“And did you nearly expire with stage fright?”

“Never was scared one bit, my dear.  All bird-lovers are the nicest kind of folks, either as an audience or in their own homes.  I have made most delightful acquaintances lecturing in fifteen different States; am now booked for a tour in the West, lecturing every day and taking classes into the fields and woods for actual observation.  Nesting-time is the best time to study the birds, to know them thoroughly.”

“Do you speak about dead birds on hats?”

“Yes, when I am asked to do so.  Did you ever hear that Celia Thaxter, finding herself in a car with women whose head-gear emulated a bird-museum, was moved to rise and appeal to them in so kindly a way that some pulled off the feathers then and there, and all promised to reform?  She loved birds so truly that she would not be angry when spring after spring they picked her seeds out of her ‘Island Garden.’”

“Have you any special magnetic power over birds, so that they will come at your call or rest on your outstretched finger?”

“Not in the least.  I just like them, and love to get acquainted with them.  Each bird whose acquaintance I make is as truly a discovery to me as if he were totally unknown to the world.”

We were sitting by a southern window that looks out on a wide-spreading and ancient elm, my glory and pride.  Not one bird had I seen on it that cold, repellent middle of March.  But Mrs. Miller looked up, and said:  “Your robins have come!” Sure enough I could now see a pair.

“And there are the woodpeckers, but they have stayed all winter.  No doubt you have the hooting owls.  There’s an oriole’s nest, badly winter-worn; but they will come back and build again.  I see you feed your chickadees and sparrows, because they are so tame and fearless.  I’d like to come later and make a list of the birds on your place.”

I wonder how many she would find.  Visiting at Deerfield, Massachusetts, I said one day to my host, the artist J.W.  Champney:  “You don’t seem to have many birds round you.”

“No?” he replied with a mocking rising inflection.  “Mrs. Miller, who was with us last week, found thirty-nine varieties in our front yard before breakfast!” Untrained eyes are really blind.

Mrs. Miller is an excellent housekeeper, although a daughter now relieves her of that care.  But, speaking at table of this and that dish and vegetable, she promised to send me some splendid receipts for orange marmalade, baked canned corn, scalloped salmon, onion a la creme (delicious), and did carefully copy and send them.

She told me that in Denmark a woman over forty-five is considered gone.  If she is poor, a retreat is ready for her without pay; if rich, she would better seek one of the homes provided for aged females who can pay well for a home.

Another thing of interest was the fact that when Mrs. Miller eats no breakfast, her brain is in far better condition to write.  She is a Swedenborgian, and I think that persons of that faith have usually a cheerful outlook on life.  She was obliged to support herself after forty years of age.