How he enjoyed lying on one side, stretched out at full length, to bask in the sun, a miniature copy of his magnificent father! Very careful was he of his personal appearance, pruning and preening his pretty feathers many times each day, paying special attention to his tail—not more than an inch long—but what a prophecy of the future! As mothers care most for the most troublesome child, so I grew daily more fond of cute little Kizzie, more anxious that he should live.
I could talk all day of his funny ways, of his fondness for me, of his daily increasing intelligence, of his hair-breadth escapes, etc.
The old story—the dear gazelle experience came all too soon.
Completely worn out with my constant vigils, I intrusted him for one night to a friend who assured me that she was a most quiet sleeper, and that he could rest safely on her fingers. I was too tired to say no.
She came to me at daybreak, with poor Kizzie dead in her hands. He died like Desdemona, smothered with pillows. All I can do in his honor has been done by this inadequate recital of his charms and his capacity. After a few days of sincere grief I reflected philosophically that if he had not passed away I must have gone soon, and naturally felt it preferable that I should be the survivor.
A skillful taxidermist has preserved as much of Kizzie as possible for me, and he now adorns the parlor mantel, a weak, mute reminder of three weeks of anxiety.
And his parents—
The peahen died suddenly and mysteriously. There was no apparent reason for her demise, but the autopsy, which revealed a large and irregular fragment of window glass lodged in her gizzard, proved that she was a victim of Beauty’s vanity. A friend who was present said, as he tenderly held the glass between thumb and finger: “It is now easy to see through the cause of her death; under the circumstances, it would be idle to speak of it as pane-less!” Beauty had never seemed very devoted to her, but he mourned her long and sincerely. Now that she had gone he appreciated her meek adoration, her altruistic devotion.
Another touch like human nature.
And when, after a decent period of mourning, another spouse was secured for him he refused to notice her and wandered solitary and sad to a neighbor’s fields. The new madam was not allowed to share the high roost on the elm. She was obliged to seek a less elevated and airy dormitory. His voice, always distressingly harsh, was now so awful that it was fascinating. The notes seemed cracked by grief or illness. At last, growing feebler, he succumbed to some wasting malady and no longer strutted about in brilliant pre-eminence or came to the piazza calling imperiously for dainties, but rested for hours in some quiet corner. The physician who was called in prescribed for his liver. He showed symptoms of poisoning, and I began to fear that in his visit to a neighbor’s potato fields he had indulged in Paris green, possibly with suicidal intent.