current estimate of the sea-gull as an intellectual force is
compressed into the word "gullibility"--a verbal monument of contempt.
But when we think how many things the gull does that we cannot do--how
he has mastered the arts of flying and floating, so that he is equally
at home in the air and on the water; how cleverly he adapts himself to
his environment, keeping warm among the ice-floes in winter and cool
when all the rest of the folks at the summer watering-places are
sweltering in the heat; how well he holds his own against the
encroachments of that grasping animal, man, who has driven so many
other wild creatures to the wall, and over it into extinction; how
prudently he accepts and utilizes all the devices of civilization which
suit him, (such as steamship-lanes across the Atlantic, and
dumping-scows in city harbors, and fish-oil factories on the seashore),
without becoming in the least civilized himself--in short, when we
consider how he succeeds in doing what every wise person is trying to
do, living his own proper life amid various and changing circumstances,
it seems as if we might well reform the spelling of that supercilious
word, and write it "gull-ability."

But probably the gull would show no more relish for the compliment than
he has hitherto shown distaste for the innuendo; both of them being
inedible, and he of a happy disposition, indifferent to purely academic
opinions of his rank and station in the universe. Imagine a gull being
disquieted because some naturalist solemnly averred that a hawk or a
swallow was a better master of the art of flight; or a mocking-bird
falling into a mood of fierce resentment or nervous depression because
some professor of music declared that the hermit thrush had a more
spontaneous and inspired song! The gull goes a-flying in his own way
and the mocking-bird sits a-singing his roundelay, original or
imitated, just as it comes to him; and neither of them is angry or
depressed when a critic makes odious comparisons, because they are both
doing the best that they know with "a whole and happy heart." Not so
with poets, orators, and other human professors of the high-flying and
cantatory arts. They are often perturbed and acerbated, and sometimes
diverted from their proper course by the winds of adverse comment.

When Cicero Tomlinson began his career as a public speaker he showed a
very pretty vein of humour, which served to open his hearers' minds
with honest laughter