BEAUTY STOLEN FROM FLOWERS 159 
and there was never another flower sunrise or an- 
other flower sunset. The Humming-bird kept all 
that for himself; he never gave any of it back to 
the flowers. It was not very generous of him. I 
think he was going to be punished for it, but, some- 
how or other, it was forgotten. Punishments do 
get forgotten, sometimes—almost as often, perhaps, 
as rewards. 
Those are just a few of the beautiful Humming- 
birds that there are in the world—in that new world 
that Columbus discovered—but, as you know, there 
are more than four hundred different kinds, and 
numbers of them are just as beautiful—some perhaps 
even more beautiful—than those I have told you 
about. And you may be sure that they know 
exactly what to do with their beauty, how to raise 
up their crests and fan out their tails and ruffle out 
their gorgets and tippets in the way to make them 
look most magnificent, and give the greatest possible 
pleasure to their wives, who are all of them hermits— 
poor plain Humming-birds—just as the Birds of 
Paradise do for their wives, who are hermits too. 
And do you know that when two gentlemen 
Humming-birds are both trying to please the same 
lady—but that, of course, is before she has married 
either of them—they very often fight, and it is then 
that they gleam and flash and sparkle, more brilliantly 
