VI 
THE LIFE OF BIRDS 
WHEN one thinks of a bird, one fancies a soft, 
swift, aimless, joyous thing, full of nervous 
energy and arrowy motions, —a song with 
wings. So remote from ours their mode of ex- 
istence, they seem accidental exiles from an 
unknown globe, banished where none can un- 
derstand their language ; and men only stare 
at their darting, inexplicable ways, as at the 
gyrations of thecircus. Watch their little traits 
for hours, and it only tantalizes curiosity. Every 
man’s secret is penetrable, if his neighbor be 
sharp-sighted. Dickens, for instance, can take 
a poor, condemned wretch, like Fagin, whose 
emotions neither he nor his reader has experi- 
enced, and can paint him in colors that seem 
made of the soul’s own atoms, so that each be- 
holder feels as if he, personally, had been the 
man. But this bird that hovers and alights be- 
side me, peers up at me, takes its food, then 
looks again, attitudinizing, jerking, flirting his 
tail, with a thousand inquisitive and fantastic 
motions, — although I have power to grasp it 
