464 
BIKD-LIFE. 
his last. These men have no opportunity of hearing 
other than caged songsters; their trades keep them 
shut up, and it is unkind and narrow-minded indeed to 
rob them of their only solace; while outside, the sun¬ 
beams smile, the flowers bloom, and birds are singing. 
The rich can go out when all Nature is gay. The 
heavy tax must needs cost the poor workman his bread, 
if he would preserve his pet; and yet the bird’s very 
song calls forth a cheery strain from the toiler’s inmost 
heart, which lightens the monotony of his labour. 
What can the “ cribbed, cabined and confined” mechanic, 
who possesses taste and feeling for song and sound, have, 
other than his caged pet ? It is his comfort, solace, his 
all,—helps him to work; and you deny him one Night¬ 
ingale if he wishes it! Thus, I say, this wish should be 
accorded,—leave him his pet! 
I will not advance the oft-repeated, but preposterous, 
idea, that the poor or uneducated cannot estimate the 
value of the Nightingale’s song, and that, in their eyes, 
one song bird is much about as good as another. It is 
impossible for the lover of cage birds to give expression 
To such an absurdity! His memory and his sense of 
feeling will serve him better; he remembers the bright¬ 
ening glance of the poor weaver, as his Nightingale 
struck up its lovely lay; he remembers the trouble and 
misery of the wood-cutter, when called upon to pay the 
tax of five thalers,—a sum the poor man could not lay 
his hands on; he knows that he will work at night for a 
fortnight rather than lose his friend;—he cannot part 
from his Nighingale ! The bird-fancier is well acquainted 
with the mountain-villages where work and poverty go 
hand in hand, and where in every cottage, aye, the 
smallest hovel, a tame bird is to be seen. And why ? 
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