The day calls, the assembly, the retreat, the mess call and a score of others are left to other birds than the robins. The thrush may pipe them. Grosbeak, tanager or warbler may trill the familiar melodies for all these, and a host of others sing at any hour of the day in tree or shrub or in the pine woods that stand in a phalanx, like a company under arms, pressing close up to the brow of the hill. Sometimes I hear these in the sweet, flowing warble of the purple finch which is not rare hereabouts, but more often in the notes of the warbling vireos which frequent the tops of the shade trees. These are all-day buglers, piping clear for all occasions in firm, rich, continuous notes of whose meaning there can be no doubt, once you have learned the calls. Nearing these and seeing the white marble of the newer comers stretch far beyond the slate headstones, over hill and dale, it is not difficult to believe these indeed the tents of an army corps and to think I hear in response to the bugle the marching tread of feet that have been resting long. The tramp of the boys in blue on Memorial Day, as they march and countermarch, passing from station to station, the ringing call of the bugle that sang across Southern fields all through Grant’s campaign could not seem much more real. When the busy day is ended it is the wood thrush that sings taps. The dropping sun reflected from polished white marble lights campfires from tent to tent, fires that shall burn low to glowworm embers presently, their smoke curling up in night mists from the dewy ground. It is then that the friendly forest seems to crowd closer as if to surround the camp with a host of faithful guards. Then out of its violet dusk rings the call of the wood thrush, a call full of gentle mystery, of faith and longing, at once so sad and so sweetly hopeful that it seems to voice all human sorrow for mortality and all human, wistful belief in immortality. “Come to me,” it pipes in tintinnabulating richness out of the deepening dusk. “Good night; good night; all’s well; good night.” No sweeter music than taps ever rang from bugle or from throat of wood thrush when deepening twilight falls upon this white-tented corner of fame’s eternal camping ground. The buttercups that stray lovingly among the graves of the pioneers give up their gold to the sky that sends its tears to dew their round eyes. All day the good gray earth and the brave blue sky have held memorial service, and as the last note of taps rings from the throat of the thrush deep in the sheltering wood the night takes up the service with wet eyes. XIV BIRDS OF CHOCORUA _Some May Songsters of the Frank Bolles Hinterland_