s. It seems to us really immodest to keep on spying
on the birds in that way. And as for the bushes and trees, what we want
to know is, How does one ever get to know them? How do you find out
which is an alder and what is an elm? Or a narcissus and a hyacinth,
does any one really know them apart? We think it's all a bluff. And
jonquils. There was a nest of them on our porch, we are told, but we
didn't think it any business of ours to bother them. Let nature alone
and she'll let you alone.

[Illustration]

But there is a pettifogging cult about that says you ought to know these
things; moreover, children keep on asking one. We always answer at
random and say it's a wagtail or a flowering shrike or a female
magnolia. We were brought up in the country and learned that first
principle of good manners, which is to let birds and flowers and animals
go on about their own affairs without pestering them by asking them
their names and addresses. Surely that's what Shakespeare meant by
saying a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. We can enjoy a rose
just as much as any one, even if we may think it's a hydrangea.

And then we are much too busy to worry about robins and bluebirds and
other poultry of that sort. Of course, if we see one hanging about the
lawn and it looks hungry we have decency enough to throw out a bone or
something for it, but after all we have a lot of troubles of our own to
bother about. We are short-sighted, too, and if we try to get near
enough to see if it is a robin or only a bandanna some one has dropped,
why either it flies away before we get there or it does turn out to be a
bandanna or a clothespin. One of our friends kept on talking about a
Baltimore oriole she had seen near our house, and described it as a
beautiful yellowish fowl. We felt quite ashamed to be so ignorant, and
when one day we thought we saw one near the front porch we left what we
were doing, which was writing a check for the coal man, and went out to
stalk it. After much maneuvering we got near, made a dash--and it was a
banana peel! The oriole had gone back to Baltimore the day before.

We love to read about the birds and flowers and shrubs and insects in
poetry, and it makes us very happy to know they are all round us,
innocent little things like mice and centipedes and goldenrods (until
hay fever time), but as for prying into their affairs we simply won't do
it.

SITTING IN THE BARBER'S CHAIR

Once every ten we