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Nothing could be plainer than that he sings for the pure pleasure of it an artist deeply in love with his art. Falling a little behind the thrashers in vocal power and technical execution were the catbirds, which sent up their cavatinas from the bushes in the hollow. Their voices lacked the volume and strength of their rivals, yet some of their strains were truly the quintessence of sweetness.
"You were a United Irishman, Mr. M'Keown, I believe?" rejoined the counsel, with a frown of stern intimidation. "Yes, sir; and a White Boy, and a Defender, and a Thrasher besides. I was in all the fun them times." "The Thrashers are the fellows, I believe, who must beat any man they are appointed to attack; isn't that so?" "Yes, sir."
When I turned my steps that way, I came first upon the feeding-ground of another party of Young Americans, thrashers. They were a family group, a pair with their two full-grown but still babyish young. Approaching cautiously, I usually found the parents on the ground busily hunting insects, and the youngsters following closely, ready to receive every morsel discovered.
Big birds like robins and thrashers, even belligerent ones, who will not generally allow themselves to be driven, usually depart speedily before the beak of the least of mothers asserting her ownership of a tree or bush; not because they are afraid of her, but because they appreciate the justice of her title, and demand the same for themselves.
In the course of this month, we saw a great number of whales and thrashers, some of which came close to the reef: indeed, on our first landing here, I found the entire skeletons of two whales, which had every appearance of having been driven on shore, and the flesh destroyed by rats and birds.
Part of the great field was already stripped to a belt of tall stubble, though long ranks of stooks still stretched across the rest, and dusty men were hard at work among them. Wagons rolled through the crackling straw going slowly, piled high with rustling loads; returning light, jolting wildly, as fast as the teams could trot, for the thrashers were paid by the bushel and would brook no delay.
This almost necessitated the existence, as a kind of defence against Orangeism, of a body I used to hear them speaking of when I was a boy in Ballymagenaghy, called the "Thrashers," which, I imagine, must have been some kind of a secret society.
The first I knew of the Baltimore and orchard orioles last spring, they were singing blithely in the trees about the house; but the brown thrashers flitted about slyly and silently for a few days, apparently to make sure that the coast was clear of danger; having done which, they burst into their dithyrambs with a will.
Grandmother spoke feelingly. “When she first came to this country, Frances, and had that genteel old man to watch over her, she was as pretty a girl as ever I saw. But, dear me, what a life she’s led, out in the fields with those rough thrashers! Things would have been very different with poor Ántonia if her father had lived.” The Harlings begged us to tell them about Mr.
So, under a blue cloud of wood smoke, and amid blinding fibrous dust, panting men, jolting wagons, and the musical whir of the separator, the work went on, until the thrashers departed, taking their pay with them.
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