The robin songs in the Balm o' Gileads, just across the yard from our chamber windows, were the matins that often waked us in June, and sounded in our drowsy ears as we lay, still half asleep, reluctant to rise and dress. For however it may be with most boys, I am obliged to confess that both then and later, I was a sleepy-head in the morning; it always seemed to me on waking, particularly in the summer months, that I was not half rested, and that I would give almost anything I possessed for another hour of sleep. As a fact, I now feel sure that I did not get sleep enough, from half past nine in the evening to five in the morning; and I think that most boys and girls of thirteen and fourteen need nine hours of sleep in every twenty-four hours, especially where they are in active exercise or work throughout the day. It is really cruel to drive a boy up when he is so shockingly sleepy! There was always so much going on, that we could not well go to bed till after nine in the evening, although I would sometimes steal away up-stairs as soon as it was dark. Curiously enough it was when I was but about half awake in the morning, that those robin-songs sounded the most distinctly, and I seemed to hear every note and trill which they uttered. "Tulip, tulip, tulip; skillit, skillit, Tulip, skillit; fill it, fill it, fill it;"-- followed after a moment or two, perhaps, by a shrill and noisy "Piff! piff! piff!"--as some sudden dissension broke out, or some suspicious cat, or other marauder, came near the nest tree. The crows, always bold in the early morning hours, would come into the Balm o' Gileads after birds' nests, sometimes, before we were astir. I remember that Addison once cut my nap short by firing his gun from the chamber window at a crow that was sneaking into the Balm o' Gileads after young robins. He shot the crow, but my own ear rang for more than two hours, and I was so confused for a time, that I scarcely knew enough to dress myself. There is no combination of letters which more nearly represents the song notes of the robin than the above, I think, although many attempts have been made to render them into some semblance of human language. Addison always insisted that they said, "Dew-lip, Dew-lip; bill it, bill it, bill it;"--the whole song being an exhortation of the robin to his mate whose name was _Dew-lip_, to get up and _bill it_ for worms. Halstead had somewheres got hold of a medical rendering of the song, by a waggish doctor who declared that the robins were constantly admonishing him in the line of his profession:-- "Kill 'em, cure 'em; physic, physic." But the rest of us scouted this partisan interpretation. The explosive, alarmingly energetic danger cry of, "Piff, piff," which will so suddenly wake the entire vicinity of the nest, is at times modified and given quite a different intonation, as if to express discontent: "Fibb, fibb!" and sometimes even loneliness: "Pheeb, pheeb!"--very mournful.