“What manner of good would you do me, stranger? Should I eat you, I should be neither more nor less hungry. You are evidently a studious Sparrow. You have burned the midnight oil, and offered up every drop of your blood on the shrine of science or literature. Skin, bone, and feathers. Ugh! you would only trouble me in my empty stomach, and there study out at leisure the various odds and ends of my organisation. No, no! get up; give my mouth a wide berth; sit on my tail, if you like the fur.”
Concealing my dread of his hungry fangs, I perched lightly on the tail, where I was not unfrequently disturbed by the tremor of his emotions.
Fellow Sparrows, the tail of a beast of prey is the safest perch, and it affords a true index of the play of passion in the brute.
“What are you doing here?” I said, to renew the conversation.
“Well,” said he, “we are awaiting some visitors at yonder castle, and intend to devour them, horses, coachmen, and all.” Here the tail whisked so briskly that I had difficulty in keeping my feet.
“That would be an extraordinary proceeding. Men, to be sure, are our foes, and you, no doubt, perform a useful function in keeping down their numbers. As they are Russians, you won’t eat their heads,” said I.
“Why?”
“It is said they have none.”
“What a pity! That will be a loss to us, but that won’t be the only one.”
“How so?”