Mr. Turveydrop and His Foreign Cousins 2$ 



visits are few and far between, but unlike angels' 

 visits, they were formerly thought to presage war, 

 pestilence, and famine though, of course, it goes 

 without the saying that in reality they had no 

 more connection with the coming of such public 

 calamities than the striking of your grandfath- 

 er's clock. Mysterious and unusual things in the 

 minds of people who haven't a thimble full of 

 sense, always spell evil or devil. In later times, 

 the Bohemian Wax-wing has been called the 

 Seven-year Bird, but his ways are too erratic to 

 be held down to human observation. 



Not so long ago one of these birds of mystery 

 gave up his life at the hands of a tender hearted 

 old man, whose eyes grow dimmer, day by day; 

 and in spite of the fact that it was an accident, 

 the ghost of the dead bird is likely to follow him 

 to the very end of life's journey. Every body 

 knows what a pest the English sparrow is, and 

 it had grown quite unbearable to the man. It 

 could not be kept out of his Martins' house, it 

 ate the food he provided for his winter birds, and 

 fairly swarmed about an old cedar hedge not 

 four rods from his office window. One day, quite 

 forgetting all the lessons on deportment taught 

 him by the Cedar Wax-wing, he lost his temper, 

 and taking a gun, that he had not fired for years, 

 he stepped to the door and fired into the hedge 

 alive with English sparrows. Only one bird fell, 



