As a matter of fact, the evening grosbeak goes to bed at dark, like all other respectable, reputable birds. Its song is a wandering, jerky warble that the singer himself recognizes as a miserable failure, for he often stops and looks discontented and then remains silent for a minute before trying again. It sounds like the early part of a robin's song, but is always suddenly checked as if the performer were out of breath. The guess of the imaginative major was later elaborated by Prince Lucien Bonaparte, Nuttall, and even by later ornithologists,--Coues among them,--not one of whom had ever seen or heard the bird. Coues's description in his "Key to North American Birds" is worth quoting as a specimen of the rhetoric in which a past generation of ornithologists dared to indulge.
"A bird of distinguished appearance, whose very name suggests the far-away land of the dipping sun and the tuneful romance which the wild bird throws around the close of day. Clothed in striking color contrast of black, white and gold, he seems to represent the allegory of diurnal transmutation, for his sable pinions close around the brightness of his vesture, as night encompasses golden hues of sunset, while the clear white space enfolded in these tints foretells the dawn of the morrow."
That morning I knew nothing of the history or the habits of this unknown and misrepresented bird. All I knew was that for me the twenty-ninth day of January, 1917, would be marked in my calendar forever by a bird from the north, all dusky gold and velvet black and ivory white--the Day of the Evening Grosbeak.
At last the time came to leave them. As I started back for home, the sun showed through the trees like a vast red coal, with a smoke of clouds drifting across its face, and I traveled back to town in the full glory of a clear winter morning, filled with the measureless content of a great discovery. It was good to be alive and to look forward to more work and to more glorious, adventure-filled runaway days.
After all, the Rosicrucians were an ignorant lot. They spent their days over alembics, cucurbits, and crucibles--yet they grew old. In our days many men--and a few women--have discovered the Elixir of Youth--but never indoors. The prescription is a simple one. Mix a hobby with plenty of sky-air, shake well, and take twice a week. I know a railroad official who retired when he was seventy. "He'll die soon," observed his friends kindly. Instead, he began to collect native orchids from all points of the compass. Now he is too busy tramping over mountains and through woods and marshes even to think of dying. Anyway, he would not have time until he has found the ram's-head and the crane's-bill orchids and finished his monograph on the _Habenaria_. He will never grow old.