204 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
enough — tliough it sang very well — to furnish her with the 
necessary definition of plumage for a correct drawing. 
Her ambition was to achieve, as nearly as possible, the but- 
terfly airiness with which this marvellous bird floats upward 
and around upon the eddying ecstasies of its mighty song. 
It was, perhaps, a presumptuous attempt, but presumption 
has ever been one synonym of daring. 
She made an hundred studies from the action of the caged 
bird, all to the same end, but none of them were entirely 
satisfactory. At last, the conviction came that we must 
have a specimen bird — ^not a stuffed specimen," but one 
warm, and yet throbbing with the last pulses of life — that 
could be placed naturally in the position studied from the 
living bird, and sketched rapidly before it grew cold in the 
rigidity of absolute death. 
When my wife announced to me that she must have such 
a, specimen — that although she had studied the wild bird on 
the wing at a distance, and the tame bird near at hand, and 
had many good ideas of this movement in her sketches — yet 
there were numerous details of outline and finish which it 
was impossible to achieve without the warm specimen — I 
well recollect my despairing answer — 
" The fact is, I would rather face a panther on the bound, 
than shoot a mocking bird. I hope God will forgive me, but 
as I see clearly it must be done, it shall be done !" 
This was said with a tragic earnest that must have been 
comical ; for my wife said, with a quiet smile : " Well, now, 
hero as you think you are, I do not believe you can do it !" 
This conveyed an implication upon my marksmanship, of 
which I am, by the way, excessively proud, and also upon 
the firmness of my nerves, which could by no means be en- 
dured ; so, with a sovereign wave of the hand and an extra 
straitening of my person, I left the room saying : You shall 
see, madam, that my will can accomplish anything that is ne- 
cessary 1" 
Fifteen minutes afterwards we were embarked in a light 
