I first heard of him from a bird-fancier in Dartmouth, who called on me and asked me what I gave my gallinule to eat.
“You have not by any chance a live one?” I asked.
He said he had; that a little boy had picked up a strange bird on the railroad track by the shore, and knowing that this gentleman had a fine collection of stuffed birds, had brought it to him, asking him to kill and mount it for him.
Telling the boy that it would be a pity to kill so handsome a bird, the gentleman gave him a dollar, and told him to choose one of his already stuffed birds.
The boy went away happy, and the gentleman came to me to write a bill of fare for the stranger, as he wished very much to keep him.
I told him I had not dreamed there were any but stuffed gallinules for several hundreds of miles near me, and that as his bird was fortunate enough to be alive, I would recommend a general sort of diet, for I saw my Beauty picking at all sorts of food in the aviary.
Above all, we must have a good, deep water dish. No matter how cold the weather was, Beauty would stand for hour after hour in his bathtub, gazing about him in a quiet contemplative fashion, and occasionally making a swift bob down into the water to wet his purple plumage.
The gentleman said he would possibly get tired of keeping a solitary bird, and if he did, would send it over to me. Therefore, I was not surprised, when in a few days gallinule number two arrived in a basket. Once more I was excited. What would the meeting be like between these two wanderers from a foreign shore? Imagine my delight if, held prisoner in Mexico, I should suddenly have thrust into my prison another real, live Nova Scotian.
I took the new bird down to the aviary and let him out. He also was a handsome bird, and in good condition, in spite of his long flight; and was, I imagined, slightly larger than mine.
To my disappointment, there were no hysterics, no heroics about the meeting. They did not fly to meet each other. My gallinule looked at the strange gallinule, and the strange gallinule looked at him. I thought I saw tokens of quiet pleasure on the part of each one, but it was extremely quiet.