d a hand, instantly my Quaker-clad
friends dived off the tree below the bank across the road, as if, in
their despair, they had flung themselves madly into the brook at the
bottom. But I did not suspect them of so rash an act, and, indeed, in a
few minutes the apple-tree again resounded with their cries.

Meanwhile the sun marched relentlessly on, and the shadows without and
the feelings within alike pointed to the dinner hour (12 M.). I rose,
and thereby created a panic in my small world. Six cedar-birds
disappeared over the bank, a song sparrow flew shrieking across the
field, a squirrel interrupted in his investigations fled madly along the
rail fence, every few steps stopping an instant, with hindquarters laid
flat and tail resting on the rail, to see if his head was still safe on
his shoulders.

I gathered up my belongings and sauntered off toward home, musing, as I
went, upon the bobolink family. I had not once seen or heard the little
mates. Were they busy in the grass with bobolink babies? and did they
enjoy the music as keenly as I did? How much I "wanted to know"! How I
should like to see the nests and the nestlings! What sort of a father is
the gay singer? (Some of the blackbird family are exemplary in this
relation.) Does he drop his part of poet, of reveler of the meadows, I
wonder, and come down to the sober prose of stuffing baby mouths? Are
bobolinks always this jolly, delightful crowd? Are they never
quarrelsome? Alas! it would take much more than one day, however sunny
and however long, to tell all these things.

At the edge of the meadow I sat down again, hoping for one more song,
and then came the crown of the whole morning, the choicest reserved for
the last. A bird sailed out from behind the daisies, passed over my
head, and delivered the most bewitching rhapsody I had yet heard. Not
merely once did he honor me, but again and again without pausing, as if
he intended to fill me as full of bobolink rapture as he was himself.
His voice was peculiarly rich and full, and, what amazed me, his first
three notes were an exact reproduction of the wood-thrush's (though more
rapidly sung), including the marvelous organ-like quality of that
bird's voice. I could have listened forever.

"Oh, what have I to do with time?
For this the day was made."

But when he had uttered his message he sank back into the grass, and I
tore myself away from the bobolink meadow, and came home far richer and
far happier