“Gilbert White gave, I believe, the name of chiff-chaff to this little bird from its note. In the midland counties it is called the chill-chall from the same cause; and, indeed, this name is, to my ear, more accordant with its continuous ditty. Its cheery little voice is one of the pleasantest recognitions of returning spring. It is sure to be heard, just as in former years, in the copse, the dell, the belt of trees bordering a wayside; we catch its simple note with pleasure, for it brings with it many a memory of happy scenes and days gone by. We see the little creature hopping along the boughs of the yet only budding oak, and know that it is as usefully employed for man as agreeably for itself. It tells us, in effect, that sunny days, flowers, and sweet airs, and the music of a thousand other birds, are coming. We revert to the time when, tracing the wood-side or the bosky dingle in boyhood, we caught sight of its rounded nest amongst the screening twigs of the low bush, and the bleached bents of last year’s grapes. We remember the pleasure with which we examined its little circular entrance, and discovered, in its downy interior, its store of delicate eggs, or the living mass of feathery inmates, with their heads ranged side by side and one behind another, with their twinkling eyes and yellow-edged mouths. Many a time, as we have heard the ever blithe note of chill-chall, as it stuck to its unambitious part of the obscure woodland glade, we have wished that we could maintain the same buoyant humour, the same thorough acceptance of the order of Providence for us. As Luther, in a moment of despondency, when enemies were rife around him, and calumny and wrong pursued him, heard the glad song of a bird that came and sang on a bough before his window, we have thanked God for the lesson of the never-drooping chill-chall. The great world around never damps its joy with a sense of its own insignificance; the active and often showy life of man, the active and varied existence of even birds, which sweep through the air in gay companies, never disturb its pleasure in its little accustomed nook. It seems to express, in its two or three simple notes, all the sentiment of indestructible content, like the old woman’s bird in the German story by Ludwig Tieck— Alone in wood so gay, ’Tis good to stay, Morrow like to-day For ever and aye; Oh, I do love to stay Alone in wood so gay! [Sidenote: _The Bird’s Ditty._] “This little bird appears to feel all that strength of heart, and to put it into its little ditty, which seems to me to say— “Here I continue ‘cheery cheery, and still shall, and still shall!’” [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN.