nd did not shrink
from the finger which gently stroked their backs. The home which had
held them was almost a complete wreck, hardly more than a flattened
platform, but they clung to it still, and I knew that I should miss the
sight I longed for, the first flight. I stayed all day, putting off the
parting till the last possible moment, watching and hoping; but when I
started for the night train, I left the pair still sitting on the ruins
of their nest. And thus ended the only glimpse into fairyland I shall
ever enjoy.

A few days later came to me, several hundred miles away, the word that
the elder bird (who was a Sunday baby) had taken flight the day he was
three weeks old, and had stayed about his native apple-tree all day,
while the younger clung to the wreck for two days more, and no one
chanced to see him fly.

VIII.

YOUNG AMERICA IN FEATHERS.

"How like are birds and men!" said Emerson, and if he had known nature's
loveliest creatures as well as he did his own race, he might have
affirmed it more emphatically; for to know birds well is to be
astonished at the "human nature" they display.

In our latitude July is distinctly the babies' month. When wild roses
give place to sun-kissed meadow lilies, when daisies drop their petals
and meadow-sweet whitens the pastures, when blueberries peep out from
their glossy coverts and raspberries begin to redden on the hill, then
from every side come the baby cries of younglings just out of the nest,
and everywhere are anxious parents hurrying about, seeking food to stuff
hungry little mouths, or trying to keep too venturesome young folk out
of danger. For Young Americans in feathers are wonderfully like Young
Americans in lawn in self-confidence and recklessness.

One evening in a certain July, up on the coast of Maine, I watched the
frantic efforts of a pair of Maryland yellow-throats--tiny creatures in
brown and gold--to coax their self-willed offspring to a more retired
position than he chose to occupy. With genuine "Young America" spirit he
scorned the conservatism of his elders. Though both parents hovered
about him, coaxing, warning, perhaps threatening, not a feather stirred;
stolid and wide-eyed he stood, while the father flitted about the bush
in great excitement, jerking his body this way and that, flirting his
wings, now perking his tail up like that of a wren, again opening and
closing it like a fan in the hands of an embarrassed girl, and the
mothe