OLIVE THORNE MILLER.

OCTOBER 5.

THE MOCKING BIRD.

  Each flower a single fragrance gives,
    But not the perfume of the rest;
  Within each fruit one flavor lives,
    Not all the flavors of our quest;
  In every bird one song we note
    That seems the sweeter without words;
  Yet from the mock-bird’s mellow throat
    Come all the songs of other birds.

FRED EMERSON BROOKS,
in Pickett’s Charge and Other Poems.

OCTOBER 6.

When a mocking-bird looks squarely at you, not turning his head one side, and then the other, like most birds, but showing his front face and using both eyes at once, like an owl—­when he looks squarely at you in this way, he shows a wise, wise face.  You almost believe he could speak if he would, and you cannot resist the feeling that he is more intelligent than he has any right to be, having behind those clear, sharp eyes, only “blind instinct,” as the wise men say.

OLIVE THORNE MILLER.

A sunset in San Juan is truly worth crossing either a continent or an ocean to witness, when the ranges toward La Paz are purple where the sage-brush is, and rose-color where the rains have washed the steep places to the clay, and over all of mesa and mountain the soft glory of golden haze.

MARAH ELLIS RYAN,
in For the Soul of Rafael.

OCTOBER 7.

THE MOCKING BIRD.

He has an agreeable way of improving upon the original of any song he imitates, so that he is supposed to give free music-lessons to all the other birds.  His own notes, belonging solely to himself, are beautiful and varied, and he sandwiches them in between the rest in a way to suit the best.  No matter who is the victim of his mimicry, he loves the corner of a chimney better than any other perch, and carols out into the sky and down into the black abyss as if chimneys were made on purpose for mocking-birds.

ELIZABETH AND JOSEPH GRINNELL,
in Birds of Song and Story.

OCTOBER 8.

I love the mocking-bird; not because he is a wonderful musician, for—­as I have heard him—­that he is not; nor because he has a sweet disposition, for that he certainly has not, but because of his mysterious habit of singing at night, which seems to differentiate him from his kind, and approach him to the human; because of his rapturous manner of song, his joy of living; because he shows so much character, and so much intelligence.

OLIVE THORNE MILLER.

The lift of every man’s heart is upward; to help another human soul in its upward evolution is life’s greatest and most joyful privilege; to lend ourselves each to the other as an inspiration to grander living is life’s highest ministry and reward.