Next the fledglings brim the cup; at last it runs over; four large
clumsy robins flutter to the ground, with much noise, much anxious calling
from papa and mamma,--much good advice, no doubt. They are fairly turned
out to shift for themselves; with the same wise, unfathomable eyes which
have mirrored the round world for so many years, which know all things, say
nothing, older than time, lively and quick as to-day; with the same
touching melody in their long monotonous call; soon with the same power of
wing; next year to build a nest with the same wise economy, each young
robin carrying in his own swelling, bulging breast the model of the hollow
circle, the cradle of other young robins. So you see it is a nest within a
nest,--a whole nest of nests; like Vishnu Sarma's fables, or Scheherazade's
stories, you can never find where one leaves off and another begins, they
shut so one into the other. No wonder the children and philosophers are
they who ask, whether the egg comes from the bird, or the bird from the
egg. Yes, it is a _Heimskringla_, a world-circle, a home-circle, this nest.
You remember that little, old, withered man who used to bring us eggs; the
boys, you know, called him Egg Pop. When the thrifty housewife complained
of the small size of his ware, he always said,--
"Yes, Marm, they be small; but they be monstrous full."
Yes, the packing of the nest is close; but closer is the packing of the
egg. "As full as an egg of meat" is a wise proverb.
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