114 WILD SPOUTS i:^^" THE SOUTH. 



The mirth that followed this apocryphal story was like 

 nothing but the laughter that hails some umisual feat of 

 the PoUchinelle, before the gaping circle of children and 

 nurses in the gardens of Paris, and it gradually subsided, 

 lingering longest furthest from the door, where the 

 negro boys could roll over on their backs without re- 

 straint, and laugh themselves to smiles, and then to 

 return for a fresh draught of fun. 



" To come back to your deer's head," I said to Miss 

 Jackson, after the laugh had subsided, " v/here did you 

 procure the glass eyes ?" 



*' Oh, father supjDlies them with his broken bottles ; the 

 shoulder of the bottle makes an eye, only a little too flat." 



"And the birds on the wall are dressed by you ?" 



" Yes, all of them." 



" And they are truer to natur' 'an a picter," added 

 Mike, approvingly. 



" Where did you get your taste for such matters, Miss 

 Jackson?" 



" I think I must have got it from associating with 

 them, to the exclusion of most other society. We lead 

 a lonely life here in the pine woods, sometimes, and 

 C I believe that when one has many gifts he does not 

 gain from them all as much as he does from one well 

 studied." 



" Where did you get your original plan, your first les- 

 son in taxidermy?" said the Doctor; "for I have 

 studied the art, and it seems to me that I have never 

 dressed a bird as well as some you have here." 



