The Song-sparrow or Humility Rewarded, a Fable 



Amelia J. Calver 

 Lebanon, N.Y. 



One beautiful morning in spring, many many years ago before 

 you or I, our mothers, grandmothers, or great grandmothers even 

 thought of living, there might have been seen gathering from all 

 parts of the world, silent bevies of birds of all kinds and sizes, to a 

 beautiful island fanned by the spice-laden zephrys of the far famed 

 East. 



But why this gathering?, you ask; why this silence? when in 

 our day a single robin will call us from our deepest slumbers, and 

 a few bluebirds and sparrows make the morning so resonant with 

 sound, that we wonder what we ever listen to when the birds are 

 gone. 



Well this is just what I am going to tell you. Birds had not at 

 that early period learned to sing and it had been announced some- 

 time before by Dame Nature that when the magnolia should send 

 its perfumed breezes throughout the verdant isles of the Tropics 

 the Fairy Queen of Song would meet the birds there to distribute 

 her gifts. 



Earliest among the expectant guests, was seen the stately flamin- 

 go whose lordly bearing seemed to claim the richest gift of all; 

 while the gaudy peacock flaunted his tail in the rays of the morn- 

 ing sun, building airy castles of the expected admiration he was 

 sure to earn when he should call attention to the beauty of his plu- 

 mage, by the sweetness of his song. Among the waving branches 

 of a lofty tree, sat a bird of paradise, silent thro' envy, won- 

 dering how birds who tread the earth, could expect to rival those 

 who were free from such drudgery and could move at pleasure 

 on downy pinions. 



In the midst of these gay dreams and while the less pretentious 

 birds were chatting in undertones, a slight rustle was heard in 

 a cluster of spice bushes which the birds thought could be no other 

 than the Fairy Queen herself, and eager to be the first to greet the 

 royal donor, the flamingo rushed into the bushes, followed by the 

 peacock, while the bird of paradise came down from his lofty 

 perch with a graceful sweep, only to prove to her highness that un- 



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