general wreck. But I had seen the tawny-thrush baby, and I was happy.
And it's no common thing to do, either. Does not Emerson count it among
Thoreau's remarkable feats that

"All her shows did Nature yield
To please and win this pilgrim wise;
He found the tawny thrush's brood,
And the shy hawk did wait for him"?

XI.

THE TAWNY THRUSH'S BROOD.

"He found the tawny thrush's brood," says Emerson, in enumerating the
special gifts of the nature-lover whose praise he celebrates. Whether
the reference were to Thoreau or to another "forest-seer," it was
certainly to a fortunate and happy man, whom I have always envied till I
learned to find the shy brood myself.

I shall never forget the exciting and blissful moment when I discovered
my first tawny-thrush nest. It was the crowning event of a long search.

It was not until the fourth year that I had looked for him, that I came
really to know the bird, to see his family, and last of all his nest. My
summer abiding-place in the Black River country was very near a bit of
woods where veeries were plentiful, and I saw them at all hours, and
under nearly all conditions.

My favorite seat was at the foot of a low-growing tree in the edge of
the woods, where the branches hung over and almost hid me. From under
my green screen I could look out into a field golden with buttercups,
with scattering elms and maples, while behind me was the forest, the
chosen haunt of this bird. Here, unseen, I listened to his song,--

"O matchless melody! O perfect art!
O lovely, lofty voice unfaltering!"

till my soul was filled with rapture, and a longing to know him in his
home relations took such possession of me that the world seemed to hold
but one object of desire, a veery's nest.

Yet though the woods were full of them, so wary and so wise were the
little builders that not a nest could I find. I studied the descriptions
in the books; I examined the nests in a collection at hand. The books
declared, and the specimens confirmed the statement, that the cradle of
the tawny thrush would be found amid certain surroundings. Many such
places existed in the woods, and I never passed one without seeking a
nest; but always unsuccessfully, till, as June days were rapidly
passing, I came to have a feeling something akin to despair when I heard
the veery notes.

One day,--it was Sunday afternoon,--I was still grieving over the lost,
or rather the unfound nest, and my friend w