Sometimes the singing was interrupted, for those canny Young Americans knew their father's song, and though he had doubtless stolen away and left them foraging on the grass by the path, they heard his voice and came after. While he was pouring out his soul in ecstasy, and I was listening with equal joy, those youngsters came by easy stages nearer and nearer, till one after the other alighted on the lower part of the birch, and, hopping upward from branch to branch, suddenly presented themselves before him, begging in pretty baby fashion for something to eat. The singer, embarrassed by their demands, would sometimes dive into the nearest bushes, followed instantly by the persistent beggars, and in a moment fly off, the infants still in his wake. But he always managed in some way to elude them. Perhaps he fed them or conducted them back to their mother, for in a few minutes he appeared again on the birch and resumed his music. [Sidenote: _OUT ALONE._] On one occasion I met one of these spruce young thrushes, evidently out on his travels alone for the first time. He was in a state of great excitement,--jerked himself about, "huffed" at me, then flew with some difficulty into a tree, where he stood and watched me in a charmingly naïve and childlike manner, utterly forgetting that part of his education which bade him beware of a human being. After passing the home of the thrashers, on my usual morning walk toward the north, my next temptation to linger came from a fern-lined path to the spring, abode of other Young Americans. The path itself was extremely seductive, narrow, zigzagging through a small forest of the greenest and freshest of ferns, so luxuriant that they were brushed aside in passing, and closed behind as if to conceal one's footsteps. Shrubs and trees met overhead; here and there a blooming dogbane or an elder, "foamed o'er with blossoms white as snow," and tall wild roses wherever they could find space to grow. Nearly down to the spring, I seated myself under the bushes and waited. At first, until the bustle of my coming was hushed, all was silent; but soon bird notes began,--soft little "pips" and "chur-r-r's," and other sounds I could not trace to their authors, but plainly expressing disapproval of a spy among them. Catbirds complained with a soft liquid "chuck" or their more decided "mew;" kingbirds peeped out to see what was the excitement, and then settled in the bushes in plain sight, at leisure now since their decorous little folk were educated and taking care of themselves; and other birds came whispering about behind my back, while I dared not turn to see, lest I send everybody off in a panic. An oriole, "Like an orange tulip flaked with black,"