Country children know that there are two ways to go berrying. According to the first of these you stroll into the pasture in the cool of the day, and at your leisure pick as many as you choose of the ripest and largest of the berries, putting every one into your mouth. This is agreeable. According to the second, you carry a basket, which you are expected to bring home again well filled. And this method--well, tastes will differ, but following the good old rule for judging in such cases, I must believe that most unsophisticated persons prefer the other. The hand-to-mouth process certainly agrees best with our idea of life in Eden; and, what is more to the purpose now, it is the one which the birds, still keeping the garden instead of tilling the ground, continue to follow.
That this unworldliness of the birds has any religious or theological significance I do not myself suppose. Still, as anybody may see, there are certain very plain Scripture texts on their side. Indeed, if birds were only acute theologians, they would unquestionably proceed to turn these texts (since they find it so easy to obey them) into the basis of a "system of truth." Other parts of the Bible must be _interpreted_, to be sure (so the theory would run); but _these_ statements mean just what they say, and whoever meddles with them is carnally minded and a rationalist.
Somebody will object, perhaps, that, with our talk about a "perpetual picnic," we are making a bird's life one cloudless holiday; contradicting what we have before admitted about a struggle for existence, and leaving out of sight altogether the seasons of scarcity, the storms, and the biting cold. But we intend no such foolish recantation. These hardships are real enough, and serious enough. What we maintain is that evils of this kind are not necessarily inconsistent with enjoyment, and may even give to life an additional zest. It is a matter of every-day observation that the people who have nothing to do except to "live well" (as the common sarcasm has it) are not always the most cheerful; while there are certain diseases, like pessimism and the gout, which seem appointed to wait on luxury and idleness,--as though nature were determined to have the scales kept somewhat even. And surely this divine law of compensation has not left the innocent birds unprovided for,--the innocent birds of whom it was said, "Your heavenly Father feedeth them." How must the devoted pair exult, when, in spite of owls and hawks, squirrels and weasels, small boys and full-grown oölogists, they have finally reared a brood of offspring! The long uncertainty and the thousand perils only intensify the joy. In truth, so far as this world is concerned, the highest bliss is never to be had without antecedent sorrow; and even of heaven itself we may not scruple to say that, if there are painters there, they probably feel obliged to put some shadows into their pictures.