the fisherman’s friend.  He seems to enter into your sport with his good wishes, and for an hour at a time, while you are trying every fly in your book, from a black gnat to a white miller, to entice the crafty old trout at the foot of the meadow-pool, the song-sparrow, close above you, will be chanting patience and encouragement.  And when at last success crowns your endeavour, and the parti-coloured prize is glittering in your net, the bird on the bough breaks out in an ecstasy of congratulation:  “catch ’im, catch ’im, catch ’im; oh, what a pretty fellow! sweet!”

There are other birds that seem to have a very different temper.  The blue-jay sits high up in the withered-pine tree, bobbing up and down, and calling to his mate in a tone of affected sweetness, “salute-her, salute-her,” but when you come in sight he flies away with a harsh cry of “thief, thief, thief!” The kingfisher, ruffling his crest in solitary pride on the end of a dead branch, darts down the stream at your approach, winding up his red angrily as if he despised you for interrupting his fishing.  And the cat-bird, that sang so charmingly while she thought herself unobserved, now tries to scare you away by screaming “snake, snake!”

As evening draws near, and the light beneath the trees grows yellower, and the air is full of filmy insects out for their last dance, the voice of the little river becomes louder and more distinct.  The true poets have often noticed this apparent increase in the sound of flowing waters at nightfall.  Gray, in one of his letters, speaks of “hearing the murmur of many waters not audible in the daytime.”  Wordsworth repeats the same thought almost in the same words: 

     “A soft and lulling sound is heard
     Of streams inaudible by day.”

And Tennyson, in the valley of Cauteretz, tells of the river

     “Deepening his voice with deepening of the night.”

It is in this mystical hour that you will hear the most celestial and entrancing of all bird-notes, the songs of the thrushes,—­the hermit, and the wood-thrush, and the veery.  Sometimes, but not often, you will see the singers.  I remember once, at the close of a beautiful day’s fishing on the Swiftwater, I came out, just after sunset, into a little open space in an elbow of the stream.  It was still early spring, and the leaves were tiny.  On the top of a small sumac, not thirty feet away from me, sat a veery.  I could see the pointed spots upon his breast, the swelling of his white throat, and the sparkle of his eyes, as he poured his whole heart into a long liquid chant, the clear notes rising and falling, echoing and interlacing in endless curves of sound,

     “Orb within orb, intricate, wonderful.”

Other bird-songs can be translated into words, but not this.  There is no interpretation.  It is music,—­as Sidney Lanier defines it,—­

     “Love in search of a word.”