As Mrs. Miller naïvely remarks, “of course I could do no less than to take her to our park, where were birds in plenty.” And here, in Prospect Park when she was nearly fifty years old—incredible as it seems in view of her later work—Mrs. Miller got her first introduction to birds. “I knew absolutely nothing about ornithology,” she confesses; “indeed, I knew by sight not more than two birds, the English Sparrow and the Robin, and I was not very sure of a Robin either! I must say in excuse for myself,” she adds, “that I had never spent any time in the country and had been absorbed all my life in books. My friend was an enthusiast, and I found her enthusiasm contagious. She taught me to know a few birds, a Vireo, the charming Catbird, and the beautiful Wood Thrush, and indeed before she left me I became so interested in the Catbird and Thrush that I continued to visit the park to see them, and after about two summers’ study the thought one day came to me that I had seen some things that other people might be interested in. I wrote what I had observed and sent an article to the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ and it was accepted with a very precious letter from Mr. Scudder, who was then editor. All this time my love of birds and my interest in them had been growing, and soon I cared for no other study. I set up a bird-room in my house to study them winters and I began to go to their country haunts in the summer.”
Of the bird-room described so interestingly in ‘Bird Ways’ it is only necessary to say that first and last Mrs. Miller had about thirty-five species of birds which she bought from the bird stores in winter and allowed to fly about in her bird room, where she could study them unobtrusively at her desk by means of skillfully arranged mirrors. For twenty summers, from 1883 to 1903, she spent from one to three months in the country studying the wild birds, visiting among other sections, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Colorado, Utah, and California, taking careful notes in the field and writing them up for publication at the end of the season. To one who has not known her, the method may sound deliberate and commercial, but to one who has worked joyfully by her side, each year’s journey is known to have meant escape from the world, to the ministering beneficence of Nature. Let her speak for herself.—“To a brain wearied by the din of the city ... how refreshing is the heavenly stillness of the country! To the soul tortured by the sights of ills it cannot cure, wrongs it cannot right, and sufferings it cannot relieve, how blessed to be alone with nature, with trees living free, unfettered lives, and flowers content each in its native spot, with brooks singing of joy and good cheer, with mountains preaching divine peace and rest!”[1] Freed from city life and the tortures imposed by her profound human sympathy, each gift of fancy and imagination, each rare quality of spirit, joined in the celebration of the new excursion into fields elysian. But while each sight she saw was given glamour and charm by her imagination and enthusiasm, her New England conscience ruled her every word and note, and not one jot or tittle was let by, no word was set down, that could not pass muster before the bar of scientific truth.