CHAPTER II. 
HOW I BECAME AN IDLER. 
Ir things had gone well with me, if I had spent 
my twelve months on the Rio Negro, as I had meant 
to do, watching and listening to the birds of that 
district, these desultory chapters, which might be 
described as a record of what I did not do, would 
never have been written. For I should have been 
wholly occupied with my special task, moving in a 
groove too full of delights to allow of its being left, 
even for an occasional run and taste of liberty ; and 
seeing one class of objects too well would have made 
all others look distant, obscure, and of little interest. 
But it was not to be as I had planned it. An acci- 
dent, to be described by-and-by, disabled me for a 
period, and the winged people could no longer be 
followed with secret steps to their haunts, and their 
actions watched through a leafy screen. Lying 
helpless on my back through the long sultry mid- 
summer days, with the white-washed walls of my 
room for landscape and horizon, and a score or two 
of buzzing house-flies, perpetually engaged in their 
intricate airy dance, for only company, I was forced 
to think on a great variety of subjects, and to 
occupy my mind with other problems than that of 
