more ambitious poems. Our own poet,
Cranch, has left one immortal stanza, and Bryant, and Longfellow, and
Lowell, and Whittier, and Emerson have written enough of poetic
melody, the direct inspiration of the feathered inhabitants of the
woods, to fill a good-sized volume. In prose, no one has said finer
things than Thoreau, who probed nature with a deeper ken than any of
his contemporaries. He is to be read, and read, and read.

But just what meaning should be attached to a bird's notes--some of
which are "the least disagreeable of noises"--will probably never be
discovered. They do seem to express almost every feeling of which the
human heart is capable. We wonder if the Mocking Bird understands what
all these notes mean. He is so fine an imitator that it is hard to
believe he is not doing more than mimicking the notes of other birds,
but rather that he really does mock them with a sort of defiant
sarcasm. He banters them less, perhaps, than the Cat Bird, but one
would naturally expect all other birds to fly at him with vengeful
purpose. But perhaps the birds are not so sensitive as their human
brothers, who do not always look upon imitation as the highest
flattery.

A gentleman who kept a note-book, describes one of the matinee
performances of the Mocker, which he attended by creeping under a tent
curtain. He sat at the foot of a tree on the top of which the bird was
perched unconscious of his presence. The Mocker gave one of the notes
of the Guinea-hen, a fine imitation of the Cardinal, or Red Bird,
an exact reproduction of the note of the Phoebe, and some of the
difficult notes of the Yellow-breasted Chat. "Now I hear a young
chicken peeping. Now the Carolina Wren sings, '_cheerily, cheerily,
cheerily_.' Now a small bird is shrilling with a fine insect tone. A
Flicker, a Wood-pewee, and a Phoebe follow in quick succession. Then a
Tufted Titmouse squeals. To display his versatility, he gives a dull
performance which couples the '_go-back_' of the Guinea fowl with the
plaint of the Wood-pewee, two widely diverse vocal sounds. With all
the performance there is such perfect self-reliance and consciousness
of superior ability that one feels that the singer has but to choose
what bird he will imitate next."

Nor does the plaintive, melancholy note of the Robin, that "pious"
bird, altogether express his character. He has so many lovely traits,
according to his biographers, that we accept him unhesitatingly as a
truly