IM FRUHLINGSGARTEN 
The winter is over and gone, and so are the crocuses; 
the Hooligan sparrows have wreaked their last wanton 
ravages, for this year at least, upon every budding 
blossom my garden grows. They are sated with des¬ 
truction now, and there is nothing but their own brazen 
bickerings between themselves to distract them from 
their assiduous domesticities. “ When sparrows build,” 
sings the poet; but, indeed, the question I would fain 
have set at rest is, “When do they not?” Even in the 
heyday of their early havoc, when all the earth is chilly 
and discomfortable, when no grass grows, and the very 
trees would seem to disclaim austerely any possible 
cognizance of leafage past or to come—even then, while 
cold pathway and black border are besprent with 
shredded gold of aconite and crocus and pale primrose 
buds ruthlessly slain at birth, the sparrows are busy 
a-building. And still they build. The high, dis¬ 
hevelled araucaria—uncomeliest of trees—is swarming 
with the sloven nests that, for once, are in harmony 
with their environment; while all around, from the 
eaves, from the clustered ivy on the walls, the thick 
hawthorns, everywhere, sounds the creaking confusion 
of their shrill bird-Billingsgate—the antithesis, one 
might have it, of the nightingale’s divine, high-piping 
Pehlevi. And the air-gun is as yet unbought, and, for 
all our brave words and futile shaking of fists, seems 
likely to remain in the region of fruitless menace—that 
same debateable land, close neighbouring upon the 
