'When the Flicker died, I felt that this only thing hitherto left to love me, could never reäppear. The kind heart of the woman would beat again; the kind heart of the bird no more forever. And strangely enough, the whole sorrow that I had passed through for Miss Brentnall's loss revived, and I went about my day's work bearing the weight of a two-fold melancholy.
'The first thing that the bird-fancying public knew—indeed almost the first thing I knew myself, so abstracted, so moody was I—a paragraph appeared in the morning papers, to the effect that the celebrated Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor, Orloff Ruricson, was about to close his business, and make a voyage to Europe, Asia and Africa, from which parts he hoped to return in two or three years, with a large and interesting collection of rare animals, to establish a Natural History Museum.
'I had caused the appearance of this notice myself; but when I read it, felt quite as surprised by it as any body. In nerve and mind I was so worn out, that although thoroughly resolved to make the move, the consolidation of the purpose into such a fixed form shocked me.
'When the novelty of the idea passed off, I disposed of all my stock to various amateurs who knew me and had every disposition to help me by paying large prices. I put the thirty thousand dollars I was now worth into such a shape that I could get its increase in regular remittances; packed the bird, the daguerreotype, and a small wardrobe, and took passage by barque for Genoa.
'At sun-rise one Monday morning, the barque's yawl took me out to her anchorage. As I went up the ladder at the side, I heard an opera-air playing on board, and when I reached the deck, the first thing that met my eyes was an Italian grinder, with his organ and monkey.
''Is that man going the voyage with us?' I asked the captain.
''Yes, Sir,' he replied; 'but he shan't play without permission after we get to sea. He's a Genoese, who has made enough in this country to keep a fruit-stall in his own, and so he's going home.'
'Home! He had a home, and was going to it! I would have handed him my bank-book—taken his monkey and organ—to be able to say that.
'As the tug hitched fast to us and we began walking down toward the Narrows, I crossed to the other side of the ship, that I might take a look at the fortunate man.
'Certainly, I said to myself, Fortune is blind. He had a home; but he was one of the most ill-favored rascals I ever laid my eyes on. No body would have taken him for a Genoese—the New-Englander of Italy—rather for a Romanesque cut-throat, or a brigand of the mountain, who had found his stiletto or his carbine good for only the slowest kind of shilling and taken to the nimble six-pence of the hand-organ, on the principle that honesty was the best policy. You have seen a thousand pen-and-pencil pictures of the fellow, and need no description of him from me.