I would gladly have stayed longer on the heights, but it was pleasant
also to be once more in the lowlands; to walk out after supper and look
up instead of down, while the chimney swifts darted hither and thither
with their merry, breathless cacklings. How welcome, too, were the
hearty music of the robin and the carol of the grass finch! After all, I
thought, home is in the valley; but the whistle of the white-throat
reminded me that I was not yet back in Massachusetts.

A WIDOW AND TWINS.

"The fatherless and the widow ... shall eat and be
satisfied."--DEUTERONOMY xiv. 29.

On the 1st of June, 1890, I formally broke away from ornithological
pursuits. For two months, more or less,--till the autumnal migration
should set in,--I was determined to have my thoughts upon other matters.
There is no more desirable plaything than an outdoor hobby, but a man
ought not to be forever in the saddle. Such, at all events, had always
been my opinion, so that I long ago promised myself never to become,
what some of my acquaintances, perhaps with too much reason, were now
beginning to consider me, a naturalist, and nothing else. That would be
letting the hobby-horse run away with its owner. For the time being,
then, birds should pass unnoticed, or be looked at only when they came
in my way. A sensible resolve. But the maker of it was neither Mede nor
Persian, as the reader, if he have patience enough, may presently
discover for himself.

As I sat upon the piazza, in the heat of the day, busy or half busy with
a book, a sound of humming-bird's wings now and then fell on my ear,
and, as I looked toward the honeysuckle vine, I began after a while to
remark that the visitor was invariably a female. I watched her probe the
scarlet tubes and dart away, and then returned to my page. She might
have a nest somewhere near; but if she had there was small likelihood of
my finding it, and, besides, I was just now not concerned with such
trifles. On the 24th of June, however, a passing neighbor dropped into
the yard. Was I interested in humming-birds? he inquired. If so, he
could show me a nest. I put down my book, and went with him at once.

The beautiful structure, a model of artistic workmanship, was near the
end of one of the lower branches of an apple-tree, eight or ten feet
from the ground, saddled upon the drooping limb at a point where two
offshoots made a good holding-place, while an upright twig spread over
it a