THE JACKDAW. 
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 acquisition of stable language, in which 
he soon became such an adept, that he would perch outside 
my window and drive imaginary horses with great skill all day. 
Perhaps, even, I never saw him at his best, for his former 
master sent his duty with him, ‘ and if I wished the bird to 
come out very strong, would I be so good as show him a drunken 
man,’ which I never did, having (unfortunately) none but sober 
people at hand. But I could hardly have respected him more 
whatever the stimulating influence of this sight might have 
been. He had not the least respect, I am sorry to say, for me 
in return, or for anybody but the cook, to whom he was 
attached, but only, I fear, 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 accom- 
plishments. His gravity, under those trying circumstances, I 
never can forget, nor the extraordinary gallantry with which, 
refusing to be brought home, he defended himself behind a 
pump, until overpowered by numbers. It may have been that 
he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may have been 
that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence 
into his maw, which is not improbable, seeing that he new 
pointed the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the 
mortar, broke countless squares of glass by scraping away the 
putty all round the frames, and tore up and swallowed hi 
splinters the greater part of a staircase of six steps and a 
landing. But after some three years he, too, was taken ill and 
died before the kitchen fire. He 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.’ Since then I have been 
ravenless.” 
CHAPTER II. 
THE JACKDAW. 
Though the least, the jackdaw is by no means the most in- 
significant of his tribe. If he lacks the gravity and decorum 
possessed by his brother the raven, he is also without his 
40 
