Once before, on Mount Clinton, I had seen him,
and had been treated with the same studied silence. And later, I fell in
with a little family party on the side of Mount Washington, and they,
too, refused me so much as a note. Probably I was too near the birds in
every case, though in the third instance there was no attempt at
skulking, nor any symptom of nervousness. I have often been impressed
and amused by the blue jay's habit in this respect. No bird could well
be noisier than he when the noisy mood takes him; but come upon him
suddenly at close quarters, and he will be as still as the grave itself.
He has a double gift, of eloquence and silence,--silver and gold--and no
doubt his Canadian cousin is equally well endowed.

The reader may complain, perhaps, that I speak only of trifles. Why go
to a mountain-top to look at warblers and thrushes? I am not careful to
justify myself. I love a mountain-top, and go there because I love to be
there. It is good, I think, to be lifted above the every-day level, and
to enjoy the society--and the absence of society--which the heights
afford. Looking over my notes of this excursion, I come upon the
following sentence: "To sit on a stone beside a mountain road, with
olive-backed thrushes piping on every side, the ear catching now and
then the distant tinkle of a winter wren's tune, or the nearer _zee,
zee, zee_ of black-poll warblers, while white-throated sparrows call
cheerily out of the spruce forest--this is to be in another world."

This sense of distance and strangeness is not to be obtained, in my case
at all events, by a few hours' stay in such a spot. I must pitch my tent
there, for at least a night or two. I cannot even see the prospect at
first, much less feel the spirit of the place. There must be time for
the old life to drop off, as it were, while eye and ear grow wonted to
novel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did take note of trivial
things,--the call of a bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was a
pleasing relief after living so long with men whose minds were all the
time full of those serious and absorbing questions, "What shall we eat,
and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"

I remember with special pleasure a profusion of white orchids
(_Habenaria dilatata_) which bordered the roadside not far from the top,
their spikes of waxy snow-white flowers giving out a rich, spicy odor
hardly to be distinguished from the scent of carnation pinks. I