constant quantity. His notes
may not rival those mellow, brief ones of the blue-birds in early
spring, so sweet in their quaint inflection, which suggest all hope,
and are so striking because heard while snow may be yet upon the
ground; he may not have the wild abandon of the bobolink with that
tinkle and gurgle and thrill; he is no pretentious songster, like a
score of other birds, but he is a great part of the soul of early
summer, for he is telling, morning, noon and night, how good the world
is, how he approves of the sunshine, and how everything is all right!
And so the young man approved much of the song-sparrow, and was
interested in the movements of all his kind.

One day in May, the boy had noted something in the clump of bushes,
between the house and creek, which very much resembled a small
bird's-nest, and had at once investigated. He found it, the nest of
the song-sparrow, and, when the little gray guardian had fluttered
away, he noted the four tiny eggs, and their mottled beauty. He did
not touch them, for he had been well trained as to what should be the
relations between human beings and all singing birds, but his interest
in the progress of that essay in summer housekeeping became at once
absorbing. He announced in the house that he intended to watch over
the nest all summer, and keep off the hawks, and that when the little
eggs were hatched, and the little birds were grown, maybe he would try
to tame one. He was encouraged in the idea. It is good to teach a boy
to be protective. And when the birds were hatched, his interest
deepened.

He was half inclined, as he stood in the doorway on this particular
day, to visit the dense bushes and note the condition of affairs in
that vicinity, but, buoyant as he was, there was something in the
outlook which detained him. There was such a yellow glory to the
afternoon, and so many things were happening.

Balanced above the phlox, a humming-bird, green-backed and glittering,
hung and tasted for a moment, then flashed to where the larkspurs were.
A red-headed woodpecker swung downward on the wing to the white-brown
side of a dead elm, sounded a brief tattoo upon the surface, then dived
at a passing insect. A phoebe bird was singing somewhere. A red
squirrel sat perched squarely on the drooping limb of a hickory tree
and chewed into a plucked nut, so green that the kernel was not formed,
then dropped it to the ground, and announced in a chatter that he wa