re I gasp and sigh
Not a breath of air is stirring,
Not a cloud in the burning sky,"

the memory might comfort me, it did not in the slightest degree make me
comfortable--I wilted, and retired before it. How the birds could
endure it and carry on their work, I could not understand.

At noon I ventured out over the burning grass. The first youngster had
left the nest, and was shouting from a tree perhaps twenty feet beyond
the native apple. The others were fluttering on the edge, crying as
usual. As is the customary domestic arrangement with many birds, the
moment the first one flew, the father stopped coming to the nest, and
devoted himself to the straggler, which was a little hard on the mother
that hot day, for she had four to feed.

While I looked on, the second infant mustered up courage to start on the
journey of life. A tall twig led from the nest straight up into the air,
and this was the ladder he mounted. Step by step he climbed one
leaf-stem after another, with several pauses to cry and to eat, and at
last reached the topmost point, where he turned his face to the west,
and took his first survey of the kingdoms of the earth. A brother
nestling was close behind him, and the pretty pair, seeing no more steps
above them, rested a while from their labors. In the mean time the first
young oriole had gone farther into the trees, and papa with him.

The little dame worked without ceasing, though it must have been an
anxious time, with nestlings all stirring abroad. I noticed that she
fed oftenest the birdlings who were out, whether to strengthen them for
further effort, or to offer an inducement to those in the nest to come
up higher where food was to be had, she did not tell. I observed, also,
that when she came home she did not, as before, alight on the level of
the little ones, but above them. Perhaps this was to coax them upward;
at any rate, it had that effect: they stretched up and mounted the next
stem above, and so they kept on ascending. About three o'clock I was
again obliged to surrender to the power of the sun, and retire for a
season to a place he could not enter, the house.

Some hours passed before I made my next call, and I found that oriole
matters had not rested, if I had; the two nestlings had taken flight to
the tree the first one had chosen, and three were on the top twig above
the nest, which latter swung empty and deserted. Mamma was feeding the
three in her own tree, while papa attend