48 
BEAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
nothing about us that is obnoxious, and not a single 
cripple. 
We are just now ready for breakfast, and we sit at 
the fire surrounded with cockatoos, macaws, and parrots. 
All the voices of the animal world salute and deafen us. 
Old Poll, the pet of the parlour, can bark, growl, bleat, 
purr, or whistle, and in addition, ask for every thing she 
wants, and for many things she does not want. She can 
be insolent or polite; and, as a result of our teaching, 
she is a very expert thief. I could tell a hundred 
anecdotes about that one patriarchal parrot: how she 
takes tea from a spoon and beer from a tumbler; how 
she cracks nuts and crows like a cock; how she leaves 
her cage to steal sugar or fruit; how she can recite two 
complete stanzas of Johnny Giljoin , and bandy small talk 
with any body. When her noise and impudence cease, 
we turn to the cockatoos, of which we have three elegant, 
docile, loving creatures : one pure white, with a crest 
that looks like flakes of turbot; another with pale 
sulphur crest; and a third with white and crimson 
plumage—strictly a cockatoo-parrot, the most loquacious 
of the whole family, but so gentle in her demeanour that 
she never was guilty of a single mischief yet. To 
visitors, the gray and green parrots, of which we have 
two each, are a perfect bore; they scream and yell and 
bark, and, if a chance were afforded them, would dig 
their pickaxe beaks into innocent faces and hands; but 
these gentle crested favourites are determined to be 
loved, and at the first sound of a strange voice, up go 
their crests, down go their heads with a soft ejaculation 
of “ Cock-a-tooand if they do not get their accustomed 
