A HAPPY FAMILY. 
57 
for themselves stony tubes; Madrepores, that build up 
ocean reefs, and that here in the glass vessel are posi¬ 
tively manufacturing coral before my eyes; some crabs, 
that walk sideways on tiptoe, and that carry their eyes 
on stalks; and hundreds of other things, of which it 
would require huge volumes to recount the history or do 
justice to their beauty, and the intense interest they 
excite in those who delight in preserving them as objects 
of study. 
After all, I think you would perhaps find more to- 
amuse you in a little singing-party, to which we have 
assigned a room upstairs. This is the special care of my 
better half, who, indeed, shuts me out from any partici¬ 
pation in its anxieties, though I am very freely admitted 
to the performances of the pupils. 
In a snug attic, well lighted, adorned with a fountain 
and mirrors > the windows and skylights embellished with 
gay plants, a collection of about forty song-birds pass 
their time in as jolly a way as one would wish. You will 
think of happy couples and nest-building, and the ma¬ 
ternal incubation of baby-broods of dickey-birds ; but we 
long ago found out, as did Mr. Kidd, the prince of bird- 
masters, that a bird-room is not the place for breeding. 
If love sanctifies life, and gives it its noblest develop¬ 
ment, it also is the parent of strife and jealousy; it ruined 
Troy, its dark side blots with some vengeance or madness or 
villany every page of the worlds history; and how should a 
community of such warm-hearted creatures as birds 
escape the desolating effects of a fire that warms when 
kept in check by wisdom, but which scorches and blights 
when passion only fans the flame? Not to philosophize. 
