er heads,
one thought drives out another; and it is nothing uncommon, when times
are hard, to see them stay quietly upon the fence while a sleigh goes
past, or suffer a foot passenger to come again and again within a few
yards.

It gives a lively touch to the imagination to overtake these beautiful
strangers in the middle of Beacon Street; particularly if one has lately
been reading about them in some narrative of Siberian travel. Coming
from so far, associating in flocks, with costumes so becoming and yet so
unusual, they might be expected to attract universal notice, and
possibly to get into the newspapers. But there is a fashion even about
seeing; and of a thousand persons who may take a Sunday promenade over
the Mill-dam, while these tourists from the North Pole are there, it is
doubtful whether a dozen are aware of their presence. Birds feeding in
the street? Yes, yes; English sparrows, of course; we haven't any other
birds in Boston nowadays, you know.

With the pine grosbeaks the case is different. When a man sees a company
of rather large birds about the evergreens in his door-yard, most of
them of a neutral ashy-gray tint, but one or two in suits of rose-color,
he is pretty certain to feel at least a momentary curiosity about them.
Their slight advantage in size counts for something; for, without
controversy, the bigger the bird the more worthy he is of notice. And
then the bright color! The very best men are as yet but imperfectly
civilized, and there must be comparatively few, even of Bostonians, in
whom there is not some lingering susceptibility to the fascination of
red feathers. Add to these things the fact that the grosbeaks are
extremely confiding, and much more likely than the buntings to be seen
from the windows of the house, and you have, perhaps, a sufficient
explanation of the more general interest they excite. Like the snow
buntings and the red-polls, they roam over the higher latitudes of
Europe, Asia, and America, and make only irregular visits to our corner
of the world.[21]

I cannot boast of any intimate acquaintance with them. I have never
caught them in a net, or knocked them over with a club, as other
persons have done, although I have seen them when their tameness
promised success to any such loving experiment. Indeed, it was several
years before my lookout for them was rewarded. Then, one day, I saw a
flock of about ten fly across Beacon Street,--on the edge of
Brookline,--and alight