join heartily in the merriment. There was a native grape-vine close
by, blue with its less refined abundance, but my cunning thieves
preferred the foreign flavor. Could I tax them with want of taste?

(1) "For well the soul, if stout within,
Can arm impregnably the skin."
*The Titmouse,* lines 75, 76.

The robins are not good solo singers, but their chorus, as, like
primitive fire-worshippers, they hail the return of light and warmth
to the world, is unrivalled. There are a hundred singing like one.
They are noisy enough then, and sing, as poets should, with no
afterthought. But when they come after cherries to the tree near
my window, they muffle their voices, and their faint *pip pip pop!*
sounds far away at the bottom of the garden, where they know I
shall not suspect them of robbing the great black-walnut of its
bitter-rinded store.(1) They are feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure,
but then how brightly their breasts, that look rather shabby in the
sunlight, shine in a rainy day against the dark green of the fringe-
tree! After they have pinched and shaken all the life of an
earthworm, as Italian cooks pound all the spirit out of a steak, and
then gulped him, they stand up in honest self-confidence, expand
their red waistcoats with the virtuous air of a lobby member, and
outface you with an eye that calmly challenges inquiry. "Do *I*
look like a bird that knows the flavor of raw vermin? I throw
myself upon a jury of my peers. Ask any robin if he ever ate
anything less ascetic than the frugal berry of the juniper, and he will
answer that his vow forbids him." Can such an open bosom cover
such depravity? Alas, yes! I have no doubt his breast was redder at
that very moment with the blood of my raspberries. On the whole,