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”?
And within three days—I can hardly believe it—the old year will be done. So let it be. Its passing brings us so much nearer the grave; worse yet, perhaps, it leaves us with our winter’s work half accomplished; but our eyes are forward. After all, our work is not important. We are twice too busy; living as our neighbors do, rather than according to the law of our own being; playing the fool (there is no fool like the busy one); selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. The great thing, especially in springtime, is to lie wide open to the life that enfolds us, while the “gentle deities” show us, for our delight,—
“The lore of colors and of sounds,
The innumerable tenements of beauty.”
Yes, that is the wisdom we should pray for. The youngest of us will not see many springs. Let us see the most that we can of this one. So much there will be to look at! Now, of all times, we may say with one of old, “Lord, that I might receive my sight.” What a new world we should find ourselves living in! I can hardly imagine it.
BIRD SONGS AND BIRD TALK
I mentioned a fortnight ago a flock of half a dozen purple finches (linnets) seen and heard conversing softly among themselves in some roadside savin trees on the 29th of January. They must be passing the winter somewhere not far away, I ventured to guess. “Within a month,” I added, “they will be singing, taking the winds of March with music.”
This forenoon (March 5) I had walked up the same pleasant by-road, meaning to follow it for a mile or two, but finding myself insufficiently shod for so deep a slush, I turned back after going only a little way. It was too bad I should have been so improvident, I said to myself; but accident is often better than the best-laid plan, and so it was now. As I neared the bunch of cedars—which I have looked into day after day as I have passed, hoping to find the linnets again there—I descried some smallish bird in one of the topmost branches of a tall old poplar across the field. My opera-glass brought him nearer, but still not near enough, till presently he turned and took an attitude. “Ah, yes,” said I; “a purple finch.” Attitude and gait, though there may be nothing definable about them, are often almost as good as color and feature for purposes of identification. I had barely named the bird before he commenced singing, and as he moved into a slightly better light (the sky being clouded) I saw that he was a red one. He seemed to be not yet in full voice; perhaps he was not in full spirits; but he ran through with his long, rapid, intricate, sweetly modulated warble with perfect fluency, and very much to my pleasure. It was the first song of spring. The linnet is of the true way of thinking; spring, with him, begins with the turn of the month.
Purple finches, by the bye, are among the birds of which it has been said—by Minot, and perhaps by others—that both sexes sing. I hope the statement is true; I could never see any reason in the nature of things why female birds should not have musical susceptibilities and musical accomplishments; but I am constrained to doubt. It is most likely, I think, that the opinion has arisen from the fact that adult males—a year or more old, and fathers of families—sometimes continue to wear the gray, sparrow-like costume of the gentler sex.
My bird of this morning dropped from his perch while I was trying to get nearer to him, and could not be found again. I still suppose that the flock is spending the season somewhere not far off. I have lived with myself too long to imagine that birds must be absent because I fail to discover them.