GOLDFINCHES AT RYME INTRINSICA 225 



supremely happy, but it was a short-lived happiness, for 

 very soon the terror and distress of my little captives, 

 and their senseless frantic efforts to get out of their 

 prison, began to anncjy and make me miserable. I say 

 "senseless" because I had no intention of keeping them 

 in captivity, and to my small boy fjrain it seemed tliat 

 they might have restrained themselves a little and 

 allowed me to enjoy seeing them f(jr an hour or two. 

 But as their flutterings and strainings and distressing 

 cries continued I opened the cage and allowed them to 

 fly away. 



Looking back on that incident now, it strikes me as 

 rather an inhuman thing to have done ; but to the boy, 

 whose imagination has not yet dawned, who does not 

 know what he is doing, much has to be forgiven. He 

 has a monkey-like, prying curiosity about things, espe- 

 cially about living things, but little love for them. A 

 bird in a cage is more to him as a rule than many 

 birds in a bush, and some grow up without ever getting 

 beyond this lower stage. Love or fondness of or kind- 

 ness to animals, with other expressions of the kind, are 

 too common in our mouths, especially in the mouths of 

 those who keep larks, linnets, siskins, and goldfinches 

 in cages. But what a strange "love" and "kindness" 

 v.hich deprive its object of liberty and its wonderful 

 faculty of flight! It is very like that of the London 

 east-end fancier who sears the eye-balls of his chaffinch 

 with a red-hot needle to cherish it ever after and grieve 

 bitterly when its little darkened life is finished. "You'll 

 think me a soft-hearted chap, but 'pon my soul when 



