 
depths of a fir forest, with 
echoing overtones and sub¬ 
tle whisperings of peace, 
one must confess its spell. 
Or when at evening the 
bird takes a station on the 
alders, such as overlook 
some murmuring stream, 
and lets his voice blend 
with the waters, or else 
trail off into suggestive 
mysteries, or again, speak 
out with startling distinct¬ 
ness, like an appraising con¬ 
science, there is no denying 
russet-backed thrush either its sweetness or its 
power. This song, too, shines by happy absence of comparable merit 
throughout most of its range; and when we recall that there are twenty 
Russet-backs sounding in the lowlands to one Hermit on the heights, we 
need not begrudge to this poet of the people his mede of praise. 
There dwelt once in that high-favored city of Berkeley a gentle 
artist who spent the evening of her life painting sunsets. Her studio 
was tucked back in a little copse of mingled evergreens and shrubbery, 
a haven of rest for which the formal front on Piedmont Avenue left one 
752 
