no 



attachment for a certain piece of Beethoven : ' My 

 dear Fraulein, I mean to practise that piece of 

 Beethoven until I conquer.' ' My dear,' responded 

 the honest Fraulein, ' you do practise for seex hours 

 a day, and j'ou do live for seexty years, at the end you 

 vill not blay it ! ' So appalling had my losses been, 

 that I almost registered a vow to buy no more; but 

 one's conscience adapts itself without much difficulty 

 to one's inclinations, and when one day I saw a whole 

 cageful of Poephila viirabilis all my good resolutions 

 melted like a snowflake under the kiss of the sun. 



When I first saw a Gould it was a case of ' love at 

 first sight,' as the story books say. I wanted that bird 

 as bad as a cow wants a calf. The possession of him, 

 it seemed, would repay me for having been born into 

 this vale of tears. Alas, the parting came only too 

 soon. Did you ever hear the story of Tom Weston's 

 calf? Tom brought them four veals into town one 

 spring to sell. Dick Larrabee used to peddle in meat 

 them days. Dick looked them over and says, 'Lock 

 here, Tom, I guess you got a deaken in that lot,' he 

 says. ' I dunno what you mean,' says Tom. ' Yes, you. 

 do,' he says,' Dick, yes, you do ; you didn't kill that 

 calf, you know it. That calf died, that's what that calf 

 did. Come now, own up,' he says. ' Wa'al,' says Tom, 

 'I didn't kill it, and it didn't die neither — it just kind 

 o' give out.' Well, that's just what my Gould did : he 

 ' kind o' give out.' 



Since then I have bought many more, only to 

 illustrate the saying that " a fool and his money are 

 soon parted," and all my experience might be summed 

 up in the terse and pointed method of the Book oj 

 Kings, ' he slept with his fathers and So-and-so reigned 

 in his stead.' 



Of course there is nothing certain in this vale of 

 tears but taxes and death, as the saying is ; still, when 

 I saw Gouldians advertized at 12s. the pair it seemed 



