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Birds and Books

BY WALTER LECKY,

Author of ‘‘ Billy Buttons,’’ ‘‘Green Graves in Ireland,”
‘*Impressions and Opinions,’’ ‘‘ Short Stories,’’ etc.

BOSTON :
ANGEL GUARDIAN PRESS,
1899. Ps

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39575

Copyright, 1899,
BY THE ANGEL GUARDIAN PRESS,

BOSTON.
TWO GOFIES «euEIveD:

TO
Villanova College,
its FACULTY “AND ITS

STUDENTS.

Y first sight of

a bullfinch was
in one of the
= “ most north-

S¥el\iie, ern of Irish

SAni. Ves,
; wild and pic-
turesque Donegal. It was on an early June
morning, one of those Irish mornings which
ever after haunt the imagination. The
soft, grey, Irish sky above, and in its
folds the lark, spilling music, which seems,
on such a morn, more like the voices of
spirits communicating to earth a bit of
celestial bliss than the earthly songs of
birds; the yellow swaying oat’s stalks,

2

IO BIRDS AND BOOKS.

and beyond them the burnished helmets
of the furze, from whence came the clear
note of the mavis carolling to his lady
love. Add to this the piping of that gay
serenader, the Irish blackbird, ‘‘with his
beak of gold,” and the soft, low crooning
of a little Irish river at my feet, whose
melody, methought, as some old tales
sped through my brain, was but the luring
song of a dripping mermaid fair, who
might, did I venture near, do to me as
she had done to Geethe’s poor fisherman.

Among such scenes came my first bull-
finch flitting among a little group of haw-
thorn trees, showing me his black cap and
his dark brown breast; when lost to my
view, in the shrubbery, still recalling his
presence by a few notes in a swift flute-
tone, that caught my boyish heart, and
aroused the enthusiasm and unbounding
ambition of youth to capture allits fancies
within my breast. So I followed him

BIRDS AND BOOKS. II

from shrub to shrub, from tree to tree,
held by his beauty, following the law of
human greed, even dominant in youth, un-
til the gay fellow, weary of my attentions,
went into the sunlight as if he was a part
of it, held my eye for a moment, and, like
all the things we cherish, faded from my
view. With his going came the old spirit,
so masterly portrayed in La Fontaine’s
fable of the Hox and the Grapes.

Distance lent him no enchantment; his
absence and above all his noble unwilling-
ness to be my prisoner made his beauty
despised

‘*‘ Things, bad begun,
Make strong themselves by ill.”

My next meeting with the bullfinch was
in a sleepy, old Tyrolese town, fond to my
heart by its lack of modernity, and its ab-
sence of tourists, and it has other claims, |
memories of Hofer, whose life I once read
in a little green volume, crying myself to

‘2 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

sleep over his tragic fate; memories, too,
but more broken and blurred, of the
Minniesingers, one of whom, in Italian
marble, crowns the square, and in his
quaint armor, for poets in those far-off
merry times were warriors as well, a thing
befitting when actions followed so quickly
words, lends a glamor to this Old World
town. ,

In front of the statue is a little cobbler’s
shop; the owner bears an Italian name,
but his look and speech are German. A
travelling friend, listening to his rich voice
singing a lyrical snatch from Schiller’s
William Tell, the shepherd’s song, saw
in this evidence of his Italian descent, as
if the Tyrolese were not as musical as the
Italians. He went on the plan of those
Wearying scientists who, meeting with a
fact and not knowing the causes, boldly
invent them, and then stamp them for al]
time with their dogmatism. Our friend

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 13

the shoemaker, for such he afterward
became, was proud of his speech and his
country, a characteristic which at once
engaged my respect. How could it be
otherwise, just fresh from a study of Scott
and his ringing linesin myear. ‘The cob-
bler had been in the army and had a rare
fund of anecdotes, amongst them his hobby
which he always mounted in front of an
audience, and those of us who laugh at
the show forget that we are only unhorsed
for the time, ready at the first convenience
to remount. And I donot hesitate to say
that on this same mount the very best
money’s worth in life is to be gotin the
riding. The nag ourfriend rode, tome a
most interesting creature, was ‘‘Bullfinch
training,” which he illustrated, illuminated,
if I may say so, with his pet which hung
above his head. And whata pet, coming
to the cage door at his master’s greeting,
hopping on his finger at command and

14 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

whistling a pathetic little German ed, on
his satisfying, curious perch, then returning
to his cage with huge gravity, the reward
for his effort a few grains of hempseed,
given to him with a kindly heart.

And as the bird ate, what light shone
in the cobbler’s eyes, what words of sweet-
ness and richness came to his mouth.
How I envied him, while reading in his
eyes that Bully was above price!

The third time I met Bully was under
other skies and sad circumstances. Iwas
walking down Vesey Street, New York,
when the sound ofa drunken sailor’s voice
awoke me from my reveries.

In his hand he held a cage which now
and then he violently swung around his
head, and in the cage was Bully, be-
draggled, tailless, a perfect bit of bird
misery. How different from the gay and
saucy fellow that had first captivated me
among the Irish meadows, how different

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 15

from the sleek, well-fed pet of the German
cobbler! Around the drunken lout were
grouped a crowd of children, all of the
lower classes, dirty and frail-looking, upon
whose poor features I discerned that
human pity which has brought joy and
sorrow to the earth, but which is after all
one of God’s noblest gifts.

How easy to read in their little pinched
faces the anger which aroused their little
hearts, and made them band together to
rescue the ill-fated Bully, and I entered
into their secrets, and, as diplomacy was
better than force, Bully became my pet
for a crisp new dollar-bill. So I bore
him to the North with much objections
from a colored porter who, following the
godless cult of the syndicate he repre-
sented in so menial a manner, dubbed the
miserable bird a nuisance, but here played
again diplomacy a noble part, taking the
form of a presentation of a coin of the

16 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

realm, and Bully once more was free to air
his misery amongst the trappings of
luxury. And so we reached home and
Bully was transferred from the many-
holed cigar box toa burnished cage, in
full view of a large and merry aviary, in
order that their liveliness and music might
cheer his exile and banish his misery.
And so it was, Bully began to cast off
his gloom; he was no longer to be seen
as a puff-ball on his perch, but a lightly
skipping fellow full of pleasant ways.

His tail grew, his breast shone; he
changed his ragged cap for one as showy
and glossy asa beaver. He was now in
dress parade and full dear to my heart,
and these colors he could show to as much
advantage in his yellow cage as his Irish
namesake could among the hawthorn trees,
while his performance was to my mind
superior to the cobbler’s pet. And here
is how I verified this last assertion. |

BIRDS AND BOOKS. i7

One evening as I sat reading the piq-
uant essays of Hazlitt, 1 came to a bitter,
cynical passage which made me put down
the book to analyze its truth, and to look
up from an old habit. The canary had
just finished his song with much bravado !
Buffon’s chamber musician, from his long
acquaintance with man, has learned from
him to play to the gallery. Over my
head was Bully’scage and from it came that
martial air, Dze Wacht am Fhezn, per-
fectly piped. I arose and therewas Bully,
the piper, bowing to the right and bowing
to the left, spreading his tail as dainty as
my lady’s fan. When his piping ceased,
I gave him a few seeds from my finger-
tips, and from that day Bully has been
my martial German piper.

As I write he sits on the top of a chair
near my writing desk, and when ‘‘Senor,”
my large yellow-headed parrot will give
him this invitation, ‘‘Sing, Bully, sing,”

18 BIRDS AND BOOKS. |

there will be martial music in the room.

Early in my career as a book hunter,
the most delightful of avocations, I was
warned by a devotee of thirty years’
experience to cultivate memory, tact and
patience, the requisites for success in this
gentle art.

“Memory,” said the sage, “in order
that you may not bring home, with laugh-
ter in your eyes, some closely hugged
bargain, to find iton your book shelf, a
bargain of long ago; tact that you may
neither irritate the bookseller with useless
questions, nor minister to his greed by the
thirst in your eyes, which he reads as
easily as a doctor tells a pulse; patience
which enables you to seek for the book of
your longings, in the dust of years, amid
the curios of centuries, on stools, chairs,
rickety step-ladders, or onany convenience
that may put the shelves within closer
range.”

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 19

AfterI have practised these require-
ments assiduously, and for years, I cannot
say that I would pass the sage’s examina-
tion. Was it nota few days ago that I
brought home in triumph, from a dust
heap in Montreal, an odd volume of an
English edition of Browning, to find, to
my utter disgust and contempt for myself,
that I had two volumes marked the VII.

This might argue that the one in pri-
ority possession of my shelf had been
unread. Robinson Crusoe reasoned wisely
from a footprint on the sand that some-
thing human had passed that way, and
the blue pencil marking of striking pass-
ages, rising boldly amidst much jargon,
was of the sameclass of proof. The book
bore a human track, and, on the peculiar-
ities of the markings, I were easily con-
victed. Notwithstanding my own lapses,
I am ready to acclaim the wisdom of my
old friend’s three rules,especially patience,

i oe

20 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

and from practical experience to affirm
the truth of the old proverb that ‘‘Every-
thing comes to those that wait.’ And I
have thrown my belief in this shape. If
aman lives long enough, he gets even
with his enemies and knows his friends, ©
and that is the acme of patience. I have
never sought a book save one, Clough’s
Poems, and it may be my bargain any
day; my patience is far from exhausted,
but it did fall into my hands when I least
expected its coming. And the tale of
such a book, long prized by me as the
most notable effort in English of conscious
purpose and diligent workmanship (I refer
to Walter Pater’s Warzus, the Epicurean),
is inextricably woven with the possession
of my first chaffinch.

Pater’s exquisite book had long been my
quest. In my yearly visit to New York I
had spent days and days in its hunt. ‘It
is one of those books,” said the bookseller,

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 25

“that rarely remains a day in our shop.
We have a class of people that call daily
for such books, and, of course, first come
first served.” These booksellers never
permitted me to leave their stores without
inculcating the maxim of patience, as if
they knew the irritable nature of most
book-hunters when clipped oftheir quarry.
Braced with his maxim I hastened down
Eighth Avenue, an old haunt of mine, for
there, amid smells indescribable, dirt white
with age, children uncanny and unkempt,
old clothes of all makes and countries, in
all sizes and stages of wear, I have foundthe
princes of the book world, and entered a
nook where all these things were in riot,
the shop (with a stretch of the imagination)
of a Polish Jew, its owner sprung from a
race that has suffered. I have a keen
sense, the gift of heredity, for the suffer-
ing of others, and it takes but ordinary
sense to track suffering in the peeking

22 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

eye and hollow face of a Polish Jew.
With a greeting in German he at once
recognized me as an old customer, and
with the alacrity of his countrymen went at
once to business.

‘‘T have,” said he, with a roguish smile,
laying his flat hand on my shoulder and
putting his curved nose, that odd mark of
his race, near my face, “a new barrel of
books for your inspection.” |

Everything he possessed was for the
stranger's inspection, and then his sneer or
his grunt, he knew me better, I thought,
and his invitation and its matter was so
framed as to show his kindness, aside
from any business consideration, and I
accepted it atits full meaning by diving
into the barrel without further ceremony,
bringing this and that dishonored volume
from its contents. Whata place for medi-
tation on the vanity of talent, and the
shortness of allimmoderate fame! Here

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 23

was the poet, novelist, essayist lauded to
the skies by his friends as one destined to
live and comfort the succeeding ages,
consigned to the oblivion of a barrel in
the home of discarded things. My search
was not in vain, for to my anxious hands
came the very book I sought, Pater’s vol-
ume. Howit fell in with such company I
forgot to ask in the joy of my find.

As I held the book in one hand, and
fumbled for change with the other, the
quick Jew divined in my greedy eyes its
merit, and put upon it a price beyond my
expectation. As I started to bargain
with him, the privilege of every book-
buyer, one of his countrymen entered
with a little wooden cage in his hands,
and carelessly set it on a pile of old car-
pets from whence came the thrice re-
peated cry of fink, fink, fink, followed in
a few moments by a delicious song which
made me forget the rapture of my prize

24 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

and center my greed on the little cage
and its occupant, well known to me from
its first call as a chaffinch, of whose song
I had heard so much in the Austrian
Tyrol. |
Having heard the price of the book I
asked that of the bird, while between the
venders passed a rapid conversation in
Yiddish,interesting from its facial gestures,
and to my vexation found that the price
of both were beyond my pocket. And I
was handicapped in further bargaining, for
I could not do as the boy with the apples
beyond his reach, belittle them. The
bird’s song was in evidence of his worth,
and the merit of the book was in my eyes.
After unsteady reflection there finally
came to me a hint from a book I had
read, and the memory of the book was
from the fancied resemblance of a figure
therein tothat of the birdseller, that a
Jewish vender was the easiest fellow in

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 25

the world to strike a bargain with if you
impress on him your importance and show
contempt for his goods. The first part
of the programme I could play, the second
part, as has been seen, was no longer in
my hands, and even thefirst part which
had worked so well in the Orient, that it
was given as a recipe in a book of travels,
was of no avail in New York.

The Jew had learned the primary of
democracy, the equality of men, and was
practising how to handle it with dexterity
against gentile scorn. I opened the book
and, for a few minutes, lost myself in the
music of Pater’s prose, and again the bird,
from the darkness of its little cage, tempt-
ing me to break its bondage and end so
sad a captivity, shot through its wooden
bars a strong, rich, tender strain, his most
ardent pleato my sympathy.

How I berated myself for the forget-
fulness of my purse, whose loss was only

26 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

felt when I needed it. How I longed for
a passing friend. How vainly I pleaded
with the bookseller to buy the bird and
keep it until my return, thereby earning
compound interest. Arguments being of
no avail, after putting Paterin the depths
of the barrel and covering him up as a
dog does a bone, that he wishes to
find on his return, and trusting to luck
for the possession of the chaffinch, with
the air and manner of a sulky child I sal-
lied forth, and made but few steps from
the store when I met an old friend to
whom | regaled my woes and desires.
When he had heard my story he laughed
right heartily, and making me specify the
exact place where Pater lay hid, left me
still spreading all around him his infec-
tious laughter,.andsoon returned with both
bird and book, bought for half the sum
of a former asking. To my tirade against
the venders and their dishonest pranks,

BIRDS AND BOOKS. ae

he trilled out the full of his cheeks of
sunny laughter, handed me my cravings,
finding his money, he said, returned with
interest, in my happiness, and then, with
a Shakespeare phrase poised lightly on
his tongue:

‘*How full of briars is this working-day world,”

joined the crowd, while I went home
light of heart, and more firmly convinced
of the worth of patience.

A few days later I bore my chaffinch to
the North, the cold North, far away from
his native haunts, the copses, orchards,
gardens and hedge rows of Old England,
yet no happier bird dwells in captivity.

A few months ago, in the summer
weather, he left his cage, ran the gauntlet
in a series of rooms, and finally escaped
to the greenery of a huge maple where he
sat and sung for hours. But no sooner
did I open my study window than he flew

28 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

from his beautiful retreat, through the
sunshine, to the gloom of my window sill,
entered most willingly my study and
sought his seed-dish with the air of one
who was well satisfied with his actions,
whose contentment was beyond dispute.
As he sat pecking and preening, I, setting
out to moralize on his conduct, was met
by a phrase from the book that had
accompanied him to the North:

‘The many,’ he said, always thus
emphasizing the difference between the
many and the few, ‘‘are like the people
heavy with wine, led by children, knowing
not whither they go;” and yet ‘“‘much
learning doth not make wise,” and again,
“the ass after all would have its thistles
rather than fine gold.”

My bird was of the ‘‘many;” would I
have loved him more had he been of the
"‘tfew?

My first recollections of the goldfinch

?

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 29

center around my early home; while other
recollections are blurred and yearly blot-
ting out, those of my childhood long
hidden in some tiny brain cell creep into
the open, stoléd in sadness. All mem-
ories of vanished days are sorrow crowned.
My father’s house rises before me with the
giant sycamores in front of it, a wooing
and nesting place for birds; inside, close
pressed to the window, the shaky oblong
table whereat he used to sit and read aloud
of gay warriors and bold lovers. And his
soul was in those books, shooting merrily
through his gray, Irish eyes. How we
followed his voice, laughing with keen
boyish glee as the hero played with advan-
tage his every caprice! How the tears
elistened on our cheeks, when the heroine
was in the hands of the villain, and how
our hearts beat as the gallant knight and
hero with his trusty fellows came canter-
ing up the road just in time to rescue the

30 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

fair one and put the villain to death!
Among the books he used to read to us
were Scott’s, Dickens’, Cooper’s.

The great Thackeray was outside his
domain; he loved a story that galloped
along, laughed and cried. To sit down
and reason with an author was beyond his
might. He could weep over Little Nell,
but a Becky Sharp he could not under-
stand. And Ihave no regrets that I was
coddled on the literature he loved, for I
am bold enough to put forth, even at the
risk of being called a heretic, the opinion
that if all our juvenile literature was lost,
it would matter little. And my ground
for this opinion is that the old masters of
English fiction and poetry constitute by
far the best reading for boys and girls.

There is a manliness in their pages, a
human pulse, a heart throb, that is
inspiring to youth. Their characters
have the life-like touch, become real to

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 31

youth, enter his very system and ever after
continue a part of him. Noisy criticism
may tell him that Dickens’ characters are
mere puppets, that can never be met with
in human life; that Dickens was a vulgar
and conceited coxcomb, that his politics
and sociology are eccentric and foolish,
his style turgid, the whole man and his
work a bore, but what man can patiently
listen to such charges who, as a boy, read
Pickwick, fresh in his memory that group
of ‘immortal grotesques’”’ marshalled
under Weller.

When I hear Cooper called a creator of
wooden figures, the Cooper of my boy-
hood, I have an irresistible desire to take
up the bucklers in memory of those de-
licious nights when my father read to us
those marvellous tales of land and sea,
adding so much to youth’s delightful
domain. My father’s reading of one of
those tales, and my first remembrance of

32 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

a goldfinch, are indelibly blended together.

Above the oblong table, almost touching
my father’s head, when he was seated for
his evening’s ramble in fancy land, hung
the goldfinch’s cage. The bird was, ac-
cording to him, an exceptional one; my
father was of that peculiar, Celtic type,
who must idealize all they love. This
bird was, if memory plays me no tricks, a
cheveral, known to the eye of the initiated
by a white spot, about the size of a pea,
under the throat. This marking gave him
power over song far beyond his ordinary
confreres, made him a star, and the object
of attention in the locality he frequented.
Now this particular goldfinch happened
to make its first appearance in my father’s
birthplace, where his sweet, wild notes
and his jaunty bearing made him a prize
for all the bird-fanciers, and, finally, taken
on a bird-lime twig, after escaping lures
for months, he crossed the ocean as a

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 33

tribute of friendship ‘“‘from those at home,
to the exile far away.” And the love of
the Irish exile for this link with his native
land was most touching.

When the bird began to sing, and he
sang by gaslight as well as by sunlight,
the exile, though thirty years had fled
since his boyhood home faded from his
view, shut the book he was reading, and
on fancy’s golden wings flew to the scene
of his youth, the haunts of his love, by the
merry magic ofa goldfinch’s songs.

It was during one of these reveries that
my impatience caused the death of the
beloved pet; a night of dark sorrow to
my childish heart, and my father’s stern
displeasure, and the tale is soon told.

My father was reading the Deer-slayer,
with our feelings high keyed:

“As she moved by the tree that hid
Chingachgook and his friend, the former
felt for his tomahawk.” Now we listened

24 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

for the scene which was already grouping
the figures in our childish brain. Just
then the goldfinch burst forth in song and,
as he did so, my father stopped his reading
to listen, while I, impetuous and burning
with eagerness to hear if the book scene
tallied with that which held my mind,
could brook no such interruption, so rising
on my tip toes, I struck the bird-cage
violently, snapping the hook that held it
to the wall.

Down it came, first on the table, then
heavily on the floor. My last sight of
the goldfinch, and that stolen over my
shoulder, as I clambered heart-broken up
the stairs to my dark room, peopled ahead
by my fancy with all kinds of monsters,
was lying in the soft palm of the exile’s
hand fluttering in death, gently stroked,
lovingly caressed. That night with its
strange sounds, its processions of fairies
and ghosts, speaking cats, cantering

BIRDS AND BOOKS. | 35

horses, and devil-eyed dogs, far from mak-
ing me register vengeance and dislike
against all birds, and the goldfinch in par-
ticular, begot a love that even to this day
makes me hang around a bird shop with
positive enthusiasm. And no lover of
Nature may apologize for such an enthusi-
asm.

My next sight of a goldfinch was under
the blue Italian sky lit up by a soft but
brilliant sunlight. Goldie was flitting
from thistle top to thistle top, as light and
airy as its swaying down. When he
settled for a moment, enticed by some
rare tid-bit, how that soft sunlight fell
upon his fine, crimson head, glistening the
black which stoled it, and adding a softer
shade to his littlke brown back. What
antics he played, this pretty little gymnast,
on the ready-made swings and burs of the
thistle tree, and when he went away how
my heart went after him; but away he

36 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

went, naught of care to burden his golden
wings.

Was such a flight in Pushkin’s mind
when he wrote:

‘‘Men are wearied, men are grieved,
But birdie flies into distant lands,

Into warm climes, beyond the blue seas;
Flies away until the spring.”

Was it then I vowed to possess a gold-
finch, to shut him up in a wooden cage
like Stearne’s captive starling, where he
could not get out, to rob him of his thistle-
down and sunlight and do these things
with an air of satisfaction under the guise
of my love for birds, a trick much alike to
those done by men to their fellow men
under the guise of that ample mantle,
humanity? But be it here written these
reflections are penned in the presence of
Goldie. It is’ a fitting case: for (Saige
Speare’s Saying,

‘‘After execution, judgment hath
Repented o’er his doom.”

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 37

After teaching Goldie to be a slave by
giving him the greatest of luxuries, the
love of ease withdignity (he has now
a golden cage), I open his cage door and
the windows wide, and when he refuses
to be free, I compliment him on his intel-
ligence. And this is all so human!

As I shut the window, I call this slavery
love, and having had him to perch on my
finger for his price, he proudly surveys the
room, the envy of all the birds, and turn-
ing his little head in their direction ad-
dressing them in a quick, soft voice, tells
them what a great bird he is, and how he
possesses his master’s confidence, and
doubtless many other things, for I know
but imperfectly his speech.

Goldie and I have been mimicking
man and playing at history.

It was while travelling in company
with a young doctor in one of the most
romantic parts of the Scottish Highlands,

38 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

that I heard for the first time the flute-like
song of the linnet. ‘The little musician
peeped from out the golden furze, his red
head watching our approach, but too in-
dolent, on that fine summer day, to fly off.
Or was it that he divined we were lovers
of nature, from whom he had a right to
expect whole-souled comradeship? Be
this as it may, he became bolder from our
advance, spread his wings as if to prepare
for flight, laughed at our idle suspicions,
hopped about the furze with a satisfying
air of safety, and finally mounted his pul-
pit, the highest and most gorgeous limb
of the tree, and piped a lay worthy of the
attention of the old god, Pan. We had
found a seat in the shape of a huge boul-
der, a side of which was worn low by
nature, and making no_ inconvenient
benches, I had better say chairs, for the
formation was more of that aspect, and
comfortably seated there in full view of

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 39

the musician, out of the sun’s blinding
rays, snuffing the scent of the mountain
flowers, ravishing our eyes on their lordly
beauty, we listened to our Scottish piper
while he exercised his heavenly gift. In
the intervals of his song my friend quoted
snatches from the poets without comment,
showing their appreciation of this master-
ful singer. And he was worthy of their
thought. As their fine sayings fell from
my companion’s mouth, I thought how
often had Burns, whose heart was in the
Highlands, witnessed such a scene, and
who among the poets more worthy of a
lintie’s song than he who wrote:

‘Or, if man’s superior might

Dare invade your native right,

On the lofty ether borne,

Man with all his powers you scorn;
Swittly seek, on clanging wings,
Other lakes and other springs;

And the foe you cannot brave,
Scorn at least to be his slave.”

40 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

This was the bird who had piped his
way through Scottish song, making his
name treasured in each Scottish home—
the bird that had rallied the drooping
spirit of Ferguson and cheered the lonely
watch of the Ettrick shepherd, Scotland’s
royal bird. Heisa part of the landscape;
wherever you travel, he is there, bird of
the chieftain and cotter, in

‘‘Russet lawns and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray ;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest,
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide.”

All over Scotia’s fair land is heard the
lintie’s song. Much as I loved his song,
and were it in my power to make him my
captive I could not have done so, I could
not have robbed the landscape of his
presence, robbed the furze of that which
was its crown. So we sat, two wanderers
from a far off land, from the land that the

BIRDS AND BOOKS. AI

Scottish poet thought of when his fortunes
were low, until our piper was joined by
his “guid wife,” and then, as was our duty,
we left the loving pair to their domestic
felicity, and turned our steps toward the
town. Since that lovely summer’s day I
have met the lintie caged in many a clime,
in the poor man’s cabin, in the rich man’s
home, pouring out, irrespective of class,
his unpremeditated lay, but it ever lacked
that wild freedom, that untrammelled trill
which won my heart in the Scottish High-
lands.

Despite Lovelace’s pretty verses, iron
bars have a subduing effect on both man
and bird. My first linnet, (the pretty fel-
low seems to know that I am writing
about him, for he lazily mounts the pine
limb that I have placed in my study at
his disposal to silence the petulance of a
goldfinch who is darting through the room
with a swift chirrup,) was given to me by

42 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

a Scotchman, and the giver of this and
many other favors lies close to my heart.
Of him, here is a tale told me by an ani-
mal importer as we leaned against a
monkey’s cage. ‘When Sandy landed
with his wife and two children on our
shore he had but little money, yet on the
very day of his landing, and out of his
small store, he purchased from me a lark.
‘Just,’ as he said, ‘to make a bit of music
in the house when Maggie and the bairns
were lonesome for home.’ I found out
that Sandy had no employment, and was
not likely to have any for some time, and
noting the man’s love for birds, I at once
engaged him to peddle them, and from
that little beginning, Sandy, with thrift
and honesty, worked his way to his own
shop, his heart’s delight, where he can
discourse by the hour to the gentle lovers
of birds on his pleasant and profitable
hobby.”

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 43

I have been a customer of Sandy’s for
years. When in New York, I spent not a
little of my time there, for his shop 1s after
my liking, an arena where you can throw
your ideas, providing you have the cour-
age to get after them and be a knight in
their defence, for the place is full of Sir
Knights ready to pounce upon them, that,
were you not there to offer protection,
they would be daggered to death, and I
take it as a compliment, that the thrifty
owner of such a shop should ship and
send to me as a Christmas gift “the best
linnet he ever handled,” with a long card
of philosophical observations, proving
thereby his right to his nation. Later
there came a letter telling me that he had
long wished to make me a “present,” but
as I “had heretofore no home he had to
wait for the day I had,” and he shrewdly
remarked, as if to temper his truth for my
palate, that ‘‘if you have not a house of

AA BIRDS AND BOOKS.

your own, you have no use for pets.”
The value of another man’s thought is en-
hanced if it has had practical illustrations
in your own life, and Sandy’s little tem-_
pering had, as I will now disclose.

Some years ago I lived in a house as a
subordinate. I had, near the garret, two
little rooms, one I used as a bedroom, the
other, as a study, where, on a mere pit-
tance of a salary, I had collected a few
precious books by a weekly hunt in the
old bookshops. On one of these hunts I
met an Irish sailor peddling a few bedrag-
sled parrots in a grimy cage. It was easy
to fall into conversation with him, as he
played his tongue with all the vanity of a
child. He had no time for thought with
this outlet ever open. Start the conver-
sation where you would, it came with a
rush to the thing that most concerned him
just then, the selling of his Pollys, which
he forced on me with bantering persis-

BIRDS AND BOOKS. AS

tence. When I told him, to use an Irish
phrase, of the ‘‘awkwardness of my pre-
dicament,” and the wrath that might
await the introduction into a peaceable
house of a screeching Polly, he at once
agreed with me, and abandoned his argu-
ment in the bird’s defence, but it was only
to spring another more plausible and
much more taking.

He was not only a smuggler of parrots,
but of smaller birds, and had nearby a
choice collection of over a dozen that he
would, driven by poverty, sell for almost
nothing, so handing me his parrots, a
proceeding which caught my sympathy,
he started on a trot, and soon returned
with his birds, canaries, goldfinches and
Indigos, and the price he spoke hurried
my hand to my pocket. The delight with
which I carried them home was akin to
that which I felt when I saw my name in
print for the first time, emotions beyond

46 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

analysis. They were mine, I thought, a
treasure that I had not in my wildest
dreams of bird possession dreamt of, fallen
into my hands by sheer luck.

I carried them home much in the man-
ner of a child carrying his first toy,
oblivious of all but them.

When I reached the house, instead of
at once going to my own abode, I was so
overcome with pride that I carried my .
pets from room to room, noisy on their
merits, yet grieved as I read contempt in
the eyes of those where I had sought but
welcome.

I learned later that all this was very
human, so I hung up my birds in the sun-
shine, and for months relished their songs,
songs that made my little quarters be-
loved. Some one, however, is always
found to destroy our likings, men of little
minds and stony hearts. My superior,
on a cold Christmas morn, when his heart

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 47

should have overflown with charity, com-
missioned a silly servant to open wide the
cage doors and then the windows, and my
pets that gave no annoyance, whose songs
were my solace, in seeking their liberty
found death.

I have often tried to banish from my
brain this cruel man’s face, whose little
sovereignty has long passed away, but
memory holds him as in a vise, and puts
him on her stage at the most unlooked-for
moments. She brackets him with the
songs of birds and the villains of books.
She can fit him to her whole range of dis-
taste. But you, my linnet, may have no
fear, sing on thy pine spray, make me
dream of other lands. No cruel hands
will give you, little exile, the liberty which
is death. After years of wandering, your
master has a little home where Sandy’s
gracious gift may dwell in sunshine and
peace.

48 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

I had been but a few days in the Adir-
ondacks, just long enough to assort my
room and to fashion with my own hands
a sign of vast proportions telling to my
neighbors that I was a physician, both by
day and by night at their service, when a
little incident happened that ministered to
my pleasure all the years I spent in the
wilderness. I had brought to the moun-
tains a broken down constitution, a few
articles of my profession, a scanty pocket
book, and a few books, mostly French.
Now my love for this language was purely
utilitarian. I was located in a French
Canadian settlement, and I thought that
it would be pleasant for them, and no bad
thing for me, if I could address them in
their native speech. For one’s ‘zee
tongue has always a charm even from the
mouth of an indifferent performer. The
books were then to be a kind of target
practise, by which I was ultimately to

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 49

bore my way to the heart of the commu-
nity. I had a faded, well-thumbed and
much worn copy of AMlo/zere that had done
duty in many climes since I first picked
it from M. Grabousky’s dust heap, Paul
et Vzrginze, decorated with a series of
blue pencillings, done in the days of
sentiment and love’s young untethered
imaginings, and De Mazstre’s Voyage
Around My Room, a little book which I
had not then read, but which was brought
along for its title, an adhesion to the old
fallacy so often speared by the moralists
of buying a book from its covers. Itisa
saying, ‘‘Read a book before you judge
it,” but I am one of those who seeing a
title imagine the contents, and following
this oddity, here is the way I reasoned.
I am a young physician going to the
Adirondacks for .a double purpose,’ to
seek health while helping others to find
that boon. I shall be confined to my

50 BIRDS AND: BOOKS.

room through my _ own indisposition,
through waiting to heal the indisposition
of others, through mountain storms and
through that delightful feeling so strongly
taught by the Chinese philosopher, Lao
Tse, whose name in philosophy I know
not, but which arises from a disinclination
to move, and to whose attacks I was
especially prone in my younger days, so
said I to my sister as she packed my
trunk, *‘Put De AVazstre’s in. You know
there is no society where I am going, and
that a great part of my time must needs
be spent in my room, and this book may
teach me how to spend it usefully. Per-
haps I may send you a voyage some
day.”

My sister, who was well aware of my
fondness for the teaching of the dolce far
niente of the Chinese philosopher, laughed
heartily at this bit of imagination.

Now it is hinted in this book that there

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 51

are in the world many curious persons,
perhaps among them some of my readers,
who fain would know if the book was of
service to me, and to them I frankly
answer no. It was charming reading,
but the Frenchman’s atmosphere and
mine were different; besides in the moun-
tains I had learned a better philosophy
than any I hitherto knew, a philosophy
which sent me to nature and kept me in
the bracing air, rambling amid valley and
highland, in sunshine and in storm.

The reading of this book was the cause
of the incident which will be found some-
where inthis paper. Adjoining my room
was a large meadow dotted with hillocks
that stretched to the river’s brim. Many
of these hillocks were surmounted by
lordly maples, trees whose magnificent
foliage filled the eye with beauty, and the
ear with song.

For here came early the robin, choicest

52 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

of nature’s warblers, with a heart of love
and a mouth of music to woo a teasing
mate and build a nest in the cool greenery
of theleaves. Oh, bird of my Northland,
what memories your song must ever
awake within me, memories that cling to
a vanished past!

One of those hillocks, famed for a huge
maple, was a favorite resting place of mine,
and my attachment arose from a robin’s
song. From the bare and topmost twig of
the great tree this masterly singer, whose
clear voice and compass of song I have
never heard equalled, greeted the first
speck of the morning sun and bade fare-
well to the dying day. Before my com-
ing he had established his power to the
distance of his voice, for when he sang,
as if in reverence to, his genius; jig
brother musicians were mute. To the.
trunk of his maple I had built a rustic
arm chair, and further up a tiny little

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 53

platform whereon I could put his favorite
food, thereby seeking to win his friend-
ship and give him more leisure for song.
And the fine fellow seemed to divine my
intention the moment my project was
Seeedted, for rising from the maple
spray with an exquisite burst of song, in
graceful curves, he pirouted toward the
platform and helped himself to a quiver-
ing worm that in efforts to escape attracted
fisteem eye: The rustic chair built,-and
the platform erected, my musician ever
at my behest, and the most delightful
scenery all around me, there could be no
cause for complaint in those early days
of my Adirondack life. If patients were
slow in detecting my worth as a physician,
it was the ordinary way and nothing to
be alarmed about.
Old practitioners had warned me of the
length of years and patience it took to
build up a practice, and that in medicine,

54 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

genius and youth were no match for talent
and age. In our profession, and a few
others, we hear much about experience,
as if it were a thing of years instead of
opportunity. And of opportunity, Bu-
chanan, a Scotch poet, gave this sage
advice which few of us heed:

‘‘Grasp Opportunity, that, passing by

On the sheet lightning with a moment’s flash
Haunts us forever with its meteor eye!”

My way of grasping opportunity in
those days was in sitting in my rustic
bench, in the maple’s shade, reading, and
my first book done there was De Mazstre’s,
and hear how it is inwoven with a robin’s
memory.

I had sought the shade of my maple
from the garish blaze of the noonday sun.
All around me was at rest, as if nature was
taking a little szesta to give her strength
for the toil of a summer’s day. I slipped
into my seat and glanced into my little

BIRDS AND BOOKS. G5

book as a preparation for my afternoon
nod. I read, “Nature, indifferent to the
fate of individuals, dons her brilliant spring
robes, and decks herself in all her beauty,
near the cemetery where he rests.” I
read no further for the thought took
possession of my mind, and started my
imagination on the gallop, until I found
escape from its shadows in sleep. And from
this delightful sleep, the sleep of careless,
happy youth and untroubled brain, I was
summarily aroused by a gunshot, and the
noise was so strange, and so out of
relation withmy sylvan retreat that my
awakening was an indescribable jar of
those feelings of ill-omen that seem to
foreshadow pain.

In front of me stood a grinning urchin,
ragged and unkempt, with a century of
cruelty peeping from his eyes, and puck-
ering his face, and inhis hand he held
triumphant my bleeding, fluttering mu-

56 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

sician, the happy fellow of an hour ago:
A mistcame over my eyes and griefawoke
anger in my heart, which the urchin quickly
translated into flight, throwing, in his fear
and with a cruelty that was inborn,
my warbler to the ground, where he lay
staining the soft grass with his blood.
“Poor little bird!” said I, as I picked him
up and stemmed the gaping wound,
‘‘man’s inhumanity is not alone confined
to his fellows; it has made his presence a
menace in the whole domain of animal
nature. Those who are his slaves obey
him in fear rather than in love.”

Having in thuswise moralized to free
my mind, I carried my unwilling captive
to the house, amputated his shattered leg,
laid him in a padded box, and became
his dutiful nurse. At first my exertions
on his behalf seemed to be but useless
annoyance, but patience, that gift so indis-
pensable to the lover of nature, not only

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 57

conquered allrepugnanceto my attentions,
but begot a comradeshipon hispart which
continued until his tragic death. He was
my first patient, and itis with some degree
of pride I write that my treatment was
successful. Dick was soon able to leave
his box and limp around my room.

In the following spring, he repaid my
love, for of trouble I had none, by filling
my little home with his varied melody.
Perched on the bed-post his song became
the most reasonable and musical of alarm
clocks. Once I carried him tothe maple
tree, the scene of his triumphs, in hopes
that he might once again seek his seat,
but the tree held ghosts, and no coaxing
could make my little cripple enter its
greenery, no song would he sing again
amid its branches. I had not the heart
to repeat the experiment.

So Dick and I became dearer to each
other with the years, and he might still

58 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

have been with me in mynew home hold-
ing first place in his tribe had it not
been that in the goodness of my heart
I admitted, on a stormy winter’s night, a
neighbor’s half-famished cat to my dwell-
ing, whose piteous appeals for mercy
smote my heart. On the morrow no robin
came to my call, no songster’s notes
made my dwelling merry. The ungrate-
ful beast had eaten my bird—yes, ‘‘Nature
is indifferent to individuals.” The French
writer's phrase was applicable enough to
weave in any memory of Dick. Since
those days I have reared from the nest
many robbins, robins taken from young
marauders, and there have been among
them not a few fine songsters, but some-
how their notes lacked that which made
Dick’s so deliciously satisfying. A friend
who prides himself on his philosophical
attachments declares, with all the arro-
gance of his class, that the robin which

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 59

hangs now in my study piping as blithely
this fine December morn, as if it were a
spring day, and the buds breaking into
laughter all around him, sings as well as
my lost favorite, that the difference is not
inthe song, but in my mind, and that this
is owing to a lack of memory and a sur-
plus of imagination.

“You are an idealist,” quoth he, ‘‘always
putting tinsel on the past.” And might
I not well accuse him and histribe of doing
a similar work? For what is philosophy
at most butthe continual dressing of a few
ancient ideas to the fancies of the age!
For when I go to Browne for his new
panacea, lo! I find in his preface a salaam
to the memory of some old Greek or
Latin master.

It was at a place called Convent
Station, situated on the banks of the Missis-
sippi, at a point where the view of that
stream is truly superb, that I first became

60 BIRDS AND BOOKS. .

acquainted with the nonpareil, as hand-
some and companionable a mate as the
bird tribe can give to man.

Convent Station, the name, as I sup-
pose, from a convent within easy distance,
is a little stopping place in Loutsiana that
could by no stretch of the imagination be
dignified as a town. Here I came one
afternoon of a beautiful August day, my
wandering spirit seeking rest, for in those
days I dreamed, as Ponce, that rest flowed
from some hidden fountain, and having to
wait for a stage to carry me further in-
land, I passed my time with a Northern
telegraph operator, whose home was both
cosy and novel. He was a handy man
and a cheerful one, and these qualities are
of great value to a bachelor as was my
friend. He was a great lover of nature,
and, as he told me, instead of boarding
with some family of the vicinity, and suf-
fering their peculiarities, he had asked for

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 64

and obtained an old and unused freight
car, which, under his touch, had become
the pretty quarters that his courtesy
placed at my disposal. One part of his
dwelling was occupied by a large cage,
his own handicraft, containing a couple of
dozen nonpareils, and a prettier bird-sight
I have not witnessed. The cage was so
placed that the sunshine filled it with
golden light and lit up the motley colors of
the gay throng that flitted in its joys.
And that the reader may the better grasp
this little Southern picture, let me draw a
nonpareil as he sits now, with gracious
mien, on the edge of my waste-basket this.
cold, winter night, begging a fly that has
been bottled for his winter comfort, and
for which he gives grace in a soft, plain-
tive, little warble, fitted to the landscape
of his sunny South land, but hardly to my
bleak, cold North land.

His head is violet-hued, his neck of the

62 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

same soft, showy color, the upper part of
his back of a green yellow, the lower part
of a bright red. The under part of his
body, throat and chest are of a red also,
‘but a shade darker than that of the lower
part of his body. He is always in motion,
which is dictated by a beauty and grace
admirably fitted to give adequate expres-
sion to his coloring.

And now that you may have the picture
before you of two dozen little charmers
flitting and warbling in the sunlight, and
that of my own delight on the edge of my
waste basket, let me tell you how this
Northern exile amused himself in the long
tedious years of his stay. One of his
amusements was the keeping of birds and
their taming to a degree that I have never
since seen excelled, and all the means he
had to work with, as he laughingly de-
clared, ‘‘was with that old instrument,
kindness,” on which saying I reminded

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 63

him he could use none better. Such suc-
cess he had that I verily believe had he
turned his magnificent collection loose
that they would have sought him and
captivity, so well had he gained their con-
fidence. And to do this, I confess, is no
easy thing, despite the fine spun tales in
bird books so tempting to youth for alike
conquest, so bitterly remembered in our
failures. My acquaintance was a great
lover of Thoreau, a man, strange to say,
whose status is still in dispute with fireside
critics.

Not so, however, with those who live
with nature, love her, and listen to her
tales. To them he is one of nature’s
searching masters, whose vision penetrates
her secrets, whose love unlocks her most
hidden alcoves, whose speech is her
tongue. Of all Thoreau’s books, and he
had most of them, he loved Walden,
which he had in a little sacred niche above

64 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

his hammock and within easy reach of his
hand. I can shut my eyes and see in the
dark, to this day, that niche and the two
little blue-bound volumes of Walden, and
in the dark comes back to me his voice,
reading what he pressed me to admit as
the best part of the book, Zhe Ponds.
Was it from knowledge or the sake of
argument that I hesitated to throw him a
bit of comfort? Such then were “ii
amusements, birds and books, and none
could give, at so little cost, so much
enjoyment. It was the memory of this man
and his pretty charmers that aroused my
desires, as soon as I possessed a home of
my own, to own a nonpareil, and hang
him in the sunlight to witness his antics
and color showing. And here is how my
friend, to whom you have been intro-
duced, came into my keeping. I was
walking one night on Eighth Avenue,
New York, when in front of a large shoe

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 65

store stood a bird-seller with a few birds,
the most miserable set I have seen in any
faaticet. They were curled up, their
heads burrowed in the feathers of their
back, their tails partly erect. The bird-
seller seemed to be thoroughly ashamed
of their wretched condition. Noting my
interest in the little captives, and heartily
glad to get rid of them at any price, he
commenced to bargain with the born in-
stinct of his kind. A peddler is born,
not made. I had not spoken with him,
nor was it needful for me to do so, while
his cunning gray eyes were riveted on
mine, gleaning thereby all the information
heneeded. ‘They are lovely birds, choice
singers,” said the pedler; ‘just now they
look a little ragged, but all they want, to be
as good as any of their kind, is seed, water
and warmth. Birds are like men,” con-
tinued the moralizing pedler, ‘if they don’t
have the things they need, how can you

66 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

expect them to be, to look and act right?
Feed me well and rig me up like a gentle-
man, and I warrant that I wil! do honor to
my expenses. Put these birds in fine
cages, for you can do it,” said he witha
sneer on his face, ‘feed them well and,
on my honor, in a few months you can
tell your friends that you bought them
from Donald Burns.” The scamp seemed
pleased with his speech, but I had no
mind to compliment him on its effect.
With the aid of a few wretched birds he
was pleading his own miserable self and
the grudge of his tribe against those
better equipped for the ‘battle of gine:
Democracy taught him he was the equal
of all men, his life told him that the jade
was a romancer, who was continually
holding as facts what history had proved
to be turbulent imaginings, and to which
verdict his own life in its experiences of
them must accord.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 67

His price, thrown out of his mouth at
random, driven by poverty, was so mod-
est, a mere song, as we say, that I entered
into no dicker with him, for my heart
would have repressed such a shabby deal-
ing, but gave him, with a willingness that
must have been evident, more than his de-
mand. He accepted it without thanks; he
had become in the hard fight of life cold
and indifferent, society had developed the
beast and crushed the man. ‘With his
birds,” said a friend, ‘‘there can be no
luck, for with them came no kind words.”
So much does the human heart pant for
kindness, that when things come under
any other cover we doubt the worth of the
sift. But why tax him for his manner,
drove into him by his brothers? The
teachers of inhumanity are men.

To the poor birds my kindness came,
with a single exception, too late. The
nonpareil alone survived, and in the moult

68 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

discarded his old coat and sluggish ways.
I gave him a new cage with a swing, and
a window facing the sun. There he for-
got his past misery, and taken with the
beauty of his surroundings, he added to
it with his plumage and frolic on the
swing. I opened his cage one fine sum-
mers day, and after much thought he
decided to come and test his wings around
my room. Seeing that he returned to his
cage in good season, I took the door off
and left him to his whims.

As soon as I entered my study in the
morning he would invariably leave his
cage and come in my way, but not close .
enough to commence a comradeship with
him, and the summer passed in this way.
During the day his chief amusement was
catching flies, and I have often been cap-
tivated by his dexterity and grace in what,
from .experience, 1 call a dificuléjare
Summer gone and his sport ended, he

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 69

came closer to my desk and finally lit on
the edge of my waste-basket, and to my
utter astonishment broke into melody.
For his song, and to tempt him to easier
intimacy, I put on my desk a large spider
and continued my writing. His quick
eye caught his favorite dish, and without
any ado he hopped on my desk, went at
once to business by striking the spider a
well-directed blow on the head which
paralyzed the animal completely. This
done he gave a hop in triumph, and a low
cry of victory, and seizing the spider ate
him in a well-bred manner. From that
moment our companionship has been 1in-
separable. He bids me good morning in
a quiet sort of way when I enter my room,
and I, in a boisterous sort of way, (for I
have never expelled the boy out of me),
bid him good night. |
When I seek a book in the library, he
follows me from case to case, flits to my

70 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

shoulder, jumps on my head, and acts in
a manner thoroughly in keeping with my
tastes. He objects to visitors entering my
study, and I have learned, after losing, to
whomsoever took them, over twenty vol-
umes, that there is method in my nonpa-
reil’s fine frenzy. It was a saying of my
old friend, Colonel Johnston, that every
man should have some nook in the house
sacred to himself, and mine shall be my
study with its birds, books, flowers and
pictures, and no more my little bird shall
your frenzy arise from the entrance of the
idle and curious. Two is company, three
a bore to man, bird and beast.

I was reading a few days ago, a criti-
cism of Lezgh Hunt, an old favorite of
mine, and the reading, rousing my stag-
nant memory, brought once more into
light, long lost memories. But a word
with the critic, for it is not manly to hear
your friend’s reputation assailed and be

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 71

dumb. The critic assures us, with evident
satisfaction, that my fanciful poet and my
kindly-seeing essayist, whose healthful
thought wears such an admirable garb,
has had his day, that readers no longer
owe him a spare moment.

What cocksureness does this age not
show in criticism! Leigh Hunt dead, not
a great writer to be sure, Mr. Critic, but
as charming and sane a fellow as ever
took hold of a pen, or carried in his
pocket a note book. His eyes, it is also
true, were not on the skies, they were on
earth, and what writer has used them with
better effect, or drew more beauty out of
common things?

Leigh Hunt is dead, the sunniest-vis-
ioned man in English literature, the
happy-hearted lounger among English
meadows, music-laden hedgerows, babbling
brooks, lazy villages, enchanted castles
and jolly inns. Be it so, then, I mourn

72 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

not for the poet but the age that can feel
no love for his legacy. Why should I
blame the age at a critic’s nod, and the
huge book of literature lying before me,
telling how viciously they lie, and espe-
cially when they judge those who have
followed the same literary pursuits, which
they, in divers ways, maintain that they
adorn. Is not Pliny’s suave dictum when
writing to his friend Priscus, that Martial’s
poems “will not survive their author,” my
warning! But the poet who wrote them,
in expectation of their doing so, gave to
mankind and not to a clique the guardian-
ship of his fame.

No single man carries the world on his
shoulders. And of mankind I have too
good an opinion to admit that it will
willingly let die aught that can cheer the
individual, and with it I leave my favor-
ite, my spirit at peace, for a memory that
came with his honored name.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 73

In Louisville there was, a few years ago,
an old bookstore of wondrous mien. It
was merely a long passage, not more than
six feet at its greatest width. Its height,
I have heard frequenters aver, was twenty
feet, if not more: on this matter I am no
authority. It was filled with books, from
floor to ceiling, leaving scarce a passage
for the purchaser, whose fear was ever of
a huge heap tumbling on his head, so reck-
lessly were they piled. I know of no
bookstore in the whole range of my expe-
rience, where a buyer was more at his ease.
The owner gave him no suggestions but
left him to his own sweet will, whether or
not that will led him to pull from its place
one book or a thousand. As he said to
me once, on my apologizing for the fall
of a corner of books, produced by my de-
sire to own a large copy of Massinger,
which copy was the corner’s prop, ‘‘Don’t
mind a little thing like that, go on and

74 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

make your selection; my books are to be
seen and to be handled, a toss and a
tumble now and then will do them good.
Every fall shows a new face.” JI at once
discerned the truth of the bookman’s
thought, for there stood a long, hidden
row of old English classics, that would
have brought warmth to the heart of
Charles Lamb. The only time in my life
that I wished for money was on such oc-
casions. In rummaging the fallen pile I
came across a coatless, nameless fellow,
torn and scratched, burnt in a few places,
altogether as disreputable a specimen of
the book world as the eye could see. I
had, however, to read but a few pages to
discern the value of this ragged chieftain,
and once again to be reminded it is heart
and not clothes that make the man. As the
bookseller handed me my carelessly done
up purchase he said, with a quip in his
eye, “If you are going out of the city put

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 75

that book in your pocket,” referring to the
raggy fellow in my hand, “you will find
that he has something to say. Yes,
Leigh Hunt is worth pocket room.on any
journey.” Now my journey led me toa
college wherein two of the most miserable
years of my life were spent in parrot
phrasing Latin and in learning, that has
been a disadvantage instead of a use to
me. The only good I lay to the place
was the little start it gave me in German.
Once a week I had a leave of absence for
a couple of hours, and, while other stud-
ents spent this time in various exercises,
I sought the woods with Lezgh Hunt in
my breast, and under the guise of going
for a walk betook myself to a little brook
where birds came for a drink and repaid
the debt with a song.

It was while lying beneath the shade of
a bunchy, white-flowering shrub, whose
perfume made one drowsy, watching the

76 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

sun-effects on the great, round, white and
orange pond lilies, that languidly nodded
to the passing stream, that a little blue
bird shot through the bloom of the shrub-
bery, past the white and gold of the lilies
and rested across the brook in a clump of
dogwood blossoms, shading his brightness
in their blend of dark green and pure
white. He had aroused my mind in the
same manner as some new plaything
arouses that of a child to center all its
thoughts for a time on the object of its
liking. I could not cross the stream, so I
awaited his leisure, and to do so the more
easily I pulled the book from my breast
and commenced reading where I had, on
a former’ visit, left off... “(Few people:
rich or poor,’ the essayist was saying,
“make the most of what they possess. In
their anxiety to increase the amount of
the means for the future enjoyment, they
are too apt to lose sight of the capability

BIRDS AND BOOKS. ay

of them for present. Above all they
overlook the thousand helps to enjoy-
ment which lie around about them, free
to everybody and obtainable by the very
willingness to be pleased, assisted by that
fancy and imagination which Nature has
bestowed more or less upon all human
beings.’ I was about to begin a new
sentence when from over my head came
a soft, dripping song, as if the perfume
had taken to speech. I became motion-
less and peered amid leaf and flower for
the singer. Soon my well-trained eye
found his perch on the highest spray of
the shrub. It was my violet blue bird
that, startled by my coming, had returned
to his favorite retreat. Putting the book
in my breast I noiselessly crept into the
open grass where my view was complete
and my watch unnoticed. And what a
pleasant hour I passed with this superb
gymnast, who performed on the tiniest

78 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

twig the most daring feats, and those to
that strange melody that had at first told
of his presence! He was in full plumage,
and that as tight fitting as that of a Java
sparrow. He seemed to be thoroughly
aware of his beauty from the care and at-
tention he lavished on it. When a feather
became ruffled or stood out from its fellows,
he immediately ceased his exercise, flew
to a stronger twig and sat there pecking
and preening until his coat was once more
in order, then flitted back again and re-
sumed his exquisite manceuvres, balancing
his every motion to the sun’s ray, con-
trasting his sparkling violet-blue with the
dark green of the leaf and the white of the
flower. As the bell recalled me to a
wearisome study, loath to go I arose, and
my going made the bird recross the brook,
this time accompanied by his drab-colored
mate. Then was made clear to me the
melancholy of his song, the brilliant pres-

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 79

entation of his beauty and the masterly
exhibition of his grace. I was witness to
a bit of bird courtship, in truth to the last
act of love prior to marriage, and a more
winsome scene could hardly be enacted.
The lesson, as usual, that day was a bore.
The professor, as was his wont, mumbled
away in medieval Latina stream of dreary
words, but I paid no attention to him or
his discourse, my mind was with much
more pleasant and profitable things.
Leigh ffunt and the bird had started my
fancy to offer delights that no dull, plod-
ding pedagogue, a race that I heartily
hate, could take from me.

A Southern friend to whom I told this
tale, as we drifted, one long, summer's
afternoon, adown that part of the lordly
St. Lawrence which is adjacent to my
home, on his return to his native Alabama
sent me a pair of Indigos with a little card
dangling to their cage, telling me that the

SO BIRDS AND BOOKS.

tale was worth his gift, and begging me
to come some day to the land of my early
wanderings and see the habitat of the In-
digo, and a longing to do so ever since
possesses my heart. I put my Indigos in
the aviary but they became listless and
sorrow stricken; they were pining for
home. Seeing this I removed them to a
commodious, brass cage and hung them
in the sunshine, within easy reach of my
writing desk where, when tired with read-
ing or writing, I had but to turn on my
chair to have a chat with them. -Onee
noticing the delight with which the male
bird caught the flies that came within his
bailiwick, I turned fly catcher and sup-
plied him in abundance with his luxury.
He became friendly, ate with evident joy
from my fingers and finally persuaded his
shy companion to drop her veil and do
likewise.

We became such friends that I removed

BIRDS AND BOOKS. SI

the door from their cage and conferred on
them the freedom of the room, and after
three years’ exercise of this privilege I
have not a single fault to find. The
Bishop, the name I have given to the
male bird, when I enter my study these
winter nights and light my lamp, draw
down the curtain and settle into an easy
chair with an interesting book in my
hands, salutes me with a song, and it has
often happened that while listening to his
melody I have forgotten the book for the
pleasures of memory drifted into the van-
ished past, where the dead live and the
living are unknown.

Near my house lies a charming home,
one that in the fine, soft summer days of
the North, attracts the eye of every pass-
ing stranger, and as it is on a road much
frequented by the gay throng of idle tour-
ists, there is hardly an hour of the day
when some one does not stand outside the

82 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

wicker gate to express admiration for the
eraceful trees, the well shaven lawns, and
the fancifully made flower plots. The
songs of birds, mostly the robin, who is a
well-cared-for pensioner, and that little
coxcomb, the yellow bird, are constant,
while the hum of Italian bees seem to link
the music of birds with the scent of flowers.
The owner of this nook is a merry, much
travelled bachelor, who has an opinion on
most subjects, and a way of expressing it
that makes his talk charming, if not always
convincing. He has the faculty of listen-
ing, as well as that of talking, and no man,
provided he has anything to say, deems
silence necessary in his house. He hates
caut, considers it a privilege to use his
own intellect, and that, being evenly bal-
anced, the outcome is. rather:stranee oat
admit, that he is to his neighbors ‘<a little
bit queer ;” you see he will not run with
the herd and utter their cry, and in this

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 83

light the misunderstanding is natural.
Needless to say, he is a lover of children,
dogs, birds, books and flowers, and it was
through these things that I came to his
heart, as warm a heart as ever beat ina
human breast. Children on first sight fell
in love with the big, brawny, laughing,
blue-eyed man, who was always ready to
turn his muscular arms into a swing at
their pleasure, whose loveliest flowers were
to be pinned by his hands on their white
frocks. Stray dogs and wandering cats,
as if by instinct, sought his house and found
there food and shelter. Itis rarely he has
not some case of misfortune on hand. He
has, too, his contempts, for who could be
a man without them, and one of the most
pronounced is against the vulgar worship
of money, which is in the summer time so
much in evidence amongst us. America,
judged by a summer resort, would furnish
a pitiable verdict. He is a great lover of

$4 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

books, only the best, for, as he said lying
one day on the green sward, under an
apple-tree, with old Andrew Marvell
open in his hands, ‘‘There’s enough of the
best to make a love feast for life.” He
has, in this love, an oddity, which I am far
from admiring: his books must be costly
bound, the outside tempting to the eye, a
foretaste of the hidden pages. But he has
wealth and the means to satisfy his fad.
What a sorry sight would my coatless,
ragey fellows make in their rough cases,
with his long rows of titled dandies in
their polished oak cabinets. Yet, I ven-
tured to tell him once that my pleasure
while sitting in my little den overlooking
the St. Lawrence, surrounded by the mas-
ters in scant attire, was as great, if not
more so, than his in the finely furnished
library full of all things that delight the
eyes. His books cost him but little
trouble, the writing to his bookseller;

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 85

mine came from a poorly filled pocket,
often the price of a meal, or by pennies
saved from ordinary comforts with miser-
ly care. His books were his friends,
mine were more. Every volume was
bound up with the memory of the hard-
ships suffered to make it of my family.
And the strong roots of love but grow in
the soil of suffering.

It was in his library that I first learned
of the subject of this paper. I said he
was a lover of birds, but he held against
allcomers, and oftentimes, much to my
chagrin, that the only place fora bird was
the open air, and he was fond of quoting
against me one of my own authorities,
Leivh Hunt,and this his saying: “Of
all creatures, restraint and death become
its winged ‘vivacity the -least.” I chal-
lenged him to come to my study early in
the morning, and to put forth his quota-
tion in the presence of my choir of pets.

86 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

He, as his defence, asked me to spend
a morning in his orchard, listening to a
cat-bird, that had built in a clump of
locust trees, and which was then in the
full flower of song. I accepted at once
his proferred invitation, and early one
morning we sallied forth to a little privacy
from which he had often watched the
warbler. We were hardly seated when a
bird about the size. of a robin, bub or
much more compact form, of a slate color,
alighted a few yards from us, and greedi-
ly ate some mocking-bird food which my
friend had thrown inhis way. During his
meal his tail became almost perpendicular
while his cunning, little eyes kept our
every movement under his observation.
The great Dane, Cesar, that had accom-
panied us, and now lay asleep at our feet,
dreaming, gave a jerk to his huge body,
and a snappy groan, possibly the effect of
a bad dream, when away flew the cat-bird,

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 87

and from the locusts sent us in rapid suc-
cession a series of angry mews. “Is that
your warbler?” said I, taking an unfair ad-
vantage. “Ifso, your quotation deserves
to be forgotten. My least songster would
not disgrace the aviary with such a vulgar
exhibition. You have a strange idea of
bird melody if that bird is your favorite.
Come to my study and hear the masters.”

‘‘With birds as with books, a taste is
necessary.’ My friend paid no attention
to my banter, but quietly took from his
jacket pocket a beautifully bound edition
of Sydney Lanzer, and commenced read-
ing. Reading aloud was to him an exquis-
ite pleasure, and he cultivated it without
reserve, until he had become an artist,
whose work was an inspiration. His
selection was Zhe Marshes of the Glynn.

I shall never forget the haunting music
of those opening lines:

88 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

‘‘Glooms of the live oaks, beautifully braided and
woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad
cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs.
Emerald twilights—
Virginal sky lights.
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of
VOWS.
When lovers pace timidly down through the dim
colonnades
Of the dim, sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,

Of the heavenly woods and glades,

That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach with-
in,
The wide sea marshes of Glynn.

Here is the speech of tender passion.
None but a lover of nature could sing thus,
one, too, with an eye for her most hidden
beauties. It was filled with music, love
and beauty, my first introduction toa poet
who can know not death and who shall be
treasured when our idols are in dust. As
soon as the poem was read, the book was
returned to his jacket and with a smile he

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 89

turned toward me, saying, ‘‘ The next
number on the programme is a Cat bird
song, and we shall not have long to wait ;
see, he is giving the last touch to his
coat before he appears in public. There
he goes, hear him?”

The cat-bird had left his retreat and
with it the sulk that had begot that angry
mew, and mounted a mountain-ash, whose
berries wore the faintest tinge of red.

Then, as if to revenge my cruel words,
he poured out the most wonderful and
elusive melody. He seemed to have
stolen the songs of every warbler in his
Vicinity, giving to them a new magic in
the resetting.

Once, I thought it was the soft, mel-
ancholy notes of the golden robin, but
in a moment I was relieved of my sus-
picion—and seemed to detect the notes
of the gray linnet, and so on until I was
forced to own that he was a master—

90 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

and my little canons of no gauge to
measure his magic. Nor can I forget the -
ease with which this wonderful melody
came. I was unable to detect a single
movement; some of the finest passages, I
noticed, were played after a little twitter
of applause that came from the thickest
erowth of the locusts, where sat, with her
little head poised in attention, his brood-
ing and well pleased spouse. What can-
not love evoke? The haunt of this bird
became a place of daily pilgrimage.

I brought food, scattered it around my
seat, and when they came in quest, paid
no attention to their inquisitiveness, which
became remarkably daring. As soon as
the young were hatched, discovering that
I was the purveyor of their food, they
became most friendly and hopped around
my bench without the slightest fear. Now
and then the male bird would spare a few
minutes from his fatherly cares to sing,

BIRDS AND BOOKS. QI

but his disinclination became more and
more, until his brood raised, and summer
dead, his voice was dumb. His was no
common minstrelsy to be played on any
stage. It required a summer theatre and
nature’s richest settings, and I did not
blame him for the care of his heaven-born
gift.

Great artists do not step forth at every
call. My last view of him was in company
with his wife and children feeding on the
ripened berries of the mountain-ash.

His delicious music did not, once I was
beyond his power, convince me of my
friend’s opinion, that the only place for a
live bitd was the open air. There are
degrees of enjoyment, and talent is com-
mendable. Even if my canaries, gold-
finch, bobolink, etc.,. must bow to his
genius, their music is constant and
always refreshing. He is the luxury ofa
summer day, my pets the lights of the year.

92 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

While watching the cat bird in my
friend’s orchard, my attention was aroused
by a few pair of American goldfinches.
commonly called the yellow bird which
were mating and building in the apple-
trees. They were a continual source of
surprises, and when in view, kept me con-
stantly on the alert, witnessing their mar-
vellous grace and agility.

I find in my note book this enti:
written in the fields under the date of July
10th, 98: **Yellow bitd; yellow bisa
what a charming little fellow he is! How
gracefully he swings from the stem of the
golden crowned dandelion. He seems
ever in motion, and in a motion that is
ever pleasing to the eye. I have seem
him flitting to-day through the apple-trees
loaded with flowers, a burning star flash-
ing through a white and green sky. His
song has not much compass; it cannot
in justice be compared to that of the

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 93

canary, but it has qualities which are lack-
ing in our more favored musician. Since I
first heard the yellow bird on the bent top
ofa thistle bough, I have associated his
manner with hissong. It is fullof go and
royal cheer, as bubbling as aspring brook.

There is no straining after effect in it,
or copying of the delights of better war-
blers, but his own whole-hearted, buoyant
utterance, that floats as carelessly from
his throat as thistle-down from its pods.
It is as bracing as the sunshine among
which he flits.

The yellow bird is a late comer to the
North. This year hecame the second of
May, and on the following morning was
heard insong in my garden and along the
public road. In the course of a fourteen-
mile drive, I counted no less than thirty-two
songsters, heedless of their surroundings ;
some were among the lavish buds of the
maples, others on telegraph poles, while

94 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

not a few preferred fence-rails. They
were all changing their dress, some of them
had slight patches of yellow on the back,
but all in allthey were not remarkable for
beauty, nor for song. Their singing con-
sisted of a few jerky notes, pitched in a
high key. It seemed to me as if they
were trying their instruments, tuning up,
as it were, for the summer concert.”
There was only one book I could read
with satisfaction in those hours I devoted,
ying in the long,’cool July grass, to the
yellow bird. It was that always compan
ionable Fly Leaves,a fit book for any
idle fellow. When the bird was lost to my
view, I could roll on the grass, bask in
the sun, open Calverly’s book, and laugh
at the turn of his phrase: Yo ayhaeae
finish had he not carried the art of Praed.
How irresistible his humor, how delicate
his fancy, and how wonderful his gift of
expression! JI once heard an American

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 95

novelist declare that he could see nothing
in this book to give it a vogue. Then
was clear to me, the dullness of his own
books; he lacked humor, and a novelist
without this gift, can draw but mummies.
Humor sees the peculiarities in the indi-
vidual and in the subtle catching ofthese
lies the greatness and strength of the
novelist. Sly Leaves has a daily glance;
it is within my reach showing on its
pages, grass stains, juice of berries, lead-
pencillings telling of its ministry in my
rambles, and that to my many moods.
And to those who love to ramble in the
fields, orchards, or by country roads
on a sultry summer day, when the spirit
craves for the light and pleasant, for the
laughter tipped, let him heed no dull
novelist, but put C. S.C. in his pocket.
I was astonished one morning to notice
in my lettuce patch, a little flock of yel-
low birds. They were noisy, quarrel-

96 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

some and fighting for favors. With my
glass I recognized that in the company,
and thecause of the quarrel,. were four
or five females, flirting with shocking
audacity. As I wished to experiment
with this bird in my aviary, I placed an
old goldfinch ina trap-cage and directed
my boy to set the trap as close to the
flock as possible without provoking them
to flight. Easy-going and careless as he
was in manual labor, he was in this an
expert which I used to think came from
his large dose of Indian blood, to which
due credit was given in the mouth and
cheek-bones. :

No one could have had more pride in
the fulfilment of my design. Scarcely
had the cage been in position than the
goldfinch commenced his calling, an-
swered by the whole flock which were
now around the cage. One of the ladies
seeing the thistle seed and wondering no

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 97

doubt how it could be there so early in
the season, and being tormented by curi-
osity, that privilege of her sex, went to in-
vestigate. Click, the trap was sprung.
Greed and conquest flashed in the boy’s
eyes and found speech-setting in a wild
yell, that leaped from his throat, giving
dance music to his feet. I curbed his
fervor, and bade him to remain quiet,
as one door was still unsprung, and waited
for a chivalrous knight to rescue the
captive maiden.

Nor had we long to wait, for a partic-
ular, quarrelsome fellow on hearing her
call of distress darted to her aid, finding
himself not only captive but separated
from the lady by a hidden wire screen.
He made a brave battle for freedom, clung
desperately to the wires while thrusting
his head through them, but vain his efforts,
it was might, man’s most potent weapon,
conquering right. My boy wasina flurry

98 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

of excitement (his age was twelve). Ail
his body waved in motion to the little
captive’s struggles, while his eyes flashed
impatiently for a sign. No sooner was
the sign given than he ran to the cage,
and in his eagerness of possession,
allowed, much to my joy, the knight to
escape. Shall I ever forget his face, a
perfect photograph of his mind! Across
it sped revenge, sorrow, triumph ; one poor
captive yet remained. ‘‘I shall have that
fellow soon!” said the boy as he brought
me in his closed hand the fluttering,
tightly held little lady. As a fact the
boy’s boast was never made good, though
we tried all manner of stratagem to take
him, save birdlime, a cruel manner much
to my dislike. He laughed at our every
device, begetting so heavily the boy’s
scorn that I had to issue an order against
stones, night raids, and other unfair ad-
vantages for his protection. And I must

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 99

admit that my boy had grounds for his
discontent. The yellow bird would sit
for hours on the trap door, preening his
feathers, singing a cheery song, and
driving all other birds from the trap, to
which proceedings my impetuous Leon
objected. .The boy said it was spite, and
I have seen so much of that in birds that
I am in no position to deny the boy’s
judgment. I secretly admired the bird’s
saucy behavior, but as Leon was my
expert in all things that pertained to bird
nesting, bird capture, I did not dare to
enlarge his disgust.

I befriended him, however, in many
ways; I put within his reach material for
nest building which he used with an artist-
ry that won my heart. I scattered thistle
and canary seed in his way and by these
means gave him leisure to bid defiance to
my alert boy, and when he left us I could
not help thinking that I had lost many an

IOO BIRDS AND BOOKS.

occasion for laughter, and many an exqui-
site study of boy and bird.

We put our captive in a dark cage,
gave her no annoyance and in a week
found her content enough to be used as a
call-bird.

‘*‘When maidens sue,

Men give like gods,’’
—and the giving in this instance was
themselves. Males in peerless attire,
lemon-colored back, black cap and black
and white wings came at her sharp com-
mand and entered captivity for her nod.
In less than a week I had ten of the most
beautiful birds in my aviary, where they
quarreled and fought with persistent de-
light, setting all order in riot until I was
compelled, in deference to my well be-
haved birds to banish them from the
aviary. This I did, retaining a few choice
songsters, to whom I granted the freedom
of my study, and which are now, as I

BIRDS AND BOOKS. IOI

write, living peacefully with a Java spar-
row and a bobolink. It is winter now, but
when Spring’s riot stirs their blood and
beautifies their feathers, I, taught from
experience, will open their cage doors and
let them ramble around my room. One
of them that often perches on my pen has
added to his repertoire not a few foreign
pieces, mostly those of an English gold-
finch, but somehow I like him best when
he plays his own piece, for it gives me in
these winter days, so many delightful pic-
tures of wanderings, marked by the songs
of his tribe. I have often wondered that
this bird, so fascinating to imaginative
minds, should have no poet to sing him to
fame. Lowell has tuned his lyre to the
blue-bird, Bryant to the bobolink, and
Whittier to Polly from the Spanish Main,
but no poesy halos the head of the bird
most worthy to its crown. Would I were
a poet to sing his praise, but poets are

102 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

born to their birthright, and it is a birth-
right that cannot be stolen or usurped, so
I content myself with hopes, that the day
is not far distant when his name shall be
added to the anathology of song, and in
the wish of John Gilpin, ‘‘May I be there
to:see |!”

In weeding out my library the other
day, I came across a volume of prose and
verse that had, on former hunts, eluded
my search by contriving to fall behind a
set of Grotes’ History of Greece.

The little volume might have remained
there indefinitely, had not my boy, in the
hot pursuit of a mouse, pulled the books
from their places. This mouse was his
black beast, that scorned his authority
and laughed at his traps. It lived prince-
ly, eating the birds’ seed, entering the
cages with engaging audacity and fright-
ening the canaries, as the boy said, “out
of their wits.” I could see no cause for

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 103

complaint in the conduct of Mr. Mouse;
I could not blame him for getting his
living and that the best within his reach,
which happened to be my bird seed.

Nor could I bear him ill for refusing at
a boy’s invitation to walk into a trap, and
sacrifice his life to satisfy a passion for
conquest and revenge. On this occasion,
however, the boy vindicated the truth of
a saying that was constantly in his mouth,
“The fox runs long but he’s caught at
last.” The mouse had run his last race.

Mr. Grotes’ stately volumes could give
him no protection, as they were roughly
thrown to the floor, one by one, the
mouse retreating, until its last stand was
in a corner, behind the book of verse and
prose, which soon followed to. the floor
those which had been its shield, and the
unprotected, panting mouse in a last
effort for liberty lost his life by a strong
blow from the boy’s fist, a blow that gave

104 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

him joy and talk for the rest of the day.
In replacing Mr. Grotes, I found this
book and put it aside until the weeding
day came, a day of some sorrow to me,
as I have a dislike to part with books,
but of much rejoicing to the village chil-
dren in whose little library my weedings
are welcomed as fine gifts.

It all depends on the point of view, and
that changes with the years and our
mental growth.

Books that were the passion of my
youth are no longer so; they seem now so
dull and commonplace, and as I lean back
in my chair, at the sight of these books,
and ask myself howis it possible that I once
could go without my supper and feign a
headache to read them? I forget, for the
time, that they are just the same and that it
is my attitude that has changed ; that in the
days when I read them they fitted thor-
oughly my condition and administered to

BIRDS AND BOOKS, 105

my delights, while at the same time,
strange to say, cultivating their own dis-
taste that should later show itself in my
haste to worship at new shrines. The
book of prose and verse has no literary
merit. It is one of those books written by
an enthusiast who vindicates his mistaken
right=to the literary field by publishing a
book at his own expense, and holding
ever "afterwards a poor opinion of the
mental capacity of his fellow-men. I but
mention it here, because it brought, in
one of its poems, an incident to my mind,
long forgotten, by prompting my own
memory to fill out and breathe into the
half-caught picture of the author, a soul.
His poem tells of a red bird that he once
saw under conditions similar to my seeing ;
verily do I believe that it was the same
bird, but as his poetry torments rather
than delights, poetry’s true mission, I
prefer my own vision and imperfect prose,

106 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

which is no fraud practised on the reader,
as my prose can in no wise fall lower than
the bard’s poetry.

In one of the Southern States in a rural
nook, a place of quiet and rest, there is a
little country cemetery surmounted by a
plain wooden cross that marks the last
resting place of a devout and gracious
man, whose whole life was at the behest
of others, whose endurance and charity
are still spoken of in a low, tender voice,
still telling of the heart gapes left by his
going. The cemetery is skirted by mag-
nolias, whose rich scent blends with that
of the roses, phlox_and petunias, which,
in the summer time creep over the graves,
mixing their bloom in one gorgeous
bouquet. It was my pleasure one even-
ing when nature was in her merriest mood
and dressed in her most befitting gown,
to turn aside from the dusty highway, and
seek rest in this most beautiful and most

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 107

unfrequented of grave-yards. Seating
myself in a rustic chair that had been
built under the shade of a magnolia,
planted by the one whose grave it now
shades, and lulled to revery by the fra-
srant flowers, the dying hum ofthe little
village and the vesper songs of the mock-
ing-birds whose favorite haunt was this
acre of the dead, I spent most of the
evening in a land of sweet and melancholy
dreams with Shelley’s lines as the peg on
which all my pictures were hung:

‘*All things that we love and cherish,

Like ourselves, must fade and perish:

Such is our rude mortal lot,
Love itself would, did they not.”

Out of the revery and from these pict-
ures my mind was drawn by a hitherto
unrecognized bird-note which seemed to
me to be the spirit of gentle melancholy
that hovers around such consecrated
places in the summer days, resigning her

108 ~ BIRDS AND BOOKS.

sceptre to the spirit of fear, the guardian
destiny of the night. As the song became
louder and clearer I was enabled to note
from whence it came, and rising, pro-
ceeded in its direction, when to my
surprise, my spirit of gentle melancholy
‘was none other than a red bird perched
on the cross, scattering his music over the
grave of the scholar and lover of nature.
Later I was told that this was the evening
custom of this red bird whose protection
was safe in the hands of the villagers.
“TI never,” said a village crone, ‘“‘heard a
bird sing so sweetly, but it is nota bird, it’s
an angel dressed in red that sings on his
cross.” The song of this bird was fitting
to the place, it harmonized with its sur-
roundings, and those who write of his
song as dull and monotonous have but
studied him in some cramped city bird
store. In his native haunts, where his
life is free and the chatter of other birds

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 109

do not drown his voice, he has a song of
his own worth any man’sear. His plum-
age, too, on a sunshiny day is altogether
charming, the dark red of his back blend-
ing with the bright scarlet of the rest of
his body, the crest raised or lowered with
his fancy, the aristocratic bearing, all
combine to make him what he is, a hand-
some bird, and I have never questioned
the taste of those Europeans who, consid-
ering plumage and song regard him as the
prince of American song-birds. Then he
is hardy in captivity, does not sulk and
droop in his cage if his master treats him
intelligently, but takes life as pleasantly
as a goldfinch, and ina little time becomes
the most sagacious of bird companions.
My bird, “Old Kentucky,” the gift of a
valued friend, was sent to mein ’9g6. He
was then but three months old. I put
him in the aviary, where he showed signs
of discontentment, such as loss of appetite

LTO BIRDS AND BOOKS.

and sitting as a puff-ball on his perch for
hours at a time, and in this mood became
the sport of a grayfinch and a Java spar-
row. The finch, the worst scoundrel I
have met in my bird experience, would
chase him to one end of the aviary and
getting him in a corner would peck and
harrass him until I came to his rescue.
The Java sparrow on every meeting would
pluck his feathers. It was impossible for
him to live and thrive in such barbarous
society, so I put him in a cage with a hen
canary, which was very tame, and then
set the cage on a little table by the edge
of my writing desk.

At first he resented such a close com-
panionship by hastily flying from one end
of his cage to the other on my least
motion, but finding this performance a
bore from so many repetitions, and learn-
ing from the undisturbed canary that
there was no cause for such a fuss, he

BIRDS AND BOOKS. III

gradually got rid of his foolishness until
he paid no more attention to my move-
ments.

Now was the time to show my desire
for his friendship, when he had cast aside
his fear. So lL approached his cage at a
certain hour, thrice a day, giving him
_hempseed or a grub, a grub most general-
ly, as the dinner bell rang, and he soon
learned to associate the sound of the bell
with the grub. I have now two reminders
of the dinner hour, a fox terrier which
never misses to enter my study at the
minute of twelve o’clock to conduct me
to the dining hall, his ulterior wish I will
not mention, and “Old Kentucky,” which
at that hour comes to his cage door and
tells me plainly that it is time to give him
his grub. I often purposely remain after
the time to test their patience and on
every occasion found they had none.
The fox-terrier became impudent and

| i 2 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

tugged at my trousers’ legs, and the red
bird threw up his crest, pecked the wires
and told me in sharp speech what he
thought of my conduct. The moment I
left my chair the quarrel was over, and
our old friendship renewed. “Old Ken-
tucky” could not keepspite. I have seen
him offer a part of his meal to the gray-
finch and suffer that scamp’s abuse for his
tenderness. This tenderness I have
heard spoken of, but an incident that
came last spring under my own observa-
tion, was convincing. During a sickness
of a few weeks that confined me to my
room I was unable to visit ‘Old Ken-
tucky.” My absence so preyed on him
that he became dull and spiritless, and
my household warned me of my coming
loss. ‘Why not bring him in here?” I
said, one morning when I was told that
he was ruffled up in the bottom of his
cage, “while there's >life, theres: hopes

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 113

My household shook their head and mut-
tered wisdom, but “to please the sick”
the cage was brought to my bedside. I
removed the bird, had a long chat with
him, coaxed him to eat a spider and ex-
ercise a little around the room, all of
which he did at my biddance. His sick-
ness came from my absence, and now
that we were united his recovery was
magical. Judge of the consternation to
the wisdom of my household, when that
evening “Old Kentucky” perched on the
edge of my water pitcher and gave us an
evening concert.

‘That will do you good,” said the
Doctor, ‘it’s better than medicine.” I
have always thought so.

My first observation on the bobolink
was made but a few years ago, though it
is more than probable that I have often
passed him unnoticed in my extended
travels. JI was lying in a country mead-

114 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

ow, under the shade of a crab-apple tree,
reading a book that has been a travelling
companion of mine since first I tasted its
pages among the islands of the Adriatic.
The book was none other than Stoddard’s
South Sea Idyls, of all books of travel that
I know of the most bewitching. I have
read Melvill’s with delight, happily wan-
dered with Louis Becke, but Stoddard
alone was capable of making me forget
my whereabouts, and leading me whither
he chose. He also added to my ambi-
tions, for I have an undying longing to
see his goldenisles, and summer seas. A
book that can make us forget ourselves
and our little aims for blissful rest, flavor
the imagination with a new delight, give
wings to fancy and tickle the memory
with pictures worthy of her interest and
retention, is indeed a noble book. Now
it may be deemed an oddity of mine, when
I here state that the mood of the book on

BIRDS AND BOOKS. I15

that July morning had something in com-
mon with the merry, careless jangle of the
bobolink as he crossed the meadow. I
was reading Aahele and the style so art-
ful, yet so simple and natural, the art hid-
ing art, that I could not get it out of my
head but somehow or other the bird and
book had an affinity. It may have been
my own mind, I cannot tell, I but merely
recordanimpression. The bobolink came
very close to my resting place and, lighting
in a clump of wild raspberry bushes, soon
disappeared from my view, while another
bird, as if relieved from duty, flew away in
the direction his relief had come. Now
here was a little tangle to unfold full of
pleasure for an inquisitive bird-lover, so I
arose and cautiously walked to the briers,
keeping my eye beyond them, for expe-
rience will soon tell the observer that birds,
whether or not they notice an object
of alarm, are too cunning to light in close

116 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

vicinity to their nests. As I approached
the skirts of the raspberries and made a
quick, startling noise, a bird rose from a
little declivity covered with large white
and yellow field daisies.

Its cry of chink, chink, repeated at brief
intervals, made it easy of recognition.
The tangle vanished, the nest hidden
among the flowers was found, and a little
piece of white cotton tied to a sapling, the
better to guide my glass in the watch of
their movements.

I had read that the bobolink had but a
few notes, tiresome from constant repeti-
tion, but I was to learn that such a state-
ment was a gross libelon a bird that well
deserves a place in the list of our native
song birds. I have watched the male bird
during mating fever, trying to pursuade a
shy, young female to come and dwell with
him, and the music he made to induce her
to accede to his reasonable request was so

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 117

wonderful and so unexpected that I made
up my mind to add a bobolink to my
aviary. Forthis reason I, every otherday,
visited my easily discovered nest, and
before the birds could fly I had wired in
the nest beyond their escape.

A village urchin, noting my walks, lay
in ambush until he discovered the secret
of my rambles, then he lost no time in
robbing the nest and carrying the birds
home where from ill-usage they died in a
few days. Emboldened by what he called
his good luck he was in the habit of
following me in all my country strolls,
when I hit upon an excellent remedy to
rid me of such a persistent nuisance.

My great Dane, Cesar, had been taught
by my neighbor’s children to play ‘‘Go
seek, Ill hide,” a game which consisted in
sending the dog after some object pointed
out to him, generally one of the children,
while the sender hid. Nowthe play of

118 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

the dog was to bring the object pointed
out to those who had sent him and he ac-
complished this feat by tugging on the
dress and pushing with his great fore shoul-
ders. I left to Leon the pleasant work of
filling the boy’s ears with tales derogatory
to the Dane’s character, dwelling espec-
ially on his perverted taste for biting
boys.

Now Leon painted picturesque fiction on
alarge canvas. All things being ready I
started out, leading the dog, followed by
the wily urchin. Once out of town, and far —
from men and houses, I lay behind a huge
bowlder and deceiving the boy who sped
on at a brisk gait, waited until he was in
the dog’s ‘sight, then said I, “Czesar, ee
and seek.” The Dane wagged his tail,
looked in my face to see if Ireally meant
such a child’s frolic, and then went gallop-
ing in the boy’s direction, coming up to
him before he had time to wheel around

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 119

on his tract. I followed and reached the
boy just as he was about to lie down in
abject fright. I pretended to have much
difficulty in affecting his rescue, warned
him that the dog would suffer no one to
follow his master, dried his tears and dis-
missed him with afew pennies. Iwonhis
affection and ever afterwards had his love,
but not hiscompany. I appointed him
on my own responsibility as game-protector
of the surrounding country at the munifi-
cent sum of six and a quarter cents per
week and the promise ofa pair of pigeons,
if, in my judgment, he had acquitted him-
self honorably in his task.

And I shall not pass him without ac-
knowledging his entire devotion to duty,
and the good which came to the feathered
tribe. So skilful himself in the pursuit of
his early occupation, he turned this skill to
his new purpose and to the disgust of his
former friends. The urchin who was

iZO BIRDS - AND, BOOKS

capable of robbing a nest and doing so un-
detected by my gamekeeper, wasararity.
His very name and the close friendship he
bore to me gave even to his name a
restraining influence. He was wise and in
every way exalted this influence by refer-
ing to me as one able to jail a boy without
judge or jury, and Leon, ordinarily so full
of contradiction, was never known to
belittle his master’s greatness. To these
two pillars of the law I entrusted the find
ing ofa bobolink’s nest, which commission
was duly performed with zeal and pride.
The birds were about to leave the nest,
and on our approach, they did so, one of
them being hit by Leon’s hat and, brought
to the ground, was quickly placed in cus-
tody by Leon’s partner, and this was
enough for my purpose. I put this yonng
one in a trap, placed the trap near the old
nest and went into the covert from whence I
could see without being seen. At my feet

BIRDS AND BOOKS. I21

crouched the two boys impatient and rest-
less. Ina few minutes the male bobolink,
being attracted by the cry of his little one,
flew to the trap and after along inspection
entered it to the glorious music of two
boyish throats. There is a wonderful fas-
cination in boyish merriment. The old
bird in our hands, the young one was al-
lowed freedom for a time.

In the meantime I carefully prepared
my plans. I kept the bobolink ina small
cage and in a dark room for a fortnight, —
then I transferred him to the trap as a
decoy and started out for his old home.
In less than an hour from my arrival there
I had trapped his whole family—his wife,
and three young ones, now full grown and
able to shift for themselves. I carried
home the young ones (giving the old
couple their freedom and my own good
wishes); these I at once. placed in a large
cage containing yellow birds, American

122 BIRDS AND BOOKS:

linnets, vesper sparrows, etc., the harvest
ofmy trap. I fed them on soaked canary
seed, eggs and crackers and green stuff,
and my bobolinks in a few weeks became
actually tame.

One of them,in a month’s captivity,
became so social that he would perch on
the seed dish while I replenished it, and I
took good care to show my appreciation
of his spirit by dropping in front of him
a few hemp seeds now and then which
he picked up with avidity. Thus noting
his good disposition I set about his train-
ing, giving him a cage after his heart, for
the bobolink in captivity is an active bird,
and placing it in the center ofa company
of artists. At first hissong was a method-
less jangle, a note of discord in the choir,
a fact which he soon noted, and set about
to rectify in a very sensible way, that of
learning from his masters. The wise look
that came to his young face, and the

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 123

attitudes of attention he maintained for
days were mirth-provoking to my house-
hold. What was our delight when one
afternoon he danced on his perch, spread
his wings, and gave us a song of much
compass and genuine feeling.

True, it was a stolen melody, but so
wrought with his own genius as to defeat
all criticism. Since then he has added
greatly to his compass; only the other
day I noticed he had pilfered the sweetest
trill in the nonpareil’s song, and coming,
as it did, between his own merry jangle
and the finished music of a German cana-
ry, the effect was particularly fine. He
has his peculiarities, and all on the inter-
esting side. He loves to bathe, requires
a large bathing pan, and takes his bath
by jumping into it, beating the water
with his wings and curiously working his
long legs as if not knowing what to do
with them. When he isthoroughly wet

124 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

he seeks his perch and waltzes up and
down it, spreading wingsand tail until dry.
He will permit no bird to light on his
cage, and carries on a daily battle with
a gray finch whose audacity and pugnacity
has turned him loose.

If I let him out of the cage he at once
seeks this finch, who is always at~ his
pleasure for a fight, and commences
battle. The finch’s plan of attack is to
pull out the head feathers, and such an
artful master has he become in this line,
that in one encounter he has made poor
Bobby bald. I havetried to make them
friends, but in vain; like men they glorify
in their own foolishness. Will years bring
the philosophic mind? .Does it in men?
And should we not expect it more from
them than from birds? :

In front of my house is a row of stately
English elms, planted by an old Vermont-
er, whose acquaintance, judging from the

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 125

tales that linger with his memory, I would
have loved to have made in the flesh.
He was a schoolmaster, but not of the
kind nowadays so much in evidence,
whose god is some barren text-book, and
whose petty rules dwarf all finer striving
of the spirit. This schoolmaster was a
man, and his energy went passionately out
to make men. He taught his students
the value of health to soul and body,
opened their eyes to the beautiful vision of
Nature all around them, and to the maj-
esty of common things. He drove out
the narrow, cruel, cat-like, country bigot-
ry, and replaced it with charity, and
from this charity came breadth and depth
which sweetened their own lives, and
helped all others with whom they were
brought incontact. ‘Such a schoolmaster
is a benediction. His elms, planted after
his own fashion, against all the experience
and ominous head shaking of the country

126 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

prophets, grew marvellously, as if to prop
the gentle scholar’s theory, and to-day
they are stately trees leading to a grassy
country lane that bears his name, the
pride of a village that bartered over the
price of his coffin. When death tapped at
his door he went as becomingly as he had
lived, leaving his all to his landlady, and
little as it was, an old silver watch, his thread-
bare clothing, and a box of books, be it
cheerfully written to her credit that it was
more than she sought, for she was a
woman with a heart as well as a mind.

Through her three of his books, bear-
ing on their pages a fullness of proofs
that they were favorites, came into my
possession, a Vzrgz/, a Horace and a stout
well-clad volume of English poetry, being
the select works of the British poets in a
chronological series, from Ben Jonson
to Beattie, with biographical and critical
notices by Dr. Aikin.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 127

Who can tell the power and influence of
such a book in a sequestrated country
village fifty years ago! “His English
books,” said the landlady, ‘‘went all
around the country, often as far as a hun-
dred miles, and this book that I am giv-
ing you was the greatest favorite, and
that’s the reason that the cover is so
thick.

“That cover was put on it by a man that
knew it from the first to the last leaf, Jamey
Thompson, the lame Scotch shoemaker.
Wherever you see a cross, that’s Jamey’s
marking, and Schoolmaster Kimpton used
to say Jamey’s crosses done the book no
harm, for wherever Jamey made a cross
any sensible man would halt fora few
minutes’ thought.” Now from long com-
panionship, I, too, can bear the same testi-
mony to Jamey Thompson’s cross as did
Master Kimpton, and they fill me with
wonder at the massive intellect of the man

128 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

and the power with which he sought the
marrow of apoet. So to Master Kimpton
and Jamey Thompson and the kindly old
dame I owe many a pleasant hour, sitting
under Master Kimpton’s elms, elms which
brought me another pleasure, and one
which ministered to a mood as success-
fully as Dr. Aikin’s book.

They were the only haunt of the golden
robins who came up from the South early
and were only driven away by our pierc-
ing winds, and after rearing their broods, as
a rule, in perfect safety. I have often in
the fine June mornings, dispensed with
sleep to hear from the elm choir the mat-
in hymn to greet ‘Mother Nature;
would generally commence with the ori-
ole’s slow, mellow note, announcing the
mystic rite, then came the rich,. bright,
clear, piercing music of the robin, followed
by the chants of the whole feathered king-
dom rising and falling, now gushing forth

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 129

from the trees as if their leaves were
breathing melody, now dying away as
if it were but the zephyr’s first kiss. From
his heights, the matin hymn finished, the
golden robin would fly toan orchard near
by where he spent most of the working
day in quest of food, for which action I
had to reason long and often with the
owner who held that this bird was a bud-
destroyer as well as an insect feeder, cer-
tainly a perversity of original taste like
that of the bullfinch, sparrow, etc., and
the formation of an artificial one that has
made him many enemies.

My duty, however, was to the bird, so
I took the other side of the argument,
using every means lawful as an advocate
to mystify and confound that most dull
and uninteresting of men, the retired far-
mer who, after years of toil and penury,
settles down in our rural village to whine
away the balance of life.

130 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

I was only successful when I hung up
in the post office a huge dodger done in
charcoal and signed by a committee of
women, whose sympathies, always on the
best side, I had aroused, threatening dire
punishment to all bird destroyers, and of-—
fering a fine for any and all information
that would jail the culprits. This hadthe
desired effect, “For,” said the farmer with
emphasis, ‘‘I will get into no controversy
with women in the town I live in,” where-
in he made a philosophic observation. I
have had an odd idea that the traditional
picture of Uncle Sam was after a drawing
of a retired farmer, caught in his whine
against the increase of village taxes.
Though later by exact observation, I was
forced to admit that the golden robin did
now and then destroy a few buds, which
information I was careful to keep hidden,
but small indeed is the soul who-could be-
grudge him these little peculations. My

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 131

interest in his behalf was appreciated, and
by putting food in the lawn after the
hatching time I was permitted to study
him and his less handsomely clad wife at
short range.

In the bright sunshine it was a pretty
sight to see the male bird in his orange
and black, strut up and down the lawn
with a pride and show of power that was
really laughable but quite excusable in so
handsome a bird. Iremember one of
those instances when his pride had, much
ito my disgust, a sudden fall.

A pair of bold, bad sparrows that I
thad in confinement, and whose liberty had
been gladly granted, mated and built in
‘the porch surrounding my house, and no-
iticing my affection for the golden robins
‘determined to drive them offat all hazards.
I witnessed their first attack.

Flying from the porch, without the
slightest warning, theyflit one on each

132 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

side of the gay fellow,and gave battle, peck-
ing furiously and with loud chatter his
head. At first taken unawares he soon re--
covered and drawing his head far back on
his body, shot out his long, piercing bill
with a rapidity and aim that soon drove
the sparrows to the elms where they held:
a lengthy converse, then they flew away,,
and in less than five minutes returned with
at least a dozen more of their fellows who
lost no time in attacking the object of
their assault. It was useless to fight
against such opponents, so he escaped
sadly mauled, followed by a chattering
throng, boasting, I have no doubt, of their:
miserable victory. From that day I de-
puted my boy, Leon, to check the audac--
ity of the saucy sparrows and keep them
off the lawn, which he did during my
absence by transferring the pair and their
brood to an old and unused lot. Another
experience is worth relating. I hada

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 133

watched through my glass the building of
an oriole’s nest, a long, pendulous pouch
swinging from a most delicate elm twig,
yet so screened that no untrained eye
might detect it. ‘‘This,” thought I, ‘‘is
a nest safe from marauding urchins and
hen-hawks,” so I continued my observa-
tions learning that the male bird sat on
the eggs, as well as the female, and during
the day much more constantly, and such
chivalry is well worthy of praise. At
length the young birds came, three in
number, giving active work to the parent
birds, whose cunning in entering and leav-
ing the nest was a constant puzzle, and
that especially so with the female whose
darker color baffled oftentimes my most
determined efforts. She would leave the
lawn, dive into the tree, feed her little ones,
while I, oblivious of her presence, still
waited for her coming. How petulant I
was with her uncalled for, as I thought,

134 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

diplomacy, but later I was willing to ad-
mit her right and good sense, and to be
taught that birds have a reason for their
acting.

One morning taking Dr. Azken in my
hand, as I used to call the old school-
master’s book, I left the house for a
tramp inthe fields. As I passed the
elm I heard a loud noise which I at once
identified as a bird-cry of distress, and
looking in the direction of the sound soon
discovered the. cause. . A red squirrel
was cautiously testing the twig prior to
making a morning meal of the young
*golden robins, while their helpless
parents were fluttering and complaining
in amost piteous manner. Then I learned
the necessity of the bird’scunning. There
was but one thing to do and that to be
done quickly. I returned to the house,
snatched my gun and returning found the

*Oriole and golden robin are the same bird

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 135

murderer ready to perpetrate his fell pur-
pose. On my arrival, possibly deterred
by Leon’s loud voice and the bark of the
dogs, he fell back for a moment, and as
he did so I aimed and fired, killing him
instantly, shattering the twig and bring-
ing to a convenient limb the nest which
was hastily sought by Leon. Its occu-
pants were put in a purposely made cage
and hung high up in the elm trunk, where
the old birds lavished on them their wealth
of care. I afterward transferred them to
an aviary for soft-billed birds, where they
at once followed the regime of the other
prisoners. Two of these birds I lost from
inexperience, in the moult, but the third,
a male bird, is very lively.and, from my
interest in him, I have been able to dis-
cover a health-giving diet, consisting of
mocking bird food, meat scraps, eggs
and grated crackers, berries and plenty of
green food. His song as yet is low and

136 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

timid, but I hope, under the tutelage of
his wild brethren, that it will gain in
strength and compass. J am having a
new cage built for his convenience, flat
and capacious, for he is apt to hurt his
head on a round top, and he loves room.
It will certainly be pleasant in the summer
sunshine to hang his cage in the shade of
the elms, and listen tothe choir that will
come at his call.

There is one book whose fascination
never grows old.

It was in my youth a volume of con-
tinual delight, and what it. was then it
is to-day when youth has vanished. I
refer to Zravels in Tartary, Thibet and
China, by M. Huc. I well remember
how for its sake I once suffered corporal
punishment from one of those teachers
whose brutal instincts, if I may say so,
survive all culture. While he talked
glibly of the ennobling office of teacher,

BIRDS AND BOOKS. P47

he debauched it by his cruelty. He was
one of those little men so common to our
civilization like the fire-ant described by
Mr. Bates, “that seem to attack persons
out of sheer malice.’”’ My copy, the little
two volume red-edition, was confiscated,
and with this admonition, that ‘‘my love
for such stuff was a very evident proof of
the weakness of my intellect.”

But I thank heaven that no such teacher,
or the dread of his ferule, could keep me
from ‘‘such stuff.” For it is the stuff that
enters most readily as a permanent part
of life. When the dull lessons and bald
explanations of the school-master, the
work of weary years, are forgotten with a
pleasing thankfulness, memory holds
sacredly the impression of such books as
Abbe Huc’s. But lam, as the schoolman
said, straying from my thesis, which, in
the present paper, relates to the house
sparrow, and I only intended to use the

138 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

name of Abbe Huc in connection with a
quotation, when the image of the school-
master, still green in my memory, led me
on. A plain case of association of ideas.
Says Abbe Huc, that most acute and
veracious of travellers: ‘‘The sparrow is
a regular cosmopolite; we have found it
wherever we have found man; ever with
the same vivid, petulant, quarrelsome
character, ever with the same sharp, angry
cry. Itis, however, to be remarked that
in Tartary, China, and Thibet it is, perhaps,
more insolent than in Europe, because,
there, nobody makes war upon it, and its
nest and brood are piously respected.
You see it boldly enter the house, live
there on familiar terms, and pick up at its
leisure the remnants of man’s food. The
Chinese call it ‘‘Kio-nio-eul (bird of the
family).” The Abbe, just in that para-
graph, shows his one native power of ob-
servation. And he wrote, too, a good

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 139

many years before animaginative American
naturalist made the fanciful discovery
that the sparrow followed the fortune of
the Anglo Saxon race.

I must confess it was just on account of
this vivid, petulant, quarrelsome character
that my interest in the sparrow grew. I
had seen him in many lands, and he was
ever the same saucy, self-possessed, pug-
nacious bird, giving his fellows to under-
stand that he possessed the earth, and if
they did not acquiesce in his opinion, not
hesitating a moment to prove his assump-
tion at the edge of his bill. JI have seen
him on the thatch roof of the Irish cottier,
amid the turrets of Notre Dame, in the
dirty alley ways that lead from Italian
streets, and among the snow-drifts of the
north, and always with a love I could not
curb.

He was oftentimes dirty, ragged and
smoke-dyed, but one quality he always

140 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

possessed, and that was manliness. He
was sufficient for himself. Wherever
met he was on easy terms with his sur-
roundings. He seems above all birds in-
sensible to fear. An old soldier once told
in my hearing, that during a hard fought
battle, where the artillery was muchin evi-
dence, the sparrows continued their chat-
tering as if there was neither danger nor
wonderment nigh. And with this bravery
he has another quality which is generally
associated with it, at least in books, and
that is cunning. All the heroes I have
read of were men of cunning, not in the
limited and perverted sense of the word
in these days, but in that of its first sense
as it came from the mint of speech. Then
it meant knowledge, and only in that
meaning would I apply it to the sparrow,
for of cunning in the ordinary sense he
possesses not a particle.

This cunning gives to his bravery, just

BIRDS AND BOOKS. I4I

as it did to Caesar’s and Napoleon’s, an
advantage. He knows his enemies, their
plans, when to fight and when to run
away, when to expose his bravery and be
a hero, when to withdraw it and remain
both heroic and sensible. His enemies are
so numerous and so persistent in their at-
tacks that there can be no doubt but his
cunning is a growth.

The city sparrow is to the country
sparrow what the street gamin is to the
country bumpkin. He can devise means
to accomplish an object that his country
brother would never dream of. In one of
the down-town streets of New York,
noted for its dirt and the multitude and
diversity of its smells, I saw, one bright
Sunday morning, a male sparrow trying
to carry a piece of twine to his nest.

All his efforts, and they were many,
were futile. Finally he dropped the twine,

142 BIRDS- AND : BOOKS;

walked up and down meditating for a few
seconds, and then flew away.
Another sparrow immediately took up
the task, and by coiling the string around
his body rose in flight, to be met by the
returning sparrow and his wife in mid-air
and forced to the ground, where he was
soundly thrashed for his theft. The two
conquering sparrows set about the busi-
ness that had brought them, and seizing
the twine in their bills by that principle of
co-operation, so unknown to the working
men among whom they lived, bore their
burden easy and safely aloft as a lining for
their nest. I have purposely put twine on
the lawn of my country-house to test the
country sparrow’s intelligence, but he
acted like his enemy, the country farmer ;
when not able to carry the thread, he
would neither seek help nor permit others
to try their strength, and I regretted that
there was no way of teaching him what

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 143

suffering and environment had taught his
city brother. Suffering is the school-
master of birds and beasts, as well as men,
and here is a little tale that may bolster
my epigramatic declaration. A female
sparrow had made her nest in acorner of
the piazza for three years. She became
very tame, and to a young member of my
family a pet. Her food was put ina little
plate in a sheltered portion of the porch
and a dish for drinking and bath purposes.
O@eenisht, in the presence of Leon, in
conversation with an invalid lady, whose
enthusiasm for the sparrow is contagion
to the listener, I ventured to remark that
I would add a sparrow to my aviary for
the purpose of studying out leisurely the
coming winter the many lovable qualities
that my host declared they possessed.
Leon, who was ever willing to please my
slightest known fancy, while drawing up
his nose at the lady’s “‘talk,” was bent on

I44 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

giving me a chance to satisfy my whim.
Business called me from home for a few
days, and on my return there was a
female sparrow in my aviary. At the
same time I was informed that little Kit
had deserted the porch, and the young
and fiery member of my family did not
hesitate to couple my boy’s name with the
sparrows disappearance. Reaching the
aviary I found a sparrow incessantly flying
from one end of the cage to the other,
and in her fury driving the other occupants
into a similar state. She had killed a
couple of yellow-birds, the head of one
of them showing conclusive evidence of
her flesh devouring tendency. I had but
to open the aviary door when Kit, as it
proved to be, flew into an adjoining room
and was speedily captured. Her struggles
for,freedom while in. my hand. were
interesting to those who would study the
pathetic fight a wild thing makes to escape

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 145

man’s possession. I had previously noticed
and had been told that a sparrow kept
around the porch since Kit’s captivity, so
to the porch I went and finding there a
lonesome looking bird let Kit loose. I
shall not readily forget what followed.
Kit flew to the barn roof followed by
this bird who proved to be Kit’s husband.

His delight knew no bounds; he danced
around her, spread his wings, proclaimed
again and again his unabated and undying
love, kissed her fervently a dozen times,
preened her feathers and made the whole
place ring with her welcome.

All through this she showed that admir-
able shyness which adds to female grace
and loveliness.

They arose ata low quick twitter of
the male bird and proceeded to the nest,
where three little birdies had long mourn-
ed for their mother. Kit never again
came to the porch. All our efforts to

146 BIRDS AND BOOKS

induce her to continue her old time ways
were unsuccessful; suffering had taught
her the reed-like quality of human friend-
ship. My next experience was more
pleasant. I found one morning on the
lawn, a little after sunrise, a young male
sparrow that had just left the nest. As
he was in the way of the village cats I
took pity on him and carried him to my
study the better to attend to his wants.
In a week’s time he was picking, and all
trouble being now over I gave him a
cage and placed it bordering that of a
German-canary, whose song I was desir-
ous he should learn. In doing this I
* had little faith, I must confess, mr tae
imitative qualities of the sparrow. The
less hopes one has the more enthusiasm
when these hopes are far surpassed. In
dealing with birds, patience is the gold-
en wand that brings so many unexpected
things. The summer, autumn and winter

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 147

passed without my sparrow showing the
slightest sound uncommon to his race,
and I had lost hope. Every morning I
waited for a note, learned from the canary,
and was disappointed with the sharp, re-
sonant voice of an ordinary sparrow.
With the coming of spring my house was
filled with melody, and listening to it one
afternoon near dusk, I thought I caught
a beginner’s song so easily known from
its shortness and lack of strength.

Next morning I put myself in position
to watch, and to my surprise and, I need
not add, my delight, I discovered that
my sparrow was surely if slowly, mas-
tering the canary’s song. This unfolding
of his imitative power went on day after
day, growing richer and stronger until
the pupil proved superior to the master.
To-day, I value him beyond most birds in
my aviary, and this valuation is based on
his merits as a musician. To the canary’s

148 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

song he has added many notes, some orig-
inal, others stolen, but so infused with
his own manner and temperament as to
make the song his own. He is like the
poet who has drawn from many sources,
but making them his own by stamping
upon them an individuality. Captivity
has not only given this bird a song, but
an improved plumage. The grey has be-
come softer, the white more brilliant, and
the black of deeper lustre. Few, on first
sight, would take him for an English spar-
row; but he never forgets the’ race amon
whence he came, evident in his notes
when a wild sparrow comes within hear-
ing.. He takes easy to petting, (aaa
shows an affection to his master only
equalled by that of the gold-finch. He
loves to bathe, to preen his feathers and
keep himself neat and tidy.

Another and greater love is for the
sunshine, and I have taken care that this

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 149

love shall have fullest indulgence. When
the sun breaks out and fills the windows
with his golden rays, life’s elixir, and
bathes the room with light and heat, the
sparrow sings him a song of worship, and
then spreading his wings, basks for hours
in the blessed sunshine. If after one
of these sun baths I[ open his cage
door, he immediately flys to me.

fe is,in the words of Catullus, .“A
honeyed darling.”

There is a little street in Rome that to
me is fullofmemories. It is called the
San Sebastianello, and runs from the Piazza
@eeeaeaena tothe Pincian. It isone of
these little Roman streets that at first sight
seems dull, dirty and commonplace, at
least to an American traveler, butit grows
day by day into your esteem, takes on
new beauties and colors, until you are
willing to admit that your firstimpressions
were foolish, and in that New World haste,

150 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

Whose opinions grate so harshly on
European ears. ‘It was,” says a writer,
“the strolling place of Hawthorne,” and
I do not doubt his assertion.

When he was making studies for his
Marble Faun, it was only natural that he
should take this near cut to the Pincian.

No day passes without somebody of
note walking in his footsteps. I have seen
there a renowned German historian mut-
tering to himself, what I took to be some
wonderful discovery in early Roman
History, for I was told,as a great secret,
that the great man, at home or abroad,
was ever in deep study, and that muttering
-was the sign board of some _ historical
achievement. I have seen on its pavements
an English poet, his long, black, glossy
hairskillfully combed back, making him-
self an object of attention and remark;
an exiled cardinal sauntering leisurely,
dreaming of his own land, I thought, and

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 151

troops of Roman students on their way to
a little shrine further up the street, some
in bright, others in sombre garb, but
blending so artfully in their constant pass-
ing and repassing as to fill the eye with
refreshing color. And may I not add
to these the horde of beggars, so fantastic-
ally clad, that come thrice daily to the
English Convent begging food with the
most piteous appeals, and the most absurd
gestures?

But not for those things do I cherish
the San Sebastianello; though memory,
forgetting incidents of much more im-
portance, clings tenaciously to these small
scenes, but for a little ristorante on your
right hand, on the way to the Pincian, three
stone-flights up and then a turn to the
left, kept by my most worthy friends,
Giovanni and Catarina Rocco, brother
and sister, the most charming couple I
ever expect to meet in one house. They

er BIRDS AND BOOKS.

had seen better days, were once in opu-
lence, but of those days not a word.

As Giovanni, bless his old heart, used
to say, ‘‘Our patrons don't care what we
have been, our business 1s to please them,
and that, signor, we really try to do; our
misfortunes are our own; strangers do not
take kindly to them,” and then he would
graciously lift his little turban, bow and
ask the signor’s pleasure. I made it a
point to be the last for meals, and as I had;
through my tove for Giovanni and Catarina
brought a few customers to their table, my
peculiartty in this respect was overlooked,
and I could idle over my dinner, and have
a chat with Giovanni now at leisure. He
had been formerly in the diplomatic
service and later proprietor of restaurants
in Cairo and Constantinople, and _ his
knowledge of the Orient was that of a
born traveller and skilled observer. He
possessed a wonderful memory and that

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 153

happy faculty of selection which never
tires the listener, but constantly stimulates
him by deftly changing scenes, color and
atmosphere atthe slightest prick of im-
patience. Giovanni wasatrue Arabian
story-teller.

- QOne afternoon he invited me to the
kitchen to show me how scrupulously
clean they were and that I might be able,
as he said, ‘‘with a hearty conscience,’ to
recommend his little ristorante to my
friends. I pleaded that no visit was
needed to urge me to interest my friends
in patronizing the most home-like
ristorante in Rome, but to no avail, so I
put myselfin Giovanni’s handsand followed
him and his sister to the kitchen, which
bore satisfying proof of their cleanliness
and tidiness. While my good hosts were
explaining the different kinds of cookery,
my eye, and I might truthfully add, my
mind, was on a large cage that stood near

Oo

154 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

the window. At my first opportunity I
asked Giovanni what the cage was for.

“Tell the signor,’ said Catarina, and
then, woman-like, she continued, ‘‘my poor
brother has had his weaknesses; one of
them was for all kinds of birds, and in
those days he had what he wanted, we had
money then, signor. Money can be made
a great blessing. Giovanni has but a
few Paddy birds in the cage; why he
keeps them I don’t know, perhaps to make
him think of the past and keep him sad.”

“But, Catarina,” said I, ‘‘Giovanni never
speaks of his trouble.”

“Ah, signor,” said Catarina, with a sigh
and ahead shake, ‘‘you remember the pro-
verb, 7 gran dolort sono mutt.” (Great
sriefs are silent), and with this saying she
led the way.

“This is the work of my odd moments,”
said Giovanni as I touched the most beau-
tiful cage I have ever seen, a real bit of

BIRDS AND BOOKS. | 155

love and artistry. ‘‘It was done after the
model of a Moslem mosque.”

The inside was most ingeniously con-
trived. Here were sliding doors, brass-
springs, that the bird by lighting on, found
both feed and water, swings, perches and
a magnificent bath that was filled or emp-
tied at the touch of Giovanni's little finger.
It had been built for the accommodation of
forty birds and once held that number,
but with death,and Giovanni’s poverty, the
worshippers dwindled down to two Java
sparrows. It was my first sight of such
birds, and my eyes at once betrayed to
their master my interest and admiration,
while his eyes in turn shot back at me his
pleasure. His birds were very active. The
moment his old, laughing face was pressed
against the wires they came to the cage
door, opened it by pulling with their bills
a little blue ribbon, and flew to his arms
making a rough noise as they didso. He

156 . BIRDS AND BOOKS.

had taught them many amusing tricks such
as dancing to his lilt, giving the foot at
the word of command, and firing off a min-
iature cannon. These tricks were a con-
stant source of merriment to Giovanni,
who would rub his hands in glee, and
laugh until the tears trickled down his
cheeks. Catarina at first objected to this
exhibition, thinking that it might displease
the foreigner and lessen his esteem for her
brother, but learning that I, too, could find
laughter and happiness insuch little things,
she allowed her own natural self to play
the part and laughed with us. And it is,
reader, on account of Giovanni and his
tales, Catarina and the Java sparrows and
all their tricks that the San Sebastianello
lingers lovingly in my memory.

In leaving Rome I vowed to own some
day a Java sparrow, but years, and they
fly so fast, went by before my vow be-
came a fact. During some of those years

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 157

I had no home that I could call my
own, and a man may not ridehis hobbies
in the homes of others, and even when I
possessed a home I was kept from my vow
by the threat of an ignorant bird-seller
that Java sparrows would not live in my
cold climate.

This man and his likes have destroyed
in me all respect for popular wisdom.
And here I remark how little of your
widely accepted wisdom will stand the
test of an analysis.

In Montreal one evening, as I was walk-
ing at my leisure along the street that led
to the station, from whence I was to take
the train for home, I met a bird-vender,
whose sole capital was a_ hen-canary,
whom the rogue tried by much show of
reason and bogus science to make me be-
lieve was a male, and a tailless, bald-
headed Javasparrow which seemed to be,
as the phrase goes,‘‘on its last legs.” Just

158 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

then an Italian organ grinder across the
street played an Italian air that I had
often heard Giovanni whistle, and the bird
and music appealing to my memory awoke
the past that told of Giovanni, and for his
sake I bought the bird and brought him
home. There was loud laughter in my
house, when I produced my new addition
to the aviary, andthe prophecy that night
was that my Giovanni would be dead in
the morning. I had to submit to a lec-
ture on my foolishness and the ease with
which a bird or book-vender could empty
my pockets. One audacious member of
the household informed me that I should
have a guardian appointed to deliver me
from such sharpers. I was so put out by
their sinister warnings and dogmatic pro-
phecies, that I arose three times during
the night to have a look at my sparrow,
returning each time more convinced that
he would live to give the lie to warnings

BIRDS AND BOOKS. —~— I59

and prophecy, a text ever after, with which
I could silence my wise household. Morn-
ing came and Giovanni, aroused from his
stupor, hopped to the seed-dish and with
much spirit and dash gave battle to every
bird that approached it, uttering a croak-
ing sound. .
“No fear of that bird dying,” said my
household. ‘‘Consistency,” says Emerson,
‘as the bugbear of little minds.” I am
proving nothing when I remark that
consistency is not to be found in my
household. Giovanni, on account of old
-memories and his bravery in living in the
face of so much harsh comment, won my
heart and he was petted and feasted above
all his companions. No bird can relish
attention more than a Javasparrow. He
takes to kindness as readily asa cat to milk
or a dog to bones, and like them his. taste
never varies. The old proverb about kill-
ing with kindness has its exception in the

160 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

Javasparrow. Giovanni cast aside his torn
coat, grew fat, put on another garb as
tight-fitting as a new kid glove. In mat-
ters of taste in dress he is easily the prince.
I know that other birds have finer and
more beautiful clothes, but none wear them
so®eatly nor look so well in them as this
Beau Brummel. Let me describe him as
he walks across the room picking his every
step, an acknowledged weakness of every
dandy. He is a little larger than our
ordinary sparrow, built after the bull-finch
style. Hehasa thick beak ofa rose color
hue fhat gives the head a canny appear-.
ance. It seems much too large, but as
nature does not generally make mistakes
I am willing to admit that it is just the
thing he needs.

The body is of soft gray, so smooth and
neat that at first sight it seems to be but
covered with one feather, the head and
throat are black, and the cheeks pure

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 161

white. With all this finery and style
Giovanni carries a courage that is almost
beyond belief. Arouse his spirit as so
many of the birds do by sneering at his
clothes, and he will fight, and with a
pluck and push that the detractors cannot
contend against. I have seem him attack
the parrot for a dish of hempseed, and
knowing that his motto was death but no
surrender, I stopped the fight after the
first engagement, much, I must admit, to
Polly’s disgust. His manner of bathing
is most peculiar ; when the bobolink enters
the bath, a circular tin basin, Giovanni sits
on the edge of it while Bobby spatters him
with water. After his bath he takes his
sleep which often lasts a couple of hours,
and woe to the bird that breaks in on his
dreams, for | am firmly convinced that
birds do dream. He cannot sing, neither
can I, as I once found out to my cost, so
how can I blame him, but he has gifts that

162 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

atone for thisloss. He isa brave, manly,
social, funny, little fellow, my Giovanni,
and much as I admire music, these charac-
teristics are still dearer to me.

In walking some years ago through an
unattractive part of Washington, strolling
without any definite purpose, as is my
wont in large cities, I was brought to
stop in front of a wooden structure digni-
fied by the name house, but bearing little
resemblance to what ordinarily fits that
word, by the marvellous song of a bird.

In front of the door sat an old negress,
wrinkled and grizzled, humming some
ditty that suffering had crushed from her
race. She seemed pleased at my inter-
est in her pet, and looking up from her
needle-work, accosted me with one of those
broad smiles that in reality are little laughs.

‘‘Plays his throat pretty nicely,” said
the old dame, as her eyes sought the ob-
ject of her speech. ‘‘He is just as you

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 163

_ see him every hour of the day; that throat
is always busy.” |

Taking an empty soap box that lay
near at hand, I turned it up on its ends
and all unbidden, but not unwelcome, I
took my seat to gossip a while and hear
music that brought, as no other music
could, many memories of long lost days—
those days of the Barmecides, when youth
was strong, and laughter loving, and gor-
geous dreams the only spinning of the
brain. Ah! those merry days when I
wandered where fancy drove me, the pres-
ent blown away with an idle day, the
future full of grand designs and lordly ©
actions.

What boots it for some frontless crea-
ture, who calls himself a philosopher and
rounds his life in a system, to tell me
that I was vagabondizing in those days,
gathering wool, building castles in Spain
and a variety of epithets which seem to

164 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

mean much and mean nothing! I should
sneer at his system and tell him that the
only time in life that I have been a _ phil-
osopher was in those very days, for then
was I content with myself and my sur-
roundings, and by this means found a
happiness, whose loss has ever since been
my quest. And any picture of those days
would be wanting in accuracy had it not
a word of the mocking bird. My wander-
ings lay in the South, from Kentucky to
Old Mexico, and the South is the home,
the landscape of this bird. Here he is
the regal master of the grove, the wood-
land, the orchard and the straggling hedge.
In the most unexpected places, in the
most unfrequented nooks and corners,
his tantalizing throat raises you at one
moment to the skies, at another reminds
you that your feet are still planted on
mother earth, and that some of her chil-
dren are near you.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 165

He has, as no other bird I know of, the
power of imitating his atmosphere. Il
often watched one of these birds, whose
favorite seat was the highest branch of a
tall tree. I could recognize him by the
band of white on his wings before the con-
cert began. His first notes were scarcely
audible, and had I not known the rogue
I would have wagered a bet that they were
those of the blue bird, and what would
have been my feeling when these notes
were immediately followed by the mellow
whistle of the cardinal. After these de-
ceptions he would leave mimicry aside
and for an hour pipe his own exquisite,
natural song, and then as if inspired by
some evil spirit turnin a moment the tune,
and give in quick succession a whole series
of diabolical utterances. The spirit min-
strel had become a barnyard comedian.

A young poet who was my companion
in those philosophic, rambling days, (he

166 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

is now a lawyer, the poet dead in him, and
conventionality where wisdom once held
sway), suggested that we should find the
nest of this finished warbler, and, like true
philosophers, rear the young, albeit we,
ourselves, could boast of no permanent
home. Youth, I love you for your con-
tempt of that miserable, cautious old fel-
low, Experience, who bothers the life out
of age and keeps men from performing
many a noble action by his easy-tongued
warnings from the past. So the poet and
I watched the movements of the bird, with
malice prepense, heard his song, while we
planned his captivity,if opportunity came,
and that of his helpless children. That
which we most admired and most praised
had wrought hisruin. It was astory with
which history is conversant from the days
of Homer to our own time. ‘Lhe gifts of
the gods bring death as often as glory.
After much observation and careful search-

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 107

ing the nest was discovered a few rods
from its favorite tree, and on our approach-
ing it the female rose, perched above it,
uttering cries of distress, which brought
the male at once to her assistance. Their
boldness and bravery I have never seen
equalled; they kept near their nest and
disputed every inch of ground with us.
We found in the nest three fledglings that
showed a depth of yellow mouth the mo-
ment our fingers touched their rather
loosely built abode. 3

No sooner had we withdrawn, than the
male, seeing his spouse quietly seated on
her brood, betook himself to his accus-
tomed place and poured out his thanks to
his guardian deity with that full, free and
fervor-tipped note which is the privilege
of liberty, whether in man or bird.

As we sat entranced by this teeming
melody, the poet repeated the lines of
Rodman Drake, and they catch as near

168 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

as poetry can the mocking bird’s song:

‘¢ Soft and low the song began:

I scarcely caught it as it ran
Through the melancholy trill

Of the plaintive whip-poor-will,—
Through the ringdove’s gentle wail,
Chattering jay and whistling quail,
Sparrow’s twitter, cat-bird’s cry,
Red bird’s whistle, robin’s sigh;
Black bird, blue bird, swallow, lark,
Each his native note might mark.

‘* Oft he tried the lesson o’er,

Each time louder than before;

Burst at length the finished song,—
Loud andclear it poured along;

All the choir in silence heard,

Hushed before this wondrous bird; =
All transported and amazed,
Scarcely breathing, long I gazed.

‘**Now it reached the loudest swell,
Lower, lower, now it fell,—
Lower, lower, lower, still,

Scarce it sounded o’er the rill.
Now the warbler ceased to sing,
Then he spread his russet wing,
And I saw him take his flight
Other regions to delight.”

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 169

‘‘T would not have the heart to take
those birds,” said the poet, after finishing

_- his quotation and meditating a few min-

utes in silence, “it would be criminal, like
thieving from heaven.” My dignified
friend the lawyer who in these days laughs
at my ‘‘bird hobbies,” was in those times
both poet and philosopher, and in his
speech is the proof. He has fallen from
his high estate to be one of the struggling,
discontented crowd. He is an illustration
to the saying of St. Beuve, ‘‘that every
man carries within him a dead poet.”
And as I sat on the edge of the soap
box, memories as the above thronged
my mind, and the old dame noting
my mood fell also to dreaming, and
there we sat, trying to gather together
a few threads of the vanished past. ‘‘If
I only had a better cage for him,” said
the negress as she roused me from my
dreaming, ‘‘he would look much better,

170 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

and be more at home. He isa Virginy
bird; my brother’s son brought him
here; he’s for sale, Mister, you seem to
be taken with him.” The old lady had
spoken the truth; I was certainly in
love with the bird, but there were many
obstacles to circumvent any desire I had
to possess her pet. I was on a lecture
tour, the most undesirable of occupations,
and although I had many friends in Wash-
ington I did not wish to trouble them with
the keeping and shipping of a bird, so
with many flattering phrases in praise of
her pet, and with some sorrow for not
being able to make the purchase, I rose
from my improvised seat, bade the ne-
gress good-bye, taking care at the next
corner to make a memorandum of the
name of the street and the exact location
of the curious little house. Why did I do
this? ;

I could not then nor now adduce a

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 171

reason. A few months after, while en-
tertaining a bird-lover, who was on his
way to Washington, I told him of my ex-
perience there and gave him the note I
had made.

A month after his departure Leon came
running to my room, his eyes kindling
with fire, his whole body swaying with
passionate delight, holding in his hand a
bird cage, followed by my curious and
impatient household. The tramping of
feet and the barking of dogs had told me
that something unusual had happened.
I had no time to question Leon, for with
his entrance he shouted, dancing with joy,
‘sA new bird, a new bird, just got him at
the express office. He’s come from away
off, and the expressman says he can sing
more in an hour than all the birds you
have in your house could do in a year.”

With the bird came a letter telling of
the joy it gave my friend to visit the old

172 BIRDS AND BOOKS

negress who thought me ‘‘a very absent-
minded man,” and to purchase at a cost
of two dollars her mocking-bird. He
playfully added that ‘‘the cage went with
the bird, but he did not dare to send the
bird in such bad company.” |

The long journey and the change of
climate kept the bird sulky and gloomy
for over three months, to Leon’s disgust
and disrespect for the expressman’s wis-
dom. But on a Sunday afternoon, as I
sat reading a volume of Dr. Newman’s
musical prose, I was made glad by the
mocking-bird’s voice. We had been feed-
ing him on a well-loved dish, meal-worm
grubs, and he could no longer be angry
with us, seeing our attentions.

Since then his song has been constant, —
his mimicry unsurpassed. He is Leon’s
pet and this means the best of care. I
confess at times he is a little disturbing,
but then that is but one side of his nature.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 173

and there is nobody without flaws.
“Madame,” says the villain in the novel,
apologizing for himself, ‘‘there are spots
in the sun.”

I have here and there in these pages
spoken of a grayfinch in terms anything
but complimentary, nor am I now going to
make an apology. My desire is rather to
make him better known, and by doing so
prove that I have in no way libelled him.

And I shall begin his history by a frank
statement of how he came into my posses-
sion. <A friend had sent me Vzews and
freviews by Mr. Henley, since a great
favorite of mine, a saucy, strong, pungent
book of criticism, with the request that I —
should read it at once and send him my
thoughts as to its merit. NowIsat inmy
library, doing this at my friend’s biddance,
when Leon entered, and without more ado
made me acquainted with his mind.

“Tthought the doctor told you not to

174 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

sit too steady at your desk. This isa fine
day, and you can read just as well in the
fields as in here. It is a good day for
trapping, and if you want I will hitch Molly
(our favorite pony) and take the dogs
along, and go where thereare lots of birds.” |
A peculiarity of Leon’s mind was that it
had to empty itself before asking an an-
swer.

It was one of those minds that cling
tenaciously to a subject, until it is either
satisfied or tickled with something new.
I heard the boy with some impatience as
my interest was just then in what Mr. Hen-
ley was saying of Matthew Arnold:

“For the present is a noisy and affected
age; it is given overmuch to clamorous
devotion and extravagant repudiation;
there is an element of swagger in all its
words and ways; it has a distressing and
immoral turn for publicity. Matthew
Arnold’s function was to protest against its

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 175

fashions by his own intellectual practise,
and now and then to take it to task and
call it to order.” Leon knew my ways and
waited until I had put a mark in the book,
closed it, and rising hid it in my pocket,
then merriment seized his feet and laughter
lit his eyes.

“The pony will be ready in a few min-
utes,” he cried, as he hurried down the
stairs. In less than half an hour we were
on our way, and here follows in the manner
of the olden time, a truthful reckon of our
cavalcade. Leon was the driver. I sat
beside him with a trap cage and yellow-
bird decoy. Inthe well ofthe buggy were
wicker cages for our captives. At our feet
lay Jack, a champion fox-terrier and a
most conceited dandy, jealous of the slight-
est attention paid to his fellows. Some-
times in front of the buggy, frolicking
sometimes behind it were the two great
Danes of noble ancestry and lordly mien:

176 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

Czesar and Juno, and the suave and decor-
ous St. Bernards, Helen of Troy, and Pom-
pey of Rome. No wonder that the way-
farers stopped to have a sight at such a
curious spectacle. But on we _ went
unmindful of the stupid gaze or the com-
ments of heavy, dull tongues, Leon con-
juring up dreams of the birds that were
eagerly waiting our coming to enter the
trap, while I was equally wool-gathering,
even if I thought the wool of better quality.
Arriving at a green country lane, edged
with golden-rod, daisies, and here and
there a shy violet, we turned in and aftera
few miles came to a large meadow that
bordered on the river. Turning the pony
loose to graze at her will, we set out to
select a suitable place for our trap, as well
as a covert for ourselves. Here I had
better remark, lest Iscandalize some reader,
that we had the permission of the owner
of the meadow to give Molly her liberty.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. i777

In one corner of the field we found a
little grove, which suited all our purposes.
It had a stream of cool, fresh water run-
ning through it with here and there many
a cozy nook fit for lithe-limbed Adonis to
sleep in. I sought one of these, leaving
the bird-trapping and luncheon-making to
my indefatigable boy who was as surely
born for life in the openas the chipmunk
that hurried over the rickety fence with
winning grace, or the birds that sang over
his head. The cool grass, the pleasant
breeze, the maples’ shade, the brook’s
song, the birds’ music, and the charm of
the place all lulled me to soft, refreshing
sleep, and Leon, hearing the doctor remark
how necessary it was for me, kept rule and
silence among the dogs, allowing me to
wake up naturally.

As I did so he accosted me with a smile
that I had learned to associate with victory.
I needed no voice to tell me that the liberty

178 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

of some captive was in his keeping. But
his story I had to hear; it was part of the
triumph. I prefer his own boyish way of
telling to any art-setting that I could give
it.

“Didn't I tell you that there were lots of
birds here.” (He thought he held the
proof in his hands.) ‘Just as soon as you
went asleep I set my trap, and, in less time
than I can tell you, there were a dozen
birds flying around it, but this fellow
(meaning the bird he held in his hand)
drove them all away and nearly killed the
decoy. Just as soon asa bird would come
near the cage, he became a regular lunatic,
bobbing up and down his head, spreading
out his wings, and jumping all over the
trap.”

“But how did you take him?’” I asked,
breaking in on the excited boy’s graphic
tale. Then flashed his eyes. I had brought
him to that part of the story which re-

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 179

‘counts his own glory, by all means to him
the mostinteresting part. ‘I drove him
away,” continued the boy, “more than
twenty times, so I gave him more chances
than he deserved. At last I could stand
him no longer, every time he went away
he came back bolder, so I sat down and
began to think what I could do with him.
Then athought came to me all at once. I
went and put the decoy into one part of
the trap, sprung it and left the other part
open for his Highness,” and the boy gazed
in triumph on his captive and laughed
until the tears came prompted, no doubt,
by an admiration of his own cleverness.
‘“‘Assoon as this wasdone, back he comes,
and seeing no bird in the under part of the
cage he flew on the trap door and, in
his love for a fight with the other
bird, went in. He fought like a Trojan
before I could get him out.” Leon was
the boastful possessor of not a few classical

180 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

phrases which he had learned on his:
rambles with me. He associated with
the name Trojan, the highest compliment
he could pay to brawn and grit. I
brought the bird home, and put him in a
large cage that contained finches, Java
sparrows, yellow-birds and bobolinks. In
the morning, on entering my study, I was
surprised to see him thoroughly at home.
In a week he was so tame or bold, which
I know not, that he ate out of the seed
dish while I filled it, and now and then
pecked violently at my fingers. From
this time henceforward his conduct be-
came unparalleled in my long experience
with cage-birds. He is the most powerful
bird of his kind I have seen, his legs being
larger, stronger by far than ordinary, and
his claws short and thick.

_ He made up his mind that the seed-dish
and water pot were there for his own pri-
- vate use, and acted accordingly.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. ISI

From early morning until dark he kept
up a continual warfare, chasing and beat-
ing every bird that dared to eat or drink.

To one of the bobolinks he took such
an aversion that he would follow him for
hours, emitting a low, hissing sound. When
he came within his reach he set to work
to pluck him in the most cruel manner,
and his delight after one of these battles
was very evident. He would sit on the
perch, spread his wings, erect his tail
feathers, shake his headand makeastrange
and indescribable noise. On several oc-
casions he became so frenzied that he
fell from his perch and rolled in the bot-
tom of the cage. I was constrained to
give him the liberty of the room, but here
again his fighting propensities made
trouble. He spent his days in flying from
cage to cage challenging the occupants to
combat. A chipping sparrow that would
not remain in the cage and was easily able

182 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

to pass out ofany cage I possess, was so
abused and driven around by this grayfinch
that it would pass the day on the edge of
my waste-basket, its only place of safety
from his rude assaults. I put this chippy
in the cage and so thoroughly had he pes-
tered it, that to this day it has not made the
slightest attempt to escape. Liberty can
be made oppressive as well as captivity.
This bird has, to use the words ofa
friend, “some marked peculiarities ;” one
of them is the manner of his bathing. He
does not, according to bird custom, pass
half an hour away fooling with the water,
but like a veteran swimmer boldly plunges
into the basin and strikes out with head
and claws. My presence makes no dif-
ference, in fact he rather enjoys it, as it
senerally means a few hempseed, of which
he is passionately fond, and for which he
counts no efforts too great. |
As an amusement I have given him a>

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 183

few seeds, then went to a cage and
deposited some there, which hewas quick
to note. As soon as he had greedily
eaten his own portion he would fly to the
cage and try, by the most absurd and
laughable means, to obtain what had been
given to his fellows and, baulked in this at-
tempt, returnto me as if begging for more.
His memory is excellent, a statement
which is proven by many tests I have
made. He has found his way from the
kitchen up stairs to my study on various
occasions, knows his cage and the manner
of opening the door, and after six months’
separation from his old enemy, the bobo-
link,is as willing as ever to begin the
attack. I have placed him ina stout cage,
where he lazily perches the most of the
day as if he were in a-sortof stupor. To
sive him both amusement and exercise I
devote odd moments, and my manner is
to put my finger in the cage which he

184 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

resents with all his might, biting so vicious-
ly at times as to puncture the skin.

As soon as spring comes and covers the
earth with bloom, I shall carry back the
grayfinch to his haunts and there restore
him to that liberty his rascality has earned.

I once had the pleasure of witnessing
from my study window an interesting and
practically harmless fight between a chip-
py and a yellowbird. I had been in the
custom of scattering canary seed from
this window to help a pair of yellowbirds
whose nest in an apple tree was almost
withinmy reach. These yellowbirds paid,
I am bound to confess, but little heed to
my generosity, preferring seeds gathered
by their own industry, an industry that
has little cessation.

Occasionally they would drop from
the apple tree, pick a few seeds, and then
disappear with that jerky flight of theirs,
which has always seemed to me to be

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 185

more of the nature ofa jump. It was on
one of these occasions that they. were
honoring me by picking up a few of the
scattered seeds, that a chippy sparrow,
and his shabbily dressed wife, came along ;
and eying the lavish display of food, whis-
pered to his wife that they had better
alight and make a meal. No sooner had
they done so than I noticed that they
were congratulating each other on their
good luck in finding such a sumptuous
banquet spread for their convenience.
This mode of congratulating I have of-
ten witnessed. It consists in a kind of
dance-hop, accompanied with an agree-
able chirrup. To this mystic rite the
male yellowbird, resplendent in perfect
coloring, objected, and I could see that
his mate was urging him to combat. I
had been reading, a few hours before, a
tale ofa richly clad knight anda home-
ly dressed serf, and in the tale the serf,

186 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

scared of the knight’s glitter, had run
away without striking a blow. ‘‘Here,”
thought I, “is the knight and the serf.
Will my plain coated chippy, who is ordi-
narily an easy going fellow, dare withstand
the pugnacious yellowbird ?”

But he did, and even more, he met him
half-way and put himself in the attitude
of defence by squatting low, spreading
his wings and giving his battle cry. The
yellowbird, on seeing this unlooked for
valor, advanced more cautiously and played
for position. While he was doing so
the female chippy, impatient of all these
tactics, attacked the yellowbird from the
rear, while her husband now boldly ad-
vanced in front and, aftera few seconds
of vigorous pecking and angry talk, the
crestfallen knight and his lady found ref-
uge and peace among the lettuce leaves.
The pair having by right of conquest
gained possession of the seed patch, under

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 187

my window, very human like made up
their minds that they would hold it, and,
though I am no imperialist, I could not
but admire the courage that could take
such aresolution. For {1 here remind the
reader, that a few yards from the chippy
kingdom lay a land, colonized and inhabit-
ed by English sparrows, whose looting
forays extended over the whole neigh-
borhood. The chippies were not long
in finding out that these marauders would
contest their right of sovereignty and do
so in thoroughly warlike manner. One
morning as the chippies were feeding on
a few crumbs, one of these wandering
soldiers came to the preserve, scanned it
eagerly, flew away and soon returned
with the rést of the army, which, on
alighting, commenced a war that could
have but one issue, the death or captivity
of the chippies. There was but one way
to save the hardy little fellows, and that

188 BIRDS AND BOOKS. °

was by placing them under Leon’s pro-
tection. Leon hated cordially the Eng-
lish sparrows and in his own words for
this reason that “he cannot behave him-—
self while the other birds are around.”
Of the truth of this assertion I oftentimes
have been a witness. When a bird “after
fooling around a trap for an hour,” was
about to enter, to the great joy of my an-
xlous boy, a sparrow would drive him off
with a noisy twitter,a very song of defiance
hurled into Leon’s teeth. I remember
one instance of this which was very laugh-
able. An English linnet, a cage bird of
many years, through the carelessness of
the boy, escaped one winter day.
Knowing that it could find no food, as
the ground was covered with snow, I put
the trap in the garden, baited it with seed
and left it under Leon’s supervision, who
was not a little mortified at his blunder,
The linnet joined a band of sparrows, the

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 189

only birds to be met with at this season
of the year. I was glad at this, as I
thought that their curiosity would lead
the linnet to the trap and possibly to its
capture. I was not mistaken. First one
sparrow came and examined, then another,
until finally, the whole flock, and with
them their guest, were busy picking up the
stray seed and fluttering around the cage.
The sparrow’s ideas of hostship falls short
of giving food to his guests, and the linnet
noticing this and, moreover, being hungry,
thought he would help himself from the
dish within the cage, but every movement
he made to accomplish this feat was foiled
by the sparrows. They jostled him, pecked
him, and in every way possible prevented
him from entering captivity. To take
one of them in a trap was never in my
mind. They are too cunning. Civili-
zation has madethem artful. Iwas watch-
ing my boy’s face whereon the mind was

190 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

playing, and it took no deep study to read
the message. Suddenly he picked up a
piece of cinder, knit his brow, half closed
his eyes, and with all the power and deft-
ness of his right hand sent it among his
enemies. The sparrows rose and flew
away, twittering in their flight their con-
tempt, but, strange to say, the linnet, pos-
sibly tired of bad company, remained, and
a few minutes after entered the trap.
“IT have had to shiver here for an hour all
on account of those sparrows, I hate them,
now. I’ll kill every one of them,” was
the boy’s blood-thirsty speech as he bore
back to the house the escaped linnet.
Now the chippies were safe under the
protection of such a good hater of their
enemies as Leon, and they seemed to know
this for they at once began to build in
the vines of the piazza. Their nest was
so located that I could, from my study
window, watch its building, and I can now

BIRDS AND BOOKS IQI

recall what pleasure a pair of chippies
brought to me those long, summer days
when ill health confined me to my rooms.
The male and female were constantly busy
gathering grass and horse hair.

The grass was found on the lawn where
I had a few handfuls brought Jong and
soft; the horse hair from the barnyard,
our pet pony supplying that commodity.

I was, during the building process,
amused by an unseemly chatter between
the husband and wife. After one of
these chattering spells the husband would
fly off, while his mate kept on building,
apparently more content with his absence
than his presence.

My opinion of their quarrel was this,
that the male bird threw out some sug-
gestions on nest-building which he wished
to put in effect, whereon his mate took
offence, and, woman-like, used her tongue,
her organ of defence, to down the husband

192 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

The quarrel, if Iam correct in calling it
so, did not last long, not more than a few
minutes, when the male returned with a
horse hair which he deposited humbly at
his mistress’ feet, then they kissed and
made up, giving, as I often thought, a
very sensible lesson to many a foolish
human family within my knowledge. As
soon as the nest was completed and accept-
ed as a fit abode for Mrs. Chippy’s coming
family, there came a silence that aston-
ished me. The male bird became more
erave,and the female bird seldom appeared.
I was anxious to find out the cause of all
this quiet, insuch demonstrative birds, so,
risking the doctor’s prophecy, I visited the
nest and found Mrs. Chippy sitting com-
fortably on three pretty blue eggs with
little black dots on their larger ends. She
paid little heed to my presence, it was
only when I reached out my hand to the
nest, that she betrayed emotion and took

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 193

to flight. She returned in a few minutes
and assumed her patient position. My
next visit was when the birdies had
been hatched abouta week. Their mother
this time showed more anxiety. The
birdies, little funny balls, at my ‘‘tweet —
tweet” opened their depth of yellow
mouths asking for food, in which Leon,
unaccustomed to the finer shades of
speech, remarked that they were all
mouth and skin.

One thing I noted was her disinclination
to seed during thenursing period. As far
as my observations could detect, her food
consisted in worms and grubs of various
kinds. I had some meat cut, torn in
shreds, and placed near the nest to tempt
Mrs. Chippy’s appetite, and if I succeeded
thereby giving her, as I thought,a much
needed rest, and my plan was successful.
Both birds became my guests. After
their brood was reared and had taken

194 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

their departure, I took in the trap their
parents and transferred them to my small
aviary which stands on a table near my
desk in order to note their lives in captiv-
ity. They became at once contented and
exceedingly social, spending their time in
the bottom of the cage rather than on the
perches. They bathe three or four times
a day, in the most gentle way, sitting on
the edge of the dish, and throwing the
water over their bodies. I have been
unable to detect in the male bird any fur-
ther capability for song other than the
chippering that has given him a name.

An enthusiastic bird lover who has had
many years’ experience with our common
birds as caged companions, tells me that
the chippy, under a master, develops
a song much as the English sparrow
does; if so I live in hopes that some
fine morning Mr. Chippy will favor me
with a tune.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 195

A few years ago when on a visit to
Montreal I purchaseda little paper-covered
book at the cost of five cents. It wasa
Scotch edition of John Burrough’s Winter
Sunshine, and to this book I owe my first
interest in the crow. Burroughsisakeen
and kindly observer of Nature. His writ-
ings in this line have been a source of
great enjoyment to me. It is to be re-
gretted that he does not keep within his
limitations where he isa charming in-
structor, but must meddle with literary
criticism.

Thank heaven, no reader these days
can be made to take his reading by pre-
scription, so I can confine myself as I do
to Mr. Burrough’s delights, and they are
enough to satisfy any ordinary demand.
In Canada, asin Europe, there are first
and second class railway coaches.

My idea in purchasing the book was to
have some reading matter in case I could

196 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

not make an acquaintance with some of
my travelling companions. I always ride
in the second class coach, not so much
for the difference in fare, as for the ease
with which a chat may be had with the —
class of society that travels in these
coaches. 7

Society in a first class coach is distant,
dull, and listless, so much given to intro-
spection, that there is neither time nor
a desire for conversation. Now ina second
class coach this is all changed, the work-
men’s brains are active and their tongues
communicative. They put forth their
ideas with dash and spirit, fight for them
vigorously, and prop them with illustra-
tions drawn from their lives that are
both clever and striking.

In a first class coach you are supposed
to give information if you carry on a
conversation, in a second class you will
receive knowledge, and if you are a believer

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 197

in the masses, as the present writer, you
will receive sustenance for your belief. So
taking my little book, I entered a second
class coach on my way home finding there-
in an American iron-moulder who gave
me the half of his seat with an eagerness
that showed his sense of fellowship. I was
sorry when he left me, the only occupant
of the car, an hour later, for his talk was
shrewd and sensible. It wasthen I threw
myself into an easy attitude and dipped
into Winter Sunshine. Here are a few
passages which I read over and over again,
and to them must be attributed the passion-
ate desire that awoke within my breast of
owning a crow: ‘The crow may not
have the sweet voice which the fox in his
flattery attributed to him, but he has a
good, strong, native speech, nevertheless.
How much character there is in it! How
much thrift andindependence! Of course
his plumage is firm, his color decided, his
wit quick, |

198 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

‘‘He understands you at once and tells
you so; so does the hawk by his scorn-
ful, defiant whir-r-r-r-r. Hardy, happy
outlaws, the crows, how I love them!
Alert, social republicans, always able to
look out for themselves, not afraid of the
cold and the snow, fishing when flesh is
scarce, and stealing when other resources
fail, the crow isa character I would not
willingly miss from the landscape. Ilove
to see his track in the snow or the mud,
and his graceful pedestrianism about the
brown fields.

‘‘He is no interloper, but has the air
and manner of being thoroughly at home,
and in rightful possession of the land.
He is no sentimentalist like some of the
plaining, disconsolate song-birds, but
apparently is always in good health and
good spirits. No matter who is sick, or
dejected, or unsatisfied, or what the
weather is, or what the price of corn, the

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 199

crow is well and finds life sweet. He is
the dusky embodiment of worldly wisdom
and prudence.” A few days after my re-
turn home, while driving in the country,
I came to a log cabin, and on the rickety
slab fence in front of the door, saw a crow,
3 his master, a dirty-faced, half-clad-boy,
lying in the grass, and holding a string
attached to the crow’s leg. The boy, as
he watched the crow’s efforts to escape,
laughed as only a boy can.

His laughter made merry my approach.
“What will you take for your crow?” I
asked, as I stopped the pony.

“How much do you think he is worth?”
retorted the youngster, tightening the
string on his victim.

«Set your own price,’ I replied, as I
- jumped from the buggy and went to meet
him. As I didsohe arose, seized his
crow, yelled viciously and ran into the
house. His yelling brought his father

200 BIRDS AND BOOKS,

from the fields, and I became heartily
sorry for my crow enthusiasm. A little
explanation, however, made things right,
and the boy, who thought me a policeman,
was calmed and brought out to dicker
with me. I told the father that unless the
boy, of his own accord, desired to part
with his pet, I could not countenance a
bargain. I should not buy my pleasures
with children’s tears.

The boy with a little more confidence
told me that he wanted to sell his crow,
if he could get a pair of pigeons in its
place, and the mother added that he was
in more need of clothes, a motherly and
truthful remark. As I wanted the crow I
satisfied both mother and son, and ‘drove
home as pleased asa child carrying a
toy. Betimes how little it takes to
please us! My household had been
taught, by years of experience, that their
objections to my pets must not go beyond

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 201

a protest, and I narrate here for the
comfort of those who intend to keep pets
that the power of protest was exercised on
every possible occasion. After the pro-
test, of whichI heard buta few words, I
committed my crowto my housekeeper’s
keeping, much against that functionary’s
will, called him ‘‘Major,” and gave him the
range of the kitchen. To keep him with-
in control and not to exhaust the house-
keeper’s patience by breaking dishes and
jumping on tables, I clipped his wing,
The lad had told me that his diet had
been bread and potatoes, but I noticed
that he had a strong desire for meat,’ and
being allowed to satisfy this desire he
evinced a decided distaste to his former
food. His taming was a very simple
process, in truth, I take no credit in it,
for Major became tame of his own accord. .
By the time his wing grewhe had become
a part of my household and I had no fear
of his flying away.

202 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

His first companionship was with a few
imported tumbler pigeons among whom
he strutted with dignity and authority.
Later this companionship grew broader
and embraced a fox-terrier, two great
Danes, two St. Bernards and a neighbor’s
maltese cat. Cats find no place in my
household, for they are incapable of
personal attachment. I knowthere are
those to whom this statement will
be rank heresy, but a little thought
given to the subject will convince the most
sceptical that a cat’s first love is for the
house, and that a family may move out
and a new family move in without the cat’s
regret, provided she is well fed. Compare
her to the dog who would rather follow
his master on a crust than live in luxury
without him. [had reared a spaniel and
after a few years gave him to a family that
loved him and treated him accordingly.
He had not seen me in two years, but

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 203

when we met his joy knew no bounds,
and during my stay he was always at my
heels. When I went away his master
wrote that he was inconsolable.

_ Major developed for me something like
this spaniel’s attachment. He would fol-
low me all over town until he was as well
known a figure on the street as I was.
He loved noise and made his way to it as
quick as his wings bore him. Following
this oddity he was to be found perched on
a dwarf maple during the children’s play-
time shouting, “Hillo quick,’ the only
words I was able to teach him. And the
children gave him no annoyance for he
was, in a sense, their pet as well as mine.
They divided their lunches, giving him
the tidbits, well pleased when he conde-
scended to dine withthem. Day after day
he extended his rambles until he might be
met with in every nook and corner ofthe
village and without the slightest fear for

204 BIRDS AND BOOKS,

his personal safety. His one weakness
was society, he could not bear to be alone.

From having had a parrot who was
very fond of being teased and played
with, and having witnessed play as a part
of the daily life of wild birds I began my
experiments with Major by tickling him
with a feather, then throwing him on
his back and catching hold of his feet,
scratching his head and similar tricks
to which he responded with a purring
sound, giving the most direct evidence of
his pleasure. Icould only compare him
to a child, the more you teased the more
pleased was Major. He was very fond of
chicken bones, imitating in this my parrot’
whose fondness for this article of diet has,
on several occasions, endangered his life.
He isalso a lover of sweets, especially | our
northern-made cookies.

In case he has had more food than
needful, he very cautiously hides it, and

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 205

his. methods are most amusing. The
keen eye that he keeps on his friends, the
swaggering gait, and the confidence he
has in his ability to outwit us is ever fruit-
ful of health-giving laughter. I have
seen him on several instances watch the
pert fox-terrier hide a bone (with the ut-
most solemnity). A close watch dis-
covered his object when later Major flew
to the hiding place and with loud cawing
set to work to unearth the bone. My
boy had only one word to express the
reason for things being done different to
his mind. He called it ‘‘deviltry,” and
this word he applied to Major’s proceed-.
ing, and I cannot but admit that the word
covered his actions, for once the bone was
above ground Major flew away and was
ever after indifferent to its fate. A neigh-
bor satisfied with my success in crow-
taming, and desiring to follow in my foot-
_ steps, procured a young bird, and having

206 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

spent much time on his education, pos-
sessed a bird much superior to Major.
He calls him Charlie, and Charlie, although
living at the other end of the town, passes
most of his time in my yard philosophiz-
ing with the Major who permits his friend
the freedom of the entire property save
the kitchen. Here he will not allow him
to enter. I know why but I am not going
to pull my friend’s character to pieces.
As I write Major and Charlie are perched
on the roof of the barn, not uttering a word,
their heads well thrown back, the sun —
glistening on their backs... What an un-
canny appearance they present! So I
fall to meditate on what they are thinking
about, and I am sure it will be as profit-
able as the meditations of philosophers.
It can be no more barren of results than
their speculations. Leon declares that they
have only one thought, how to live the
day, and if this be so, they touch closer
than I knew the vast majority of men.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 207

One of the most vivid bits of my early
recollections, is a selection from Sterne,
The Tale of the Caged Starling. To
this day the poor bird’s sad refrain comes
to my mind at the most unlooked for times.
What I suppose made the impression so
indelible on my young fancy was the
teacher’s voice as he read, ‘‘I cannot get
out, | cannot get out,” said the starling.
The teacher’s face is before me, a long,
bony face, curved, crooked and indented
to oddity, but lit up with eyes, large, mel-
low, gray eyes, that won for it reverence.
Many stories were told of his loves and ad-
ventures, his cares, and now his sorrows,
for ill-health and cramping years had com-
pelled him to eke out a sustenance in teach-
ing children, and all these stories but made
him more conspicuously the hero of my
childhood. When the tale was ended, he
gathered us close to him, and, with a pen-
cil, deftly drew the bird and its cage, de-

208 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

scribed the starling, and told a dozen little
tales of its doing, planting in my heart
that love for Nature which has made me
happy in all my wanderings.

The purse might be light, the road hard, |
and the future dark enough, but what
matters all these things, if there were
meadows, along the way, babbling brooks,
breaking flowers, birds in song. I could
make a couch under the _ broad-leaved
trees, in the thick, cool grass, Heaven’s
best music, the birds above me, and dream
dreams that no kings could enact. He
only, I reckon, a teacher who provides us
with a shield against the future’s tyranny.
What a teacher; he was my first master to
give me a love that grows stronger with |
the years, a love that will survive and give
pleasure when other loves more fondly
planted, more tenderly nurtured, are dead,
leaving but a dim remembrance, a fire-fly
light amid the giant shadows of the past.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 209

The life of love is growth; even while his
soft voice, narrating the wonderful tricks
of the starling, fellon our ears, I must have
been dreaming of some day owning such
a marvellous bird, for from those early
days came the longing for a starling. I
so familiarized myself with the bird’s fig-
ure and plumage that I would have no
hesitancy in picking him out im any bird™
shop I might enter. But it was not in
a bird shop that I first met him, but in
a little sequestrated Irish village, lying
on the banks of a sleepy old river, in
whose clear pools, as the peasantry
tell, when the moon and the stars are
out, nymphs, the prettiest in Erin, disport
themselves, singing songs that lure the
human hearttodeath. Onan early morn-
ing, I sauntered from this town along its
leading way until I reached a glebe, the
property of an English clergyman, and
could go no further, held by the beauty of

210 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

the place. I entered the gate and walked
up the broad avenue, shaded by the fra-
grant horse-chestnut. The lawns, which
extended from the avenue, were dotted
with small trees, juniper and holly and
flowering shrubs, mostly the rhododen-
dron, then in gorgeous bloom. From a
little patch of furze, ablaze in the love of
the sun, came the thrush’s ‘‘fine, careless
rapture.” In front of me inthe holly was
the blackbird, his fine golden tune filling
the woodland with his magical spell.

On the avenue at their ease, picking in
the gravel or hopping by the edge of the
lawn, were chattering sparrows and rob-
ins half awake, trilling now and then a
liquid note.

The goldfinch was calling from the
sycamores, a bulfinch shot through the
greenery of the hawthorne hedge giving
me a bit of his color and a few sleepy
notes. In the meadows the larks were

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 211

rising and descending, scattering through
the clover-scented air the stolen music of
the gods.

Amid these scenes, fit abode for a
dreamer, came my first starling, shooting
in and out through a bit of straggling
hawthorne hedge, the steel blue and the
dark greenand purple of his coat flashing
vividly in the sunlight, but seeming to
change to other colors as the bird went
further from my view. I could under-
stand the truth of diverse description of
this bird’s plumage, for while his true
color is that revealed to me in the haw-
thorne hedge, it seems to vary with the
degree of sunlight and shade. But he is
a handsome bird, no matter in what light
he is seen, while in cleverness he is eas-
ily the master of all his bird companions.
He is as light and true on his feet as a
Parisian dancing master, and his grace
under the most arduous circumstances, is

212 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

always that of the best society. I have
never seen a starling with that slatternly
droop common to so many birds in the
woods, when they think that they are un-
observed. He is always on dress parade.
I sat down on a rustic seat, a seat, I
learned afterwards, that was the favorite
resting place of the owner, an observant
and highly-gifted man, whose love for
birds had filled his grove with song when
other groves weresilent. Loveconquersall.
The starling was joined by his mate,after
_ I lost sight of him, and when he returned
with her and entered a cherry-bush I was,
as the children’ say, ‘‘all eyes? amy
patience and vigilance was repaid, for I
witnessed a pretty bit of bird courtship, .
and though the maiden did not, in my
presence, become engaged, there was
something about her that told me she was
perfectly willing to be so, and that her
impatient air and angry manner was put

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 213

on to increase her value in the eyes of the
amorous male. Love, what a plague
you are, blinding our eyes to mockeries
and veriest delusions! Once, when the
male tired of his entreaties, sulked and
flew away, the female immediately
showed a power which intrinsically be-
longs to all her class by whistling him
back to more utter subserviency. I left
them to their quarrels, well knowing the
result, and sought the little town, now
awake from its sleep, amused on my way
by the antics of a chattering magpie. My
next meeting with the starling was at an
old English inn, one of those that Hazlitt
loved to frequent, where a bottle of wine
and a chicken might be easily had after
one of his long, country rambles; I know
of no hostlery to compare with these
inns,

One canapply to them what Maurice
De Guerin calls that “deleczeuse express-

Banc BIRDS AND BOOKS.

ton Anglazse gue resume tout le chez sor—
at home.” The starling I saw at this inn
brought me no joy, but a certain jerk of |
sharp pain, leaving in my memory an
impression that must ever remain there.
Almost in front of the inn grew a large
sycamore tree. The morning after my
arrival it was alive with starlings on their
annual passage, and no prettier sight can
be seen than a flock of those birds whose
motions are constant and whose plumage
assumes, under the sun’s rays, such vary-
ing colors. ‘The jolly master of the inn
had just called me to see the pleasant
sight, when bing, bang, bang, went the guns,
and by the time I hurried to the street,
more than forty starlings lay dead and
wounded around the trunk of a tree, their
beautiful plumage bespattered with blood
and dirt. Theactors in this miserable
affair were boisterous, telling of their ex-
ploits, and a crowd, drawn by the gun’s

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 215

report, were listening, with glee in their
eyes, to the wanton, cowardly destruction
of the birds. Such heartlessness I have
never seen equalled. I left the town in
disgust, though I had planned to spend a
few weeks amidst its beauties which were
inviting me on every side, but the murder
of the birds stole away all the charm that
would have been mine in this rustic re-
treat.

A starling came into my possession a
few years ago, without the slightest ro-
mance attached to it. A New York bird
dealer had it in his possession for two
years and, being unable to sell it at any
price, gave it to me with a few birds I had
purchased. ‘‘Do you see that starling,”
said the bird man,—‘‘he just looks as if
death would bea relief; if you want to
bother with him ll throw him in with
the rest.”

The bird was in a bad plight, a sorry

216 BIRDS AND BOOKS

object to behold. He had been confined
to a small cage, had been deprived both
of his exercise and bath, and the conse-
quence was that most of his feathers, and
especially those of his head, were rubbed
off, his wings trailed hiding the sore and
dirty feet; the eyes were heavy and dull,
but Hope, always hid in the human mind
as it was in Pandora’s box, came to my
succor when I had the words of refusal
on my lips, giving me enough of cheer to
suppress them and permit the starling to
be mine. I started home that night with
the birds, arriving there the next afternoon
and transferred them to cages.

The starling was so weak that his feet
doubled under him, but Hope still stood
by me. Leon was sent to the cabbage
path to find some slugs, while another of
my household procured a large, wooden
cage, sprinkled it thickly with sand- and
placed in it a large bathing pan. All

BIRDS AND BOOKS. at

being ready, I put the starling, towhom I
gave the name of Hope, inthe bottom of
this cage and in a little dish in front of
his bill, the appetizing slugs. He glanced
at them cautiously, touched them gently
with the front of his beak and then, mind-
ful of old memories, greedily devoured
them. A few days later he took a little
hurried dip in his bath-pan. To the slugs
and seed I added fruit and a little red
pepper now andthen. In three weeks he
was able to perch and in less than eight
days from that time his recovery was com- |
plete. I had handled himso much in the
days of his sickness that all the wildness
had gone out and athorough attachment
taken its place, which was proven on many
occasions. He became a great favorite for
his droll ways and the restless activity
with which he busied himself from morn till
night. His love of fine clothes was very
marked, for not a single particle of dirt was

218 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

allowed to rest on his well-polished coat.
No old Roman loved his bath more than
Hope, and I have again and again stopped
my writing to watched the felicity with
he bathed. He would totally abandon
himself to its delight, plunging into the
basin, tossing the water with his head,
flapping it with his wings, all the whilethe
eyes sparkling with joy.

I have tried, following the tale of Nor-
man Macleod’s Starling, whose talking
propensities brought so much trouble to
his loving master, to educate Hope to the
making of short phrases, but so far my suc-
cess has been less than moderate. He
says, ‘‘Ho, ho, well, well,” but further in
speech-making he refuses to go. If men
were only so modest what peace on earth !
But left to himself he has: composed the
most wonderful medley of sound. Hehas
taken the notes of all the birds in my house
and all those he has heard in the bird

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 219

store and mixed them up in the most
humorous and laughable way. ‘To these
lately he has added the screeching of the
parrot, and the bray of aneighbor’s don-
key. This complicated masterpiece he
is entirely too willing to pour forth, and
especially so if any strangers are around
him. He hangs now in the parlor and, as
I write, he is piping this masterpiece and
half a dozen merry children sitting in
frontof him. His fame has gone abroad,
his eccentricities have made his reputation,
and there are those who swear that the
song 1s his own, ‘“‘a great song, a veritable
masterpiece.”

I know better, but nought shall I say,
advised by Shakespeare, |

‘*A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities.”

Somehow or other, in early childhood,
I came to have an idea that the owl was
not just earthly, or, to better express my

220 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

mind, that it had doings with the world
which lies beyond Nature. And this
foolish idea still clings to my head, not*
any longer, it is true, as a belief, for a
moment’s reflection shows its absurdity,
but as the first impression that passes be-
fore me at the mention of the word owl.
This is but a proof, how difficult it is to
eradicate our earliest sensations, and the
indentions they make when later life
comes with its corrective hand. Biography
assures me that a complete success here
cannot be obtained, and hence I have
come to believe that the phrase, ‘‘The
child is father of the man,” can be taken
in a stricter sense than that thought of
by the poet.

This idea of the owl must have arisen
from the strange stories I heard of him in
those early days.

By the chimney corner in the winter
nights, when the wind sang his mournful

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 221

music through the pinery and made
strange sounds in every corner of the
house creating a mystic atmosphere around
us, we, children, heard tales of this bird
that made us afraid to climb the stairs
that led to our cots, and when there,
turned to very torment all our waking
hours. These tales told how he could
speak, dance, and turn himself into every
possible shape.

How vividly I remember waking up one
beautiful, moonlight night, when the stars
were looking through the window, filling
my soul with beauty and wonder, how the
memory of an owl that had turned him-
self into a maiden, and carried away a
boy, changed all these pleasant sensations
to pain, and kept me hid under the bed
clothes in abject fright, until that most
loveable of al] the gods, Morpheus, struck
my forehead with his golden wand, and
bade me dream and artifice more pleas-

222 BIRDS AND BOOKS,

ant figures than changing owls. Even
in boyhood this fear continued, and
amidst allthe dreams I dreamt in those
happy days, reading Buffon and extracts
from Audubon, there never came one for
a desire to own an owl. Bird lovers’
tastes develop from the. bird to the race,
and I can no longer claim any detach-
ment on the score of the owl. He, too,
has a place in my heart. Here is how
my passion started.

I had been on a hunting expedition, in
the heart of the Adirondacks, and on such
occasions, early rising is indispensable to
secure game. One morning I was at my
post a few minutes after five waiting for a
shot. This post was by the side ofa huge
cedar that grew by the edgeof a little for-
est brook. From afar off, I could hear
the glorious music of the dogs, making
me impatient for the approach of the deer,
but soon the music died away, the morn-

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 223

ing’s air became chill and more piercing,
and with these things, my attention dull and
listless, until finally I wrapped my catskin
coat close around me, put my Remington
safely against the tree, threw myself on
the ground, and was soon fast asleep, un-
mindful of dogs and deer and all my wak-
ing glories. From this delightful sleep,
(for there is no sleep comparable to that
taken inthe open), I was aroused by a
series of hideous cries that I can bring no
language to picture. My first feeling was
one of fright, but remembering that the
Remington was at my hand and that my
reputation as a sportsman was at stake, this
feeling passed for one of anxious curiosity
to lodge a bullet in the heart of the monster
which, I was comingto believe,was no other
than a dreaded catamount of whose prow-
essand cunning, I had heard adozen stories
aroundthecamp-fire. AgainI heard the
hideous cries and this time much louder

224 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

than before, and blending with them came
the running music of a couple of dogs, and
a few minutes later a breaking of the brush-
wood and a crackling of leaves. I had
barely time to grasp the gun when a huge
deer was within a few yards, coming at full
speed. A well-aimed bullet brought him
to the ground, and as he fell in death's
throes, a large bird flew from above my
head into the thickness of the forest. It
was an owl ofthe species known to wood-
men as the hawk-owl, and this was the
monster whose unearthly cries had aroused
me from sleep, and put me in an attitude to
slay the lordly brute that lay at my feet.
For this service I owed him at least some
sort of recognition, which I gave to him in
the form of trying to disengage my mind
from the mass of prejudice heaped against
his race in my childhood, and from this ef-
fort came the ambition to possess an owl
and study his ways at my leisure. This

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 225

ambition was fostered by my friend and
neighbor, who had a long experience with
these birds. One is worth relating.

He had a very large eagle that had been
captured in the wilds of Canada when very
young, and wasinsome degree tame, at
the time to which I refer. He was kept in
a wired apartment chained by the leg, and
had for his companiona largeowl. They
were chained in such a way that they
could just touch bills. I had often been
their visitor, and had for hours listened to
their master’s tales, of their love for each
other and good comradeship.

One winter’s night the owl slipped his
chain, and in the morning, when my friend
visited his pets, he found the owl plucked
quite clean and partly eaten. He has an-
other owl, but it isnot in the same apart-
ment astheeagle. Enthusiasm is always
tamed by experience. It was to this friend
whose love for everything in Nature is so

226 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

well known to the country people, thatthey
send him a!]l kinds of birds and animals
that fall in their way, that I owe my first
owl whose mounted figure now sits on my
writing desk, with that same calm and
grave attitude which he bore in life, as ifthe
problems of the world pressed heavy upon
him.- It but shows the acuteness of the
Greek mind when it dedicated this bird to
Minerva.

My friend’s gift was, at his own sugges-
tion, placed in a screen wire cage and ina
part of the cellar that was both comfortable
and easy of access. He was of the same
species as I had heard in the Adirondacks.

At first he was warlike and vicious
ready to pounce upon my hand, as I| care-
fully pushed it toward him. He would not
eat in my presence, his only game to watch
every movement of my body, holding him-
selfon defense, and uttering ho, ho, ina
jerky way which I took to be his battle cry.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 227

When the fox terrier, who ts always at my
back, came to the cage, Cato threw him-
self on his back and worked his legs like
two drum sticks. As his cage.was large
and the handling of him difficult, I built a
stand much the same as that used for par-
rots, and removed him to it, giving orders
that I was to be his only visitor, which I
might here remark was unnecessary, as
my household took no interest in his
affairs. I visited him regularly for over
three months, without making the slightest
impression upon him, and I was beginning
to get tired of his refusals to my compan-
ionship when Leon suggested a new means
to conquer his resistance. The boy had
caught hold ofa dozen mice and his sug-
gestion was that I should present one of
them to Cato with my compliments, prom-
ising him more ofthe same dainties for his
friendship. I took the mouse, tied a string
to its hind leg, and held it in front of the

228 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

philosopher who watched with his one eye
the frantic efforts of the mouse to get away.
As I let out the string, andthe mouse ran
further from his stand, his interest so in-
creased that he flew from his perch with
all grace and dignity, and when he return-
ed the mouse was in his keeping. After
he had dispatched the mouse I approached
close enough to scratch his head, after
which I gave him from my hand another
mouse, and from that day until his untimely
death, Cato gave me no more trouble. I
cannot say that his affection was very de-
monstrative, but it was solid. And that
was more befitting his sober look.

‘‘Our outward act is prompted from within.”

After having himin my possession for
almost a yearI gave him a chance to seek .
his liberty, did he desire to do so, by
leaving the cellar door open. Toward
dusk he came to the yard, flew to the

BIRDS AND BOOKS ~~ 229

barn, entered it and was soon lost to my
seeing. I then made up my mind that
Cato had for good taken his departure,
but, on the advice of Leon, leaving the
cellar door open I was astonished next
morning to find Cato perched in his old
place looking nothing the worse from his
night’s outing.

After this I gave him full liberty, and
to this liberty must I attribute his early
death and the loss of incentive for further
owl studies.

It happened in this way. In the cel-
lar, asin most cellars of our Northland,
there are large, uncovered cisterns to hold
soft water. One morning Cato, whether
for the purpose of drinking or other pur-
pose unknown to me, I cannot say, sought
this cistern. When Leon found him he
was in the centre of it, as wise looking as
ever. With the aid of a hooked pole he
was brought to land, rolled in a flannel

230 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

cloth and by the boy’s hands lovingly de-
posited by the fire. He made not the
slightest resistance. It has often been my
study the taming effects the coming ofdeath
has on the wildest animals. Some years
ago I saw a remarkable instance of this
in the death of a catamount. For five
minutes before his death he paid no
attention to us, allowing us to pass over
his body freely. It seemed to me, how-
ever, that during this time his eyes were
telling the awful pain of*the final conquer-
ing. Just as he rolled over in death I
caught in his eye the same look as I once
saw in the eyes of a dying bandit, the
protest of unbridled liberty against the
despotism of civilization.

Cato lay in his improvised little cot for
a whole day. Toward night-fall I noticed
a glaze stealing over his eyes and I knew
that he could not last but a few minutes,
so I uncovered him and laid him on the

‘\

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 231

bare floor, when he rolled on his back,
kicked once or twice with his legs and
then forever was calm.

The same member of my family who
had formerly accused Leon of capturing
the sparrow, Kit, now came forward and
made a long harangue much in the
manner of Antony over the dead Cesar,
using Cato as an illustration to act upon
our sympathies. The pith and point of
her charge was that Leon, having heard
that an owl could swim as goodas an otter,
threw Cato into the cistern to test the truth
of the tale, and finding that the bird did
not do what his race was supposed to do
naturally, called me to witness a so-called
accident, but what was in reality a dastard-
ly attempt to take the owl’s life, and then
the orator, pointing to the dead body of
Cato, and flashing her large, lustrous black
eyes full on the boy’s face, said in pathetic
tone, ‘‘and the villain has succeeded.”

Die BIRDS AND BOOKS.

Leon was not awed in the slightest by the
maiden’s onslaught and, when his turn
came to speak, defended himselfin such a
gallant manner that I could not but believe
his speech, for I hold with Shakespeare
that ‘‘An honest man is able to speak for
himself, when a knave is not.”

One of my boyish longings was to be
the possessor of a parrot. When about
six years old I read a little book on these
birds, and it so fired my ambition that,
when a year later a showman came to
town with a talking gray parrot, I fol-
lowed him from street to street in a perfect
rhapsody of delight. His parrot, as I re-
member, was an accomplished talker, and
this accomplishment settled in my mind
any doubts I had as toanimals being able
to talk. |

From that time, and for many years
after, I was constantly on the lookout fora
chat with Danny, the black cat, and Tobey,

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 233

the greyhound, and if my ambition to
discourse with these worthies was never
satisfied, I was far from blaming them,
believing that fear of losing their home
kept them from exercising their wonder-
ful gift, for, young as I was, I well knew
from the nightly fireside tales what prej-
udice there was against talking animals.
When the showman left the town, I
strongly desired to accompany him and
be Polly’s most loving and admiring com-
panion, but my wishes in the matter were

scouted and trampled upon. I was locked
_inaroom while Polly and the showman
took the main road for parts unknown,
left lonely and sad to cry, till exhausted I
fell asleep and found in dreams what was
denied to my waking hours. Somewhere,
I cannot just now tell where, the great
English Cardinal Manning, whose strange,
thin, pallid face and piercing eyes won
my ardent admiration in his bare London

234 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

house years ago, has written that the
world is not worthy of a child’s tear. The
man was worthy of the saying, and ever
since I read it, have I added his name to
those to whose worth I have erected a tablet
in the pantheon of my memory. The
maker of such a phrase is a leader ahead
of his times, ahead of an age that permits
childhood to carry a thousand brutalities
on its weak, young shoulders, turning
what nature intended for a fair form into
a shrunken, aching, shapeless thing, blind-
ing the vision of the eyes, paralyzing the
litheness of the limbs and filling the soul
with canker. When I walkthrough the ghet-
tos of our great cities, and behold such
misshappen things speaking so keenly to
my soul of the rapacious blind greed of
those who command, and the living tor-.
tures of those who must obey or die, I
wonder if our age ever pauses to think
what kind of human beings she proposes

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 235

to give as a legacy to the future, for the
child is father of the man, and the man
will be father of the child, and so on, until
in time the brute men, goaded by their
matadors, will become as fierce as Spanish
bulls, and the wrongs of years will be ad-
justed in blood. In a bird store in the
capital of Old Mexico, kept by a French-
man who came to give Mexico a king, and
seeing the king shot and his fellows cap-
tured, became a good republican and
swore fealty to the land of his adoption, I
saw the largest collection of parrots that
fortune could bring to a bird lover, and
many of them, mostly the native bird, so
cheap as to tantalize my heart into barter,
but my reason held out, showing the ab-
surdity of any such proceeding.

I was a wanderer and did not know
the length or extent of my wanderings. I
had no settled place of abode, here to-day
and away to-morrow sort of existence.

236 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

As the Frenchman loved to talk English,
though I understood him much _ better in
either French or Spanish, and as I have
always been willing to have a man mount
his hobby in my presence, I soon became
a great favorite with Monsieur Bourgeois,
an acquaintance which gave mea respec-
table and delightful lounging place, and
the dapper littlke Norman a chance to
practise his loquacity inlaughable English.
I was very willing to correct him, but I
found him perverse to such a course,
much preferring his own mixing, to the
queen’s authorized brew. Seeing this I
made no further remonstrance, but valiant-
ly engaged him whenever we met, asking
no explanation on his part. What I did |
not understand I allowed to pass, believing
its loss of small account. There are more
than poets born. Bird-lovers are of the
class to whom I refer, for no amount of
teaching can supply the defect, and M.

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 229

Bourgeois was born a bird-lover. Each
parrot in his collection appealed to him
from an intrinsic peculiarity that marked
him from his fellows. One of his often
repeated sayings that birds, in their dis-
positions, are as different as men, after
long experience, comes to me as a truth.

Here are four canaries out of the same
nest; one is gay and joyous, another
sulky, a third wild, and the fourth by
times combining all their dispositions.
I know of no class of animals where the
truth of the Frenchman’s opinions is more
evident than among dogs and the inves-
tigator is at his leisure. M. Bourgeois
was not a believer in the tales that have
common currency in regard to the parrot.
He held that the gray parrot had a very
retentive memory and could, from con-
stant repetition, master a short lyric, as
he proved to my scepticism by having a
bird for foreign trade repeat in excellent

~

238 _ BIRDS AND BOOKS.

French a humorous drinking song; the
yellow headed variety came next in his
estimation as a talker, while for gaiety,
and originality, he preferred him to all
other parrots.

A third kind, with a bar of blue on its
head, while a passable talker in the
romance languages, could not master our
English tongue. I heard a species of this
parrot a few years later, giving a fine
imitation of a drunken, Spanish sailor, but
I was then told that he was an uncommon
bird that no money could purchase, albeit
his owner was far from being a rich man.
My good opinion of the man grew wonder-
fully when I knew that he kept his bird
out of love. Many keep birds for show
and treat them with a recklessness propor-
tionate to their egotism. :

Not so with the bird-lover who would
fast and be cold in order that his little
pets were warm and well-fed. Their

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 239

songs are not for the idle crowd, but for
the master’s heart. The stories of parrots
carrying on aconversation my Frenchman
denounced, and a little reflection makes
one of his opinion.

Under the tutelage of Monsieur
Bourgeois I not only learned much about
parrots and their treatment, but begot a
revival of my old love for them, the grace
_of which still remains with me. Wonder
not then that as soon as I was settled
down, the anchor cast fora few years, that
I became the possessor of a brace of par-
rots, a gray and ayellowhead. The gray
parrot had been brought from the west
coast of Africa in a sailing vessel, and
had mastered a few nautical terms. In
my possession he became so wild and
sulky that no one could approach his
cage, and after a few weeks of continual
beating his head against the wires, lay
down and died.

240 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

_ All my care was now turned to the yel-
low head. I put him in my study where
he was under my own eyes, and where I
could note his slightest indisposition.

I was rewarded for all my care, for Sen-
or became in a short time such a pet as to
have no need for a cage. My first bound
to hisintimacy was through a chicken bone
of which he is passionately fond, dropping
all other eatables for this dainty.

Hold up a chicken bone. and Senor im-
mediately lays his plans to procure it.
He dances up and down his perch in the
most ludicrous fashion, with the most
gracious series of bows; if, after this old
fashioned. waltz, the bone is still kept from
him, he gives an imitation of the summer
song of a Mexican burro, and by this time
the bone is willingly put in hisclaws. —

Then he seems to have perfect enjoyment
and will be heedless of his surroundings
until the fox-terrier makes his appear-

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 241.

ance, when his feathers become ruffled
and his loud cry of ‘dirty dog,” re-
sounds through the house. This terrier
has snatched Polly’s bone more than once,
and between them has come a bitter ha-
tred that will grow with the years, for
neither of them will speak the first word of
friendship.

Wherever they meet Polly Senor calls
Jack an abusive name, and he, in dog
speech, swears most outrageously at Polly’s
importance and impudence. With the
Great Danes and St. Bernards, Polly is on
the most friendly terms, calling them by
their names in my voice, and with such an
exact imitation that they run to her with
great speed.

One of the dogs, a Great Dane, called
Cesar, is very fond of Polly, and Polly
reciprocates all the affection lavished upon
her by perching upon Czsar’s back, sleep-
ing between his huge paws, balancing

242 BIRDS AND BOOKS.

herself on his nose, and the hundred odd
ways she has of passing an hour with a
friend. Polly sings a few snatches ofa top-
ical song that Leon taught her during my
absence, and, to my great disgust, as it
was my intention to put in her mouth but
classic poetry, but since she came under
my boy’s tuition I note a decided aversion
to polite literature, and at the same time a
wonderful quickness to catch and repeat
phrases that were better left unsaid.
While I praised Polly to a clerical
friend of mine as a pious and prayerful
bird, rejoicing the heart of the good man,
Polly laughed loudly, and made use of a
phrase that is not permitted in good society.
To this I called the boy’s attention and
was on the point of giving him a scolding,
when the haughty bird sent us with a roar
of laughter to the society of a distin-
suished personage, none other than
Monsieur Satan, to use the phrase of the

f

BIRDS AND BOOKS. 243

Englishman who gave it as the equivalent
of /e diable. The boy was not slow to
take it as a text to vindicate his honor.
fWia 1 teach her that bad word?” he
asked. ‘Answer me that. If you did
not hear her yourself I would be blamed
for putting it into her head, but she needs
nobody to prompt her, for her head 1s just
full of such stuff, and whenever any body
is around she says it to be mean.” What
could I do-_but laugh at the boy, bird and
my pious friend, vowing that henceforth I
should place no confidence in the talk of
Polly Senor. I heard later that the pious
friend was shocked at the bird’s villany
and would visit me no more, on which
occasion I gave thanks that the Lord made
my life a little more pleasant. Of all
bores none is more wearisome than the
Pharisee.

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