I 
BOYHOOD AND BIRDS. 69 
a nest, mine was the luck of all the rest of tlie would-be rob- 
bers. But, perseverance lias its reward. 
One day I bad paused near the " sink-hole spring" to hear 
my favorite mocker sing by day -light, for variety — when, 
instead of a song, I saw — what ? A splendid pair of mock- 
ing birds, disporting themselves gaily along the fences and 
in the grass of the very slip of meadow in the corner of 
which I made my usual nightly couch ! 
I drew a long breath. What a discovery ! How tame 
they are ! It must be some mysterious sympathy ! The 
male must be that magnificent bird I have listened to so 
many nights with rapture, and never seen ! Hah ! these 
have a black mark under the eye ; the Southern bird I re- 
member has not that mark in the plates of it that 1 have seen. 
This must be a new variety ! I have heard my uncle and 
father, who have been to ISTew Orleans, describe the Southern 
bird. It certainly has no such mark as this, which resembles 
that under the eye of the Eed-Bird ; and from what they 
have told me of its singing, it cannot be near equal to this 
glorious creature. My mother, though, has described the 
bird in northern Kentucky, where she knew it, and from 
what she has told me, this must be the very one. It must be 
this same wonderful bird I have been listening to ! 
0, how happy I was ! I crouched down beside the fence 
for fear I might chance to startle them, and gazed in eager, 
anxious admiration. What a handsome bird! It seems 
rather shorter, though, than I expected from the appearance 
of those at a distance ; and there is the white bar across the 
wings. But, somehow or other, the wings do not seem so 
wide, nor the stripe so broad ; its neck, too, disappoints me ; 
it appears much shorter and thicker than I supposed. But, 
that's easily enough accounted for in the fact, that it must 
require a very powerful neck to emit such loud sounds. But 
it is a lovely bird, with that light, gray plumage so delicately 
marked on the breast, and looks so warlike with the black 
mark under its eye ! Ah ! I see its bill is very hooked ; it 
