96 What Birds Have Done With Me 



man? u He could eat more victuals than three 

 score men, a church and a steeple and all the good 

 people and yet his belly wasn't half full." 



Once when I was calling professionally on a 

 sick lad, his mother stopped in a half-apologetic 

 manner to consult me about a sick bird they had 

 in the house a wild bird picked up on the lawn 

 two days before. After the manner of doctors, 

 I declined to give a diagnosis till I had an oppor- 

 tunity to examine my prospective patient; but 

 when I saw her coming with a Robin in her hand, 

 I knew at once that what ailed this patient was 

 just the opposite to what ailed her gorged little 

 boy, the bird was starving. Evidently, the good 

 lady's education had not included Mother Goose 

 or she would not have entertained the notion that 

 on a diet of two horse-flies and one angle-worm, 

 in two days, the case was likely one of indigestion. 

 Again after the manner of my calling, I said: 

 "This is a fatal case, you should have called me 

 earlier, very sad, very sad, for in a land of plenty, 

 it is simple starvation. A hundred horse-flies one 

 day and a hundred angle-worms the next, might 

 have carried him along until he was old enough 

 to go to church alone and look after himself." As 

 a matter of fact, a growing young Robin requires 

 more than its own weight of food daily. You 

 who live across the street or in the next house 

 to a girl who practices on the piano five hours 



