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window and saw that the sky beyond the 

 lake was a beautiful rose color, but the 

 sun was not yet risen. Aunt Dorothy was 

 sleepy, so she closed her eyes again, but 

 just as she did so she heard a strange 

 twittering noise and wondered where it 

 came from. Her curiosity was so great 

 that she could not go to sleep again, so 

 she rose and dressed herself and, after 

 saying a little prayer to the great All- 

 Father to keep her through the day, she 

 went to find out what the noise was. But 

 she had already thought that it must be 

 birds in the chimney. She climbed up 

 on a chair and listened near the chimney 

 hole. Soon she heard a fluttering of 

 wings and a chirping. Mamma Swift was 

 coming with some worms for her 

 babies' breakfast. Her babies, like a 

 great many girl and boy babies, waked 

 up very early in the morning and were 

 quite troublesome. In order to quiet 

 them, Mamma Swift was forced to find 

 some worms before sunrise. Aunt Doro 

 thy was delighted. If she made a little 

 noise near the chimney hole the baby 

 birds thought it was their mother coming 

 with food for them, and they stretched 

 their heads up out of the nest, so Aunt 

 Dorothy could see them-. Often, when 

 she was writing or reading in her room 

 she could hear the birds in the chimney. 

 She knew the papa and mamma bird had 

 to work very hard, for they came many, 

 many times a day with food for the baby 

 Swifts. But there came a day when the 

 nest in the chimney was empty, for the lit 

 tle birds had gone away with their par 

 ents and were learning to fly through the 

 trees and to catch insects to eat. It made 

 Aunt Dorothy lonesome to sit in her 

 room after that, and instead she used to 

 go out of doors where she could watch 

 the birds. 



One day she took a fire-shovel and 

 with it managed to loosen the nest and 

 take it out of the chimney without break 

 ing it. The shape of it was like half of a 

 deep saucer, and it was made principally 

 of the petioles or stems of grapevine 

 leaves laid across each other as the logs 

 are in building log houses. The big ends 

 of the leaf stems alternated with the small 

 ones and stuck out, making a bristling 



outside wall for the nest. There were two 

 or three very slender cedar twigs no 

 bigger than a darning-needle used in 

 making the nest, and these the birds had 

 brought from a long distance. The nest 

 looked as if it had been covered with glue, 

 and this was because the birds had cov 

 ered it with their saliva and that held the 

 leaf stems together just as glue would. 

 Aunt Dorothy knew a man who went to 

 some islands in the Pacific ocean, where 

 the Pigmy Swifts live. Pigmy means lit 

 tle, and these Swifts are smaller than the 

 ones who built in Aunt Dorothy's chim 

 ney. The Pigmy Swifts build their nests 

 in caves. Some of them build very far in 

 the caves, where it is entirely dark. Aunt 

 Dorothy's friend went one day with an 

 other man to a cave to get some bird's 

 nests. 



These men had a ladder made of rattan, 

 on which they had to climb in order to 

 reach the nests. The man who climbed 

 highest had a long four-pronged spear, 

 with a lighted candle fixed on it a few 

 inches below the prongs. By the aid of 

 the light he found some nests. With the 

 spear he took them unbroken from the 

 rock. When he had gotten a nest be- 

 tween the prongs of the spear, he held it 

 so the man lower down on the ladder 

 could reach the end of it, and let it down 

 through his hands until he could take the 

 bird's nest from between the prongs of 

 the spear and put it in his pocket. 



When Aunt Dorothy's friend came 

 back to America he brought some of 

 these bird's nests with him and gave one 

 to h p r. 



The Chinese people think these bird's 

 nests are very good to eat, and make soup 

 of them. Aunt Dorothy put the nest, 

 which she had taken from the chimney r 

 into her cabinet with the one from the 

 island in the Pacific ocean. One day in 

 the fall she took some of her little friends 

 for a walk and they picked up a basketful 

 of leaf stems under the elm and linden 

 trees, and with them they made some 

 bird's nests which they covered with glue 

 and which looked very much like the one 

 Aunt Dorothy found in her chimney. 

 'Mary Grant O'Sheridan. 



