SUNDAY afternoon the birds were sweetly mad, and the lovely rage of song drove them hither and thither, and swelled their breasts amain. It was nothing less than a tornado of fine music. I kept saying, "Yes, yes, yes, I know, dear little maniacs! I know there never was such an air, such a day, such a sky, such a God! I know it! I know it!" But they would not be pacified. Their throats must have been made of fine gold, or they would have been rent by such rapture-quakes.—Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a letter to her mother.

Lovely flocks of rose-breasted grosbeaks were here yesterday in the high elms above the springhouse. How very elegant they are! I heard a lark, too, in the meadows near the lake, the note more minor than ever in October air. And oh, such white crowns and white throats! A jeweled crown is not to be mentioned beside theirs—such marvelous contrasts of velvets, black, and white! Swamp sparrows, too, and fox sparrows—I saw both during my last drive.—From letter to Ed., from Nelly Hart Woodworth, Vermont, Oct. 20, 1899.