282 



Five Htindi'cd Dollars Rcwai^d. 



all. When the newcomer had been with 

 them three days, there came to the door a 

 nine-year-old girl with big, expectant eyes. 



"Mamma heard you caught a canary," 

 she said; "and may I please look and see 

 if it is mine?" 



"Of course you may," replied grandma. 

 And as soon as the little girl looked she 

 began to cry and to say, " O, Dick! O, 



you darling Dick! That's just like your 

 cage, and that's just why you went into it." 

 And she bore him away, with smiles and 

 thanks that made his giving a pleasure. 



As for Zip, he never again escaped. And 

 as I write this tale of his excursion, he 

 chirps and swings, and preens and sings 

 just overhead. But whether he longs some- 

 times for one more excursion, I cannot say. 



Mrs. George Archibald. 



FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. 



IN our November Note Book we drew 

 attention to a series of paragraphs 

 which for the past year or more have ap- 

 peared in the country papers of New York, 

 New Jersey and Pennsylvania, to the gen- 

 eral purport that some one, in some remote 

 part of the State, had been induced to affix 

 his signature to a pledge to refrain from 

 the destruction of non-game birds, and that 

 the document had been converted into a 

 promissory note, generally for a consider- 

 able amount. Such a paragraph published 

 in a paper would share the general fate 

 of such news items, and be extracted by 

 one paper after another over a wide area; 

 as soon as it had run its course a similar 

 story would be .started as news in another 

 locality. These stories were all so vague 

 as to persons and localities, that it was very 

 difficult to institute any systematic inquiry 

 into their truth or origin, but the result of 

 all our inquiries was that the stories were 

 utterly without foundation, and the persons 

 named generally fictitious. The reference 

 to the Audubon Society showed unmistak- 

 able evidences of malice, but the pretense 

 that one of our pledges could be converted 

 into a promissory note, was so absurd that 

 any one seeing the document would sign it 

 without the smallest anxiety on that score. 

 We were consequently disposed to treat 

 the whole matter with a mere passing ex- 



pi-ession of contempt, but since we pointed 

 out that it was only obscure country papers 

 which could be induced to give insertion to 

 such charges, a successful attempt has been 

 made to get them palmed off as news items 

 in the New York dailies. On Dec. i the 

 New York World published a pretended 

 news item from Jeffersonville, this State, 

 to the effect that a person named had been 

 victimized to the extent of several hundred 

 dollars in this way, and no notice being 

 taken of it, another paragraph was pub- 

 lished in the New York Sun as a news letter 

 from Seneca Falls, this State, giving a most 

 circumstantial account of how a woman, pro- 

 fessing to represent our Society, had called 

 on several residents. Deacons, J. Ps, and 

 other conspicuous persons and got a lot of 

 signatures, which were converted into pro- 

 missory notes, ranging from a dollar and a 

 half to five hundred dollars. The whole 

 statement was so circumstantial and detailed 

 that it was difficult to believe that it was 

 mere invention, but here as usual all our 

 inquiries lead us to believe that the story is 

 without a shadow of foundation in fact. 

 The i^eople named were addressed in de- 

 tail, but without eliciting any reply, and 

 even our letters are coming back to us with 

 the intimation that the addresses are not 

 known. 



The i)ublishers of the Audubon Maga- 



