-ho!
Saying: "How do you do?"
As his top-knot of blue
Is raised as polite as can be--heigh-ho!
O impudent jay,
With your plumage so gay,
And your manners so jaunty and free--heigh-ho!
How little you guessed
When you robbed the wren's nest,
That any stray fellow would see--heigh-ho!

CHARLES KEELER,
in _Elfin Songs of Sunland._

SEPTEMBER 14.

It is to prevent the wholesale slaughter of songbirds that I appeal to
you. The farmer or the fruit-raiser has not yet learned enough to
distinguish friend from foe, and goes gunning in season and out of
season, so that the cherry orchard, when the cherries are ripe, looks
like a battle-field in miniature, the life-blood of the little slain
birds rivaling in color the brightness of their wings and breast. And
all this destruction of song, of gladness, of helpfulness, because the
poor birds have pecked at a few early cherries, worthless, almost, in
the market, as compared to the later, better kinds, which they do not
interfere with.

JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN.

SEPTEMBER 15.

THE VOICE OF THE CALIFORNIA DOVE.

Come, listen O love, to the voice of the dove,
Come, hearken and hear him say,
"There are many Tomorrows, my love, my love,
There is only one Today."

And all day long you can hear him say,
This day in purple is rolled,
And the baby stars of the milky way
They are cradled in cradles of gold.

Now what is thy secret, serene gray dove,
Of singing so sweetly alway?
"There are many Tomorrows, my love, my love,
There is only one Today."

JOAQUIN MILLER.

SEPTEMBER 16.

With the tip of his strong cane he breaks off a piece of the serried
bark, and a spider scurries down the side of the log and into the
grass. He chips off another piece, and a bevy of sow-bugs make haste to
tumble over and play dead, curling their legs under their sides, but
recovering their senses and scurrying off after the spider. The cane
continues to chip off the bark, and down tumble all sorts of
wood-people, some of them hiding like a flash in the first moist earth
they come to; others never stopping until they are well under the log,
where experience has taught them they will be safe out of harm's way.
And they declare to themselves, and to each other, that they will never
budge from under that log until it is midnight, and that wicked
meadow-lark is fast asleep.

ELIZABETH AND JOSEPH