great planter, and sows those wild ones in the woods that solace the
pedestrian, and give a momentary calm even to the jaded victims of the
White Hills. He keeps a strict eye over one's fruit, and knows to a
shade of purple when your grapes have cooked long enough in the sun.
During the severe drought a few years ago the robins wholly vanished
from my garden. I neither saw nor heard one for three weeks, meanwhile
a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of bearing, seemed to find the
dusty air congenial, and, dreaming, perhaps of its sweet Argos across
the sea, decked itself with a score or so of fair bunches. I watched
them from day to day till they should have secreted sugar enough from
the sunbeams, and at last made up my mind that I would celebrate my
vintage the next morning. But the robins, too, had somehow kept note of
them. They must have sent out spies, as did the Jews into the promised
land, before I was stirring. When I went with my basket at least a
dozen of these winged vintagers bustled out from among the leaves, and
alighting on the nearest trees interchanged some shrill remarks about
me of a derogatory nature. They had fairly sacked the vine. Not
Wellington's veterans made cleaner work of a Spanish town; not Federals
or Confederates were ever more impartial in the confiscation of neutral
chickens. I was keeping my grapes a secret to surprise the fair Fidele
with, but the robins made them a profounder secret to her than I had
meant. The tattered remnant of a single bunch was all my harvest-home.
How paltry it looked at the bottom of my basket,--as if a humming-bird
had laid her egg in an eagle's nest! I could not help laughing; and
the robins seemed to join heartily in the merriment. There was a native
grape-vine close by, blue with its less refined abundance, but my
cunning thieves preferred the foreign flavor. Could I tax them with want
of taste?

(1) "For well the soul, if stout within, Can arm impregnably the skin."
_The Titmouse,_ lines 75, 76.

The robins are not good solo singers, but their chorus, as, like
primitive fire-worshippers, they hail the return of light and warmth to
the world, is unrivalled. There are a hundred singing like one. They are
noisy enough then, and sing, as poets should, with no afterthought. But
when they come after cherries to the tree near my window, they muffle
their voices, and their faint _pip pip pop!_ sounds far away at the
bottom of the garde