506 PASSERINES. 



of a pound or two of white-lead. Alas ! this youthful indiscretion 

 terminated in death. 



"Whilst yet inconsolable for the loss, another friend of mine," 

 adds Mr. Charles Dickens, " discovered an older and more gifted 

 Eaven at a village inn, which he prevailed upon the landlord to part 

 with for a consideration. The first act of this sage was to administer 

 to the effects of his predecessor, by diisinterring all the cheese and 

 halfpence he had buried in the garden — a work of immense labour 

 and research, to which he devoted all the energies of his mind. 

 When he had achieved this task, he applied himself to the acquisi- 

 tion of stable language, in which he soon became such an adept that 

 he would perch outside an)' window and drive imaginary horses all 

 day long, with great skill in language. Perhaps I never saw him 

 at his best, for his former master sent his dutj^ with him, and 

 said, ' if I wished the bird to come out very strong, to be so good 

 as show him a drunken man ; ' which I never did, having (unfortu- 

 nately) none but sober people at hand. But I could hardly have 

 respected him more, whatever the stimulating influence of this 

 sight jnight have been. He had not the least respect for me, I 

 am sorry to say, in return, or for anybody but the cook, to whom he 

 was attached — but, I fear, only as a policeman might have been. 

 Once I met him unexpectedly, about half a mile off, walking down 

 the middle of the public street, attended by a pretty large crowd, 

 and spontaneously exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. 

 His gravity under this trying ordeal I never can forget, nor the 

 extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be brought home, 

 he defended himself behind a pump untii overpowered bj- numbers. 

 It may have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or 

 it may have been that he took something pernicious into his bill, 

 and thence into his maw — which is not improbable, seeing he new- 

 pointed the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the 

 mortar, broke countless squares of glass b-\' scraping awajr the 

 putty all round the frames, and tore up and swallowed in splinters 

 the greater part of a wooden staircase of six steps as well as the 

 landing — but after some three years he was taken ill, and died 

 before the kitchen fire. Pie kept his eye to the last upon the 

 meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with the 

 sepulchral cry of ' Cuckoo.' " 



