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Updated: May 8, 2025
Victim of a devouring ambition that will not let him rest till either legs or wings will bear him, he scrambles out upon his native tree, stretches, plumes a little in a jerky, hurried way, and then boldly launches out in the air alas! to come flop to the ground, where he is an easy prey to boys and cats, both of whom are particularly fond of young mocking-birds.
Once, and once only, thus far, the water has frozen in my tent; and the next morning showed a dense white frost outside. We have still mocking-birds and crickets and rosebuds, and occasional noonday baths in the river, though the butterflies have vanished, as I remember to have observed in Fayal, after December.
"What nonsense!" said Richard, coldly; "a journey to Europe is a trifle no need to make a fuss about it; is there, Phyllis? Come, let us go to dinner. I hear the bell." Before dinner was over the sun had set and the moon risen. The mocking-birds were singing, the fire-flies executing, in the sweet, languid atmosphere, a dance full of mystery. The garden was like a land of enchantment.
The matter of a fort had not been broached, yet Smith, whose military knowledge showed him how vulnerable the island was, made no suggestion for its fortification. He had strolled alone through the tangle of undergrowth, of flowering vines in which frightened mocking-birds and catbirds were darting, to the side of the island nearest the bank of the mainland.
But even these dissonances hardly rippled the clear torrent of the mocking-birds' notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs and trees. It would not have been preposterous for one to tiptoe and essay to touch the stars, they hung so bright and imminent. Mr. Kinney's wife, a young and capable woman, we had left in the house.
The figs commenced leafing with the month: now they are green with broad leaves, and in the axil of each appears the rudiment of a fruit. They are grotesquely gnarled and twisted, taking most unthought-of shapes and positions. The mocking-birds have mated and begun the construction of their nests. Their music is delightful: nearly all the day long they sing, and sometimes in the night.
How could he secure and forward to England a few things that he must have, such as a gar alligator, a pair of mocking-birds, a Floridian flamingo, a ruby humming-bird, "a Texan horned frog, with a distinctly-developed tail, crustaceous, probably antediluvian, and credibly reported to live upon air," not to mention other treasures, and collections previously made, which must be shipped before he left?
The mocking-birds, which had so jeered and flouted him before, were again fluttering to and fro over his head and crying incessantly with their sharp, small voices: "Herr Studiosus, Herr Studiosus, don't be in such a hurry! Don't peep into the clouds so! You may fall on your nose He, he! Herr Studiosus, put your powder-mantle on; cousin Screech-Owl will frizzle your toupee."
Are you not always, as the saying goes, 'two faces under one hood?" "Truly, how can it be otherwise, when you put our heads under the great hood of your pelisse?" said Rose, laughing. "There they are again, mocking-birds! One never has the last word with them. Come, ladies, your secret, since a secret there is." "Speak, sister," said Rose. "No, miss, it is for you to speak.
These American mocking-birds surpass them as one of our Eastern Shore clippers outsails all the naval powers of Europe."
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