I do hate to see a tall, stout fellow so sniveling like a girl of fourteen over a dead tomtit.

At one time wild duck, pigeons, and woodcock were plentiful there, but that time has passed, though the gallant French sportsmen may still be seen trooping through with their dogs after blackbirds and tomtits!

One year, when all the places were taken, I suppose, a tomtit, in her embarrassment, spied the slit of the letter-box protected by its little roof, at the right of the parsonage gate.

"That must be a tomtit," said he, "they are the only birds clever enough to think of it.

" He did take away the key, and when he had finished the morning's dutiesvisits to his parishioners who were ill or in trouble; instructions to a boy who was to pick him out some fruit at the village: a climb up the steeple because a storm had loosened some stones, he remembered the tomtit and began to be afraid she would be troubled by the arrival of a letter while she was hatching her eggs.

" The letter arrived at St. Philémon the very day the tomtits were hatched.

The time came when the tiny points on the wings of the little tomtits began to be covered with down.

Recognizing their friend and master as he walked up and down the gravel path, they came down, fluttered about him, making an unusually loud noise, and the tomtits, the fourteen of the nest, whose feathers were still not quite grown, essayed their first spirals about the pear-trees and their first cries in the open air.

Nevertheless, the next day, after a night spent in talking to Philomène, he said to her: "Next year, Philomène, if the tomtit comes back, let me know.

But the tomtit never came againand neither did the letter from the bishop!

Of these red feathers Cook says they were of such value that "not more than might be got from a tomtit, would purchase a hog of 40 or 50 pounds weight."

bud, germ, seed, blossom, tidbit, morsel, mannikin, tomtit, abbreviation, concentration, quintessence!

I wonder how he felt last year when there was a reception in the hall and a band broke the long stillness with 'The Gay Tomtit.'

" "A tomtit might as well defy me," he said with amusement.

"Well, big as you are, a tomtit having such superior facilities for getting about could easily defy you," I replied.

Hence, Woodpeckers, Creepers, and Tomtits do not migrate.

She tears up a handful of wild thyme and smells it, or calls the tomtits and the jayswho never come to her by any chance.

And inside of me I was singing as small as a tomtit.