though that was a secret of mine and nobody but myself knew it. Because
of this fact I had the power of holding myself STILL--quite STILL and
filling myself with softly alluring tenderness of the tenderest when any
little wild thing came near me. "What do you do to make him come to you
like that?" some one asked me a month or so later. "What do you DO?" "I
don't know what I do exactly," I said. "Except that I hold myself very
still and feel like a robin."

You can only do that with a tiny wild thing by being so tender of him--
of his little timidities and feelings--so adoringly anxious not to
startle him or suggest by any movement the possibility of your being a
creature who COULD HURT--that your very yearning to understand his tiny
hopes and fears and desires makes you for the time cease to be quite a
mere human thing and gives you another and more exquisite sense which
speaks for you without speech.

As I sat and watched him I held myself softly still and felt just that.
I did not know he was a robin. The truth was that he was too young at
that time to look like one, but I did not know that either. He was
plainly not a thrush, or a linnet or a sparrow or a starling or a
blackbird. He was a little indeterminate-colored bird and he had no red
on his breast. And as I sat and gazed at him he gazed at me as one quite
without prejudice unless it might be with the slightest tinge of favor--
and hopped--and hopped--and hopped.

That was the thrill and wonder of it. No bird, however evident his
acknowledgement of my harmlessness, had ever hopped and REMAINED. Many
had perched for a moment in the grass or on a nearby bough, had trilled
or chirped or secured a scurrying gold and green beetle and flown away.
But none had stayed to inquire--to reflect--even to seem--if one dared