22 What Birds Have Done With Me 



sword at the gate, and the gate wide open for 

 any one to enter in and take possession. For four 

 weeks he believed himself in the Garden of Eden, 

 and as a mother hen will try to stretch her wings 

 to cover every thing in sight, so the wings of 

 his love yearned to gather every living thing be- 

 neath them. Joy, joy, joy beneath the tender light 

 of a new heaven, and on the warm palpitating 

 breast of a new earth, and then came death and 

 all his woes. Is the object of life, to teach by ex- 

 perience ? Perhaps, for certain it is that we never 

 half know a thing till we have thus learned it. 

 Many a funeral he had seen in the city, and once, 

 visiting a boy who lived near a cemetery, they, 

 with a few neighboring boys, had spent half a day 

 playing I Spy and hiding behind tombstones, 

 but death never really came home to him till he 

 looked upon the stark and stiff bodies of some 

 little pigs that had actually died in his own Eden. 

 Between the house and the barn, early one morn- 

 ing, he had met his father, who paused long 

 enough to say, "Black Sue has eight babies. Have 

 you seen them?" 



He might have said more, but the boy did not 

 give him a chance. He was off for the sty, like a 

 race horse, and in a moment came staggering back, 

 dumb with horror. He had almost run over them, 

 for they lay outside the sty all in a row no cuter 

 or more innocent babies under heaven, and all 



