he same thing
comes out again in his music. Full of passion as his singing is (and we
have hardly anything to compare with it in this regard), yet the
listener cannot help smiling now and then; the very finest passage is
followed so suddenly by some uncouth guttural note, or by some whimsical
drop from the top to the bottom of the scale.

In neighborly association with the brown thrush is the towhee bunting,
or chewink. The two choose the same places for their summer homes, and,
unless I am deceived, they often migrate in company. But though they are
so much together, and in certain of their ways very much alike, their
habits of mind are widely dissimilar. The towhee is of a peculiarly even
disposition. I have seldom heard him scold, or use any note less
good-natured and musical than his pleasant _cherawink_. I have never
detected him in a quarrel such as nearly all birds are once in a while
guilty of, ungracious as it may seem to mention the fact; nor have I
ever seen him hopping nervously about and twitching his tail, as is the
manner of most species, when, for instance, their nests are approached.
Nothing seems to annoy him. At the same time, he is not full of
continual merriment like the chickadee, nor occasionally in a rapture
like the goldfinch. Life with him is pitched in a low key; comfortable
rather than cheerful, and never jubilant. And yet, for all the towhee's
careless demeanor, you soon begin to suspect him of being deep. He
appears not to mind you; he keeps on scratching among the dry leaves as
if he had no thought of being driven away by your presence; but in a
minute or two you look that way again, and he is not there. If you pass
near his nest, he makes not a tenth part of the ado which a brown thrush
would make in the same circumstances, but (partly for this reason) you
will find half a dozen nests of the thrush sooner than one of his. With
all his simplicity and frankness, which puts him in happy contrast with
the thrush, he knows as well as anybody how to keep his own counsel. I
have seen him with his mate for two or three days together about the
flower-beds in the Boston Public Garden, and so far as appeared they
were feeding as unconcernedly as though they had been on their own
native heath, amid the scrub-oaks and huckleberry bushes; but after
their departure it was remembered that they had not once been heard to
utter a sound. If self-possession be four fifths of good manners, our
red-eyed Pipilo