156 THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 



Among all my acquaintances in feathers there 

 are none wliose friendship I prize more highly than 

 that of this crested tenant of the woods ; and since 

 our intimacy began, years ago, he has never been 

 guilty of a single act of indecorum that would 

 tend in the least to alienate my affections from him. 



I have called him " a mountebank in feathers." 

 That may, at first blush, seem to contain a sly sug- 

 gestion, or even a serious disparagement of the 

 bird ; but I assure you I mean no detraction what- 

 ever. I have simply jdelded to that common ca- 

 price or impulse of human nature which often leads 

 us to give uncouth and even apparently malignant 

 names to the persons and objects we love the most, 

 when we really mean the precise opposite. 



Still, to be frank, our bird has some of the man- 

 ners of the mountebank. He often tries to attract 

 your attention to himself by his loud alarm calls, 

 when there is nothing whatever to frighten him, 

 and then, when he thinks you are watching him, he 

 begins to poise and tilt among the branches like a 

 trapeze performer in a circus. Oh ! how agile he 

 is. To play pranks on a horizontal perch is too 

 commonplace an exploit for his exuberant spirits, 

 and so he amuses 3'ou by clinging to the vertical 

 stem of a bush or sapling, hurling himself from 



