98 
THE SPARROW. 
We confess to a great partiality for the sparrow. There 
is something hearty in his impudence (London boys call 
him “cheeky,”)—something funny in his domestic 
habit, and in his love very much of the heroic. Our 
partiality, though, has a deeper source than the super¬ 
ficial traits of sparrow-life, and springs from tire con¬ 
stancy of the sparrow as an associate of man every¬ 
where. He is the last representative of bird-life left to 
the smoke-dried citizen, just as the grass is the last relic 
of vegetable life which still clings to him. The sparrow 
will make itself a home in the most sooty covert under 
grim tiles, and between the blackened chinks in 
chimneys and waterspouts; and the grass will spring up 
between the flags in the closest court or alley, or on the 
most barren heap of rubbish in a dirty corner. This 
proximity to us, however, is fatal to the sparrow as an 
object of study, and when an amateur ornithologist 
commences the formation of a museum, the sparrow is 
the last specimen that finds a home there. We watch 
our human neighbours too closely, and very often allow 
slander to supply what ignorance suffers to escape; but 
our out-door neighbours, the sparrows, are, from their 
