ON BOSTON COMMON. 29 
said to haye been famous, —or at all events 
notorious, if any old-fashioned reader be dis- 
posed to insist upon this all but obsolete dis- 
tinction. His triumph, such as it was, had al- 
ready begun when I first discovered him, for he 
was then perched well up in an elm, while a 
mob of perhaps forty men and boys were pelt- 
ing him with sticks and stones. Even in the 
dim light of a cloudy November afternoon he 
seemed quite bewildered and helpless, making 
no attempt to escape, although the missiles were 
flying past him on all sides. The most he did 
was to shift his perch when he was hit, which, 
to be sure, happened pretty often. Once he 
was struck so hard that he came tumbling to- 
ward the ground, and I began to think it was 
all over with him; but when about half-way 
down he recovered himself, and by dint of pain- 
ful flappings succeeded in alighting just out of 
the reach of the crowd. At once there were 
loud cries: “ Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!” 
and while the scamps were debating what to do 
next, he regained his breath, and flew up into 
the tree again, as high as before. Then the 
stoning began anew. For my part I pitied the 
fellow sincerely, and wished him well out of 
the hands of his tormentors; but I found my- 
self laughing with the rest to see him turn his 
head and stare, with his big, vacant eyes, after 
