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They found him enjoying himself with a lively company of careless bachelors all distant cousins of Bobby Bobolink who had travelled with him in a roistering flock all the way from the South. They were all wonderful singers those happy Bobolinks. They could scarcely have kept still if they had wanted to. But somehow Bobby Bobolink seemed to be just a bit the best singer of the lot.
There used to be meadows full of rocks, in each crevice of which nodded a scarlet columbine, surrounded by grassy borders where wild strawberries grew thickly, with hedge-rows running riot with blackberry, sumach, and alder, all reckless of utility and given over to lovely waste, that were vocal on June mornings with bobolinks, but where in these times one might wait the whole day through and not hear a single note of the old refrain.
"Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we were allowed to visit her in her own room, a neat little parlor in the neighborhood, whose windows looked down a hillside on one hand, under the boughs of an apple-orchard, where daisies and clover and bobolinks always abounded in summer time; and on the other faced the street, with a green yard flanked by one or two shady elms between them and the street.
"In smoothing the rough hillocks I smooth my temper. In a short time I can hear the bobolinks sing and see the blessed deluge of light and color that rolls around me."
The flock of them had gathered in tree-tops and flooded the day with such mellow, laughing melodies as the world can have only in springtime and only as long as the bobolinks last. The ways of the springtime are for the spring, and those of the autumn for the fall of the year.
Off to my right, in a piece of rank grass, where branches of dock had sprung up, bobolinks were swinging the pale, green sprays, filling the air with melody. "Bobolink, bobolink, spirk, spank, spink, chee, chee, chee!" I knew that "Mrs. Robert of Lincoln" was sitting contentedly on her little round nest, under a tuft of grass, very near the sweet singer.
If he walked in the road, he walked in the middle of it, shuffling up the dust; or if he went elsewhere, he was likely to be running on the top of the fence or the stone wall, and chasing chipmunks. John knew the best place to dig sweet-flag in all the farm; it was in a meadow by the river, where the bobolinks sang so gayly.
Nestlings cradled near the ground seem to be spared the long period in the nest endured by birdlings who must be able to fly before they can safely go. Young veeries and bobolinks, song sparrows and warblers, who build low, apparently take leave of the nursery as soon they can stand up.
"It is like passing sweet meadows alive with bobolinks." "Some men," says Beecher, "move through life as a band of music moves down the street, flinging out pleasures on every side, through the air, to every one far and near who can listen; others fill the air with harsh clang and clangor.
Thus, with a little aid of imagination, I get up some very exquisite fabrics vocal silks and satins: robins on a field of chickadees; bobolinks and thrushes alternately on a hit-or-miss ground of blackbirds, wrens, and pewees.
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