THE PLEASURE OF THE FANCY. ii 



in tune. The poet in satirical verse has well 

 lashed the follies of the age : — 



" My heart is sad with sore misgiving, 

 I think of days of auld lang syne ; 

 The world was pleasant then to live in, 

 And folks were neither fast nor fine. 



" But everything is out of gear now, 



Such push and struggle, care and dread ; 

 Of God on high we have no fear now. 

 And down below the devil's dead ; 



' ' And things look crumbling all to ruin. 

 So bleak, so dismal, were it not 

 For here some billing and there some cooing, 

 What would there be to live for — what ? " 



I have spoken of the pleasure of the Fancy. 

 Some persons keep pigeons whom I do not 

 account Fanciers. They keep birds not for 

 pleasure but for profit ; and when the money 

 question enters into the calculation, the love of 

 the thing is bowed out. It assumes a business 

 aspect at once. For instance, those who keep 

 birds for racing. Horse-racing and pigeon- 

 racing I regard with equal abhorrence ; not that 

 it is impossible to follow each pursuit innocently. 

 However, the stress of temptation is against it. 

 Betting follows hard upon the heels of racing. 

 I have heard high-faluting language about the 

 " noble " Homer Pigeon — " training its intellec- 

 tual powers ; " but in nine cases out of ten the 



