r.

He is the mountain streams' own darling, the humming-bird of blooming
waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves
flowers, as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain
birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings,--none so
unfailingly. For both in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily,
independent alike of sunshine and of love, requiring no other
inspiration than the stream on which he dwells. While water sings, so
must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning his voice in sure
accord; low in the drought of summer and the drought of winter, but
never silent.

During the golden days of Indian summer, after most of the snow has been
melted, and the mountain streams have become feeble,--a succession of
silent pools, linked together by shallow, transparent currents and
strips of silvery lacework,--then the song of the Ouzel is at its lowest
ebb. But as soon as the winter clouds have bloomed, and the mountain
treasuries are once more replenished with snow, the voices of the
streams and ouzels increase in strength and richness until the flood
season of early summer. Then the torrents chant their noblest anthems,
and then is the flood-time of our songster's melody. As for weather,
dark days and sun days are the same to him. The voices of most
song-birds, however joyous, suffer a long winter eclipse; but the Ouzel
sings on through all the seasons and every kind of storm. Indeed no
storm can be more violent than those of the waterfalls in the midst of
which he delights to dwell. However dark and boisterous the weather,
snowing, blowing, or cloudy, all the same he sings, and with never a
note of sadness. No need of spring sunshine to thaw _his_ song, for
it never freezes. Never shall you hear anything wintry from _his_
warm breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering notes between sorrow and
joy; his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to downright gladness, as
free from dejection as cock-crowing.

It is pitiful to see wee frost-pinched sparrows on cold mornings in the
mountain groves shaking the snow from their feathers, and hopping about
as if anxious to be cheery, then hastening back to their hidings out of
the wind, puffing out their breast-feathers over their toes, and
subsiding among the leaves, cold and breakfastless, while the snow
continues to fall, and there is no sign of clearing. But the Ouzel never
calls forth a single touch of pity; not becaus