leafy canopy against rain and sun. Had the builders sought my
advice as to a location, I could hardly have suggested one better suited
to my own convenience. The tree was within a stone's toss of my window,
and, better still, the nest was overlooked to excellent advantage from
an old bank wall which divided my premises from those of my next-door
neighbor. How could I doubt that Providence itself had set me a summer
lesson?

At our first visit the discoverer of the nest--from that moment an
ornithologist--brought out a step-ladder, and we looked in upon the two
tiny white eggs, considerately improving a temporary absence of the
owner for that purpose. It was a picture to please not only the eye, but
the imagination; and before I could withdraw my gaze the mother bird was
back again, whisking about my head so fearlessly that for a moment I
stood still, half expecting her to drop into the nest within reach of my
hand.

This, as I have said, was on the 24th of June. Six days later, on the
afternoon of the 30th, the eggs were found to be hatched, and two
lifeless-looking things lay in the bottom of the nest, their heads
tucked out of sight, and their bodies almost or quite naked, except for
a line of grayish down along the middle of the back.

Meanwhile, I had been returning with interest the visits of the bird to
our honeysuckle, and by this time had fairly worn a path to a certain
point in the wall, where, comfortably seated in the shade of the
hummer's own tree, and armed with opera-glass and notebook, I spent some
hours daily in playing the spy upon her motherly doings.

For a widow with a house and family upon her hands, she took life
easily; at frequent intervals she absented herself altogether, and even
when at home she spent no small share of the time in flitting about
among the branches of the tree. On such occasions, I often saw her hover
against the bole or a patch of leaves, or before a piece of caterpillar
or spider web, making quick thrusts with her bill, evidently after bits
of something to eat. On quitting the nest, she commonly perched upon one
or another of a certain set of dead twigs in different parts of the
tree, and at once shook out her feathers and spread her tail, displaying
its handsome white markings, indicative of her sex. This was the
beginning of a leisurely toilet operation, in the course of which she
scratched herself with her feet and dressed her feathers with her bill,
all the while dart