And that is a great deal. If they did nothing all their lives but set examples to children (and to their parents also, sometimes), the doves would be among our most useful little birds.
I suppose we all have some friends whom we are always glad to see, even if they are of no particular service to us. And this is right; we should not value people's society in exact proportion to what we think we can get out of them. Now, the swan is a feathered friend, and a good one, but I must say he is of very little practical use to us. But there is something more to be desired than victuals, clothes, feather-beds, and Easter-eggs. We should love the beautiful as well as the useful. Not so much, to be sure, but still very much. The boy or man who despises a rose because it is not a cabbage is much more nearly related to the cows and hogs than he imagines. If we accustom ourselves to look for beauty, and enjoy it, we will find it, after awhile, where we never supposed it existed—in the caterpillar, for instance, and in the snakes. There is beauty as well as practical value in almost everything around us, and we are not the lords of creation that we suppose we are, unless we are able to see it.
Now, then, I have preached you a little sermon, with the swans for a text. But they are certainly beautiful subjects.
A goose, when it is swimming, is a very handsome bird, and it is most admirable when it appears on the table roasted of a delightful brown, with a dish of apple-sauce to keep it company. But, for some reason, the goose has never been treated with proper consideration. It has for hundreds of years, I expect, been considered as a silly bird. But there never was a greater mistake. If we looked at the thing in the proper light, we would not be at all ashamed to be called a goose. If any one were to call you an ostrich, I don't believe you would be very angry, but in reality it would be much more of an insult than to call you a goose, for an ostrich at times is a very silly bird.
But geese have been known to do as many sensible things as any feathered creatures of which we know anything. I am not going to say anything about the geese which saved Rome, for we have no record that they intended to do anything of the kind; but I will instance the case of a goose which belonged to an old blind woman, who lived in Germany.
Every Sunday these two friends used to go to church together, the goose carefully leading the old woman by her frock.