Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/27



of my friends, a bird lover like myself, used to complain that by the end of May he was worn out with much walking. His days were consumed at a desk,—"the cruel wood," as Charles Lamb called it,—but so long as migrants were passing his door he could not help trying to see them. Morning and night, therefore, he was on foot, now in the woods, now in the fields, now in shaded by-roads, now in bogs and swamps. To see all kinds of birds, a man must go to all kinds of places. Sometimes he trudged miles to visit a particular spot, in which he hoped to find a particular species. Before the end of the month he must have one hundred and twenty or one hundred and twenty-five names in his "monthly list;" and to accomplish this, much leg-work was necessary.

I knew how to sympathize with him. Short as May is,—too short by half,—I