KKIGHTS AND CASTLES. 



THE PURPLE MARTIN. 



As a fighter of unimpeachable courage, address, and bokl- 

 ness that never takes up the gauge of battle without reason, 

 nor lays it down without honor, the purple martin stands peer- 

 less. He is a knightly character, amiable, gentle, courteous, 

 and wholly devoted to his lady wife whom he adores and 

 caresses with sweet words; but very valiant toward any 

 enemy, and, though unarmed in either bill or claws, both of 

 which are small and weak, willing to engage in battle with 

 any that affronts him. Like the knights of old he wears a 

 steel-blue suit that shines like polished metal (but his 

 lady's gown is white beneath) ; and, like the ancient knight, 

 he prefers to live in a castle. 



I do not see them so often now, but in my childhood no 

 carpenter in New England considered that he had finished a 

 barn until he had built and placed upon its gable a martin 

 box. These were sometimes elaborate affairs, and occasionally 

 were so large that, instead of being perched above the peak of 

 the barn on a short pole, they were erected in the middle of 

 the farmyard upon a staff of their own as large as a small 

 mast. In this case they spun a weather-vane upon their 

 roofs, a horse, or a fish, or a gaudy cockerel that tried to run 

 before the breeze, and could do nothing but turn round and 

 round as it whiffled east or west. In this case, too, they were 

 usually not snug little cottages, but pyramidal palaces of many 

 stories, each with a wide balcony in front, and with many little 

 round-topped doors opening into as many snug chambers, in 



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