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 spring house. 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.