“Yes, sir; he be a pretty one too. There’s lots on ’em here, and welcome as rain.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, “but what humbug it is.”
Monnick stared, and the robin hopped on the top of a garden stick and chirruped a few notes.
“Just imagine,” said the doctor, who was in a didactic mood; “try and imagine a stout, well-built man, six feet high, a fine, handsome brawny savage, seizing a boa constrictor in his teeth, shaking the, say, eighteen feet of writhing bone and muscle till it had grown weak and limp, and, by a complete reverse of all rule, swallowing the lengthy monster without an effort. The idea partakes of the nature of the serpent, and is monstrous; but all the same, that little petted and be-praised impostor will hop up to a great earthworm three times his length, give it a few digs with his sharp beak, and then—as the Americans would say—get outside it apparently without effort or ruffling a feather, after which he will hop away, flit to a twig, and indulge in a short, sharp song of triumph over his deed. It is his nature to, no doubt, and so are a good many more of his acts; but in these days, when it has grown to be the custom to run tilt at no end of our cherished notions; when we are taught that Alfred did not burn the cakes; that Caractacus never made that pathetic speech about the wealth of Rome: it is only fair to strip the hypocritical feather cloak of hypocrisy off that flagrant little impostor, the robin.”
“The robin and the wren be God’s cock and hen,” said John Monnick solemnly, pairing according to old custom two birds of different kinds.
“Yes,” said the doctor, “and terrible are the penalties supposed to attach to the man or boy who takes the nest, steals the egg, or destroys old or young of their sacred progeny. As a matter of course, no one ever did take egg, nest, or destroy the young of this couple, inasmuch as they are two distinct birds.”
“Yes, sir, two of ’em,” said John Monnick solemnly. “The robin and the wren be God’s cock and hen, and nobody never takes their eggs but jays and magpies and such like, robins is always the friends of man.”
“Friend of man, eh?” said the doctor. “Well, go where you will, there is the pretty bird to be seen, with his orange-scarlet breast, olive-green back, and large, bright, intelligent eyes. Winter or summer, by the homestead, at the window-pane, amongst the shrubs of the garden, or in the wood, there is the robin ready to perch near you and watch your every act, while from time to time he favours you with his tuneful lay. All pure affection for man, of course—so the unobservant have it, and so poets sing; when the fact of the matter is that the familiarity of the bird comes from what Mr Roger Riderhood termed ‘cheek,’ for, the sparrow not excepted, there is no bird in which the sense of fear seems so small; while the motive power which brings the pretty little fellow so constantly in man’s society is that love which is known as cupboard. Probably the robin first learned from Adam that when man begins to garden he turns up worms; and, as these ringed creepers are this bird’s daily bread, he has attached himself to man ever since, and will come and pick the worms from his very feet, whether it be in a garden or during a botanical ramble in the depths of some wood.”
“Yes, sir,” said John Monnick, “they follows mankind everywhere. I’ve had ’em with me wherever I go.”
“For worms, Monnick, and in winter they will come for crumbs to the window sill, or pick pieces of meat and gristle from the bones inside the dog’s kennel; while in autumn time, when the flies grow sluggish and little spiders fat, where is there a better hunting-ground than the inside of a house where there is an open window, or, best of all, a church? What other bird, it may be asked, would take delight in making its way into a country church to flit about as the robin will? A sparrow would awaken at once to its sacrilegious behaviour, and beat the window-pane to escape; a robin never. On the contrary, he seems to take delight in making the little boys laugh, in impishly attracting the attention of people from the ‘secondly’ and ‘thirdly’ of the sermon.”