26 What Birds Have Done With Me 



his best to make himself fit for polite society, he 

 went back. 



Years afterward, on a drowsy Sabbath day, he 

 found himself listening to a frowsy little parson 

 droning over a sermon from the text, "Keep your- 

 selves unspotted from the world," and sweeping 

 the window from the central blue of illimitable 

 space, came the same old crab apple tree, where 

 he had seen them first, and the identical flock of 

 Waxwings, and he smiled to himself as he thought, 

 "Any one of you smug fellows could give this poor 

 little human, spades and trumps, and beat him in 

 a sermon on this text, for at least you would look 

 the part." One of the first reader lessons in life 

 they were created to teach, they had thus neatly 

 delivered to the boy, and he had made a personal 

 application thereof, with soap and brush, and 

 was now back for a second reader lesson. He did 

 not have long to wait. The second reader class, 

 and he was it, was ordered to take up the study 

 of certain wax figures, representing deportment. 



That a certain thing has been done in a certain 

 way, time out of mind, is no reason that it should 

 be continued; neither is there any sense in not 

 trying a thing, simply because it never has been 

 done. In the antiquated, rutty schools, in which 

 humanity in its youth is guarded from learning 

 any thing about the wonder world in which it has 

 its being, it is customary for one individual to 



