sual.

[Illustration]

LETTER VI.

_FROM THE WILD DUCK TO THE TAME DUCK._

Dated Lincoln and Ely Fens.

DEAR COUSIN,

I suppose I must call you so, though I declare I know not how we are
related. But, though I am thought so very wild and shy, I have still a
kind of fellow-feeling for you; and, if you have not gone to the spit
before this comes to you, I should be glad of your reply in a friendly
way. You know very well that you are intended to be eaten, and so are
we--when they can catch us. I understand that you never fly and that you
seldom waddle above a meadow's length from your pond, where you keep
puddling and groping from daylight till dark. This, I assure you, is not
the life that I lead. We fly together in vast numbers in the night, for
many miles over this flat, wet country; so, as to water, we have an
inexhaustible store: we may swim ourselves tired. But, I dare say, every
station of our duck-lives is subject to some disadvantages and some
calamities. Thus, with all our wildness, we are not secure; for we are
taken sometimes by hundreds in a kind of trap which is called a
decoy.

[Illustration: WILD DUCKS.]

Some of our tribe have been made tame like you (but I hope you are not
so false-hearted), and then their masters feed them plentifully, in a
place contrived on purpose, with a narrow entrance, with which these
_traitor ducks_ are well acquainted, so that they can pass in and out at
a place we strangers should never have thought of. They are sent out in
the dusk of the evening, when they soon join with large companies of us
strangers; and knowing, as they do, their way home, and that they shall
find food, they set off, close at each other's tails, along a ditch, or
watercourse, and we fools follow them.

The entrance, as far as I could see of it, is very narrow; for I have
been twice within a hair's breadth of being caught, and do not pretend
to know all about it; but I wish heartily that every duck and drake in
the country--ay, and every one of our allies, the geese, too, could say
as much--could say that "they had twice been on the verge of destruction
by keeping bad company, but had escaped."

What becomes of my companions, when taken, I think I have heard pretty
accurately; for there is somewhere a very large assemblage of
fellow-creatures to those who catch us, and whose demand seems never to
be satisfied. Well, never mind, cousin; I am determined to fly, and swim
too, as long as