114 TUMBLERS. MORNING PERFORMANCE. [CHAP. iv. 



of the bird, in seemingly the most unaccountable 

 fashion. 



Our birds have all been shut up over-night, so to-day 

 let us have a morning performance, by special desire. 

 Terpsichore, the saltatory Muse, belongs as much to air 

 as to earth. House-tops, or better, tree-tops, shall be 

 the boards of our rustic opera-stage ; clouds shall be 

 the wings ; the blue sky, the flies ; the rising sun shall 

 do his best to fill the place of the gas in the footlights ;. 

 the orchestra are selected from the elite of Cocks and 

 Hens, Ducks and Geese, with China Geese for the 

 wind instruments and ophicleides, Thrushes and Larks 

 for first fiddles, and the Cow and the Pig for a pedal 

 bass, though the threshing-machine in the distance 

 best represents that. The audience is composed of 

 yourself, your wife, three or four boys and girls, the 

 nursemaid with the little one, the woman who is hang- 

 ing out the the week's washing in the orchard, and the 

 gardener who is come with a wheelbarrow to fetch some 

 columbine guano for his melon-bed. This fresh breeze 

 is better than the smell of orange-peel ; that hedge of 

 sweet-briar is more fragrant, though less powerful, than 

 a leaky gas-pipe. The word is given ; open sesame 

 falls the trap; the performers appear on their little 

 platform, for all the world like the strolling actors in 

 front of a show at a fair, cooing, bowing, advancing, 

 retiring, in this their divertissement. They plunge 

 into their air-bath like truant schoolboys into a brook 

 during the dog-days. The respectable aldermanic 

 Powter swells his portly paunch to the utmost, claps 

 his wings smartly, and sails about in circles : it seems 

 marvellous that he should be able to fly at all ! But 



