s most comfortably
in his ring, inside a magnificent brass-wired cage. "To-day is Polly's
birthday," said she with stupid simplicity: "and the little brown
field-bird must wish him joy."

Mr. Polly uttered not a syllable in reply, but swung to and fro with
dignified condescension; while a pretty canary, as yellow as gold, that
had lately been brought from his sunny fragrant home, began to sing
aloud.

"Noisy creature! Will you be quiet!" screamed the lady of the house,
covering the cage with an embroidered white pocket handkerchief.

"Chirp, chirp!" sighed he. "That was a dreadful snowstorm"; and he
sighed again, and was silent.

The copying-clerk, or, as the lady said, the brown field-bird, was
put into a small cage, close to the Canary, and not far from "my good
Polly." The only human sounds that the Parrot could bawl out
were, "Come, let us be men!" Everything else that he said was as
unintelligible to everybody as the chirping of the Canary, except to the
clerk, who was now a bird too: he understood his companion perfectly.

"I flew about beneath the green palms and the blossoming almond-trees,"
sang the Canary; "I flew around, with my brothers and sisters, over
the beautiful flowers, and over the glassy lakes, where the bright
water-plants nodded to me from below. There, too, I saw many
splendidly-dressed paroquets, that told the drollest stories, and the
wildest fairy tales without end."

"Oh! those were uncouth birds," answered the Parrot. "They had no
education, and talked of whatever came into their head.

"If my mistress and all her friends can laugh at what I say, so may you
too, I should think. It is a great fault to have no taste for what is
witty or amusing--come, let us be men."

"Ah, you have no remembrance of love for the charming maidens that
danced beneath the outspread tents beside the bright fragrant flowers?
Do you no longer remember the sweet fruits, and the cooling juice in
the wild plants of our never-to-be-forgotten home?" said the former
inhabitant of the Canary Isles, continuing his dithyrambic.

"Oh, yes," said the Parrot; "but I am far better off here. I am well
fed, and get friendly treatment. I know I am a clever fellow; and that
is all I care about. Come, let us be men. You are of a poetical nature,
as it is called--I, on the contrary, possess profound knowledge and
inexhaustible wit. You have genius; but clear-sighted, calm discretion
does not take such lofty flights, and utt