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A good, strong gate is a necessary article for your garden. A good, strong, heavy gate, with a a dislocated hinge, so that it will neither open nor shut. Such an one have I. The grounds before my fence are in common, and all the neighbors' cows pasture there. I remarked to Mrs. S., as we stood at the window in a June sunset, how placid and picturesque the cattle looked, as they strolled about, cropping the green herbage. Next morning, I found the innocent creatures in my garden. They had not left a green thing in it. The corn in the milk, the beans on the poles, the young cabbages, the tender lettuce, even the thriving shoots on my young fruit-trees had vanished. And there they were, looking quietly on the ruin they had made. Our watch-dog, too, was foregathering with them. It was too much, so I got a large stick and drove them all out, except a young heifer, whom I chased all over the flower-beds, breaking down my trellises, my woodbines and sweet-briers, my roses and petunias, until I cornered her in the hot-bed. I had to call for assistance to extricate her from the sashes, and her owner has sued me for damages. I believe I shall move in town.

SPRING BIRDS.

19

CHAPTER II.

conclude to give the Country another Year's Trial-Spring Birds-Mr. Sparrowgrass becomes the Owner of a Boat-A Visit from a Friend-First Experience with a Fish-net-An Irishman in a Fyke-Exchange of Civilities and Cucumbers-Bate's Cow, and a Hint to Horticulturists-Local Designations.

MRS. SPARROWGRASS and I have concluded to try it once more: we are going to give the country another chance. After all, birds in the spring are lovely. First, come little snow birds, avant-courriers of the feathered army; then, blue-birds, in national uniforms, just graduated, perhaps, from the ornithological corps of cadets, with high honors in the topographical class; then follows a detachment of flying artillery-swallows; sand-martens, sappers, and miners, begin their mines and countermines under the sandy parapets; then cedar birds, in trim jackets faced with yellow-aha, dragoons! And then the great rank and file of infantry, robins, wrens, sparrows, chipping-birds; and lastly--the band!

"From nature's old cathedral sweetly ring

The wild bird choirs-burst of the woodland band,
-who mid the blossoms sing;

Their leafy temple, gloomy, tall, and grand,

Pillared with oaks, and roofed with Heaven's own hand."

There, there, that is Mario. Hear that magnificent chest note from the chesnuts! then a crescendo, falling in silence-à-plomb!

Hush he begins again with a low, liquid monotone, mounting by degrees and swelling into an infinitude of melody-the whole grove dilating, as it were, with the exquisite epithalamium.

Silence now-and how still!

Hush! the musical monologue begins anew; up, up, into the tree-tops it mounts, fairly lifting the leaves with its passionate effluence, it trills through the upper branches-and then dripping down the listening foliage, in a cadenza of matchless beauty, subsides into silence again.

"That's a he cat-bird," says my carpenter.

A cat-bird? Then Shakespeare and Shelly have wasted powder upon the sky-lark; for never such "profuse strains of unpremeditated art" issued from living bird before. Sky-lark! pooh! who

OUR QUAKER FRIEND.

21

would rise at dawn to hear the sky-lark, if a catbird were about, after breakfast?

I have bought me a boat. A boat is a good thing to have in the country, especially if there be any water near. There is a fine beach in front of my house. When visitors come, I usually propose to give them a row. I go down-and find the boat full of water; then I send to the house for a dipper; and prepare to bail; and, what with bailing and swabbing her with a mop, and plugging up the cracks in her sides, and struggling to get the rudder in its place, and unlocking the rusty padlock, my strength is so much exhausted that it is almost impossible for me to handle the oars. Meanwhile, the poor guests sit on stones around the beach, with woe-begone faces. "My dear," said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, "why don't you sell that boat?" "Sell it? ha! ha!"

One day, a Quaker lady from Philadelphia paid us a visit. She was uncommonly dignified, and walked down to the water in the most stately manner, as is customary with Friends. It was just twilight, deepening into darkness, when I set about preparing the boat. Meanwhile our Friend seated herself upon something on the beach. While

I was engaged in bailing, the wind shifted, and I became sensible of an unpleasant odor; afraid that our Friend would perceive it too, I whispered Mrs. Sparrowgrass to coax her off, and get her further up the beach.

"Thank thee, no, Susan, I feel a smell hereabout, and I am better where I am."

Mrs. S. came back, and whispered mysteriously, that our Friend was sitting on a dead dog, at which I redoubled the bailing, and got her out in deep water as soon as possible.

Dogs have a remarkable scent. A dead setter one morning found his way to our beach, and I towed him out in the middle of the river; but the faithful creature came back in less than an hourthat dog's smell was remarkable, indeed.

I have bought me a fyke! A fyke is a good thing to have in the country. A fyke is a fish-net, with long wings on each side; in shape like a night-cap with ear-lappets; in mechanism like a rat-trap. You put a stake at the tip end of the night-cap, a stake at each end of the outspread lappets; there are large hoops to keep the nightcap distended, sinkers to keep the lower sides of the lappets under water, and floats, as large as

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