Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 6/Spring's first minstrel
Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/247 Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/248 household cares intent; I might be bold enough to attempt it, for should I not have the nightingale, the blackcap, and a hundred others to console me, if my unhallowed barbarism provoked Nemesis to silence the thrushes in my garden altogether? I protest I dare not risk such a punishment before I have heard the spring song of my favourite. Better fling my ring into the sea, with an ancient monarch, as a propitiation for mentioning such a thing; better burn my cherished copy of Gilbert White; or, with devout wishes that all my readers may with me soon hear the first minstrel of spring, better than all let me close this paper I have written in his honour.