8 Massachusetts Audubon Society 



as it strove to feed itself or hitch about in its box. "Whenever the box 

 was moved to a different spot, it would glance keenly around to take in 

 all the new sights. 



We began to wish that Chickadee might live and stay long with us, 

 so much did the brave little cripple endear itself to us. Then again we 

 felt we could not wish this — so many times within an hour we found it 

 lying feet uppermost, powerless to right itself. Yet often, while lying 

 thus overturned, the cleanly birdie went to work pecking and preening 

 at a soiled spot on its little gray breast. 



Gradually the stricken mite became more helpless, so that we had 

 to take it up in one hand and offer it morsels of food from the other. 

 The good little patient took the morsels from between thumb and 

 finger, and sometimes cocked a bright eye up to my face as if to say: 

 "It's all right, old fellow, I'm having a bully good time!" . . . One 

 could think God must have liked to watch that little bird, that had fallen 

 to the ground, yet bore all so bravely. 



But one morning I rose early and went to see our pet — and Chicka- 

 dee was dead. My wife cried over the tiny, fluffy corpse, and I nearly, 

 too. 



I fear the little sufferer may have died from thirst. Unaided it 

 could not drink, and when we held it to water it seemed to choke on the 

 few drops it took. . . . 



American young folk know the impassioned thought of the poet 

 Emerson, grateful for the sprightly good-fellowship, the exemplary 

 courage of these birds: 



"The Providence that is most large 

 Takes hearts like thine in special charge." 



Would not the wise, good poet wish us to remember that it lies in 

 our power to help — and not to thwart — this "charge" of Providence? 

 "In glad remembrance of our debt." 



Arthur J. Parker. 



ANOTHER DUCK STORY 



The story of the ducks in a recent number of the Audubon Bulletin 

 has reminded me of another family of ducks that lived in Phoenix, 

 Arizona. These ducks, four in number, lived in a part of the town 

 which once in so often was inundated with city water. 



One afternoon, as I was sitting on the porch opposite, I saw the 

 water begin to gather in the lower part of the garden, and walking down 

 to meet it, came one duck. On he waddled, until he stood on the very 

 edge of the water. There, just as he seemed about to plunge into his 

 cool bath — and it was a terribly hot day! — he turned and hurried off, 

 quacking as he went. 



The other members of his family were at the farthest corner of the 

 garden, but he searched them out, and soon, in single file, they were 

 hurrying down to the water led by the kind)^ and unselfish brother who 

 had first found the little bath. X S. C. K. 



