irst surprise and wonder were over, she swung loyally
back to her first love, the wood thrush, of whose sublime voice she
says, "The first solemn opening note transports you instantly into a
holy cathedral."

For myself, I have never been able to choose permanently between these
two glorious singers, and at that time I had been under the spell of the
hermit song for days. Morning after morning I had spent in the woods,
listening to the marvelous voice, and trying to discover its charm.

The bird began to sing his way down to us about ten o'clock in the
morning. I heard him first afar off, then coming nearer and nearer, till
he reached some favorite perch in the woods behind, and very near the
farmhouse, before noon, where he usually sang at intervals till eight
o'clock in the evening. I studied his song carefully. It consisted of
but one clause, composed of a single emphasized note followed by two
triplets on a descending scale. But while retaining the relative
position of these few notes he varied the effect almost infinitely, by
changing both the key and the pitch constantly, with such skill that I
was astonished to discover the remarkable simplicity of the song. A
striking quality of it was an attempt which he frequently made to utter
his clause higher on the scale than he could reach, so that the triplets
became a sort of trill or tremolo, at the very extreme of his register.
Sometimes he gave the triplets alone, without the introductory note; but
never, in the weeks that I studied his song, did he sing other than this
one clause.

It was only with an effort that I could force myself to analyze the
performance. Far easier were it, and far more delightful, to sit
enchanted, to be overwhelmed and intoxicated by his thrilling music. For
me, the hermit voices the sublimity of the deep woods, while the veery
expresses its mystery, its unfathomable remoteness. A wood warbler, on
the contrary, always brings before me the rush and hurry of the world of
people, and the wood pewee its under-current of eternal sadness. Into
the mood induced by the melancholy pewee song breaks how completely and
how happily the cheery optimism of the chickadee! Brooding thoughts are
dissipated, all is not a hollow mockery, and life is still worth living.

[Sidenote: _A PERFECT NOOK._]

Often, when listening to the hermit song, I wondered that at the first
note of the king of singers all other birds were not mute. But evidently
the birds ha