into the woods in the direction
whence it came, but without getting so much as a flying glimpse of the
musician. Very mysterious, surely! Finally, by accident I believe, I
caught the fellow in the very act of singing, as he stood on a dead
pine-limb; and a few minutes later he was on the ground, walking about
(not hopping) with the primmest possible gait,--a small olive-brown
bird, with an orange crown and a speckled breast. Then I knew him for
the golden-crowned thrush; but it was not for some time after this that
I heard his famous evening song, and it was longer still before I found
his curious roofed nest.

"Happy those early days," those days of childish innocence,--though I
was a man grown,--when every bird seemed newly created, and even the
redstart and the wood wagtail were like rarities from the ends of the
earth. Verily, my case was like unto Adam's, when every fowl of the air
was brought before him for a name.

One evening, on my way back to the city after an afternoon ramble, I
stopped just at dusk in a grove of hemlocks, and soon out of the
tree-top overhead came a song,--a brief strain of about six notes, in a
musical but rather rough voice, and in exquisite accord with the quiet
solemnity of the hour. Again and again the sounds fell on my ear, and as
often I endeavored to obtain a view of the singer; but he was in the
thick of the upper branches, and I looked for him in vain. How delicious
the music was! a perfect lullaby, drowsy and restful; like the
benediction of the wood on the spirit of a tired city-dweller. I blessed
the unknown songster in return; and even now I have a feeling that the
peculiar enjoyment which the song of the black-throated green warbler
never fails to afford me may perhaps be due in some measure to its
association with that twilight hour.

To this same hemlock grove I was in the habit, in those days, of going
now and then to listen to the evening hymn of the veery, or Wilson
thrush. Here, if nowhere else, might be heard music fit to be called
sacred. Nor did it seem a disadvantage, but rather the contrary, when,
as sometimes happened, I was compelled to take my seat in the edge of
the wood, and wait quietly, in the gathering darkness, for vespers to
begin. The veery's mood is not so lofty as the hermit's, nor is his
music to be compared for brilliancy and fullness with that of the wood
thrush; but, more than any other bird-song known to me, the veery's has,
if I may say so, th