makes, held its beautiful eggs. How seldom one hears the hedge-sparrow's song spoken of, and yet it is wonderfully sweet, a charming "descant" to the robin's bolder lay. The misselthrush, too, that strange bird so shy of itself that it will be seen as little as it may, and yet so confident of its nest that it piles it up in most prominent places, one of the boldest of builders, and often leaving pendent streamers of wool or hay to attract the eye. It will come into the orchard, and within reach of the hand of passers-by build its nest and lay its eggs, and yet never have been seen at work. It is a beautiful bird, and the easiest of all to bring up by hand, its natural courage making it bold to take food where others refuse, and its hardiness helping it over difficulties that even the blackbird and thrush succumb to. These, too, have already built, and even hatched, "before the swallow dares" to come. But they choose, where they can, the shrubbery of evergreens, or thickly ivied wall. Nor is there any reason why they should not be early, for their food is abundant, and the earth-worms, now at the surface again, are everywhere in evidence. Birds, they say, cannot count beyond one. Why is it, then, that the blackbird and thrush, when they are feeding their young ones, never go to the nest with only a single worm in their beaks? If they cannot count they seem to know that it is no use taking one worm back to five hungry nestlings, and, though ignorant of addition, appear to have made a shrewd guess at the first principles of short division. The wood-pigeon, too, has nested, the wariest of birds that then becomes the most stupid-that having young ones in its nursery, must needs throw the egg shells down on to the ground, to tell everybody of the fact, and that sits cooing to its mate on the same bough that holds the nest. What exquisite plumage it is in just now, and how beautiful its voice in the woods! Yet it is among Shakespeare's oddities that he never mentions the ringdove once, nor its cooing. But, then, he never mentions the woodpecker, not the kingfisher, though he lived his youth among woods and by streams. None the less, the culver is both a poem and a poet.

And here, again, as to names of birds that we all know, and think have been always known what were the blackbird and the thrush? "The thrush replies; the mavis descant plays," says Spenser. So the thrush is not the mavis. "The throstle" and "the mavis eke," says Gascoigne. So the throstle is not the mavis. "The woosell near at hand that hath a golden bill" (Shakespeare's "ouzel cock with orange-tawny bill") and " upon the dulcet pype the merle doth only play,' says Drayton. So the blackbird was not the merle. Is it true, as some have surmised, that the golden oriole was once common in England? It has an orange tawny" bill, and its note is exquisite. However, it is a stranger now, though still classed as a British bird." Other strangers are with us in March, and "before the swallow dares." For the chiff-chaff is already everywhere crying out his name vigorously from the tops of trees, but perpetually" moving on," in quest, perhaps, of a mate; and the pretty lisping note of a sylvia may be heard from the hedge where the hazel catkins shake out their mellow dust with every puff of wind that blows in this roaring moon of daffodils."

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But look up at the elms how they swing and sway, and at the rooks that, just as if they were hung in the air on strings, swing and sway above them. It is a grand old bird the rook; one of the very best of our birds. Have you to be up in the morning early? The rooks are before you, and as you ride along, the bright eye of day just showing through the gray, they are passing overhead to where the men are busy in the fields. They are the agricultural laborers of the birds, following the peasant in his work, whatever it may be, and, like him, returning when the day is done to the same place, with the same companions. no better friend than the rook. I have seen acres of potatoes black with rooks, and, walking along the furrows, have seen where their strong beaks had been at work. But five shillings' worth of labor has set all right again, and the crop of potatoes has been magnificent. Yet the farmer shoots the rooks--just as he pays loafers to kill the moles. Up in the morning before the dew is

The farmer has

off the grass, before the lark has left her" moist cabinet," and when probably the only bird-voice to be heard is the robin's, tipsily carolling, as if homeward bound from a jovial supper-party, the rooks are hard at work, scrutinizing every foot of ground for the early worm or the night-feeding grub that has stayed out too late. As soon as the men are afield the rooks are there, waiting for them and for the plough and the harrow and there is no appeal from the inquisition of the rook. He holds his sessions where he chooses, and they may look for summary procedure, beetle, grub or caterpillar, that comes before this rural justice. In their wicker nests, high up in the topmost elms, there are already young ones, here and there, and in all the rest are the full complements of eggs, and life is almost at its busiest, for the birds change places on the nests, and often they have far to go for food, and, while one is away at its meal the other sits upon the eggs. For myself, I think a rookery is far more beautiful as an object for comtemplation, certainly more instructive in its "moral" than the beehive of which we hear so much, and of which the inmates are slaves for all their lives, and wholesale parricides on occasion. The rook is the most human of all birds, and the most English in its character.

The jackdaw, its companion, and now, too, very busy, is rather a gamin, but its voice is delightfully in sympathy with long undisturbed repose, and most significant of antiquity, and of the statelier forms of peace. All through the year they keep near, or pay visits to, their old nests, as the rooks, but scarcely any other birds, do, thus showing an appreciation of "home" which is almost altogether absent in the birdworld. The result is that their nests become enormous, and, as a schoolboy, I have stepped from nest to nest, and often sat on a nest while I blew the eggs.

That Spring is just twenty-five years ago, but the jackdaws, I suppose, build there still, and if they do, there must be a continuous roadway along the boughs of the firs. With nothing else on hand, I often used to go there to rob the jackdaws' nests. But not only for

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that on the way there was a vale in the Downs, littered, and in places heaped, with "aerolites," balls of metal that, when they were broken smelled of sulphur, and were beautifully rayed in prismatic colors. Then there was a little landslip on the crest of a wave of the chalk, in which we found sharks' teeth. In the road that went past it was to be caught V. antiope and a "hairstreak," found nowhere else in the neighborhood. In a word, it was an excursion that always yielded a satisfaction of delights-out of bounds," of course, but when "impositions," all ready written, were to be bought from other boys with birds' eggs, what did impositions matter to the successful bird's-nester? And of all our delights, the jackdaws' grove never failed to please." We, one sworn companion and I, used to reconnoitre the groveit was of dwarf firs--and, assured that there was no enemy in view, would go in on all fours like weasels. The branches grew close to the ground, and, let it be never so sunny outside, the grove was always in a dim religious light amounting to absolute gloom. Not a ray of sunshine ever reached the ground, which was strewn, feet deep probably, with "needles" from the firs, the softest, most sumptuous, carpet boys ever crawled upon. The trees were planted in straight lines, and we used to lie down and look along the ground to see if any keeper's feet and leggings were visible. But all we ever saw was rabbits sitting up to look at us, and jackdaws parading up and down; overhead was the deep foliage of the firs, made denser in places by the huge platforms of jackdaws' nests. On all fours we used to crawl along, picking up as we went squirrels' skulls or jackdaws' heads, beautifully bleached, and, I remember, empty shells of the great "Roman" snail, till we found ourselves under some specially large agglomeration of nests, and then up to it we went. The jackdaws, immediately affected by our spectral appearance through the boughs from underneath, of course made a great to do, but in the general clamor of the grove their expostulations went for nothing, and we used to make ourselves quite at home. Sitting on the platforin, we would find round us, all

within arm's reach, perhaps a dozen nests, each furnished with eggs, and, taking our drills and blow-pipes out of our pockets, would proceed to blow them as we sat there, for as every boy knows, the egg-shell is easy to carry when the egg is not, and as for us, we had the afternoon before us. No keeper could find us, even if he walked below us where we sat, and in the general babel of jackdaw voices the few outraged parents who were aware of our presence gave no cause for suspicion. So there we sat, in the fir-trees, at our ease, blowing the eggs which by-and-by would be paid away for the impositions

which we should have to produce for not being in school to answer to our names at the roll-call.

That Spring, as I have said, is now twenty-five years away in the past, but the Spring this year seems just the same as it was then. That sulphur butterfly going by now is precisely like the other that, as a schoolboy, I threw my cap at, the daffodils are still the same, and now as then

"from the neighboring vale The cuckoo, straggling up the hill tops, Shouteth faint tidings of some gladder place." -Contemporary Review.

You are soaked through," said an elderly lady, who was herself trying to get roasted. "You ought to lose no time in changing your clothes."

I have not anything to change," said the young girl, laughing. “Oh, I shall soon be dry!"

Have you lost all your luggage?" asked the lady sympathetically.

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No," said the young girl, "I had none to lose." And she smiled a little And she smiled a little mischievously, as though she knew by instinct that her companion's sympathy would at once degenerate into suspicion !

"I don't mean to say that I have not a knapsack," she added, considerately. I have walked a long distance-in fact from Z."

And where did you leave your companions?" asked the lady, with a touch of forgiveness in her voice.

"I am without companions, just as I am without luggage," laughed the girl.

And then she opened the piano, and struck a few notes. There was something caressing in the way in which she touched the keys: whoever she was, she knew how to make sweet music : sad music too, full of that undefinable

longing, like the holding out of one's arms to one's friends in the hopeless distance.

The lady bending over the fire looked up at the little girl, and forgot that she had brought neither friends nor luggage with her. She hesitated for one moment, and then she took the childish face between her hands and kissed it.

"Thank you, dear, for your music," she said, gently.

"The piano is terribly out of tune," said the little girl suddenly, and she ran out of the room and came back carrying her knapsack.

"What are you going to do ?" asked her companion.

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I am going to tune the piano," the little girl said; and she took a tuninghammer out of her knapsack, and began her work in real earnest. She evidently knew what she was about, and pegged away at the notes as though her whole life depended on the result.

The lady by the fire was lost in amazement. Who could she be ? Without luggage and without friends, and with a tuning-hammer!

Meanwhile one of the gentlemen had strolled into the salon; but hearing the sound of tuning, and being in secret possession of nerves, he fled, saying, The tuner, by Jove!"

A few minutes afterward Miss Blake, whose nerves were no secret possession,

hastened into the salon, and in her usual imperious fashion demanded instant silence.

"I have just done," said the little. girl. "The piano was so terribly out of tune; I could not resist the temptation."

Miss Blake, who never listened to what any one said, took it for granted that the little girl was the tuner, for whom M. le Propriétaire had promised to send; and having bestowed on her a condescending nod, passed out into the garden, where she told some of the visitors that the piano had been tuned at last, and that the tuner was a young woman of rather eccentric appearance. Really it is quite abominable how women thrust themselves into every profession," she remarked, in her masculine voice. "It is so unfeminine, so unseemly."

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There was nothing of the feminine about Miss Blake her horse-cloth dress, her waistcoat and high collar, and her billycock hat were of the masculine genus; even her nerves could not be called feminine, since we learn from two or three doctors (taken off their guard) that nerves are neither feminine nor masculine, but common. "I should like to see this tuner," said one of the tennis-players, leaning against a tree.

"Here she comes," said Miss Blake, as the little girl was seen sauntering into the garden.

The men put up their eye-glasses, and saw a little lady with a childish face and soft brown hair, of strictly feminine appearance and bearing. The goat came toward her and began nibbling at her frock. She seemed to understand the manner of goats, and played with him to his heart's content. One of the tennis-players, Oswald Everard by name, strolled down to the bank where she was having her frolic. "Good afternoon," he said, raising his cap. "I hope the goat is not worrying you. Poor little fellow! This is his last day of play. He is to be killed to-morrow for table d'hôte."

"What a shame!" she said. "Fancy to be killed, and then grumbled at !" "That is precisely what we do here," he said, laughing. We grumble at everything we eat. And I own to beNEW SERIES, VOL LIX, No 5.

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ing one of the grumpiest,-though the lady in the horse-cloth dress yonder follows close upon my heels.'

"She was the lady who was annoyed at me because I tuned the piano," the little girl said. "Still it had to be done. It was plainly my duty. I seemed to have come for that purpose."

"It has been confoundedly annoying having it out of tune," he said. "I've had to give up singing altogether. But what a strange profession you have chcsen! Very unusual, isn't it ?"

"Why, surely not," she answered, amused. "It seems to me that every other woman has taken to it. The wonder to me is that any one ever scores a success. Nowadays, however, no one could amass a huge fortune out of it."

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No one, indeed !" replied Oswald Everard, laughing. "What on earth made you take to it ?"

"It took to me," she said, simply. "It wrapt me round with enthusiasm. "I could think of nothing else. I vowed that I would rise to the top of my profession. I worked day and night. But it means incessant toil for years if one wants to make any headway."

"Good gracious! I thought it was merely a matter of a few months," he said, smiling at the little girl.

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A few months!" she repeated, scornfully. "You are speaking the language of an amateur. No one has to work faithfully year after year; to grasp the possibilities and pass on to greater possibilities. You imagine what it must feel like to touch the notes, and know that you are keeping the listeners spellbound; that you are taking thein into a fairyland of sound, where petty personality is lost in vague longing and regret."

"I confess I had not thought of it in that way," he said, humbly. "I have only regarded it as a necessary everyday evil; and to be quite honest with you, I fail to see now how it can inspire enthusiasm. I wish I could see," he added, looking up at the engaging little figure before him.

"Never mind," she said, laughing at his distress; "I forgive you. And after all, you are not the only person who looks upon it as a necessary evil. My poor old guardian abominated it. He

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made many sacrifices to come and listen to me. He knew I liked to see his kind old face, and that the presence of a real friend inspired me with confidence."

"I should not have thought it was nervous work,” he said.

"Try it and see," she answered. "But surely you spoke of singing. Are you not nervous when you sing?" "Sometimes," he replied, rather stiffly." But that is slightly different." (He was very proud of his sing ing, and made a great fuss about it.) "Your profession, as I remarked before, is an unavoidable nuisance. When I think what I have suffered from the gentlemen of your profession, I only wonder that I have any brains left. But I am uncourteous."

"No, no," she said. "Let me hear about your sufferings.'

"Whenever I have specially wanted to be quiet," he said, and then he glanced at her childish little face, and he hesitated. "It seems so rude of me," he added. He was the soul of courtesy, although he was an amateur tenor singer.

"Please tell me," the little girl said, in her winning way.

"Well," he said, gathering himself together, "it is the one subject on which I can be eloquent. Ever since I can remember, I have been worried and tortured by those rascals. I have tried in every way to escape from them, but there is a cruel fate working against me. Yes; I believe that all the tuners in the universe are in league against me, and have marked me out for their special prey."

tuner struck up in the drawing-room. I left off suddenly, and fled from the house. But there is no escape from these fiends: I believe they are swarming about in the air like so many bacteria. And how, in the name of goodness, you should deliberately choose to be one of them, and should be so enthusiastic over your work, puzzles me beyond all words. Don't say that you carry a black bag, and present cards which have to be filled up at the most inconvenient time: don't-"

He stopped suddenly, for the little girl was convulsed with laughter. She laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks; and then she dried her eyes and laughed again.

"Excuse me," she said, "I can't help myself; it's so funny."

It may be funny to you," he said, laughing in spite of himself; "but it is not funny to me.'

"Of course it isn't," she replied, making a desperate effort to be serious. "Well, tell me something more about these tuners."

"Not another word," he said, gallantly. "I am ashained of myself as it is. Come to the end of the garden, and let me show you the view down into the valley."

She had conquered her fit of merriment, but her face wore a settled look of mischief, and she was evidently the possessor of some secret joke. She seemed in capital health and spirits, and had so much to say that was bright and interesting, that Oswald Everard found himself becoming reconciled to the whole race of tuners. He was

he re

"All the tuners, of course, plied, rather snappishly. "I know that we cannot do without them; but, good heavens! they have no tact, no consideration, no mercy. mercy. Whenever I've wanted to write or read quietly, that fatal knock has come at the door, and I've known by instinct that all chance of peace was over. Whenever I've been giving a luncheon-party, the tuner has arrived, with his abominable black bag, and his abominable card, which has to be signed at once. one occasion I was just proposing to a girl in her father's library, when the

On

the way from Z, and quite alone too.

"Oh, I don't think anything of that," she said; "I had a splendid time, and I caught four rare butterflies. I would not have missed those for anything. As for the going about by myself, that is a second nature. Besides, I do not belong to any one. That has its advantages, and I suppose its disadvantages; but at present I have only discovered the advantages. The disadvantages will discover themselves!''

"I believe you are what the novels call an advanced young woman," he said. "Perhaps you give lectures on