DUCKS 



"^ ■ '^HE duck," says a writer in the Spectator, 



■ "is a person who seldom gets his deserts." 



I As regards myself I cannot but admit the 



"^^ truth of this assertion. I mean, not that I 



am a duck, but that I have returned that bird evil for 



good. He has given me much pleasure, and I have either 



eaten or shot him as a quid pro quo. 



One of the greatest delights of my early youth was 

 to feed the ducks that lived on the Serpentine. How 

 vividly do I remember the joy that the operation 

 gave me ! In the first place, I was allowed to enter the 

 kitchen — that Forbidden Land of childhood's days, 

 presided over by a fearsome tyrant, yclept the cook — 

 and witness dry bread being cut up into pieces of a size 

 supposed to be suited to the mastication of ducks. The 

 bread thus cut up would be placed in a paper bag and 

 borne off by me in triumph to the upper regions. Then 

 my sister and I, accompanied by the governess, would 

 toddle up Sloane Street, through Lowndes Square, past 

 the great French Embassy, into Hyde Park, along 

 Rotten Row, and thus up to that corner of the Serpentine 

 where the ducks were wont to congregate. There, amid 

 a chorus of quacks, the bread would be thrown, piece by 

 piece, to the ever-hungry ducks. The writer in the 

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