“The Bird Imitator,” The Bohemian,

Zoe Anderson Norris.

“The Bird Imitator,” The Bohemian,

November 1907.

Cover art by William G. Krieghoff.

Zoe often portrayed Southerners like herself, navigating big cities. In this story, a businessman traveling in rural Virginia meets a teenager skilled at imitating birdsong and persuades the boy to perform on New York’s vaudeville stages—birdsong imitators indeed filled theaters in Zoe’s day. But Manhattan’s “bedlam-like turmoil” cacophonously blots out the teen’s memories of tuneful woodland birds. He flees homeward. Zoe wrote eight stories for The Bohemian (1900-1909), based in Boston and then upstate New York. 

From the Collection of Eve M. Kahn.