some elder civilization embodied in this community of birds,--all those
lost arts taken wings, not to fly away, but to come flitting and building
in our trees, picking crumbs from our door-steps?

Do they say birds are limited? Who are we that set bounds to this direct
knowledge, this instinct? Mathematical, constructive, they certainly
are. What bold architect has builded so snug, so airy a house,--well
concealed, and yet with a good outlook? We make our dwellings conspicuous;
they hide their pretty art.

We wiseacres, who stay at home, instead of following the seasons round the
globe, should learn the art of making happy homes; yet what housekeeper
will not hang her head in shame and despair, to see this nice adaptation of
use to wants, shown each year in multitudes of nests? Now, only look at
it! always just room enough,--none to spare. First, the four or five eggs
lie comfortably in the small round at the bottom of the nest, with room
enough for the mother robin to give them the whole warmth of her broad red
breast,--her sloping back and wings making a rain-proof roof over her
jewels. Then the callow younglings rise a little higher into the wider
circle. Next the fledglings brim the cup; at last it runs over; four large
clumsy robins flutter to the ground, with much noise, much anxious calling
from papa and mamma,--much good advice, no doubt. They are fairly turned
out to shift for themselves; with the same wise, unfathomable eyes which
have mirrored the round world for so many years, which know all things, say
nothing, older than time, lively and quick as to-day; with the same
touching melody in their long monotonous call; soon with the same power of
wing; next year to build a nest with the same wise economy, each young
robin carrying in his own swelling, bulging breast the model of the hollow
circle, the cradle of other young robins. So you see it is a nest within a
nest,--a whole nest of nests; like Vishnu Sarma's fables, or Scheherazade's