XIII. 

 FRIENDSHIP IN FEATHERS. 



EMERSON somewhere speaks of a friendship 

 "on one side, without due correspondence on 

 the other," and I often thought of it while 

 watching the curious relation between two 

 birds in my house last winter ; for the more 

 one studies our feathered neighbors, the better 

 he comes to realize that the difference between 

 their intelligence and that of man himself is 

 " only of less and more." 



This friendship, then, was all on one side. It 

 was not a case of " love at sight " ; on the con- 

 trary, it was first war, and the birds had been 

 room-mates for months before any unusual 

 interest was shown ; neither was it simple ad- 

 miration of beauty, for the recipient of the 

 tenderness was at his worst at the moment ; 

 nor, again, could it be the necessity of loving 

 somebody, for the devotee had lived in the 

 house ten years, and had seen forty birds of 

 almost as many kinds come and go, without 



