nk it was at least a fortnight before I learned that these
whistles came from the tufted titmouse. I had been seeing him almost
daily, but till then he had never chanced to use that particular note
while under my eye.

There was a certain tract of country, woodland and pasture, over which I
roamed a good many times, and which is still clearly mapped out in my
memory. Here I found my first Carolina or mocking wren, who ran in at
one side of a woodpile and came out at the other as I drew near, and
who, a day or two afterwards, sang so loudly from an oak tree that I
ransacked it with my eye in search of some large bird, and was
confounded when finally I discovered who the musician really was. Here,
every day, were to be heard the glorious song of the cardinal grosbeak,
the insect-like effort of the blue-gray gnatcatcher, and the rigmarole
of the yellow-breasted chat. On a wooded hillside, where grew a
profusion of trailing arbutus, pink azalea, and bird-foot violets, the
rowdyish, great-crested flycatchers were screaming in the tree-tops. In
this same grove I twice saw the rare red-bellied woodpecker, who, on
both occasions, after rapping smartly with his beak, turned his head and
laid his ear against the trunk, evidently listening to see whether his
alarm had set any grub a-stirring. Near by, in an undergrowth, I fell in
with a few worm-eating warblers. They seemed of a peculiarly
unsuspicious turn of mind, and certainly wore the quaintest of
head-dresses. I must mention also a scarlet tanager, who, all afire as
he was, one day alighted in a bush of flowering dogwood, which was
completely covered with its large white blossoms. Probably he had no
idea how well his perch became him.

Perhaps I ought to be ashamed to confess it, but, though I went several
times into the galleries of our honorable Senate and House of
Representatives, and heard speeches by some celebrated men, including at
least half a dozen candidates for the presidency, yet, after all, the
congressmen in feathers interested me most. I thought, indeed, that the
chat might well enough have been elected to the lower house. His
volubility and waggish manners would have made him quite at home in that
assembly, while his orange-colored waistcoat would have given him an
agreeable conspicuity. But, to be sure, he would have needed to learn
the use of tobacco.

Well, all this was only a few years ago; but the men whose eloquence
then drew the crowd to the capitol