very bill pointing into the wind, every
feather reefed, every tail lying out on the flat of the storm.

As I watched the bands starting from the tree-tops of the roost I wondered
if they really crossed the river into Cambridge and Charlestown. A few
mornings later I was again up early, hastening down to the West Boston
Bridge to see if I could discover the birds going over. As I started out I
saw bunches moving toward the river with a free and easy flight, but
whether I reached the bridge too late, or whether they scattered and went
over singly, I do not know. Only now and then did a bird cross, and he
seemed to come from along the shore rather than from above the house-tops.

I concluded that the birds of the roost were strictly Bostonians. One
evening, however, about a week later, as I was upon this bridge coming
from Cambridge, a flock of sparrows whizzed past me, dipped over the rail
to the water, swung up above the wall of houses, and disappeared toward
the roost. They were on their way from Cambridge, from the classic elms of
Harvard campus, who knows, to the elms of the ancient burial-ground.

It was five that April morning when the first sparrow left the roost. By
half-past five the trees were empty, except for the few birds whose
hunting-ground included the cemetery. By this time the city, too, had
yawned, and rubbed its eyes, and tumbled out of bed.

"MUX"

[Illustration]

"MUX"

No, "Mux" is not an elegant name--not to to be compared with Ronald or
Claudia, for instance; and I want to say it is not the name of one of my
children, though its owner was once a member of my household. Mux was a
tame half-grown coon, with just the ordinary number of rings around his
tail, but with the most extraordinary amount of mischief in his little
coon soul. Perhaps he had no real soul, and I should have located his
mischief somewhere else. If so, then I should say in his feet. I never saw
any other feet so expressive. The essence of the little beast seemed
concentrated in his lore paws. If they made trouble, whose fault was it?
They were designed for trouble. You could see this purpose in them as
plainly as you could see the purpose in a swallow's wings. Whenever Mux
ran across the yard these paws picked up trouble out of the turf, just as
if the grass were trouble-filings, and Mux a kind of four-footed magnet.
He never went far before they clogged and stopped him.

One day, the first day that Mux was g