Part 17 (2/2)

The bird that most impressed ales in abundance near Lake Como, and had also listened to larks, but I had never heard either the blackbird, the song thrush, or the blackcap warbler; and while I knew that all three were good singers, I did not knohat really beautiful singers they were

Blackbirds were very abundant, and they played a prohout the day on every hand, though perhaps loudest the followingat dawn In its habits and ly resembles our American robin, and indeed looks exactly like a robin, with a yellow bill and coal-black plue It hops everywhere over the lawns, just as our robin does, and it lives and nests in the gardens in the saeneral resemblance to that of our robin, but many of the notes are far more musical, more like those of our wood thrush Indeed, there were individuals a those we heard certain of whose notes seemed to me almost to equal in point of hest possible praise for any song-bird is to liken its song to that of the wood thrush or hermit thrush I certainly do not think that the blackbird has received full justice in the books I knew that he was a singer, but I really had no idea how fine a singer he was I suppose one of his troubles has been his name, just as with our own catbird

When he appears in the ballads as thethrush, it is far easier to recognize hiland to have such an asset of the countryside, a bird so common, so much in evidence, so fearless, and such a really beautiful singer

The thrush is a fine singer too, a better singer than our Aood as the blackbird at his best; although often I found difficulty in telling the song of one fro of the other, especially if I only heard two or three notes

The larks were, of course, exceedingly attractive It was fascinating to see the and soaring for several minutes, and then return to the point whence they had started As my companion pointed out, they exactly fulfilled Wordsworth's description; they soared but did not roam It is quite impossible wholly to differentiate a bird's voice fro there are occasionalas a whole is not very musical; but it is so joyous, buoyant and unbroken, and uttered under such conditions as fully to entitle the bird to the place he occupies with both poet and prose writer

The er we heard was the blackcap warbler To ale It was astonishi+ngly powerful for so small a bird; in volus of the thrushes and of certain other birds, but in quality, as an isolated bit ofthe ers the robin was noticeable We all know this pretty little bird from the books, and I was prepared to find him as friendly and attractive as he proved to be, but I had not realized hoell he sang It is not a loud song, but verypractically all through the year The song of the wren interested me much, because it was not in the least like that of our house wren, but, on the contrary, like that of our winter wren The the did not seeer of the North Woods The sedge warbler sang in the thick reeds aventriloquial lay, which reminded me at times of the less pronounced parts of our yellow-breasted chat's song The cuckoo's cry was singularly attractive and , many times repeated, note of our rain-crow

We did not reach the inn at Brockenhurst until about nine o'clock, just at nightfall, and a few htjar It did not sound in the least like either our whip-poor-will or our night-hawk, uttering a long-continued call of one or two syllables, repeated over and over The chaffinch was veryits unimportant little ditty I was pleased to see the bold, masterful missel thrush, the stors in the early spring, when the weather is still te been silentit The starlings, rooks, and jackdaws did not sing, and their calls were attractive rackles are attractive; and the other birds that we heard sing, though they played their part in the general chorus, were performers of no especial note, like our tree-creepers, pine warblers, and chipping sparrows The great spring chorus had already begun to subside, but the woods and fields were still vocal with beautiful bird music, the country was very lovely, the inn as comfortable as possible, and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our traether I passed no pleasanter twenty-four hours during a my own birds, and was much interested as I listened to and looked at the the notes and actions of the birds I had seen in England On the evening of the first day I sat inacross the Sound towards the glory of the sunset The thickly grassed hillside sloped down in front of olden, leisurely chih the still air cahtfall we heard the flight song of an ovenbird fro in the weeping elroren Song-sparrows and catbirds sang in the shrubbery; one robin had built its nest over the front and one over the back door, and there was a chippy's nest in the wistaria vine by the stoop During the next twenty-four hours I saw and heard, either right around the house or while walking down to bathe, through the woods, the following forty-two birds:

Little green heron, night heron, red-tailed hawk, yellow-billed cuckoo, kingfisher, flicker, hued blackbird, sharp-tailed finch, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, bush sparrow, purple finch, Balti, robin, wood thrush, thrasher, catbird, scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, yelloarbler, black-throated green warbler, kingbird, wood peewee, crow, blue jay, cedar-bird, Maryland yellowthroat, chickadee, black and white creeper, barn shite-breasted s, ovenbird, thistlefinch, vesperfinch, indigo bunting, towhee, grasshopper-sparrow, and screech owl

The birds were still in full song, for on Long Island there is little abatement in the chorus until about the second week of July, when the blossoreenish-yellow[]

[] Alas! the blight has now destroyed the chestnut trees, and robbed our woods of one of their distinctive beauties

Ournot only in the earlyhot June afternoons So in the trees immediately around the house, and if the air is still we can always hear the the tall trees at the foot of the hill The thrashers sing in the hedgerows beyond the garden, the catbirds everywhere The catbirds have such an attractive song that it is extre to know that at any moment they may interrupt it to mew and squeal The bold, cheery music of the robins always seems typical of the bold, cheery birds the elms around the house, and the orchard orioles in the apple trees near the garden and outbuildings A is the cheerful, si-sparrow; and in March we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark--to us one of the most attractive of all bird calls Of late years now and then we hear the rollicking, bubbling melody of the bobolink in the pastures back of the barn; and when the full chorus of these and ofdown, there are soo buntings and thistlefinches

As is that of the bush-sparrow--I do not knohy the books call it field-sparrow, for it does not dwell in the open fields like the vesperfinch, the savannah-sparrow, and grasshopper-sparrow, but a locusts in the same places where the prairie warbler is found Nor is it only the true songs that delight us We love to hear the flickers call, and we readily pardon any one of their nuh to wake us in the early les of the roof In our ears the red-winged blackbirds have a very attractive note We love the screah overhead, and even the calls of the night heron that nest in the tall water reen herons that nest beside the salt marsh It is hard to tell just how much of the attraction in any bird-note lies in the music itself and how much in the associations

This is what s of one country with those of another Acan no s hich from his earliest childhood he has been fa of his own fas--birds and trees and books, and all things beautiful, and horses and rifles and children and hard work and the joy of life We have great fireplaces, and in thes The big piazza is for the hot, still afternoons of sus that appeal to the householder because of their associations, but which would not mean much to others Naturally, any man who has been President, and filled other positions, accuard to his own personal ton bronze, ”The Bronco Buster,” givenTiffany silver vase given to Mrs Roosevelt by the enlisted men of the battleshi+p Louisiana after we returned froift, presented to her in the White House, on behalf of the whole crew, by four as strappinga turret or pointed a twelve-inch gun The enlisted men of the army I already kneell--of course I kneell the officers of both arrew to knohen I was President On the Louisiana Mrs Roosevelt and I once dined at the chief petty officers'

mess, and on another battleshi+p, the Missouri (when I was in coain on the Sylph and on the Mayfloe also dined as guests of the crew When we finished our trip on the Louisiana I made a short speech to the assembled crew, and at its close one of the petty officers, the very picture of what a man-of-war's-man should look like, proposed three cheers for me in terms that struck me as curiously illustrative of America at her best; he said, ”Now then, men, three cheers for Theodore Roosevelt, the typical Aht of the Aood way, too It was an expression that would have coovernrained in the iment I need scarcely add, but I will add for the benefit of those who do not know, that this attitude of self-respecting identification of interest and purpose is not only compatible with but can only exist when there is fine and real discipline, as thorough and genuine as the discipline that has always obtained in thefleets and armies The discipline and thethe Presidency all of us, but especially the children, became close friends with many of the sailor men The four bearers of the vase to Mrs Roosevelt were pro brothers by our two shts of Washi+ngton in the landau--”the President's land-ho!” as, with seafaring huuests iain, Mrs Roosevelt was in a railway station and had so, quiet man stepped up and asked if he could be of help; he remarked that he had been one of the Mayflower's crew, and kneell; and in answer to a question explained that he had left the navy in order to study dentistry, and added--a delicious touch--that while thus preparing hio on with his studies by practicing the profession of a prize-fighter, being a good

There are various bronzes in the house: Saint-Gaudens's ”Puritan,” a token froar, the gift of the Tennis Cabinet--who also gave us a beautiful silver bohich is always lovingly pronounced to rhyme with ”owl” because that was the pronunciation used at the ti by the valued friend who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and as himself the only non-American member of the said Cabinet There is a horse bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians Mixed with all of these are gifts fro from a brazen Buddha sent me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the E from japan in remembrance of the peace of Portsmouth, and a beautifully inlaid iven o, when he visited Sagas froarden; a huge, very handso miniature of John Hans of ”Eugenio von Savoy” (another ofcup; the state sword of a Uganda king; the gold box in which the ”freedoiven iven me by the French authorities after s froer Es from home friends: a Polar bear skin from Peary; a Sioux buffalo robe with, on it, painted by soht; a bronze portrait plaque of Joel Chandler Harris; the candlestick used in sealing the Treaty of Portsmouth, sent me by Captain Cameron Winslow; a shoe worn by Dan Patch when he paced a mile in 1:59, sent me by his owner There is a picture of a bull ius, which see as I have ever seen In the north room, with its tables and mantelpiece and desks and chests made of woods sent from the Philippines by army friends, or by other friends for other reasons; with its bison and wapiti heads; there are three paintings by Marcus Syht and Shadow Meet,” ”The Porcelain Towers,”

and ”The Seats of the Mighty”; he is dead now, and he had scant recognition while he lived, yet surely he was a great iinative artist, a wonderful colorist, and a ren's pictures of the Western plains; and a picture of the Grand Canyon; and one by a Scandinavian artist who could see the fierce picturesqueness of workaday Pittsburgh; and sketches of the White House by Sargent and by Hopkinson Smith

The books are everywhere There are as -room a un-room at the top of the house, which incidentally has the loveliest view of all, contains more books than any of the other roo, just because they have notone of the reasons why they are relegated to their present abode But the books have overflowed into all the other rooms too

I could not naathered

Books are almost as individual as friends There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover's besetting sin, of what Mr Edgar Allan Poe calls ”the ant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books Of course there are books which a man or woman uses as instruments of a profession--law books,of these, for they are not properly ”books” at all; they coory of tiencies of civilized life I aranted that these books are decent and healthy, the one test to which I de If the book is not interesting to the reader, then in all but an infinitesiives scant benefit to the reader Of course any reader ought to cultivate his or her taste so that good books will appeal to it, and that trash won't But after this point has once been reached, the needs of each reader must be met in a fashi+on that will appeal to those needs

Personally the books by which I have profited infinitely more than by any others have been those in which profit was a by-product of the pleasure; that is, I read the them, and the profit came in as part of the enjoyment

Of course each individual is apt to have some special tastes in which he cannot expect that any but a few friends will share Now, I aaaland, more extensive than mine, but I have not happened to coinals go back to the sixteenth century, and there are copies or reproductions of the two or three es, such as the Duke of York's translation of Gaston Phoebus, and the queer book of the Emperor Maximilian It is only very occasionally that I meet any one who cares for any of these books On the other hand, I expect to find many friends ill turn naturally to some of the old or the new books of poetry or romance or history to which we of the household habitually turn Let me add that ours is in no sense a collector's library Each book was procured because some one of the family wished to read it We could never afford to take overht for the outsides of books; ere too much interested in their insides

Now and then I am asked as to ”what books a statesman should read,” andshort stories under the head of novels I don't mean that he should read only novels and modern poetry If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek dra books on history and governood books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse Gibbon and Macaulay, Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus, the Heila, Froissart, Joinville and Villehardouin, Parkman and Mahan, Mommsen and Ranke--why! there are scores and scores of solid histories, the best in the world, which are as absorbing as the best of all the novels, and of as per is true of Darwin and Huxley and Carlyle and Emerson, and parts of Kant, and of volumes like Sutherland's ”Growth of the Moral Instinct,” or Acton's Essays and Lounsbury's studies--here again I aether, or measure one by another, or enu, but just to indicate that any ence and soht, scientific or historical or philosophical or econoovern to read, and which in addition give that for which his or her soul hungers

I do not for a reat many different books of this character, just as every one else should read them But, in the final event, the statesitator for new things, and the upholder of what is good in old things, all needelse to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great iinative writers, whether of prose or of poetry

The room for choice is so liues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best thinkers This is why I have no sy lists of the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library It is all right for a ood books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot getto choose a five-foot library of particular books which in that particular year and on that particular trip he would like to read But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority ofas a five-foot library which will satisfy the needs of even one particularover a number of years Milton is best for one mood and Pope for another Because aor Lowell he should not feel hi or Korner or Heine or the Bard of the Diood at one time and those of Sienkiewicz at another; and he is fortunate who can relish ”Salammbo” and ”Tom Brown” and the ”Two Adoldsby Legends” and ”Pickwick”

and ”Vanity Fair” Why, there are hundreds of books like these, each one of which, if really read, really assimilated, by the person to whom it happens to appeal, will enable that person quite unconsciously to furnish himself with much ammunition which he will find of use in the battle of life