“Very well,” said the Blackbird, “then I move that man is a mean, mischievous, and malevolent animal. Will that do for you?”
“Excellent!” said every one. “Go on, and be quick.”
“Be as quick as you can,” said the Robin, “or there won’t be time for my speech.”
“Silence!” cried the president. “I call on the Blackbird.” And the Blackbird began his oration.
“Man,” he said, “is in the first place mean. This may be thought perhaps too obvious a proposition to need proof. I need but ask you to look over the orchard wall into the kitchen-garden yonder. What do we see there? Gooseberry-bushes, currant-bushes, covered with delicious fruit; I know it, for did I not try the flavour of every one of them daily till yesterday? And now, now, just as their juices are mellowing, each of those trees has been covered over with a most vile and treacherous netting! If time were not pressing I could easily produce statistics to show——”
“What are statistics?” asked a Flycatcher deferentially.
“A new kind of earwigs,” said the Blue-Tit promptly. “Don’t interrupt. What a flow of eloquence!”
“I could produce statistics to show,” continued the Blackbird, “that those gooseberries and currants would be sufficient to feed scores of blackbirds for several weeks together. Think of what is here lost to the world through the meanness of Man!
“The raspberries indeed are not netted; but, friends, I would ask you, if you can control your feelings for a moment, to look in the direction of the raspberry canes. There you may see—I can hardly bear to mention it—the dead bodies of two cousins of mine, who lost their lives through the meanness of Man, in the exercise of their natural rights and appetites. Shot, cruelly shot, by the farmer’s son, and exposed to view to frighten us!”
Here the speaker was overcome by emotion, and paused for a few moments.