elous rippling music like the sweet babble of a brook over stones;
like the gentle sighing of the wind in pine-trees; like other of
nature's enchanting sounds, which I really must borrow a poet's words to
characterize:

"O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul!
O wondrous singer."

The gray-cheeked, most charming in every look and motion, uttered his
notes in a free sweep or crescendo, which began low, gathered force as
he went on, and then gradually died out; all in one long slur, without a
defined or staccato note, making a wonderful resemblance to wind sounds,
as Emerson expresses it:

"His music was the Southwind's sigh."

The song of the veery was quite different, low, rapid, interspersed with
a louder, wild-sounding cry, or, as aptly described by a listener, like
the gurgling sounds made by blowing through a tube into soft water, with
occasional little explosions. The soft, whispered warble of a brown
thrush added a certain under-tone which combined and harmonized both
these, forming with them a rhapsody of a rippling, bubbling character
impossible to describe, but constantly reminding one of running streams,
and gentle water-falls, and coming nearer to "put my woods in song" than
any other bird-notes whatever. Neither of the performers opened his
mouth, so that the trio was very low, a true whisper-song.

It was somewhat curious that with one exception all the birds in the
room through these months sang whisper-songs also, without opening the
bill. There were six of them, and every one delighted in singing; the
three thrushes, a bluebird, a female orchard oriole, and a Mexican
clarin. To the thrushes, music seemed necessary to life; hour after
hour they stood on their respective perches across the room, puffed out
into balls, "pouring out their souls," and entrancing us not only with
their suggestive melody, but with graceful and poetical movements, and a
beauty of look and bearing that moved one deeply. During the aria both
birds stood motionless, one with wings drooping, and accenting every
note, the other with tail slightly jerking for the same purpose.

In character no less than in song the birds differed; bright, active and
high-spirited, the gray-cheeked delighted in the freedom of the room,
feared nothing, came upon the desk freely, and calmly met one's eyes
with his own, brave free soul that he was, while his _vis-a-vis_ was
timid and shy, could not be induced to