"Hold your tongue!" screamed Aunt Mathilda. "Come down from there!
Come here!"
Polly cocked his head and jingled the prisms. "Sit down, Mathilda!" he said, cheerfully. "You've got to listen. You are fat and homely and selfish. You are a nuisance to everybody about you. You have got to feed me and take care of me better than ever—and you've got to listen to me when I talk. Pig!"
I visited another person with a parrot the next day. She put a cloth over his cage when I came in.
"Take it off!" said Polly. She took it off.
"Won't you come into the other room?" she asked me, nervously.
"Better stay here!" said her pet. "Sit still—sit still!"
She sat still.
"Your hair is mostly false," said pretty Poll. "And your teeth—and your outlines. You eat too much. You are lazy. You ought to exercise, and don't know enough. Better apologize to this lady for backbiting! You've got to listen."
The trade in parrots fell off from that day; they say there is no call for them. But the people who kept parrots, keep them yet—parrots live a long time.
Bores were a class of offenders against whom I had long borne undying enmity. Now I rubbed my hands and began on them, with this simple wish: That every person whom they bored should tell them the plain truth.