“You are too much in haste,” some man will say; the same that said, “How are the dead raised up?” But I know better. It is one happy effect of ornithological habits that they shorten the winter. There will be no spring flowers for a good while yet, but there will be spring birds within a fortnight, perhaps within a week; nay, there may be some before night. Indeed, I have just come in from a two-hour jaunt, and at almost every step my ears were open for the first vernal note. I have seen bluebirds, before now, earlier than this; and what has happened once may happen again. So, while the wind blew softly from the southwest, and all the hills were mantled with a dreamy haze, I chose a course that would take me past one apple orchard after another; and, as I say, my ears (which I often think are better ornithologists than their owner,--if he is their owner) kept themselves wide awake. If that sweet voice, “Purity, purity” (with all bird lovers I thank Mr. Burroughs for the word)--if that heavenly voice, the gentlest of prophets, was on the breeze, they meant to hear it. They heard nothing, but that is not to say that they listened to no purpose. They heard nothing, and they heard much; for there is an ear within the ear, and the new year’s voice--which is the bluebird’s--was in the deepest and truest sense already audible. The ornithologist failed to catch it; for him _Sialia sialis_ is still to look for; but the other man was in better luck. The “new year’s voice,” I say; for the year begins with spring. We had the seasons in their true order when we were school-children--“spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter.” It must have been some very old and prosy chronologist that arranged their progression as our almanacs now give it. The young are better instructed. Does not the Scripture say, “The last shall be first”? And within three days--I can hardly believe it--the old year will be done. So let it be. Its passing brings us so much nearer the grave; worse yet, perhaps, it leaves us with our winter’s work half accomplished; but our eyes are forward. After all, our work is not important. We are twice too busy; living as our neighbors do, rather than according to the law of our own being; playing the fool (there is no fool like the busy one); selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. The great thing, especially in springtime, is to lie wide open to the life that enfolds us, while the “gentle deities” show us, for our delight,-- “The lore of colors and of sounds, The innumerable tenements of beauty.” Yes, that is the wisdom we should pray for. The youngest of us will not see many springs. Let us see the most that we can of this one. So much there will be to look at! Now, of all times, we may say with one of old, “Lord, that I might receive my sight.” What a new world we should find ourselves living in! I can hardly imagine it. BIRD SONGS AND BIRD TALK