243 



dimly conscious that though weeping among the 

 birds may endure for a night, yet joy assuredly 

 comelli in the morning. 



^bc Siberian (Tit. 



By the Rev. C. D. Farrar. 



IT is not always possible to live up to one's 

 reputation. I believe I am supposed to be 

 invariably successful, either owing to good luck 

 or my immense aviaries: here then is a simple 

 record of failure, to encourage others. We mortals 

 should chiefly like to talk to each other out of good 

 will and fellowship, not for the sake of hearing 

 revelations or being stimulated by witticisms, and I 

 have generally found that it is the rather dull person 

 who appears to be disgusted with his contemporaries 

 because they are not always strikingly original, and 

 to satisfy whom the party at a country house should 

 have included the Prophet Isaiah, Plato, Francis 

 Bacon and Voltaire ! 



With this brief exordium let me begin this paper. 

 vSome of my readers may know the following lines 

 written by a certain poet concerning mice playing 

 round a trap : 



Alas ! regardless of their fate 



The little creatures play ; 



No sense have they of ills to come 



Nor care beyond to-day ; 



Yet see how all around theni wait 



The ministers of humau fate. 



I behaved like the mice, and in my case the minister 

 of fate was Mr. Thorpe of Hull. One morning he 

 asked me, on one of his insinuating post cards, if I 

 wanted some Northern Tits ? Need I say what my 

 answer was ? 



In order to make a man covet a tliin.g it is onl}^ 



