an voices, appears to be more
common and unfailing than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to
some extent, at least in life's fresh morning, attracted by them as
instinctively as humming-birds and bees. Even the young Digger Indians
have sufficient love for the brightest of those found growing on the
mountains to gather them and braid them, as decorations for the hair.
And I was glad to discover, through the few Indians that could be
induced to talk on the subject, that they have names for the wild rose
and the lily, and other conspicuous flowers, whether available as food
or otherwise. Most men, however, whether savage or civilized, become
apathetic toward all plants that have no other apparent use than the use
of beauty. But fortunately one's first instinctive love of song-birds is
never wholly obliterated, no matter what the influences upon our lives
may be. I have often been delighted to see a pure, spiritual glow come
into the countenances of hard business-men and old miners, when a
song-bird chanced to alight near them. Nevertheless, the little mouthful
of meat that swells out the breasts of some song-birds is too often the
cause of their death. Larks and robins in particular are brought to
market in hundreds. But fortunately the Ouzel has no enemy so eager to
eat his little body as to follow him into the mountain solitudes. I
never knew him to be chased even by hawks.

An acquaintance of mine, a sort of foot-hill mountaineer, had a pet cat,
a great, dozy, overgrown creature, about as broad-shouldered as a lynx.
During the winter, while the snow lay deep, the mountaineer sat in his
lonely cabin among the pines smoking his pipe and wearing the dull time
away. Tom was his sole companion, sharing his bed, and sitting beside
him on a stool with much the same drowsy expression of eye as his
master. The good-natured bachelor was content with his hard fare of
soda-bread and bacon, but Tom, the only creature in the world
acknowledging dependence on him, must needs be provided with fresh meat.
Accordingly he bestirred himself to contrive squirrel-traps, and waded
the snowy woods with his gun, making sad havoc among the few winter
birds, sparing neither robin, sparrow, nor tiny nuthatch, and the
pleasure of seeing Tom eat and grow fat was his great reward.

One cold afternoon, while hunting along the river-bank, he noticed a
plain-feathered little bird skipping about in the shallows, and
immediately raised his gun.