28 What Birds Have Done With Me 



bird kingdom. The bird at the head of the line 

 will pass a worm to his next neighbor, and he to 

 his neighbor, till it has made the rounds of every 

 bird in the flock, and has been returned to the one 

 whose find it was, who proceeds to partake of it 

 in a slow and sedate and decorous fashion, calcu- 

 lated to delight the heart of Dr. Fletcher. On 

 higher ground, not twenty feet from the gaunt 

 elm on which they were perched, the man and boy 

 were having something like an interview with the 

 birds, and the man was curious as to the effect of 

 it on the mind of the boy. He did not have long 

 to wait; in the flippant style of the average col- 

 lege youth came the comment. u Dad, don't you 

 think these birds awfully stuck on themselves ?" 

 "Perhaps," came the rejoinder, "but in an age 

 when misrule is the rule, rather than the excep- 

 tion, and Flippancy with his cap and bells marches 

 through the land, past the seats of the mighty 

 and up to the very throne of God, it's high time 

 for* us to learn a needful lesson of a bird that 

 can always be trusted to do things decently and 

 in order." There was a merry twinkle in the 

 young fellow's eyes as he put his arm almost 

 caressingly on his father's shoulder, and said, "I 

 wanted to get a rise out of you, and that was the 

 reason I threw the bait." 



The Bohemian Wax-wing, a first cousin to the 

 Cedar Wax-wing, is a cosmopolitan fellow, and his 



