CHAPTER n 

 HOW I BECAME AN IDLER 



IF things had gone well with me, if I had spent 

 my twelve months on the Rio Negro, as I had 

 meant to do, watching and listening to the birds 

 of that district, these desultory chapters, which 

 might be described as a record of what I did not 

 do, would never have been written. For I should 

 have been wholly occupied with my special task, 

 moving in a groove too full of delights to allow of 

 its being left, even for an occasional run and 

 taste of liberty ; and seeing one class of objects too 

 well would have made all others look distant, ob- 

 scure, and of little interest. But it was not to 

 be as I had planned it. An accident, to be de- 

 scribed by-and-by, disabled me for a period, and 

 the winged people could no longer be followed 

 with secret steps to their haunts, and their actions 

 watched through a leafy screen. Lying helpless 

 on my back through the long sultry midsummer 

 days, with the white-washed walls of my room for 

 landscape and horizon, and a score or two of buz- 

 zing house-flies, perpetually engaged in their in- 

 tricate airy dance, for only company, I was forced 

 to think on a great variety of subjects, and to 



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