CHAPTER XXVI
SWEET-SWEET AND THE SAINT OF THE AVIARY
Among the books that I bought when I started my aviary was one that amused me immensely. It was a clever book, but the description of each bird almost always began with the assertion that this particular bird was the best, the brightest, and the prettiest bird of the entire race of birds.
I have not had the variety of birds described in that book, but now that I am attempting to relate the particulars of some of my pets, I find myself tempted to ascend up to the same heights of eulogy. Each bird is the best bird. Each one is the most beautiful, the most lovable—one has to exercise self-restraint to avoid exaggeration.
I have had quite a large number of birds that I cannot write about at length. I will merely mention some of them.
I one day expressed a wish to have some bluejays in the presence of a bird-fancier, and shortly afterward he arrived with a pair that he had bought from a woman near Halifax, in one of the colored settlements composed of descendants of Southern Negroes. They were handsome birds, and as I released them in the aviary I could not help thinking that if they were foreigners how greatly they would be sought after.
Their appearance in the aviary occasioned the greatest consternation among some of my birds, whose instinct recognized in them hereditary enemies. This instinct of fear in these partly domesticated birds is the same that makes them cower when a hawk passes over their cages.
One indigo bunting fainted and fell motionless on the ground. I took her upstairs where she would not see them, and the other birds soon quieted down, for the blue jays went into a corner and stayed there, only occasionally uttering harsh, unhappy cries.
I wondered how they had ever contented themselves in a small cage with the colored woman, if they were so unhappy in my aviary. I begged them to have patience, that there were fires in the forests about the city, and as soon as they were extinguished I would set my prisoners free.
Finally a bright morning came, when I put them outside the window, and they flew swiftly away, and I hope are living happily in my beautiful native land.
Shortly after they left me, a small boy arrived at our door with a tiny cage, scarcely suitable for a canary.