acked like the duck,
and even Miss Guinea-fowl found that he could "pot-rack" better than she
could.

The Shanghai remarked to the peacock that this young Louisianian was a
remarkable acquisition to the community; Gander White thought he ought to
be elected to the city council, and Miss Guinea-fowl remarked that she
had always thought there was something in the young man. Dr. Parrot
laughed quietly at this last remark.

The very next day the mocking-bird was asked to take up a singing-school.
The whole barn-yard was in the notion of improving the popular capacity
to sing. And Daddy Longlegs came near breaking his neck in his hurry to
get up on a barrel-head to advocate a measure that he saw was likely to
be popular.

But it did not come to anything. The only song that the rooster could
ever sing was the one in Mother Goose, about the dame losing her shoe and
the master his fiddle-stick, at which Professor Mocking-bird couldn't
help smiling. Mr. Peacock, the gentleman of leisure, could do nothing
more than his frightful "ne-onk!" which made everybody shiver more than a
saw-file would. Gander White said he himself had a good ear for music,
but a poor voice, while the Hon. Turkey Pompous said he had a fine bass
voice, but no ear for tune. Dr. Parrot was heard to say "Humbug!" when
the whole company turned to him for an explanation. He was at that moment
taking his morning gymnastic exercise, by swinging himself from perch to
perch, holding on by his beak. When he got through, he straightened up
and said:

"In the first place, you all made sport of a stranger about whom you knew
nothing. I spent many years of my life with a learned doctor of divinity,
and I often heard him speak severely of the sin of rash judgments. But
when you found that our new friend could sing, you all desired to sing
like him. Now, he was made to sing, and each of the rest of us to do
something else. You, Mr. Gander White, are good to make feather beds and
pillows; Hon. Turkey Pompous is good for the next Thanksgiving day; and
you, Mr. Peacock Strutwell, are good for nothing but to grow tail-feathers
to make fly-brushes of. But we all have our use. If we will all do our
best to be as useful as we can in our own proper sphere, we will do
better. There is our neighbor, Miss Sophie Jones, who has wasted two
hours a day for the last ten years, trying to learn music, when nature
did not give her musical talent, while Peter Thompson, across the street,