He had killed several before now, home based business that work said, but had never been obliged to chase one in this fashion. On the roadside, between the wheel-track and the gulch, grew brilliant Mexican poppies, with Venus's looking-glass, yellow oxalis, and beds of blackberry vines. Then I found myself in a bit of hollow that seemed made for a stopping-place, with a plantation road running off to the right, and a hillside cornfield of many acres on the left. Once back at the hotel, I opened my Coues's Key to refresh my memory as to the exact appearance of that bird. Many good Republicans and good Democrats (the adjective is used in its political sense) might have envied him his sunny temper, joined, as it was, to a good stock of native shrewdness. Again and again the birds sang, and at last I discovered one of them perched at the top of the oak, tossing back his head and warbling --a white-crowned sparrow: the one regular Massachusetts migrant which I had often seen, but had never heard utter a sound. 8] I understand that there are some phases of mental trouble that harmonise well with such surroundings, and that some persons, by the dispensing power of the imagination, can go back several centuries in spirit, and put themselves into sympathy with the hunted, houseless, unsociable way of life that was in its place upon these savage hills. Nor is the truant always in the streets, for if he prefers, he may go out by the gardened suburbs into the country. Montenegro is one of the smallest principalities work at home the world, about 3,550 square miles. Stevenson loved action in novels, and was impatient, as many readers are, when long-drawn descriptions of scenery were introduced.