Sept 9.—Bird song is comparatively rare in. ihe early days. of September: every living creature seems to be tired and to be saying with Hamlet, "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world." Hence my surprise this morning when I ventured forth into the barbed-wire-entangled country and heard the magnificent voice of a song-bird: it had all the mellow tones of a Blackbird...but Blackbirds seem to, be in a state of eclipse now and are taking their annual after the labours of the breeding season: could it be the song of the Hwamei (bird of the Flowery Eye?) Hardly that, because we seldom get the wild Hwamei, and even the Chinese possessors of caged birds have other things to do in times like these than to "exercise the bird", as they call it. Filled with curiosity I went across cóuntry by devious ways the entanglements and repeating to myself Omar's lines, "Oh Thu who didst with pitfall and with gin beset the road I was to wander when I suddenly found the answer to my puzzle. There, beside a little patch of autumn beans, was an ancient Chinese—long gown turned. up for comfort as he squatted on cotton-clad haunches: before him a little cage, rate wie it a Hwamei singing its heart out, Oy four bombing-planes crawled lazily like four fat Bluebpttles crossing an azure ceiling Prrrr-Oddoomp they had laid their eggs some miles away. But the ancient Chinese continued to watch his singing bird, which, birdlike, sang all the louder for the noise—and I walked thinking of many things.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.