e of their reaction, choosing for destruction the one
whose deportment seems to him most foolish. In this way, by weeding out
the extremely silly, he hopes in time to raise the general intellectual
standard of the barnyard. But he urges that much more might be done if
my heart were in it. Very likely, but my heart is not. Intelligence is
all very well, but the barnyard, I am convinced, is no place for it.
Give me my pretty, silly hens, with all their aimless, silly ways. I
will seek intelligence, when I want it, elsewhere.

In another direction, too, Jonathan's optimistic temperament has found
little encouragement. This is in regard to the chimney swallows. When we
first came, these little creatures were one of my severest trials. They
were not a trial to Jonathan. He loved to watch them at dusk, circling
and eddying about the great chimney. So, indeed, did I; and if they had
but contented themselves with circling and eddying there, I should have
had no quarrel with them. I did not even object to their evolutions
inside the chimney. At first I took the muffled shudder of wings for
distant thunder, and when great masses of soot came tumbling down into
the fireplace, I jumped; but I soon grew accustomed to all this. I was
even willing to clean the soot out of my neat fireplace daily, while
Jonathan comforted me by suggesting that the birds took the place of
chimney-sweeps, and that soot was good for rose bushes. Yes, if the
little things had been willing to stick to their chimney, I should have
been tolerant, if not cordial. But when they invaded my domain, I felt
that I had a grievance. And invade it they did. At dawn I was rudely
awakened by a rush from the fireplace, a mad scuttering about the dusky
room, a desperate exit by the little open window, where the raised shade
revealed the pale light of morning. At night, if I went with my candle
into a dark room, I was met by a whirling thing, dashing itself against
me, against the light, against the walls, in a moth-like ecstasy of
self-destruction. In the mornings, as I went about the house pulling up
the shades and drawing back the curtains, out from their white folds
rushed dark, winged shapes, whirring past my ears, fluttering blindly
about the room, sinking exhausted in inaccessible corners. They were as
foolish as June bugs, fifty times bigger, and harder to catch. Moreover,
when caught, they were not pretty; their eyes were in the top of their
heads, like a snake's,