be another story.  There were so many people in this garden—­people with feathers, or fur—­who, because I sat so quietly, did not mind me in the least, that it was not a surprising thing when I looked up one summer morning to see a small bird hopping about the grass a yard or so away from me.  The surprise was not that he was there but that he stayed there—­or rather he continued to hop—­with short reflective-looking hops and that while hopping he looked at me—­ not in a furtive flighty way but rather as a person might tentatively regard a very new acquaintance.  The absolute truth of the matter I had reason to believe later was that he did not know I was a person.  I may have been the first of my species he had seen in this rose-garden world of his and he thought I was only another kind of robin.  I was too—­ though that was a secret of mine and nobody but myself knew it.  Because of this fact I had the power of holding myself still—­quite still and filling myself with softly alluring tenderness of the tenderest when any little wild thing came near me.  “What do you do to make him come to you like that?” some one asked me a month or so later.  “What do you do?” “I don’t know what I do exactly,” I said.  “Except that I hold myself very still and feel like a robin.”

You can only do that with a tiny wild thing by being so tender of him—­ of his little timidities and feelings—­so adoringly anxious not to startle him or suggest by any movement the possibility of your being a creature who could Hurt—­that your very yearning to understand his tiny hopes and fears and desires makes you for the time cease to be quite a mere human thing and gives you another and more exquisite sense which speaks for you without speech.

As I sat and watched him I held myself softly still and felt just that.  I did not know he was a robin.  The truth was that he was too young at that time to look like one, but I did not know that either.  He was plainly not a thrush, or a linnet or a sparrow or a starling or a blackbird.  He was a little indeterminate-colored bird and he had no red on his breast.  And as I sat and gazed at him he gazed at me as one quite without prejudice unless it might be with the slightest tinge of favor—­ and hopped—­and hopped—­and hopped.

That was the thrill and wonder of it.  No bird, however evident his acknowledgement of my harmlessness, had ever hopped and remained. Many had perched for a moment in the grass or on a nearby bough, had trilled or chirped or secured a scurrying gold and green beetle and flown away.  But none had stayed to inquire—­to reflect—­even to seem—­if one dared be so bold as to hope such a thing—­to make mysterious, almost occult advances towards intimacy.  Also I had never before heard of such a thing happening to any one howsoever bird loving.  Birds are creatures who must be wooed and it must be delicate and careful wooing which allures them into friendship.