oisy, too dank with the smell of leather for them. They seem
as numerous where the rush of drays is thickest as in the open
breathing-places where the fountains play. They are in every quarter, yet
those to the east and south of the old burial-ground do not belong to the
roost. Perhaps they have graveyards of their own in their sections, though
I have been unable to find them. So far as I know, this is the only roost
in or about Boston. And this is the stranger since so few of the total
number of the Boston sparrows sleep here. A careful estimate showed me
that there could not have been more than six or seven thousand in the
roost. One would almost say there were as many millions in Boston. And
where do these millions sleep? For the most part, each one alone behind
his sign-board or shutter near his local feeding-grounds.

Now, why should the sparrows of the roost prefer King's Chapel Burial
Ground to the Old Granary, a stone's throw up the street? I passed the
Old Granary yard on my way to the roost and found the trees empty. I
searched the limbs with my glass; there was not a sparrow to be seen.
Still, the Granary is the less exposed of the two. It may not formerly
have been so; but at present high sheltering walls bend about the trees
like a well. Years ago, perhaps, when the sparrows began to roost in the
trees at King's Chapel, the Old Granary elms were more open to the winds,
and now force of habit and example keep the birds returning to the first
lodge.

Back they come, no matter what the weather. There are a thousand cozy
corners into which a sparrow might creep on a stormy night, where even the
winds that know their way through Boston streets could not search him out.
But the instinct to do as he always has done is as strong in the sparrow,
in spite of his love for pioneering, as it is in the rest of us. He was
brought here to roost as soon as he could fly, when the leaves were on and
the nights delicious. If the leaves go and the nights change, what of
that? Here he began, here he will continue to sleep. Let it rain, blow,
snow; let the sleet, like a slimy serpent, creep up the trunk and wrap
around the twigs: still he will hold on. Many a night I have seen them
sleeping through a driving winter rain, their breasts to the storm, their
tails hanging straight down, shedding every drop. If a gale is blowing,
and it is cold, they get to the leeward of the tree, as close to the trunk
as possible, and anchor fast, e