may certainly pass for a gentleman.

We have now named four birds, the chickadee, the goldfinch, the brown
thrush, and the towhee,--birds so diverse in plumage that no eye could
fail to discriminate them at a glance. But the four differ no more truly
in bodily shape and dress than they do in that inscrutable something
which we call temperament, disposition. If the soul of each were
separated from the body and made to stand out in sight, those of us who
have really known the birds in the flesh would have no difficulty in
saying, This is the titmouse, and this the towhee. It would be with them
as we hope it will be with our friends in the next world, whom we shall
recognize there because we knew them here; that is, we knew _them_, and
not merely the bodies they lived in. This kind of familiarity with birds
has no necessary connection with ornithology. Personal intimacy and a
knowledge of anatomy are still two different things. As we have all
heard, ours is an age of science; but, thank fortune, matters have not
yet gone so far that a man must take a course in anthropology before he
can love his neighbor.

It is a truth only too patent that taste and conscience are sometimes at
odds. One man wears his faults so gracefully that we can hardly help
falling in love with them, while another, alas, makes even virtue itself
repulsive. I am moved to this commonplace reflection by thinking of the
blue jay, a bird of doubtful character, but one for whom, nevertheless,
it is impossible not to feel a sort of affection and even of respect. He
is quite as suspicious as the brown thrush, and his instinct for an
invisible perch is perhaps as unerring as the cuckoo's; and yet, even
when he takes to hiding, his manner is not without a dash of boldness.
He has a most irascible temper, also, but, unlike the thrasher, he does
not allow his ill-humor to degenerate into chronic sulkiness. Instead,
he flies into a furious passion, and is done with it. Some say that on
such occasions he swears, and I have myself seen him when it was plain
that nothing except a natural impossibility kept him from tearing his
hair. His larynx would make him a singer, and his mental capacity is far
above the average; but he has perverted his gifts, till his music is
nothing but noise and his talent nothing but smartness. A like process
of depravation the world has before now witnessed in political life,
when a man of brilliant natural endowments has yielded to low a