e and opportunity serve.

Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more than the bad
company birds keep. Foreign birds often get into good society, but
British birds are inseparable from low associates. There is a whole
street of them in St. Giles's; and I always find them in poor and
immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the
pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man
who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye.
Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted
velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur
caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of
society to undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a
goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were
in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and offered,
in writing, to barter himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or
even kitchen stuff. Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any
finch! I bought that goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung
upon a nail over against my table. He lived outside a counterfeit
dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it
would have been impossible to account for his perch sticking out of the
garret window. From the time of his appearance in my room, either he
left off being thirsty--which was not in the bond--or he could not make
up his mind to hear his little bucket drop back into his well when he
let it go; a shock which in the best of times had made him tremble. He
drew no water but by stealth and under the cloak of night. After an
interval of futile and at length hopeless expectation, the merchant who
had educated him was appealed to. The merchant was a bow-legged
character, with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new strawberry.
He wore a fur cap and shorts, and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny.
He sent word that he would "look round." He looked round, appeared in
the doorway of the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the
goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird; when it was
appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets of water; and
finally, leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill as if he had been
to the nearest wine-vaults and got drunk.

Donkeys, again. I know shy neighbourhoods where the donkey goes in at
the street-door, and appears to live upstairs, fo