Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/29

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
A FULL MIGRATION
11

as he might have picked a berry. I myself noted in New Hampshire, what many noted hereabouts, the continual presence of warblers on the ground. 'T is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and our multitude of young bird students—for, thank Heaven, they are a multitude—had the opportunity of many years to make new acquaintances. A warbler in the grass is a comparatively easy subject.

After all, the beginners have the best of it. No knowledge is so interesting as new knowledge. It may be plentifully mixed with ignorance and error. Much of it may need to be unlearned. Young people living about me began to find scarlet tanagers early in April; one boy or girl has seen a scissor-tailed flycatcher, and orchard orioles seem to be fairly common; but at least new knowledge has the charm of freshness. And what a charm that is!—a morning rose, with the dew on it. The old hand may almost envy the raw recruit—the young woman or the boy, to whom the sight of a rose-breasted grosbeak, for instance, is like the sight of an angel from heaven, so strange,