this, I found, was more easily said than done. In Jefferson, in Gorham,
in the Franconia Notch, in short, wherever I went, there was no
difficulty about hearing the music, and little about seeing the wren;
but it was provoking that eye and ear could never be brought to bear
witness to the same bird. However, this difficulty was not insuperable,
and after it was once overcome I was in the habit of witnessing the
whole performance almost as often as I wished.

Of similar interest to me is a turn in an old Massachusetts road, over
which, boy and man, I have traveled hundreds of times; one of those
delightful back-roads, half road and half lane, where the grass grows
between the horse-track and the wheel-track, while bushes usurp what
ought to be the sidewalk. Here, one morning in the time when every day
was disclosing two or three new species for my delight, I stopped to
listen to some bird of quite unsuspected identity, who was calling and
singing and scolding in the Indian brier thicket, making, in truth, a
prodigious racket. I twisted and turned, and was not a little astonished
when at last I detected the author of all this outcry. From a study of
the manual I set him down as probably the white-eyed vireo,--a
conjecture which further investigation confirmed. This vireo is the very
prince of stump-speakers,--fluent, loud, and sarcastic,--and is well
called the politician, though it is a disappointment to learn that the
title was given him, not for his eloquence, but on account of his habit
of putting pieces of newspaper into his nest. While I stood peering into
the thicket, a man whom I knew came along the road, and caught me thus
disreputably employed. Without doubt he thought me a lazy
good-for-nothing; or possibly (being more charitable) he said to
himself, "Poor fellow! he's losing his mind."

Take a gun on your shoulder, and go wandering about the woods all day
long, and you will be looked upon with respect, no matter though you
kill nothing bigger than a chipmunk; or stand by the hour at the end of
a fishing-pole, catching nothing but mosquito-bites, and your neighbors
will think no ill of you. But to be seen staring at a bird for five
minutes together, or picking roadside weeds!--well, it is fortunate
there are asylums for the crazy. Not unlikely the malady will grow upon
him; and who knows how soon he may become dangerous? Something must be
wrong about that to which we are unaccustomed. Blowing out the brains
o