Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/171

Rh "I know not what it was," he says, "but something shocked my mind at that thought, and I durst not speak the words. 'How canst thou be such a hypocrite?' said I."

So I imagine that most bird-gazing men would hesitate to thank the Divine Providence for a northern winter, with its rigors, its inordinate length, and its destitution. They put up with it, make the best of it, grumble over it as politely as may be; but they are not so piously false-tongued as to profess that they like it.

By the last of December they have begun, not exactly to tire of chickadees and blue jays, but to sigh for something else, something to go with these, something by way of variety. "Where are the crossbills," they ask, "and the redpoll linnets, and the pine grosbeaks?" All these circumpolar species are too uncertain by half, or, better say, by two thirds. Summering at the apex of the globe, so to speak, with Europe, Asia, and America equally at their elbow, they seem to flit southward along whatever meridian happens to take their fancy. Once in a while chance brings them our way, but only