h increasing
familiarity I discerned more and more clearly the respects in which the
songs differed, and each came to have to my ear an individuality
strictly its own. They were alike, doubtless,--as the red-eyed vireo's
and the blue-head's are,--and yet they were not alike. Of one thing I
grew, better and better assured: the grosbeak is out of all comparison
the finer musician of the two. To judge from my last-year's friends,
however, his concert season is very short--the more's the pity.

I begin to perceive (indeed it has been dawning upon me for some time)
that our essay is not to fulfill the promise of its caption. Instead of
the glorious fullness and variety of the month's music (for May, in this
latitude, is the musical month of months) the reader has been put off
with a few of the more exceptional features of the carnival. He will
overlook it, I trust; and as for the great body of the chorus, who have
not been honored with so much as a mention, they, I am assured, are far
too amiable to take offense at any such unintentional slight. Let me
conclude, then, with transcribing from my note-book an evening entry or
two. Music is never so sweet as at the twilight hour; and the extracts
may serve at least as a convenient and quasi-artistic ending for a paper
which, so to speak, has run away with its writer. The first is under
date of the 19th:--

"Walked, after dinner, in the Old Road, as I have done often of
late, and sat for a while at the entrance to Pyrola Grove. A wood
thrush was singing not far off, and in the midst a Swainson thrush
vouchsafed a few measures. I wished the latter would continue, but
was thankful for the little. A tanager called excitedly,
_Chip-cherr_, moving from tree to tree meanwhile, once to a birch in
full sight, and then into the pine over my head. As it grew dark the
crowd of warblers were still to be seen feeding busily, making the
most of the lingering daylight. A small-billed water thrush was
teetering along a willow-branch, while his congeners, the
oven-birds, were practicing their aerial hymn. One of these went
past me as I stood by the roadside, rising very gradually into the
air and repeating all the way, _Chip, chip, chip, chip_, till at
last he broke into the warble, which was a full half longer than
usual. He was evidently doing his prettiest. No vireos sang after
sunset. A Maryland yellow-throat piped once or twice