I have ventured upon some slight ornithological comparison between southeastern Tennessee and eastern Massachusetts, and, writing as a patriot (or a partisan), have seen to it that the scale inclined northward. To this end I have made as much as possible of the absence of robins, song sparrows, and vesper sparrows, and of the comparative dearth of swallows; but of course the loyal Tennessean is in no want of a ready answer. Robins, song sparrows, vesper sparrows, and swallows are _not_ absent, except as breeding birds. He has them all in their season,[9] and probably hears them sing. On the whole, then, he may fairly retort, he has considerably the advantage of us Yankees: he sees our birds on their passage, and drinks his fill of their music before we have caught the first spring notes; while we, on the other hand, see nothing of his distinctively southern birds unless we come South for the purpose. Well, they are worth the journey. Bachman's finch alone--yes, the one dingy, shabbily clad little genius by the Chickamauga well--might almost have repaid me for my thousand miles on the rail. * * * * * It was a strange mingling of sensations that possessed me in Chattanooga. The city itself was like other cities of its age and size, with some appearance of a community that had been in haste to grow,--a trifle impatient, shall we say (impatience being one of the virtues of youth), to pull down its barns and build greater; just now a little checked in its ambition, as things looked; yet still enterprising, still fairly well satisfied with itself, with no lack of energy and bustle. As it happened, there was a stir in local politics at the time of my visit (possibly there always is), and at the street corners all patriotic citizens were exhorted to do their duty. "Vote for Tom ---- for sheriff," said one placard. "Vote for Bob ----," said another, in capitals equally importunate. In Tennessee, as everywhere else, the politician knows his trade. Familiarity, readiness with the hand, freedom with one's own name (Tom, not Thomas, if you please), and a happy knack at remembering the names of other people,--these are some of the preëlection tests of statesmanship. All in all, then, between politics and business, the city was "very much alive," as the saying goes; but somehow it was not so often the people about me that occupied my thoughts as those who had been here thirty years before. Precious is the power of a first impression. Because I was newly in the country I was constantly under the feeling of its past. Hither and thither I went in the region round about, listening at every turn, spying into every bush at the stirring of a leaf or the chirp of a bird; yet I had always with me the men of '63, and felt always that I was on holy ground. FOOTNOTES: [3] _The Auk_, vol. iii. p. 103.