forgot one phrase in Thoreau's statement: "sooner or _later_."
No doubt the Concord hermit was a true prophet; but how many of the
inhabitants are "later"--too late, indeed, for a mortal who, unlike our
New England philosopher, has such weak human needs as food and rest, and
whose back will be tired in spite of her enthusiasm, if she sits a few
hours on a rock, with a tree for a back.

Many of the sweet and shy residents of that lovely bit of wildness
showed themselves while I waited. A flicker, whose open door was in
sight, and who was plainly engaged in setting her house in order,
entertained me for a long time. Silently she stole in, I did not see
how. Her first appearance to me was on the trunk, the opposite side
from her nest, whence she slid, or so it looked, in a series of jerks to
her door, paused a few minutes on the step to look sharply at me, and
then disappeared, head first, within. Quick as a jack-in-the-box, her
head popped out again to see if the spy had moved while she had been out
of sight, and finding all serene, she threw herself with true feminine
energy into her work. The beak-loads she brought to the door and flung
out seemed so insufficient that I longed to lend her a broom; but I
found she had a better helper than that, a partner.

When she tired, or thought she had earned a rest, she came out, and
flying to the limb above the nest, began softly calling. Never was the
ventriloquial quality more plainly exhibited. I heard that low "ka! ka!
ka! ka! ka!" long repeated, and I looked with interest in every
direction to see the bird appear. For a long time I did not suspect the
sly dame so quietly resting on the branch, and when I did it was only by
the closest inspection that I discovered the slight jerk of the tail,
the almost imperceptible movement of the beak, that betrayed her.

Another as well as I heard that call, and he responded. He was exactly
like her, with the addition of a pair of black "mustachios," and it may
be she told him that the strange object under the maple had not moved
for half an hour, and was undoubtedly some new device of man's, made of
wood perhaps, for he did not hesitate on the door-step, but plunged in
at once, and devoted himself to the business in hand, clearing out,
while she vanished.

But though I watched this domestic scene with pleasure, and saw and
noted every feather that appeared about me, the tree-tops had my closest
attention, for there I was certain I sho