mbre background!

I have thus run over some of the features of an ordinary trouting
excursion to the woods. People inexperienced in such matters, sitting
in their rooms and thinking of these things, of all the poets have sung
and romancers written, are apt to get sadly taken in when they attempt
to realize their dreams. They expect to enter a sylvan paradise of
trout, cool retreats, laughing brooks, picturesque views, and balsamic
couches, instead of which they find hunger, rain, smoke, toil, gnats,
mosquitoes, dirt, broken rest, vulgar guides, and salt pork; and they
are very apt not to see where the fun comes in. But he who goes in a
right spirit will not be disappointed, and will find the taste of this
kind of life better, though bitterer, than the writers have described.

VI

BIRDS AND BIRDS

I

There is an old legend which one of our poets has made use of about the
bird in the brain,--a legend based, perhaps, upon the human
significance of our feathered neighbors. Was not Audubon's brain full
of birds, and very lively ones, too? A person who knew him says he
looked like a bird himself; keen, alert, wide-eyed. It is not unusual
to see the hawk looking out of the human countenance, and one may see
or have seen that still nobler bird, the eagle. The song-birds might
all have been brooded and hatched in the human heart. They are typical
of its highest aspirations, and nearly the whole gamut of human passion
and emotion is expressed more or less fully in their varied songs.
Among our own birds, there is the song of the hermit thrush for
devoutness and religious serenity; that of the wood thrush for the
musing, melodious thoughts of twilight; the song sparrow's for simple
faith and trust, the bobolink's for hilarity and glee, the mourning
dove's for hopeless sorrow, the vireo's for all-day and every-day
contentment, and the nocturne of the mockingbird for love. Then there
are the plaintive singers, the soaring, ecstatic singers, the confident
singers, the gushing and voluble singers, and the half-voiced,
inarticulate singers. The note of the wood pewee is a human sigh; the
chickadee has a call full of unspeakable tenderness and fidelity. There
is pride in the song of the tanager, and vanity in that of the catbird.
There is something distinctly human about the robin; his is the note of
boyhood. I have thoughts that follow the migrating fowls northward and
southward, and that go with the sea-birds into the de