his already melting song an indescribable trill, something so spiritual,
so charged with the wildness of the woods, that no words--even of a
poet--can do it justice. Now, too, he began to turn longing glances out
of the window, and evidently his heart was no longer with us. So, on the
first perfect day in May he was taken to a secluded nook in a park and
his door set open. His first flight was to a low tree, twenty feet from
the silent spectator, who waited, anxious to see if his year's captivity
had unfitted him for freedom.

Perching on the lowest branch, the thrush instantly crouched in an
attitude of surprise and readiness for anything, which was common with
him, his bill pointed up at an angle of forty-five degrees, head sunk in
the shoulders, and tail standing out stiffly, thus forming a perfectly
straight line from the point of his beak to the tip of his tail. There
he stood, perfectly motionless, apparently not moving so much as an
eyelid for twenty minutes, trying to realize what had happened to him
and in the patient, deliberate manner of a thrush to adjust himself to
his new conditions. In the nook were silence and delicious odors of the
woods; from a thick shrub on one side came the sweet erratic song of a
cat-bird, and at a little distance the rich organ-tones of the
wood-thrush. All these entered the soul of the emancipated bird; he
listened, he looked, and at last he spoke, a low, soft, "wee-o." That
broke the spell, he drew himself up, hopped about the tree, flew to a
shrub, all the time posturing and jerking wings and tail in extreme
excitement and no doubt happiness to the tips of his toes. At last he
dropped to the ground and fell to digging and reveling in the soft loose
earth with enthusiasm. The loving friend looking on was relieved; this
was what she had waited for, to be assured that he knew where to look
for supplies, and though she left his familiar dish full of food where
he could see it in case of accident, she came away feeling that he had
not been incapacitated for a free life by his months with her.

One more glimpse of him made it clear also that he could fly as well as
his wild neighbors, and removed the last anxiety about him. A
wood-thrush, after noticing the stranger for some minutes, finally
braved the human presence and made a rush for the little fellow about
half his size. Whether war or welcome moved him was not evident, for
away they flew across the nook, not more than a foot ap