GRINNELL,
in _Birds of Song and Story._

SEPTEMBER 17.

SIESTA.

A shady nook where nought is overheard
But wind among the eucalyptus leaves,
The cheery chirp of interflitting bird,
Or wooden squeak of tree-frog as it grieves.
The resting eye broods o'er the running grass,
Or nodding gestures of the bowed wild oats;
Watches the oleander lancers pass,
And the bright flashing of the oriole notes.
Hushed are the senses with the drone of bees
And the far glimmer of the mid-day heat;
Dreams stealing o'er one like the incoming seas,
Soft as the rustling zephyrs in the wheat;
While on the breeze is borne the call of Love
To Love, dear Love, of Majel, the wild dove.

CHARLES ELMER JENNEY,
in _Western Field, Dec._, 1905.

SEPTEMBER 18.

One summer there came a road-runner up from the lower valley, peeking
and prying, and he never had any patience with the water baths of the
sparrows. His own ablutions were performed in the clean, hopeful dust
of the chaparral; and whenever he happened on their morning
splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant his shining tail
to the level of his body, until he looked most like some bright
venomous snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and feint of battle.
Then suddenly he would go tilting and balancing down the gully in fine
disdain, only to return in a day or two to make sure the foolish bodies
were still at it.

MARY AUSTIN,
in _The Land of Little Rain._

SEPTEMBER 19.

MEADOW LARKS.

Sweet, sweet, sweet! O happy that I am!
(Listen to the meadow-larks, across the fields that sing!)
Sweet, sweet, sweet! O subtle breath of balm.
O winds that blow, O buds that grow, O rapture of the Spring!

Sweet, sweet, sweet! Who prates of care and pain?
Who says that life is sorrowful? O life so glad, so fleet!
Ah! he who lives the noblest life finds life the noblest gain.
The tears of pain a tender rain to make its waters sweet.

Sweet, sweet, sweet! O happy world that is!
Dear heart, I hear across the fields my mateling pipe and call.
Sweet, sweet, sweet! O world so full of bliss--
For life is love, the world is love, and love is over all!

INA D. COOLBRITH,
in _Songs from the Golden Gate._

SEPTEMBER 20.

How could we spare the lark, that most companionable bird of the
plains? Wherever one may wander ... his lovely, plaintive, almost human
song may be heard nearly