piritual intelligences
look on with wondering pity to see us so in love with our prison-house.
Well, yonder panorama was beautiful to _me_, at all events, however it
might look to more exalted beings, and, like my brother under the
spruce-tree bark, I would make the best of life as I found it.

This way my thoughts were running when all at once two birds dashed by
me--a black-poll warbler in hot pursuit of an olive-backed thrush. The
thrush alighted in a tree and commenced singing, and the warbler sat by
and waited, following the universal rule that a larger bird is never to
be attacked except when on the wing. The thrush repeated his strain once
or twice, and then flew to another tree, the little fellow after him
with all speed. Again the olive-back perched and sang, and again the
black-poll waited. Three times these manoeuvres were repeated, before
the birds passed out of my range. Some wrong-doing, real or fancied, on
the part of the larger bird, had excited the ire of the warbler. Why
should he be imposed upon, simply because he was small? The thrush,
meantime, disdaining to defend himself, would only stop now and then to
sing, as if to show to the world (every creature is the centre of a
world) that such an insect persecution could never ruffle his spirit.
Birds are to be commiserated, perhaps, on having such an excess of what
we call human nature; but the misfortune certainly renders them the more
interesting to us, who see our more amiable weaknesses so often
reflected in their behavior.

For the sympathetic observer every kind of bird has its own temperament.
On one of my jaunts down this Mount Mansfield road I happened to espy a
Canada jay in a thick spruce. He was on one of the lower branches, but
pretty soon began mounting the tree, keeping near the bole and going up
limb by limb in absolute silence, exactly in the manner of our common
blue jay. I was glad to see him, but more desirous to hear his voice,
the loud, harsh scream with which the books credit him, and which, _a
priori_, I should have little hesitation in ascribing to any member of
his tribe. I waited till I grew impatient. Then I started hastily
toward him, making as much commotion as possible in pushing through the
undergrowth. It was a clever scheme, but the bird was not to be
surprised into uttering so much as an exclamation. He dropped out of his
tree, flew a little distance to a lower and less conspicuous perch, and
there I finally left him.