A LINNET FOR SIXPENCE. 
0 
weary-faced, Saturday-night buyers from the mean streets. 
There they stood, silently gazing and listening in the 
glare of evil-smelling naphtha lamps, while the people who 
crowded the streets went jostling on either side, and the 
raw misty air was filled with the noise of scores of hawkers 
and stall-keepers all shouting their loudest. 
A linnet—think of it! The small bird of our open 
spaces, which is, in its brilliant faculties, its delicate lovely 
spring colouring, and, above all, in its voice—those 
exquisite fairy notes, glad, yet tender, which it sings among 
the blossoming furze—the species which merits above all 
our feathered fellow creatures the epithet “ spirituel,” that 
.Michelet applies to birds generally. And in its life, how 
beautiful the linnet is ! Social above other kinds, there is 
always perfect harmony among the members. No bicker¬ 
ings, no jars, even in the love season, that time of greatest 
trial, when jealousy and rage, if a creature be capable of 
such emotions, are apt to show themselves. Nor when 
paired do they break up their little companies, but are 
near neighbours that call to one another, and meet and sing 
together a hundred times a day. Another engaging quality 
to be noted is the linnet’s love of the open space and of 
nature’s wildness. He will not endure the confinement of 
woods and copses, but must have the wide earth and wide 
sky around and above him, and the dark prickly furze 
bush for a home and castle. 
This is the bird, the aerial little gladdener of our 
