“In Boston. A lady had a canary that she petted very much. He used to light on her head when she was knitting and pull her hair.”
“Why did he do that foolish thing?” asked Billie.
“He wished her to play with him. She would shake her knitting needle at him and say, ‘Fly high, Toby, fly high.’
“To her surprise, the bird one day repeated her words. ‘Fly high, Toby, fly high.’ She at once began to train other young birds, and made quite a good living at teaching short sentences to them, but it took a great deal of patience. So you see, if human beings spent more time in teaching us, we’d be more clever.”
Billie looked dreadfully. “Don’t speak about training birds and animals too much, Dicky-Dick. It makes me shudder. If you knew what horrible things are done to animals who appear in public.”
“I do know,” I said. “I’ve heard shocking
tales from Chummy, told him by downtown pigeons.”
“Once,” said Billie, “I met a strange dog looking for food on the dumps. You never saw such a scarecrow, and he was frightened of his own shadow. He told me he had run away from The Talented Terrier Traveling Troupe. He said his life had been simply awful. A big man used to stand over him with a whip, and make him mount ladders and hang by his paws and do idiotic things that no self-respecting dog should be required to do.”
“Billie,” I said, “I do know about these things, and the whole subject is so affecting to me that I often have nightmare over it. I dare not tell you the horrible things they sometimes do to the little performing birds you see on the stage. Starvation is one of the least dreadful ways of making them do their tricks.”
“Why do human beings who are often so sensible allow this wickedness?” asked Billie wistfully.