Oh, sweet musician! thou dost far excel
The soothing song of pleasing Philomel:
Sweet is her song, but in few notes confined,
But thine, thou mimic of the feathery kind!
Runs thro' all notes: thou only know'st them all,
At once the copy and th' original!'"
"That's magnificins!" Rhoda exclaimed, with quiet delight; "who is
'fellow Mil,' Jedge?"
"Oh, that's the British nightingale. These American mocking-birds
surpass them as one of our Eastern Shore clippers outsails all the naval
powers of Europe."
"I've hearn 'The British Nightingale,'" Rhoda said, with a flash of her
eyes; "he was a blind man with green specticklers that sang at Nu-ark,
''ome, sweet 'ome'--that's the way he plonounced it--an' it affected of
him so, he had to drink a whole tumbler of water, an' Misc Somers,
spying around to see if he was the rale nightingale, she found it was
gin in that glass, and told about it."
Rhoda made even the minister laugh, as she indented her cheeks and cast
a sheep's glance at him and the Judge. He marvelled that such forest
English could be resented so little by his mind, but he thought,
"Never mind, she may have had no more lessons than the bird, whose
difficulty is even beautiful. But see! Mr. Milburn is wide awake. My
friend, how do you feel?"
"Better, better!" murmured Milburn. "I cannot lie here any more. There
is money, _money_, gentlemen, dependent on my getting about.
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