e nations. He it was who
marked with his clarion the moment when he upon whose name is founded
the most powerful of the Christian Churches denied his master and his
faith. He sings the coming of the dawn in every clime, and marks the
hour when graveyards cease to yawn, or when Romeos must depart. He leads
his harem abroad in the morning as he has ever done, ever ready to fight
his rival from across the fence or to meet in unconsidered duel the
marauding hawk. With a gallantry quite unknown to any other bird or
human, he calls familiarly to others of his family to come and eat the
choicest morsel he may find. He is gay. He has the natural gait and air
of an acknowledged chieftain. The sun glints upon his neck. His tail is
a waving plume the equal of which few birds can boast. He hath a bold
and glittering eye. Sometimes retreating under the dictates of prudence,
as many higher personages have often done and been commended therefor,
he is yet the ideal of homely, home-defending courage. Withal, he will
upon necessity demean himself to scratch for a brood of chirping
orphans, and gather them to his gallant breast because they have no
mother. Yet, forsooth, not this illustrious bird, but the eagle--the
"American" Eagle--is the emblem of the foster-mother of all the nations.

There is a place where every visitor to Chicago may see this emblematic
lordling near at hand. It is at Lincoln Park. There is a colossal cage
there where there are a dozen or so of him, and he is not even
restricted in certain limited flights which seem fully satisfying to him
in his well-fed condition. If you go to see him there you will have the
advantage of observing how absurdly draggle tailed and slovenly he may
become with full leisure to make his toilet if he ever does, and that he
evidently is not naturally a dandy. This trait is not common with any of
his captive neighbors except the coyotes, and nobody who has known the
coyote in his native wilderness expects anything better of him. You can
also observe his grotesqueness when he is on the ground, where he often
comes, and there is probably nothing more ridiculously abortive in all
nature than his movements when so situated. But one cannot visit him
often or observe him long without becoming convinced that none of the
attitudes in which he is almost invariably depicted on flags, medals,
seals, coins, and other ornamental and emblematic devices is natural to
him. He never assumes them even by mi