Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/90

72 had sung for me, and that was something not fairly to be expected. For a good while he kept silence. Then, in response to a jay's scream, he began snarling, or complaining, after the family manner. I enjoyed the sight of him as long as I could stay (he was the second one I had ever seen with anything like certainty), and when I returned, an hour later, he was still there, and still willing to be looked at.

And then, to heighten my pleasure, a rose-breasted grosbeak, invisible, but not far away, broke into a strain of most entrancing music; with no more than half his spring voice, to be sure, but with all his May sweetness of tone and inflection. Again and again he sang, as if he were too happy to stop. I had heard nothing of the kind for weeks, and shall probably hear nothing more for months. It was singing to be remembered, like Sembrich's "Casta Diva," or Nilsson's "I know that my Redeemer liveth."

Scarlet tanagers are still heard and seen occasionally,—one was calling to-day,—but none of them in tune, or wearing so much as