BOMBAY DUCKS 
DOVES 
OVES are birds for which I entertain the 
greatest respect. They remind me of cer- 
tain urchins who were my companions at a 
dame’s school to which I was sent for the 
sins of my early youth. Notwithstanding the fact that 
the aforesaid urchins were the originators of all mischief, 
the respectable ladies in authority were in the habit of 
holding them up as models to be copied by the rest of 
the school. Those boys were not hypocrites, they did 
not falsely pretend innocence; there was no need for 
them to do so. Fortune was always kind to them: she 
never allowed them to commit the fatal crime of being 
found out. Thus they passed their early schooldays 
chuckling at the sweet simplicity of the dames to whose 
care they had been confided. So it is with doves, With- 
out conscious efforts, these birds have succeeded in per- 
suading mankind that they are paragons of virtue. 
“The whole life and being of the dove,” wrote Dr. 
