Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III.?BUSY BODIES. DON’T put a hyphen between the words: I do not mean common busy-bodies, people who meddle with other folks’ business. I do not mean people at all. I mean some busy, busy birds, who mind their own affairs, work diligently for their living, and set their whole lives to music of the gentlest monotone. It has not even the two notes, up and down, down and up, by which an editor once described the compass of his minister’s voice. It is one never-varying hum-m-m-m-m-m-m, with not so much as a final dropping by way of emphasis. On and on, like the story which was never to come to an end, so greatly desired by the Eastern king, until he found it, as you will remember, running on day after day, and week after week, in this wise:
And there came another locust and carried off another grain of corn, and therecame another locust and carried off another grain of corn, till, as you know, the poor king went frantic, and offered anything, everything he had, only to have done with the locusts. And there might be such a thing as too much humming-bird. I never discovered that this bird produced any other sound except a faint kind of squeal ? for it is more that than it is a chirp. It is about such a squeak ? to call it by another name?as a bungling player experimenting with the strings of a violin sometimes makes: small, quick, half plaintive, half shrill, and snapping short off. You have a chance to see the whole mode of operation ? both of the humming and the insect-like cry ? if you catch the bird and put him under a glass. This we have frequently done. Humming-birds are door-yard folks who are apt to come in when they don’t mean to; and once in, they seem so turned round that they don’t know the way out. I have sometimes thought that the reason why a hummi…