them more clearly than you do Atkinson,
although they are not there. But this is an advanced exercise in
struthian expression--a complicated feat, involving various and complex
elements. There is the neck-wilt and the bending of the head; also the
three-quarter face, not a simple element.

[Illustration]

The plain and elementary principles of struthian expression lie in the
mere front and side views. The third simple view, the back, is not
particularly eloquent, although practice might do something even for
that. At the side the ostrich is glum, savage, misanthropical,
depressed--what you will of that sort. Let him but turn and face you--he
can't help a genial grin. All done by the versatile neck, you observe,
which gives the head its position.

[Illustration: GLUM SIDE.]

[Illustration: GENIAL FRONT.]

Man, instigated by woman, has a habit of pulling out the camel-gander's
tail. This ruins the appearance of the site of that tail, without
commensurately improving the head whereunto the tail is transplanted--an
unprofitable game of heads and tails, wherein tails lose and heads don't
win. Even the not over clever ostrich knows better than to wear those
feathers on the wrong end. Perhaps he knows that he is enough of a fool
already.

There is a deal of hidden interest about the ostrich's neck. It is the
cleverest piece of an ostrich--unless you count his stomach; and even in
the triumphs of the stomach the neck takes a great share. When a
camel-goose lunches off a box of dominoes, or a sack of nails, or a
basketful of broken bottles, there is quite as much credit in the feat
due to the neck as to the stomach; with anybody else all the
difficulties of that lunch would begin with the neck--even a thicker
neck. Parenthetically, one remembers that the ostrich's neck is not
always thin. Catch Atkinson here in a roaring soliloquy, and you shall
see his red neck distended as a bladder, with a mighty grumbling and
grunting. This by the way. The neck makes nothing of the domino
difficulty, or the tenpenny nail difficulty, or the door-knob
difficulty, or the broken bottle difficulty--which are not difficulties
to the camel-goose. On the contrary, the neck revels in them and keeps
the dainties as long as possible. Give Pontius Pilate, or Atkinson--I am
quite impartial--an apple. When he swallows it you shall see it, in a
bulge, pass along and _round_ his neck; down it goes and backward, in a
gradual curve, until it disappear