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?

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 garden, where they know I shall
not suspect them of robbing the great black-walnut of its
bitter-rinded store.[P] They are feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure,
but then how brightly their breasts, that look rather shabby in the
sunlight, shine in a rainy day against the dark green of the
fringe-tree! After they have pinched and shaken all the life out of
an earthworm, as Italian cooks pound all the spirit out of a steak,
and then gulped him, they stand up in honest self-confidence, expand
their red waistcoats with the virtuous air of a lobby member, and
outface you with an eye that calmly challenges inquiry. "Do _I_ look
like a bird that knows the flavor of raw vermin? I throw myself upon
a jury of my peers. Ask any robin if he ever ate anything less
ascetic than the frugal berry of the juniper, and he will answer that
his vow forbids him." Can such an open bosom cover such depravity?
Alas, yes! I have no doubt his breast was redder at that very moment
with the blood of my raspberries. On the whole, he is a doubtful
friend in the garden. He makes his dessert of all kinds of berries,
and is not averse from early pears. But when we remember how
omnivorous he is, eating his own weight in an incredibly short time,
and that Nature seems