peeping into her neighbor's house? Much
time I spent before that castle in the air, but never was able to answer
my own questions. No two old birds came at the same time, and no
difference could I discover in looks or manners, that answered the
query whether there were one or two pairs at work. Now they have all
flown, and only the laugh of the flicker and the call of the young ones
all around remain to tell that woodpecker babies grew up in the tree.

[Sidenote: _THE GLORY OF THE WEST._]

Now let us close our glasses, fold our camp-chairs, and go back to the
camp, our present home. As we turn into the gate another voice strikes
our ear, louder, richer, more attention-compelling than any we have
heard. Listen: It is the wonder and the glory of the West; it is the
most intoxicating, the most soul-stirring of bird voices in the land
where thrushes are absent; it embodies the solitude, the vastness, the
mystery of the mesa; it is the western meadow lark. This is his
nesting-time, and we may be treated to his love-song, the exquisite,
whispered aria he addresses to his mate. As I have heard it when very
close to him, he sings his common strain several times, and then drops
to a very low twittering and trilling warble, in which now and then is
interpolated a note or two of the usual score, yet the whole altogether
different in spirit and execution. He ends by a burst into the loud
carol he offers to the world. There is nothing beyond that to hear, even
in my beloved nook.

XI.

THE IDYL OF AN EMPTY LOT.

A CITY STUDY.

Opposite my study windows is an empty lot. It is of generous size; six
residences facing another street, with high board fences, stretch across
the back; a large apartment-house towers above it on the right, and a
tight fence defines it on the left. The front is open to the street, but
the whole is so given up to weeds, such a tangle of rank vegetation,
that few people penetrate it, and it is the great out-of-doors for the
animal life of the neighborhood. Looking down upon it as I do,
constantly spread out under my windows, I cannot choose but see
everything that goes on.

Last summer was the blossoming-time of the empty lot. It had but one
summer of romance--just one--between the building of the brick row
behind it and the beginning of the new row which shall hide it from the
sun for ages, perhaps.

[Sidenote: _A RELAPSE INTO BARBARISM._]

It was not attractive in the spring, for man had