The woods offer unlimited opportunity for making acquaintances, and nothing else stimulates the interest more than this. The keenest pleasure is in meeting a new bird: a rare and subtle stimulus not to be defined, to be experienced only and cherished as a memory. You stand in the midst of one of the mixed flocks of autumn--winter visitants with a sprinkling of warblers, and perhaps a blue-headed vireo and a pair of silent thrushes--and recognize old friends, with a chance of discovering a stranger. It calls out the zest for the woods like an appetite for dinner--a finer, more ethereal appetite, which is satisfied through the eye and ear. Occasionally the blue-headed vireo may be heard, though the season is far advanced, and the little Parula warbler indulges in a spiritual and melodious reverie, as if he already had visions of another spring and was communicating in a state of trance and ecstasy his prophetic thought. One supremely mellow day the last of October, there came a pair of hermits to a secluded spot, flitting into a white oak, where they remained regarding me with round bright eyes. In due season they crossed to the pine under which I sat, whereupon one, directly over my head, began cautiously descending from branch to branch through the lower dead limbs until he was but a few feet from my face. Here he sat, regarding me in a gentle friendly way and talking to himself in an undertone--or was he talking to me? The impelling force continued to draw my little friend--it was mutual did he but know, a true case of love at sight--for at last, with an indescribable little flutter, he dropped from his perch with the evident intent of alighting upon me, but changed his course directly in my face, and with a swift motion of the wings darted into the shrubbery. Upon a near view the spell had broken, and he was again the timid solitary thrush. It is because the wild life is so shy and elusive that the unexpected encounters have such charm. They are altogether clandestine and romantic. You may stroll time and again without the least encouragement, as though wholly ostracized from this society; and then some morning you are welcomed on every hand and admitted to the inner circle of the wood life. About the woods there is ever an enticing mystery. They invite us to enter as though they concealed some treasure we sought. A race dwells here apart, and we turn aside for that silent and refreshing company. When they speak, their speech is lyrical. There are men who have never known any friendship in Nature; others again who never outgrow the love of birds and flowers, who preserve some youthfulness and innocence which keeps them in touch with wild life. Over and above a healthy curiosity, or any scientific acquaintance, it is the _companionship_ of the woods and fields which counts--a real friendship for birds and bees and flowers. Let us remember the woods in the days of our youth, that we may have this unfailing resource in later years.