THE SPARROW AGAIN. 
109 
II. 
I love you with a love that shall not end, 
I love you purely, as a childhood’s friend ; 
I reverence you, for in your silence lies 
The secret of a life that never dies, 
A life made gladder by the flowers fair, 
A heart all-trusting though the snow is there ; 
A life whose every hour its tiny shell 
Is adding to the curves that nobly swell. 
A mind laid open to the glorious air 
Where God’s own sunshine lingers still and clear. 
A soul whose sky is near, whose silence calms ; 
And underneath, the Everlasting Arms ; 
A life made perfect where the sunbeams glide. 
In that bright sea, whose praises echo wide. 
A. M. Ibbs. 
THE SPARROW AGAIN, 
O much has been, of late, written about the sparrow in 
Nature Notes, that I too, think I want my say ! 
Poor bird ! he hardly gets fair play in all this con- 
' troversy. His opponents are too bitter ; and they 
make no allowance whatever. Personally I rather dislike 
sparrows ; it bores one to set a breakfast in the garden every 
morning all winter long, and to find scarcely any birds except 
sparrows come to eat it. And yet there is something rather 
pathetic in the instinct they evidently have that some one is 
lozsympathetic. The poor little things don’t make half the jolly 
fuss and noise they made once — in the old days before they 
found out about it. Yet they are not without friends. One day 
I remarked to my gardener, “ I do hate those sparrows.” “ Do 
you ? ” said he, “ I like them, the)’ are so clever.” And so they 
are, brimful of cleverness, most amusing to watch in their 
cunning ways and manners. Your correspondents differ so 
much, that one has to believe sparrows’ dispositions vary in 
various localities. For instance, 1 never saw a single bird of 
any other species driven away by them from our breakfasts. I 
never, on any occasion whatever, have seen a sparrow even 
speak to any other bird, much less fight him ! and since the 
“ feed ” is on the gravel walk, in full view of my window, 
whence I don’t fail to keep an eye on the birds, and on all that 
goes on, I can hardly be mistaken. As a rule we have about 
fifty sparrows for the feed ; four robins, three hedge-sparrows (I 
beg pardon, I mean accentors), half a dozen blackbirds, the same 
number of thrushes off and on, with a chaffinch or two. They 
