nk of returning to court in this plight, and so,
amid the falling leaves and cold rains of autumn, was patiently biding
his time.

The soft, mellow flute of the veery fills a place in the chorus of the
woods that the song of the vesper sparrow fills in the chorus of the
fields. It has the nightingale's habit of singing in the twilight, as
indeed have all our thrushes. Walk out toward the forest in the warm
twilight of a June day, and when fifty rods distant you will hear
their soft, reverberating notes rising from a dozen different throats.

It is one of the simplest strains to be heard,--as simple as the curve
in form, delighting from the pure element of harmony and beauty it
contains, and not from any novel or fantastic modulation of it,--thus
contrasting strongly with such rollicking, hilarious songsters as the
bobolink, in whom we are chiefly pleased with tintinnabulation, the
verbal and labial excellence, and the evident conceit and delight of
the performer.

I hardly know whether I am more pleased or annoyed with the catbird.
Perhaps she is a little too common, and her part in the general chorus
a little too conspicuous. If you are listening for the note of another
bird, she is sure to be prompted to the most loud and protracted
singing, drowning all other sounds; If you sit quietly down to observe
a favorite or study a new-comer, her curiosity knows no bounds, and
you are scanned and ridiculed from every point of observation. Yet I
would not miss her; I would only subordinate her a little, make her
less conspicuous.

She is the parodist of the woods, and there is ever a mischievous,
bantering, half-ironical undertone in her lay, as if she were
conscious of mimicking and disconcerting some envied songster.
Ambitious of song, practicing and rehearsing in private, she yet seems
the least sincere and genuine of the sylvan minstrels, as if she had
taken up music only to be in the fashion, or not to be outdone by the
robins and thrushes. In other words, she seems to sing from some
outward motive, and not from inward joyousness. She is a good
versifier, but not a great poet. Vigorous, rapid, copious, not without
fine touches, but destitute of any high, serene melody, her
performance, like that of Thoreau's squirrel, always implies a
spectator.

There is a certain air and polish about her strain, however, like that
in the vivacious conversation of a well-bred lady of the world, that
commands respect. Her maternal