ir wings in panic,
swallows swooped down over him in anxious clouds, sharp-tailed sparrows
and all other winged creatures fled wildly before this "agitator," who
seemed to have no aim except to disturb, and reminded me irresistibly of
his human prototype. Somewhere in that "league upon league of marsh
grass," I suppose, were the blackbird's little folk; for the watcher on
the bank was in deepest tribulation, and his outcries quickly brought me
down to see what had happened.

The Young Americans of the redwing family are as vivacious and uneasy as
might be expected of the scions of that house. No sooner do they get the
use of their sturdy legs than they scramble out of the nest and start
upon their bustling pilgrimage through life, first climbing over the
bushes in their neighborhood, and as they learn the use of their wings
becoming more venturesome, till at last, every time a hard-working
mother brings a morsel of food, she has to hunt up her straggling
offspring before she can dispose of it. Though eager for food as most
youngsters, they are altogether too busy investigating this new and
interesting world to stay two minutes in one place. So far from waiting,
like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, they proceed, the moment
they can use their limbs, to attack the problem of delay for
themselves; to wait is not a blackbird possibility. It is needless to
say that such preternaturally sharp and wide-awake Young Americans very
soon graduate from the nursery.

[Sidenote: _A YELLOW-HEADED MONSTER._]

The last trial that came to the blackbird, and the one, perhaps, that
induced him finally to abandon his watch-towers and join his friends on
the bank farther down, was the appearance one day in the meadow of a new
importation from the city, a boy marked out for notice by a striking
yellow-and-black cap. The instant he entered the inclosure afar off, the
redwing uttered a shriek of hopeless despair, as who should say, "What
horrible yellow-headed monster have we here?" and as long as he remained
the bird cried and bewailed his fate and that of his family, as if
murder and sudden death were the sure fate of them all. It was the last
act in the blackbird drama on the meadow.

Between my morning in the pasture and my afternoon down the meadow, were
two or three hours of rest beside my window, and there, too, the drama
of life went on. On one side was an orchard--an orchard, alas! without
bluebirds, for it was the summer fo