Whoever loves the music of English sparrows should live in Chattanooga; there is no place on the planet, it is to be hoped, where they are more numerous and pervasive. Mocking-birds are scarce. To the best of my recollection, I saw none in the city itself, and less than half a dozen in the surrounding country. A young gentleman whom I questioned upon the subject told me that they used to be common, and attributed their present increasing rarity to the persecution of boys, who find a profit in selling the young into captivity. Their place, in the city especially, is taken by catbirds; interesting, imitative, and in their own measure tuneful, but poor substitutes for mocking-birds. In fact, that is a rôle which it is impossible to think of any bird as really filling. The brown thrush, it is true, sings quite in the mocking-bird's manner, and, to my ear, almost or quite as well; but he possesses no gift as a mimic, and furthermore, without being exactly a bird of the forest or the wilderness, is instinctively and irreclaimably a recluse. It would be hard, even among human beings, to find a nature less touched with urbanity. In the mocking-bird the elements are more happily mingled. Not gregarious, intolerant of rivalry, and, as far as creatures of his own kind are concerned, a stickler for elbow-room,--sharing with his brown relative in that respect,--he is at the same time a born citizen and neighbor; as fond of gardens and dooryard trees as the thrasher is of scrublands and barberry bushes. "Man delights me," he might say, "and woman also." He likes to be listened to, it is pretty certain; and possibly he is dimly aware of the artistic value of appreciation, without which no artist ever did his best. Add to this endearing social quality the splendor and freedom of the mocker's vocal performances, multifarious, sensational, incomparable, by turns entrancing and amusing, and it is easy to understand how he has come to hold a place by himself in Southern sentiment and literature. A city without mocking-birds is only half Southern, though black faces be never so thick upon the sidewalks and mules never so common in the streets. If the boys have driven the great mimic away from Chattanooga, it is time the fathers took the boys in hand. Civic pride alone ought to bring this about, to say nothing of the possible effect upon real estate values of the abundant and familiar presence of this world-renowned, town-loving, town-charming songster.