Mr. Esau 153 



uppermost wrecked faith, hope and charity every 

 fifteen minutes. 



I had rather be chief cook for a hundred lumber 

 jacks than personal chef for a single caged Gros- 

 beak. Mrs. Rorer herself would have had to 

 work over time to devise dishes that would tempt 

 so capricious an appetite. Potato bugs were out 

 of season and Crickets and Grass-hoppers in Kin- 

 dergarten classes; Dragon-flies cruising as subma- 

 rines and June-bugs undrilled for street concerts; 

 the White Grub was my refuge and help in trou- 

 ble. How he loved them ! He would eat a half 

 a pint in a day. It was a banquet twelve hours 

 long and he Fletcherized each individual grub. 

 He would hop about the cage with a fine fat 

 beauty sticking out of the side of his mouth, sug- 

 gesting a devotee getting the very last whiffs from 

 a quarter inch long cigarette. He would not eat 

 an angle worm on compulsion, or in any other 

 way, and rejecting cherries and lush strawberries, 

 always made believe that he had a well-bred lik- 

 ing for grape-fruit. Hemp-seed he cracked for the 

 sake of the recreation it afforded, having clearly 

 no great liking for the kernel except as it helped 

 to balance his White Grub ration. He never at- 

 tempted to sing the songs of the tree-tops in his 

 narrow prison-house and how his kind learned of 

 his predicament, I have no more way of knowing 



