of its own, and the topmost branch is haunted. Must all legends be
about the loves and sorrows of our self-satisfied race alone?"

"But did you really and truly hear it?" they asked. "I heard it," said
the old man. "But, as I tell you, one hears and one hears. I don't say
that everybody would have heard it, merely by sleeping in my chamber;
but, for the benefit of the least imaginative, I will assure you that
it is founded on fact."

"Begin! begin!" shouted the children.

"Once upon a time," said the old man, "there was a young thrush, who
was born in that beautiful dingle where we last planted the ---- fern.
His home-nest was close to the ground, but the lower one is, the less
fear of falling; and in woods, the elevation at which you sleep is a
matter of taste, and not of expense or gentility. He awoke to life when
the wood was dressed in the pale fresh green of early summer; and
believing, like other folk, that his own home was at least the
principal part of the world, earth seemed to him so happy and so
beautiful an abode, that his heart felt ready to burst with joy. The
ecstasy was almost pain, till wings and a voice came to him. Then, one
day, when, after a grey morning, the sun came out at noon, drawing the
scent from the old pine that looks in at my bedroom window, his joy
burst forth, after long silence, into song, and flying upwards, he sat
on the topmost branch of the pine, and sang as loud as he could sing to
the sun and the blue sky.

"'Joy! joy!' he sang. 'Fresh water and green woods, ambrosial sunshine
and sunflecked shade, chattering brooks and rustling leaves, glade, and
sward, and dell. Lichens and cool mosses, feathered ferns and flowers.