BIKTH, SLEEP, AND DEATH 97 



feminist, but as old-fashioned as St. Paul in his view of 

 the other sex. In true male insolence he will banish the 

 hen bird from the ground till his turn is done. Your 

 real gentleman in the party is the chaffinch. He always 

 comes alone, never in a hurry, never insistent, always a 

 little apart, taking his crumbs with a graceful indif- 

 ference. The wagtail, too, when he comes as a rule he 

 prefers an insect diet has the air of an aristocrat. Un- 

 like the chaffinch, he usually brings his wife. The demo- 

 crats, of course, are the sparrows, always there, the 

 common folk of the land, but as good as their betters, 

 with a sense that the place belongs to them, as though 

 they had caught the spirit of the age. No one molests 

 them ; they are happy fellows, and the rest take them for 

 granted. Now and again, in the winter, you may see a 

 hawfinch, a heavy, clumsy fellow, but he comes in as a 

 stranger and is clearly not at home. Sometimes the 

 starlings arrive ; they are a gregarious lot, greedy too, 

 gobbling their food in vulgar haste. It is quaint to see 

 the young birds, when almost full grown, squatting help- 

 less with their beaks agape till the parent bird packs in 

 the food, oblivious, like some other parents we know, that 

 the children are older and bigger than they are. Some- 

 times the thrush pays the party a visit, but crumbs are 

 small fare for him, and he prefers to tug out of the lawn 

 the long, round worms which are his delight, suggesting, 

 as he gulps them down, awkward questions to the country 

 rector's mind, should he happen to be meditating on the 

 traditional benevolence of the Unseen Power which lies 

 behind nature's cruelty as well as behind its beauty and 

 its interest, with whose existence and character we have, 

 too, in these sad times to reconcile in some way the war- 

 fare not of robins only but of Empires. 



E. B. TOLLINTON. 



September 4, 1915. 



NOTE. Mr. Tollinton goes and spoils it all by his last 

 sentence. The fact is that there are very few phenomena 



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