Almost every boy tries to fly, and he thinks there is some secret about it which he can find out, if he is only patient enough. He gets up on a high fence, and he flaps his arms for wings, and he plays that he is going to fly to the next town. The birds, looking on, must laugh heartily.
Perhaps if the boy's body were boat-shaped, like a bird's body, and if his legs were put midway between the two ends of his body like a bird's legs, the boy would come nearer flying. But more than all, he would need a good strong pair of wings. We have never seen a boy yet who had wings of any sort.
[CHAPTER XV.]
CRADLE MAKING.
There is a good deal said and written about the way birds build their houses. But, really, birds do not build houses. Their houses or dwellings are built for them by Mother Nature, and are the trees and the bushes, and the sheltering rocks and the caves, and the cornices of our own houses.
What birds really do build are their cradles,—little crib beds, sometimes with rockers and sometimes without.
Birds do not make the cradle first and put the rockers on afterwards, as a cabinet-maker would do. They first choose the best rockers in the market, and then make the cradle on top of the rockers. Sometimes they do a very queer thing; they find the rockers, and then build the cradle under them. Birds have ways of their own, and they are very good ways, as you shall see.
The rockers for a bird's cradle are of the branches of the sycamore, or apple or orange trees, or they are of twigs of the elm or cypress, or banana leaves. Any strong, firm twig or branch that will rock and tilt in the breeze, makes a good rocker of the old-fashioned sort.
"Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down comes baby, cradle and all."