m MEE LIKE A BUNCH OF FLOWERS 7 
happy. Can anything be happier than the life of 
a bird? Surely not. Only to fly, just think how 
delightful that must be, and then to be always living 
in green, leafy palaces under the bright, warm sun 
and the blue sky. For I must tell you that these 
birds we are going to talk about live where the trees 
are always leafy, where the sun is always bright and 
the sky always blue. So they are always happy. 
Even if a bird cou/d be unhappy in winter—which I 
am not at all sure about—there is no winter there. 
Now the happier any creature is the more cruel it 1s 
to kill it and take that happiness away from it. I 
am sure you will understand that. If you were 
carrying a very heavy weight, which tired you and 
made you stoop and gave you no pleasure at all, and 
some one were to come and take it away from you, 
you would not think that so very cruel. You would 
have nothing now, it is true, but then all you Aad had 
was that weight, which was so heavy and made you 
stoop. But, now, if you were carrying a beautiful 
bunch of flowers which smelt sweetly and weighed 
just nothing at all, and some one were to take shat 
away, you would think ¢Aat cruel, 1am sure. A bird’s 
life is like that bunch of flowers. How cruel, then, it 
must be to take it away from any bird. We should 
think it very wrong if some one were to kill ws. Yet it 
is not a/ways a bunch of flowers that we are carrying. 
