IN A GABDEN, 
175 
proper attitude towards the inferior animals; a 
godlike benevolent neutrality ; a keen and kindly 
interest in every form of life, with indifference as 
to its ultimate destiny ; the softness which does no 
wrong with the hardness that sees no wrong done. 
To return to the birds. The starlings have 
kissed like lovers, and fluttered up vertically on 
their short wings, trying to scream like eagles, 
only to return to the trees once more and sit there 
chattering pleasant nothings ; at intervals throwing 
out those soft, round, modulated whistled notes, 
just as an idle cigarette-smoker blows rings of blue 
smoke from his lips ; and now they have flown 
away to the fields so that I can listen to the others. 
A thrush is making music on a tall tree beyond 
the garden hedge, and I am more grateful for the 
distance that divides us than for the song; for, 
just now, he does not sing so well as sometimes 
of an evening, when he is most fluent, and a 
listener, deceived by his sweetness and melody, 
writes to the papers to say that he has heard the 
nightingale. Just now his song is scrappy, com- 
posed of phrases that follow no order and do not 
fit or harmonize, and is like a poor imitation of 
an inferior mocking-bird's song. 
Between the scraps of loud thrush-music I listen 
to catch the thin, somewhat reedy sound of a 
yellow-hammer singing in the middle of a grassy 
