habitually vary
their song in this manner. Other birds sing almost inaudibly at times,
especially in the autumnal season. Even the brown thrasher, whose
ordinary performance, is so full-voiced, not to say boisterous, will
sometimes soliloquize, or seem to soliloquize, in the faintest of
undertones. The formless autumnal warble of the song sparrow is familiar
to every one. And in this connection I remember, and am not likely ever
to forget, a winter wren who favored me with what I thought the most
bewitching bit of vocalism to which I had ever listened. He was in the
bushes close at my side, in the Franconia Notch, and delivered his whole
song, with all its customary length, intricacy, and speed, in a tone--a
whisper, I may almost say--that ran along the very edge of silence. The
unexpected proximity of a stranger may have had something to do with his
conduct, as it often appears to have with the thrasher's; but, however
that may be, the cases are not parallel with that of the pine-wood
sparrow, inasmuch as the latter bird not merely sings under his breath
on special occasions, whether on account of the nearness of a listener
or for any other reason, but in his ordinary singing uses louder and
softer tones interchangeably, almost exactly as human singers and
players do; as if, in the practice of his art, he had learned to
appreciate, consciously or unconsciously (and practice naturally goes
before theory), the expressive value of what I believe is called musical
dynamics.

I spent many half-days in the pine lands (how gladly now would I spend
another!), but never got far into them. ("Into their depths," my pen was
on the point of making me say; but that would have been a false note.
The flat-woods have no "depths.") Whether I followed the railway,--in
many respects a pretty satisfactory method,--or some roundabout, aimless
carriage road, a mile or two was generally enough. The country offers no
temptation to pedestrian feats, nor does the imagination find its
account in going farther and farther. For the reader is not to think of
the flat-woods as in the least resembling a Northern forest, which at
every turn opens before the visitor and beckons him forward. Beyond and
behind, and on either side, the pine-woods are ever the same. It is this
monotony, by the bye, this utter absence of landmarks, that makes it so
unsafe for the stranger to wander far from the beaten track. The sand is
deep, the sun is hot; one place is as