THIS garden had some small fruit trees thickly covered with leaves, and a tangle of currant bushes and raspberry vines, as well as neatly worked rows of vegetables. There was also a thick clump of tall, feathery grass beside the paling.

It was well it had these small places of refuge, for it had many perils. Two cats, a white and a gray, patrolled the garden with silent and velvety tread; boys, who were not silent, used all kinds of small but deadly weapons on the street that ran beside it, and great heavy wagons rumbled up and down all day, making a great noise and dust.

But how many birds I have seen and heard there! Red-headed Woodpeckers tapped and called early in the morning on the tall telegraph pole at the corner, and flocks of Grackles, the Bronze, the Purple, and the Rusty Grackles, were fed from the fresh-turned earth. A Catbird hopped lightly in the shadow of the tool-house, and I suspect some Robins of foraging turn with their young families. Sparrows of all kinds dwelt there — flocks of yellow Ground Sparrows, Brown and Gray Sparrows, Chipping Sparrows.

I saw one day the funniest Chipping baby with his chestnut cap pushed up into a regular crown almost too big for his tiny head, and the brightest black eyes peering at me, as he stood on a clod of earth. Flocks, also, of Goldfinches, glittering like small balls of gold, and Indigo Buntings, blue as the sky, held merry-makings there, and oh, the songs from morning until night! A Warbling Vireo sang so loud and so splendidly that we thought he must be some big bird of scarlet plumage instead of the wee wood-sprite he was; and little Wrens and little Indigo Birds fairly bubbled over with songs of joy.

The nests, the hidden nests, were the old garden's secrets, and the garden kept them well. There was a flutter of wings, the bird floated down and was straightway invisible. Not the tip of a tail or beak was to be seen. Or up flew the bird and was as quickly lost in the thick screen of interwoven leaves overhead. There were certain gray birds so much the color of the dead wood on which they perched that they might have nested in full, open view, and yet have remained unseen until they moved. How the little birds did love this garden — the noisy street on one side, the close, dingy houses on the other, and how near its heart did the old garden keep the birds.

So many and such different birds — yet "not one of them is forgotten before God." — ELLA F. MOSBY.