306 Life and Immortahty. 
remarkable for their ability to take care of themselves. 
Theirs is a nature which is based upon self. They are an 
avaricious species, and little they reck for their neighbors. 
As the eagle is known to treat the osprey, and the skua-gull 
its weaker brethren, so the sparrow has been known fo act 
towards its neighbors. But exceptions exist to every rule, 
and we are pleased to record an honorable one in the case of 
this most detested species. Close by a maple-tree, which a 
pair of sparrows had appropriated and made the support for 
their home, dwelt a sturdy robin with his mate. Their 
home, a mud-lined domicile, was placed in the crotch of a 
small tree. Three children appeared in process of time to 
bless the happy couple. Everything went along smoothly 
and pleasantly with the robins, the sparrows being too much 
engrossed with their own affairs to think of giving them any 
trouble. But a tragedy soon happened which, sad to relate, 
foreboded evil and consequent death to the nest-full of young 
robins. Father and mother had, while searching for food for 
the little ones, been cruelly killed by a conscienceless sports- 
man. But the fledglings, which seemed doomed to die the 
death of starvation, were spared by some good genius who 
put it into the heart of the sparrows to pass that way, and 
thus was their sad and pitiable condition brought to the light 
of day. Their heart-rending appeals for food, combined with 
their orphaned situation, struck a sympathetic chord in the 
breast of the sparrows, and day after day these birds, whose 
chief concern naturally seems for self, might be seen acting 
the part of the good Samaritan towards these unfortunate of 
God's children. 
But let us now pass to that form of generosity which has 
been called Magnanimity. Few qualities in human nature 
are more noble than the capability of foregoing revenge when 
the offender is powerless to resist. This unwillingness to 
resent an injury, even though the power to do so is present 
in the individual, is what is implied by magnanimity. When 
we find those beings whom we designate brutes rising to a 
