r in his first nap he contrived
to nestle himself into the cotton of which his bed was made, and to get
more of it than he needed into his long bill. We pulled it out as
carefully as we could, but there came out of his bill two round, bright,
scarlet, little drops of blood. Our chief medical authority looked
grave, pronounced a probable hemorrhage from the lungs, and gave him
over at once. We, less scientific, declared that we had only cut his
little tongue by drawing out the filaments of cotton, and that he would
do well enough in time,--as it afterward appeared he did,--for from that
day there was no more bleeding. In the course of the second day he began
to take short flights about the room, though he seemed to prefer to
return to us,--perching on our fingers or heads or shoulders, and
sometimes choosing to sit in this way for half an hour at a time. "These
great giants," he seemed to say to himself, "are not bad people after
all; they have a comfortable way with them; how nicely they dried and
warmed me! Truly a bird might do worse than to live with them."

So he made up his mind to form a fourth in the little company of three
that usually sat and read, worked and sketched, in that apartment, and
we christened him "Hum, the son of Buz." He became an individuality, a
character, whose little doings formed a part of every letter, and some
extracts from these will show what some of his little ways were.

"Hum has learned to sit upon my finger, and eat his sugar and water out
of a teaspoon with most Christian-like decorum. He has but one
weakness,--he will occasionally jump into the spoon and sit in his sugar
and water, and then appear to wonder where it goes to. His plumage is in
rather a drabbled state, owing to these performances. I have sketched
him as he sat to-day on a bit of Spiraea which I brought in for him. When
absorbed in reflection, he sits with his bill straight up in the air, as
I have drawn him. Mr. A---- reads Macaulay to us, and you should see the
wise air with which, perched on Jenny's thumb, he cocked his head now
one side and then the other, apparently listening with most critical
attention. His confidence in us seems unbounded; he lets us stroke his
head, smooth his feathers, without a flutter; and is never better
pleased than sitting, as he has been doing all this while, on my hand,
turning up his bill, and watching my face with great edification.

"I have just been having a sort of maternal strug