A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE EOW 201 



we sat there. How serious and concerned he looked, 

 and how surprising that hearty, soliloquizing sort 

 of laugh which now and then came from him as he 

 talked, not so much a laugh provoked by anything 

 humorous in the conversation, as a sort of foil to 

 his thoughts, as one might say, after a severe judg- 

 ment, "Ah, well-a-day, what matters it!" If that 

 laugh could have been put in his Latter-day Pam- 

 phlets, where it would naturally come, or in his later 

 political tracts, these publications would have given 

 much less offense. But there was amusement in 

 his laugh when I told him we had introduced the 

 English sparrow in America. " Introduced ! " he 

 repeated, and laughed again. He spoke of the bird 

 as a "comical little wretch," and feared we should 

 regret the "introduction." He repeated an Arab 

 proverb which says Solomon's Temple was built 

 amid the chirping of ten thousand sparrows, and 

 applied it very humorously in the course of his talk 

 to the human sparrows that always stand ready to 

 chirrup and cackle down every great undertaking. 

 He had seen a cat walk slowly along the top of a 

 fence while a row of sparrows seated upon a ridge- 

 board near by all pointed at her and chattered and 

 scolded, and by unanimous vote pronounced her 

 this and that, but the cat went on her way all the 

 same. The verdict of majorities was not always 

 very formidable, however unanimous. 



A monument had recently been erected to Scott 

 in Edinburgh, and he had been asked to take part 

 in some attendant ceremony. But he had refused 



