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CHAPTER VI. 



THE buhfutch. 



MY mother Having had occasion, as sometimes happened, 

 to pay a short visit to her native country, looked about 

 for some present for me when the time came for her to re- 

 turn home again; and rightly judging that nothing would please 

 me better than a bird, made choice of a Bullfinch, which was 

 quite a rara avis in our part of the world. I had heard, it 

 is true, and read about such a bird in my Natural History 

 books, but had never seen one, nor do I think there were 

 any to be met with in our neighbourhood wild. 



The reader wUl therefore understand the boyish delight 

 with which I contemplated the strange "English Bird", as 

 Perrine, our maid, called my mother's present. We were never 

 tired of looking at it, and admiring its black head, red breast, 

 and grey back : then its song ! what an extraordinary, and yet 

 what a sweet, note! and how tame and familiar it was! I 

 was charmed, and my mother equally so to see me pleased. 



Poor dear Bully ! his was a sad and a tragic end. He was 

 so tame, that we let him hop about the room occasionally, 

 and on one of these occasions I, inadvertently, put my great 

 clumsy foot upon him — you may, kind reader, imagine the 

 rest — after all these years I cannot bear to think about it. 



Many years afterwards I purchased a piping German, a 

 charming bird, that would eat seed from my fingers, or from 

 between my lips: he had learned to say "Hip, hip, hurrah!" 

 bowing, and spreading out his wings and tail as he repeated 

 the words, which, doubtless, had some meaning for him; also 

 to say his own name "Peter", for which he was always 

 rewarded with a grain of hemp: he was almost as nice a 

 bird as my first dear Bully was. 



