A wood-pile, if it be not too near the house, has many attractions for birds of various kinds, and I am at a loss to know why the whip-poor-will should, of recent years, have forsaken it. Formerly, the first of these birds heard in early spring was that which perched upon the topmost stick and whistled his trisyllabic monologue from dark to dawn. Now they frequent only the retired woodland tracts. Various insect-eating birds continually come and go, attracted by the food they find in the decayed wood, but the house-wren remains throughout its summer sojourn here—that is, from April to October; while during the colder months the winter wren takes the other’s place. These little brown birds are exceedingly alike in appearance, in habits, and in size, and I shall never forget my communicating the fact that they were not the same to Miles Overfield. It was almost my last conversation with him. “Not the same?” he exclaimed. “You might as well tell me that a snow-bird isn’t a chippy in its winter dress!” “They are not, indeed!” I replied, astonished to hear so remarkable a statement. “So you set up book-learnin’ against me about such things as that, eh?” Miles remarked, with unlimited scorn in both his voice and manner; and from that time I lost favor in his eyes. Such crude ideas concerning our common birds are still very common, nor is it to be wondered at. Knowledge of local natural history is still at a discount. Is there a country school where even its barest rudiments are taught? The heaped-up logs that, burning brightly, made cheery my room when I sat down for a quiet evening’s meditation, are now a bed of ashes and lurid coals. They typify the modern wood-piles about our farms—mere heaps of refuse sticks and windfall branches of our dooryard trees. Fit for kindling, perhaps, but never for a generous fire upon an open hearth. As I linger over them, the irrecoverable past, with all its pleasures to the fore, comes back with painful vividness. The fantastic shapes of the ruddy coals, the caverns in the loose ashes, the shadows of the andirons, the filmy thread of smoke, are a landscape to my fancy, upon which my eyes can never dwell again. In the faint moaning of the wind that fills the chimney corner I hear a voice, long stilled, whose music led me dancing through the world. Place and people are alike changed. “All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PART II. IN SPRING. ------- The April Moon.