lade gets its due share; and as all
parts are wet at once, so all are dry at the same time, and the surplus,
if there be any, runs in well-appointed ways, with delight to both eye
and ear. All this is changed when the office of Jupiter Pluvius devolves
upon man; different indeed are his methods. A man turns a stream loose
in a field or pasture, and it wanders whither it will over the ground.
The grass hides it, and the walker, bird-student or botanist, steps
splash into it without the slightest warning. This is always unpleasant,
and is sometimes disastrous, as when one attempts to cross the edge of a
field of some close-growing crop, and instantly sinks to the top of the
shoes in the soft mud.

On the morning spoken of, I stopped before the barrier, considering how
I should pass it, when the woman showed me a narrow passage between the
house and the stone wall, through which I could reach the higher ground
at the back. I took this path, and in a moment was in the grove of young
oaks which made her out-of-doors kitchen and yard. A fire was burning
merrily in the stove, which stood under a tree; frying-pans and
baking-tins, dippers and dishcloths, hung on the outer wall of her
little house, and the whole had a camping-out air that was captivating,
and possible only in a rainless land. I longed to linger and study this
open-air housekeeping; if that woman had only been a bird!

But I passed on through the oak-grove back yard, following a path the
horses had made, till I reached an open place where I could overlook
the lower land, filled with clumps of willows with their feet in the
water, and rosebushes

"O'erburdened with their weight of flowers,
And drooping 'neath their own sweet scent."

A bird was singing as I took my seat, a grosbeak,--perhaps the one who
had entertained me in the field below, while I had waited hour after
hour, for his calm-eyed mate to point out her nest. He sang there from
the top of a tall tree, and she busied herself in the low bushes, but up
to that time they had kept their secret well. He was a beautiful bird,
in black and orange-brown and gold,--the black-headed grosbeak; and his
song, besides being very pleasing, was interesting because it seemed
hard to get out. It was as if he had conceived a brilliant and beautiful
strain, and found himself unable to execute it. But if he felt the
incompleteness of his performance as I did, he did not let it put an end
to his endeavor. I sat ther