The house wren is one of Nature’s illuminated successes. It has been said that there is no second spring, yet to-day (July 20th) this bird is in the full glory of spring-time melody. He sings from the top of a telegraph pole, the song caught up and repeated by some country cousin in the grove, a musical argument carried on all day long and left at night in the same unsettled state in which morning found it. Whether they are discussing the relative merit of their respective claims, a town residence or a country seat, I am unable to decide; it is certain, however, that the concessions of neither party infringe upon domestic dignity. Their speech is a revelation of supreme content, a liquid, flexible measure with ripples and cascades bubbling through and over, a dash of pure color amid July’s neutral tinted emotions. The day may be dark and threatening, the sun concealed in gloomy banks of cloud, rain falling, or thick mists obscuring the valley; each and all are powerless to dampen his ardor or to effect his extreme optimism. He clings to his creed with persistent closeness, asserting valiantly the ecstasy of finding one’s self alive and emphasizing the statement by a perfect wave of melodious argument. There are hours when he sings with such force that his whole little body catches the key-note and natural rhythm; the melody becomes compounded of his very substance, body of his body and soul of his soul. It is an inundation of musical notes, cascadic, cataclysmic, the tide of song rising till it drowns his personality; he is no longer a bird but an animated song. My little neighbor is a pattern of husbandly devotion, a lover-husband over whom coming events are already casting tender shadows before, the special event in this instance being located in a crevice beneath the eaves of the house. Wren babies had not left the first nest when Jenny Wren’s husband was hard at work upon a second house, which was ready for occupancy before the first family were self-supporting. This was an admirable arrangement in the way of time-saving, as eggs are often laid in the second nest before the first is vacated. Though the new house lacked the freshness of coloring and the picturesqueness of the swing of a nest in the sunshine, Jenny Wren made no complaint of being cooped up in the darkness, and as to her husband, he was quite as well pleased with the glamor and wonder of its art as if it had been wound with blossoms and sprinkled with star-dust. A bird with different tastes might have urged that it was only a little hole in the house-jet, yet everything in life depends upon the point of view from which you regard it. Judged from the wren standpoint, it was considered admirably adapted to the family needs, nor could the most critical observer fail to see here a literal illustration of that familiar truth: Happiness is from within.