dquarters, and
there, in many hours of daily study, I learned to know him a little, and
respect him a good deal.

It was a delightful spot the doves had chosen to live in, and so
frequented by birds that whichever way I turned my face, in two minutes
I wished I had turned it the other, or that I had eyes in the back of my
head. With reason, too, for the residents skipped around behind me, and
all the interesting things went on at my back. I could hear the flit of
wings, low, mysterious sounds, whispering, gentle complaints and
hushings, but if I turned--lo! the scene shifted, and the drama of life
was still enacted out of my sight. Yet I managed, in spite of this
difficulty, to learn several things I did not know before.

No one attends to his own business more strictly than the dove. On the
ground, where he came for corn, he seemed to see no other bird, and paid
not the slightest heed to me in my window, but went about his own
affairs in the most matter-of-fact way. Yet I cannot agree with the
common opinion, which has made his name a synonym for all that is meek
and gentle. He has a will of his own, and a "mild but firm" way of
securing it. Sometimes, when all were busy at the corn, one of my
Quaker-clad guests would take a notion, for what reason I could not
discover, that some other dove must not stay, and he would drive him (or
her) off. He was not rude or blustering, like the robin, nor did he make
offensive remarks, after the manner of a blackbird; he simply signified
his intention of having his neighbor go, and go he did, _nolens volens_.

It was droll to see how this "meek and gentle" fellow met blackbird
impudence. If one of the sable gentry came down too near a dove, the
latter gave a little hop and rustled his feathers, but did not move one
step away. For some occult reason the blackbird seemed to respect this
mild protest, and did not interfere again.

Would one suspect so solemn a personage of joking? yet what else could
this little scene mean? A blackbird was on the ground eating, when a
dove flew down and hovered over him as though about to alight upon him.
It evidently impressed the blackbird exactly as it did me, for he
scrambled out from under, very hastily. But the dove had no intention
of the sort; he came calmly down on one side.

The first dove baby who accompanied its parent to the ground to be fed
was the model of propriety one would expect from the demure infant
already mentioned. He stood