Sweet content in voice and motion;
Following plash of many a wave;
Or o’er pine that faces ocean
Mounts this rover, gay and brave!
—George Bancroft Griffith.
A BIT OF BIRD GOSSIP.
The sun shone brightly through the green leaves of the trees and crowned each tiny ripple on the lake with a glistening diamond. A Robin Redbreast hopped along the shore, picking up a few pebbles, for the poor thing has to wear her false teeth in her stomach, as it were, having no teeth in her head with which to chew her food.
There was a rush of wings above her and she dropped the grain of sand with which she had thought to fill up her gizzard, cocked her smooth black head on one side and watched the approach of another bird. Was it friend or enemy? It proved to belong to the aristocratic family of Thrushes—real high-flyers among birds—who alighted on the same sandy shore and advanced “with many a flirt and flutter” to greet her old friend, for they had been neighbors in the same sunny orchard the year before.
“So glad to meet you again, Mrs. Redbreast,” said the gracious Thrush in a most musical voice, “but are you not a long way from the willows on the river bank where I last had the pleasure of seeing you?”
“Oh, we never finished that house among the willows. We became dissatisfied with the neighborhood,” answered Mrs. Redbreast, after performing the graceful courtesy of a well-bred bird, as are all Robin Redbreasts.