hanty, although too intent on my
studies to notice it. Presently the woman could no longer endure my
apparent espionage, and so she said: "Go 'bout yer own business,
mister, 'n' don' ye be spyin' inter my house!"

TROUBLE AMONG THE BIRDS*

*The larger part of this chapter was first published in "The Christian
Endeavor World," Boston; the rest of it in "Our Animal Friends," New
York. I reprint it here by permission of both these journals.

Even at the risk of causing a feeling of dejection on the reader's
part, I am going to put one "trouble" chapter into this volume. There
are trials in the birds' domain, and perhaps you and I will feel more
sympathy with them, and will be led to protect them all the more
carefully, if we know something about the "deep waters of affliction"
through which they are sometimes compelled to pass. Our native
American birds, at least some of them, suffer a good deal at the hands,
so to speak, of the pestiferous English sparrows, which were introduced
into this country by some egregious blunder.

There can be no doubt that the English sparrows are regular bullies.
They do not fight other birds so much as they hector them, making life
intolerable by their ribaldry, coarse jests, and prying manners. Some
birds, especially many of our beautiful native species, are sensitively
organized, and cannot endure such boorish society as the badly bred
foreigners furnish. That as much as anything has driven our genteel
bluebirds away from our homes into the woods and other out-of-the-way
places. How would you feel, my friend, if, as you were going along the
street, a lot of hoodlums should take to gibing and hooting at you?

Were there ever such pesky, ill-mannered citizens as the English
sparrows? Here comes a downy woodpecker, or a cardinal, or a
rose-breasted grosbeak to town, flitting about the trees of my yard,
gathering goodies among the leaves and twigs, and perhaps piping a
little aria at intervals, congratulating himself on having found a
pleasant, quiet place, when, lo! a gang of English sparrows crowd
around him, peering at him now with one eye, now with the other,
canting their heads in their impertinent way, bowing and scraping and
blinking, and for all the world seeming to make such derisive remarks
as, "Oh, what a fine fellow! Quite stuck-up, ain't he? Isn't that a
stylish topknot, though? He! he! he! Look! he wears a rose on his
shirt bosom! Isn't he a dandy? Ge! g