"If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over.
We will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat.
We will show them how to live together in peace and love and
to agree as we do in our nests. We will build pretty houses
which you will like to see. We will play about your gardens
and flower-beds,--ourselves like flowers on wings,--without
any cost to you. We will destroy the wicked insects and worms
that spoil your cherries and currants and plums and apples
and roses. We will give you our best songs and make the spring
more beautiful and the summer sweeter to you. Every June
morning when you go out to the field, Oriole and Blackbird
and Bobolink will fly after you and make the day more delightful
to you; and when you go home tired at sundown, Vesper Sparrow
will tell you how grateful we are. When you sit on your porch
after dark, Fife Bird and Hermit Thrush and Wood Thrush will
sing to you; and even Whip-poor-will will cheer up a little.
We know where we are safe. In a little while all the birds
will come to live in Massachusetts again, and everybody who
loves music will like to make a summer home with you.
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