TWO BLUE FEATHER-FOUNTAINS 83 
Bird of Paradise whose feathers are really and truly 
blue, and I am quite sure that there is no other one 
—at least that we know of—which has so much blue 
about it, that you would think of it as a blue bird, or 
that has blue feather-fountains—those wonderful long 
silky plumes that grow out of each side under the 
wings. 
That is what is most wonderful in the Blue Bird 
of Paradise. There is no other Bird of Paradise that 
can sit under a blue fountain or look out of a blue 
sunset. But the plumes of the Blue Bird of Para- 
dise are not so long as those of the Great or the Lesser 
Bird of Paradise, and when he spreads them out they 
go more on each side of him than up over his head, 
and, for this reason, I think, he looks more as if he 
was looking out of a sunset than sitting under a 
fountain. You have seen a beautiful sunset often; 
there will be blue in it somewhere, cool, lovely lakes 
or bays, or long, stretching inlets, of the loveliest, 
purest, most delicate blue. But the clouds that float 
in those bays and lakes like islands, or that shut them 
in and make their shores, like great burning conti- 
nents, are not blue, but rosy red or fiery crimson or 
molten gold or golden-crimson flame. That, at 
least, is what the brightest ones are like, those that 
are gathered nearest round the sun. Now, if they 
could keep all their brightness and glowingness and 
