BY THE WAYSIDE. 
70 
I. 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
Published on the fifteenth of each month. ' 
The official organ of the Wisconsin and Illinois Audu¬ 
bon Societies. 
Twenty=five cents per year. Single copies, three cents. 
Ad communications should be sent to Mas. G. W . 
Pkckham, 64G Marshall St., Milwaukee, Wis. 
The fate of the Wayside has been hanging- 
in the balance for some time, but it is now de¬ 
cided that with the beginning of the next 
volume, in May, it shall pass into the hands 
of Miss Ruth Marshall, of Appleton, who will 
become editor and manager. 
Surely no bird lover can live content without 
Bird Lore. Everything that appears in it is 
not only full of interest, but is ably written, 
and the perfect taste with which the mechanical 
part is managed—the clear type and the 
charming illustrations—make it a joy to the 
eye as well as to the mind. To teachers in¬ 
terested in nature study it is especially useful. 
Its attractiveness is to be increased, during 
the coming year, by a series of colored plate-, 
a sample of which appears in this number of 
the Wayside. To one who is familiar with the 
clumsy and inartistic, even’if correct, work¬ 
manship that has gone into the illustration of 
many costly books on birds, these dainty pic¬ 
tures, accurate, and yet full of the very spirit 
of the bird’s life and grace, are a wonder and 
a delight. 1 
John K.uskin warns us not to kill or hint any 
living creature needlessly, but to strive to save 
and comfort all gentle life, and guard and 
perfect all natural beauty upon earth. 
4 
An English observer tells of a canary that 
learned to whistle “God Save the King’’ from 
a bullfinch kept in an adjoining room. At the 
end of the second line the bullfinch would 
sometimes pause longer than he ought, when 
the canary would take up the tune and finish 
it. Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller tells a similar 
storv of how, when she would whi.-tle the be- 
ginning of a tune known to her pet English 
blackbird, he would take it up where she left 
off and go on with it. 
When one sees the fashionable world of 
women driving about the streets or piously at¬ 
tending church service, in hats crowned with 
egret, or with long bird-of-paradise plumes 
bleached white and streaming in the wind, one 
marvels how it should lie possible that these 
distinguished dames can possess minds so un¬ 
trained—in a sense so uneducated—be so re¬ 
lentless, so lost to pity, as not to know or 
care whether whole races of birds, the loveliest 
and most innocent of created beings, be killed 
off (and mostly under circumstances of great 
barbarity), simply in order to make trimming 
for their hats!— Cornhill Magazine , 
The Snow-Storm. 
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides Hills and woods, the river, and the 
heaven, 
And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s 
feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the house mates 
sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 
Come, see the north wind’s masonry. 
Out cf an unseen quarry evermore 
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
Curves his white bastions with projected roof 
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. 
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his- wild work 
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he 
For number or proportion. Mockingly, 
On coop or kennel, be bangs Parian wreaths; 
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; 
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall. 
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate, 
A tapering turret overtops the -work: 
And when his hours are numbered, and the 
world 
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, 
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, 
The frolic architecture of the snow. 
From Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
