In the mornings of early summer the out-of-door sleeper is more likely to be awakened by the song-birds. In June and early July they strike up about half-past three. “When it is light enough to see that all is well around you, it is light enough to sing,” they carol. “Before the early worm is stirring, we will celebrate the coming of day.” During the summer the song-sparrows have been the first to nudge me in the morning with their songs. One little sparrow especially would perch on the telephone-wire above the roadside and go through his repertoire of five songs with great regularity and joyousness. He will long be associated in my mind with those early, fragrant, summer dawns. One of his five songs fell so easily into words that I had only to call the attention of my friends to it to have them hear the words that I heard: “If, if, if you please, Mr. Durkee,”--the last word a little prolonged, and with a rising inflection. Another was not quite so well expressed by these words: “Please, please, speak to me, sweetheart.” The third one suggested this sentence: “Then, then, Fitzhugh says, yes, sir!” The fourth one was something like this: “If, if, if you seize her, do it quick.” The fifth one baffled me to suggest by words. But in August his musical enthusiasm began to decline. His different songs lost their distinctiveness and emphasis. It was as if they had faded and become blurred with the progress of the season. The little birds are insignificant and unobtrusive on the great background of nature, yet if one learns to distinguish them and to love them, their songs may become a sort of accompaniment to one’s daily life. In May, while I was much occupied in repairing and making habitable an old farm-house, a solitary, mourning, ground-warbler, which one rarely sees or hears, came and tarried about the place for a week or ten days, singing most of each forenoon in the orchard and garden about the house, and giving to my occupation a touch of something rare and sylvan. He lent to the apple-trees, which I had known as a boy, an interest that the boy knew not. Then he went away, whether on the arrival of his mate or not I do not know. [Illustration: Photograph, copyright, by Alvin Langdon Coburn. Color-tone made for ~The Century~ by Henry Davidson JOHN BURROUGHS ]