bark camp, and eats of your simple fare, and leaves a bit of sunshine
behind him. He goes with you, as you force your way heavily through
the fir thickets on snowshoes. He is hungry, perhaps, like you, but
his note is none the less cheery and hopeful.

When the sun shines hot in August, he finds you lying under the
alders, with the lake breeze in your face, and he opens his eyes very
wide and says: "_Tsic a dee-e-e?_ I saw you last winter. Those were
hard times. But it's good to be here now." And when the rain pours
down, and the woods are drenched, and camp life seems beastly
altogether, he appears suddenly with greeting cheery as the sunshine.
"_Tsic a de-e-e-e?_ Don't you remember yesterday? It rains, to be
sure, but the insects are plenty, and to-morrow the sun will shine."
His cheerfulness is contagious. Your thoughts are better than before
he came.

Really, he is a wonderful little fellow; there is no end to the good
he does. Again and again I have seen a man grow better tempered or
more cheerful, without knowing why he did so, just because Chickadee
stopped a moment to be cheery and sociable. I remember once when a
party of four made camp after a driving rain-storm. Everybody was wet;
everything soaking. The lazy man had upset a canoe, and all the dry
clothes and blankets had just been fished out of the river. Now the
lazy man stood before the fire, looking after his own comfort. The
other three worked like beavers, making camp. They were in ill humor,
cold, wet, hungry, irritated. They said nothing.

A flock of chickadees came down with sunny greetings, fearless,
trustful, never obtrusive. They looked innocently into human faces and
pretended that they did not see the irritation there. "_Tsic a dee_. I