questions his eager soul was always asking of the outer world.

There was no spirit in Edgewood bold enough to conceive that Tony
learned anything in the woods, but as there was never sufficient
school money to keep the village seat of learning open more than half
the year, the boy educated himself at the fountain head of wisdom and
knowledge the other half. His mother, who owned him for a duckling
hatched from a hen's egg, and was never quite sure he would not turn
out a black sheep and a crooked stick to boot, was obliged to confess
that Tony had more useless information than any boy in the village.
He knew just where to find the first Mayflowers, and would bring home
the waxen beauties when other people had scarcely begun to think
about the spring. He could tell where to look for the rare fringed
gentian, the yellow violet, the Indian pipe. There were clefts in
the high rocks by the river side where, when every one else failed,
he could find harebells and columbines.

When his tasks were done, and the other boys were amusing themselves
each in his own way, you would find Tony lying flat on the pine-
needles in the woods, listening to the notes of the wild birds, and
imitating them patiently, till you could scarcely tell which was boy
and which was bird; and if you could, the birds couldn't, for many a
time he coaxed the bobolinks and thrushes to perch on the low boughs
above his head, where they chirped to him as if he were a feathered
brother. There was nothing about the building of nests with which he
was not familiar. He could have helped in the task, if the birds had
not been so shy, and if he had possessed beak and claw instead of
clumsy fingers. He would sit near a beehive for hours without
moving, or lie prone in the sandy road, under the full glare of the
sun, watching the ants acting out their human comedy; sometimes