174 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



between his ideal and reality must be correspond- 

 ingly greater in his case. This was obvious — almost 

 a truism ; but the illustration by means of which 

 he brought it home to his hearers was certainly 

 bom of poetic imagination. The life of the ordinary 

 person he likened to that of the canary in its cage. 

 And here, dropping his lofty didactic manner, and 

 — ^if I may coin a word — smalling his deep, sonorous 

 voice to a thin reedy treble, in imitation of the 

 tenuous fringilline pipe, he went on with lively 

 language, rapid utterance, and suitable brisk move- 

 ments and gestures, to describe the little lemon- 

 coloured housekeeper in her gilded cage. Oh, he cried, 

 what a bright, busy bustling life is hers, with so 

 many things to occupy her time ! how briskly she 

 hops from perch to perch, then to the floor, and 

 back from floor to perch again I how often she drops 

 down to taste the seed in her box, or scatter it about 

 her in a little shower ! how curiously, and turning 

 her bright eyes critically this way and that, she 

 listens to every new sound and regards every object 

 of sight ! She must chirp and sing, and hop from 

 place to place, and eat and drink, and preen her 

 wings, and do at least a dozen different things every 

 -minute ; and her time is so fully taken up that the 

 narrow limits confining her are almost forgotten — 

 the wires that separate her from the great world of 

 wind-tossed woods, and of blue fields of air, and the 



