the fall on their way to the south where they will winter; others will nest with you and stay all summer and then go south for the winter; still others will come from the north in the fall and stay over winter and go back north again in the spring, while a few will be with you winter and summer alike; if you will send to Mr. A. W. Butler, secretary of the board of charities he will send you blanks on which to keep this information. In this way you can very pleasantly interest yourselves in the travels of birds. Have you not seen flocks of wild geese flying in long lines forming a V to the north? Two such flocks at least have flown over my home during March, this year; as winter approaches you will see them flying in similar lines to the south. Where do these birds winter? Have you read

"He who from zone to zone

Guides through the boundless sky thy soli-
tary flight,

In the long way that I must lead alone
Will guide my steps aright."

This is only one impressive case of what we call bird migration; many birds pass thus unnoticed, because they come and stay a few days and then pass on, and others come and take their places, and careless observers do not notice that anything is taking place; when you first have a chance to read this letter the spring migration season will be nearly over, but you can notice it in the fall. The birds furnish us something of interest always. They are mating and nesting now, and this will interest us all summer long.

If you will watch the comings and goings of birds for several years you will find that it works differently one year from what it does another, and it will become a pleasure to find out why; the chief reasons will be that the winter is colder or warmer than common, or you may have provided a comfortable home and plenty of food so that some bird will not need to go south, or coming to you from the north will tarry with you instead of going further; watch the kingfisher and see if he does not stay with you until the streams freeze over so that he can no longer get food.

Birds know their friends; they are afraid of us because for many years we have stoned and killed them; we can win them again by kindness. Burns sung, when his mouse ran from him,

"I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
And justifies the ill opinion,
That makes thee startle

At me, thy poor earth-born companion
And fellow mortal."

We

When Captain Cook first went to the South Sea islands he met birds that had ́ never seen men and they welcomed him with music and banners to their shores; I am sorry to have to relate that they found men undesirable fellows, and now they run whenever they see any of us coming. ought to behave differently toward the beautiful, useful birds; if you can get hold of a young robin or bluebird or cedar bird you can raise it for a pet if you will give it the freedom of the house at first and later the freedom of the yard and neighborhood; you will have to know just what it likes for food, will have to give it time to learn your good intentions; it will soon fly down from the trees and eat from your hand; how delightful to know that the bird is yours and yet that it is free to fly wherever it will; it returns to you because it loves you, instead of remaining because it must,-in a cage; and besides how much more beautiful the bird is on the wing; it flies in ideal curves and displays all its charms of color. If you want to acquaint yourselves with the lives and habits of your home birds, a little booklet by Professor Hodge of Clark university will help you greatly; you can get it for ten cents of O. B. Wood of Worcester, Mass.

If a bird has any peculiar habit as the hang-bird in building its nest so that it will shut up when the bird is on, the quail in hopping off from its nest or brood as if lame, or the meadowlark and quail in entering the nest by a trap door from the side sometimes, the yellow-breasted chat in making its voice seem to come from a distant bush where its nest is not, the cowbird in laying its eggs in the nest of another bird, the English sparrow in nesting in a crevice the entrance to which is very small, or the fly-catcher in ornamenting its nest with a snakeskin, you will be richly paid if you try to find out why it behaves as it does; often the key to its action will be protection from enemies or gathering its food. Birds are colored very differently and some of them differently at different seasons of the year; in many instances the male and female are not the same color; do you know that the red bird, the redwinged blackbird, and the rose-breasted grosbeak are all gayly clad

"Robert-of-Lincoln is gaily dressed,

Wearing a bright black wedding coat;
White are his shoulders and white his crest
Hear him call in his merry note.
"Robert-of-Lincoln's quaker wife,

Pretty and quiet with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life,

Broods in the grass while her husband sings: Nice good wife that never goes out,

Keeping house while I frolic about."

You have often seen

"Mr. Bluejay full of sass,

In them base ball clothes of his, Sportin' round the orchard jes

Like he owned the premises."

Mrs. Bluejay dresses for the world like her husband, and the chances are about even that it was she Riley saw. Mrs. Meadowlark and Mrs. Redhead are both very much like their husbands; male and female are alike also among hawks generally, owls, crows and buzzards; you should try to find out the reason for these and similar observations which you may make; see if this suggestion will help you; the female must sit on the nest; she ought to be colored like her surroundings, so as not to be easily seen, unless like the hawk she is master of her

tects her, or like the oriole her nest conceals her; her husband should be alike inconspicuous if, like the meadowlark, he sits on the nest part of the time.

The birds will tell you much if you will get acquainted with them. Nawadaha had no books from which to learn and yet he was wise; Longfellow says he got his lessons

"In the birds' nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoofprints of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle;

"All the wild fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands and the fenlands,
In the melancholy marshes."

Birds are more than artists and teachers, more than friends to the friendly, more than "bits of sunshine dowered with a voice' close by the barn, the eaves of which housed those hundreds of martins, the Bellflower tree of my boyhood grew; we gathered thirty bushels of apples a year from it; every apple was sound; the toll we paid in the way of red-junes and cherries to the woodpeckers was small pay for the services of the birds; to-day there are ten hungry worms for every apple in our old orchard.

EARLHAM COLLEGE.

AS

S early as the time of Henry VII, companies of players constituted a part of the households of the great noblemen of England. The players were attached to the musical part of the establishment and presented the interludes and morality plays which were the forerunners of the Elizabethan drama. When the service of the players was not needed by the master, they were allowed to wander about the country at will, performing on the village greens or in the tavern yards of larger towns. such journeys the players went by the name of Lord So and So's servants; and, as was natural, it was not long before the suburban districts were overrun with bands of vagabonds and rogues who, by calling themselves his servants, claimed the protection of some

On

nobleman who had perhaps never heard of them.

To put an end to this practice, a law was passed early in the reign of Elizabeth, which required every actor to procure a license. The power to grant these licenses was given to certain noblemen, to the mayors of towns, to the Lord-Lieutenants of certain counties, and to two justices of the peace resident in the neighborhood where the applicant resided. This law, which inflicted the penalties for vagabonds upon all unlicensed actors for a while put an end to the abuse of patronage.

This restriction of the actors occurred just at that time in the reign of Elizabeth when the importation of foreign ideas, and prosperity at home combined to develop the