Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/235

Rh 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"?