water-ouzel pattering in perfect ease and comfort along the floor of the
pellucid pool, and who had heard from their fisher friends from the
north coast of the gannets that were drawn up in the herring-nets.

Most of us, even _color chi sanno_, like to retain a spice of mystery in
our mental food. It may constitute no part of the nutriment, and may
often be deleterious, but it meets a want, somehow or other, and wants,
however undefinable, must be recognized. It is a spur that titillates
the absorbent surfaces and helps to keep them in action. It is a craving
that the race is never going to outlive, and that will afford occupation
and subsistence to a considerable class of its most intelligent and
respectable members until the year one million, as it has done since the
year one. The great mass of us like to see the absolute reign of reason
tempered by the incomprehensible, and are ever ready to lend a kindly
ear to men and things that humor that liking.

Where do all the birds, myriads in number and scores in species, go when
they leave the North in the winter? A small minority lags, not
superfluous, for we are delighted to have them, but in a subdued,
pinched, and hand-to-mouth mode of existence in marked contrast to their
summer life and perceptibly marring the pleasure of their society. They
flock around our homes and assume a mendicant air that is a little
depressing. Unlike the featherless tramps, they pay very well for their
dole; but we should prefer them, as we do our other friends, to be
independent, and that although we know they are but winter friends and
will coolly turn their backs upon us as soon as the weather permits. The
spryest and least dependent of them all, the snow-bird, who sports
perpetual full dress, jerks at us his expressive tail and is off at the
first thaw, black coat, white vest, and all. No tropics or sub-tropics
for him. He can stand our climate and our company with a certain