The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1874-12-24

"A great, glOSSy-leaved trumpetvine
hangs its wealth of foliage and flower.
clusters over the paling in front of oul
door. Every afternoon 1t is visited by a
pair of humming- birds, little golden.
green bits of beauty, darting their tiny
bills into the deep-throated, yellow-lined,
scarlet blossoms, and futtering and hov.
ering about like vague dreams Of poetry
too ethereal to alight. They were q
"jOy forever" to our little household.
One day (during the late panic about
the negro riot), we heard the loud report
of gun, and, going out to ascertain the
cause, found the curly-headed pet of our
household standing in the walk, with a
morsel of bright, blood-dabbled feathers
in her hand, and her black eyes flashing
indignant fire at great, red bewhiskered
six-foster, who reclined lazily on bench
under peach-tree. The gun in the
mans hand, the little bunch of bloody
feathers, the indignant attitude of the
child, told the story, oven before We
heard the man say complacently to his
comrade:
"That was a good shot. You sec
took his head off Clean"
He had killed one of our pretty pair
of humming-birds. He had ruthlessly
destroyed in an instant thing made OF
beauty and innocence and joy--a sun
beam in a world of shadow, whose ex-
quisite loveliness his gross compound OF
flesh and blood could not appreciate or
comprehend. The act seemed intensely
cruel. 1t was on par with the malig-
nifty of a boy once knew, who collected
all the frogs of different sizes he could
find, and confined them alive in pot.
There were there, heaped en- n,asse, the
delicate green tree-frog, the mottled rain
frog, the bright-eyed, clean-limbed cham
pion leaper of the pool, and the great,
goggle-eyed, blOod-a-n0uns king Of the
mill-pOnd, whose thighs are held in such
esteem at French restaurants. The young
Nero advertised a free frog concert ;
filled his pot with water, clapped the
lid on, and built fire under it. Then
he sat down and laughed and chuckled
to hear the confused croaking that rose
to shrill chorus of agony as the water
in the pot gradually heated to boiling
point.
That boy liyed an era too soon. He
should have been born in Rome, and
been chief of the Inquisition in the days
of the torture.
But we set out to talk about birds, not
frogs, though a raw Paddy is said to have
described these as "mighty purity birds,
barring they haven't the fithers."
The swinging nest of the oriole is a
charming curiosity. The great pear-tree
by our window has every year been the
site of a mOcking-birds nest, but last
spring it was more rarely honored. An
Oriole swung her silken hammock upon
one of its bOughs, and reared her bronze
colOred brood beneath our admiring eyes.
We watched the weaving of the curious
swinging cradle with daily interest, and
when it was finished, and the dainty
eggs had turned to wee, halfnaked, liv-
ing creatures, pathetic in their helpless
ness, we trembled lest every wind should
send their frail domicile flying off like q
balloon. But it swung bravely, and the
little bird-babies nestled within seemed,
like the sailor in his hammock, to sleep
the sweetcr for the tossing. Our curly
haired pet wondered if the mOther-brd
did not sing them Dame Goose's lullaby,
translated into OriOle-
" kOck-a-Dy baby on the tree-t0p,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock"
When the young orioles had taken
wing and gone to seek their fortunes in
the great woods beyond, we took down
the deserted nest to place among our
treasures. We examined it curiously,
and found many souvenirs of the sum-
mer interwrsught with its texture.
There were tao fine needles dangling from
the outside by their threads Of blue silk
and of white cotton; there were the long
stamens of an artificial lily that M
had worn on the bosom of her ball-dress,
and bit of gold braid that We remem-
bered to have seen ripped from the Zou-
ave jacket of black-eyed romp who had
spent bright week with us in spring.
And in the soft lining was woven human
hair of two colors, nut-brown and crimpy
black, exactly matching the locks of the
two eager heads that bobbed against each
other in their inspection of the swinging
nest.
One who lives much with nature learns
many of the secrets of birds, but the
owls will always remain.