18 
B Y THE WA YSIDE 
dry one, and it seemed so useless to build 
a house out of dry earth. But suddenly 
he espied a dish under the hedge, two 
dishes, in fact, one full of clear, cool 
water, of which he immediately made 
use, —oh, such a delicious bath as he 
had ! And the other dish contained, now 
what do you think ? A lot of the lovliest 
mud , a robin could wish for, soft and 
smooth and pasty. He called his mate 
and they found a crooked crab apple 
tree and set to work; they built a nest so 
perfect, so round, so smooth inside,—oh, 
you couldn’t make such a house! It 
was fastened so firmly that no amount of 
shaking could move it. Then four eggs 
were laid. Later four of the dearest, 
trustiest, most confident, young robins 
Hew from the new home. How the par¬ 
ent birds loved them, and taught them 
all that robins should know ! 
When they could Hy nicely they were 
induced to come to the bath tub and to 
see the dear, patient mother teach them 
to bathe would have done you good.- The 
father sang happily from the elm tree in 
the front yard, knowing that he had done 
well his part, and that the mother was 
taking good care of the little ones. One 
of them, the smallest one, always tagged 
his mother and would stand and bawl if 
she got too far away. You couldn’t call 
it anything else. “Peach-it, peach-it,” he’d 
say, and then the mother would pull up 
a fat angleworm and leave it, well know T - 
ing that the lazy little hypocrite would 
gobble it up. 
Sometimes while the robins batbed 
(often there were as many as eighteen 
around the tub), a cat would sneak up, 
and then that strange imitation of a rob¬ 
in’s danger call was heard; then all the 
robins would rush to the fence and trees, 
for by this time they had learned that it 
was the woman who whistled, and tho’ it 
was but a poor imitation of a robin’s call 
they knew what it meant and minded. 
I hope you will not forget, when there 
is no rain for weeks, to help the birds; a 
dish of mud, a dish of water always; a 
few little pieces of rag, or old lace or em¬ 
broidery is much loved for nest decora¬ 
tion. 
The above is a true story. The nest 
was taken down from the old apple tree 
in the early winter after the robin went 
south—(It can be seen by those who de¬ 
sire at the Public Library in Appleton, 
placed there by the woman herself.) 
E. L. E. 
Bird Warden of Audubon Association 
Slain. 
Woman’s desire to wear on her bonnet 
pretty aigrets plucked from the slain 
bodies of plume birds of southern Flor¬ 
ida, and the avariciousness of men to ob¬ 
tain the money she so willingly pays for 
the dainty adornments are credited with 
being the causes which led to the killing 
of Guy M. Bradley, warden of the Nation¬ 
al Association of Audubon Societies, on 
an island off Florida, forty miles from 
Key West, on Julv 8. 
According to details of the killing re¬ 
ceived by officers and members of the 
national association it is alleged that 
Bradley was the victim of a plot, and 
Walter Smith, a professional plume 
hunter, who is now in the Key West jail 
awaiting the action of the grand jury, is 
accused of being the willing instrument 
of his colleagues in getting rid of the 
man who stood relentlessly for the pro¬ 
tection of the birds. Smith asserts that 
he shot Bradley in self-defense. His 
two sons who were with him, corroborate 
his statements. The finding of the bodv, 
its condition and the surrounding circum¬ 
stances, however, leave much to be ex¬ 
plained, and for this reason Smith was 
arrested on the charge of murder. 
