74 BEAUTIFUL) SIRs 
—black velvet jewellery you may call it, very 
handsome, very beautiful indeed. Still it is black, 
but all at once all the colours that have lain asleep 
in it—blues and greens, and bluey-greens and greeny- 
blues, and purples and indigos, and wonderful bronzy 
reflections—wake up together, and flash out of it 
like the sparkles out of the diamond, like the 
tongues of fire out of the black cavern, like the 
lightning out of the dark night. There they all 
are, flashing and leaping about, meeting and ming- 
ling, then shooting apart, playing little games with 
each other, till all at once they fall asleep again, and 
there is only the smooth, glossy black, the deep, 
jetty black, the shining, gleaming, satiny-velvety 
black, the black velvet, black satin jewellery. That 
is what a Black Bird of Paradise is like, like a black 
diamond, like a cavern with a fire lighted in it, like 
a dark night with flashes of lightning. 
But now I will tell you a little more about his 
appearance, for this that I have told you is only 
just to give you an idea of how that wonderful 
material, from which Dame Nature with her scissors 
cuts out all her children (for all things that are 
alive are the children of Dame Nature), can be 
black, and yet have all sorts of colours in it at the 
same time. 
First, you must know—so as not to make any 
