d the mosquito-bar, and I went to bed to
nurse my cough. It was about nine in the evening. What a state of
things! For three hours the yelling and shouting of natives in the hall
continued, along with the velvety patter of their swift bare feet--what a
racket it was! They were yelling orders and messages down three flights.
Why, in the matter of noise it amounted to a riot, an insurrection, a
revolution. And then there were other noises mixed up with these and at
intervals tremendously accenting them--roofs falling in, I judged,
windows smashing, persons being murdered, crows squawking, and deriding,
and cursing, canaries screeching, monkeys jabbering, macaws blaspheming,
and every now and then fiendish bursts of laughter and explosions of
dynamite. By midnight I had suffered all the different kinds of shocks
there are, and knew that I could never more be disturbed by them, either
isolated or in combination. Then came peace--stillness deep and solemn
and lasted till five.

Then it all broke loose again. And who re-started it? The Bird of Birds
the Indian crow. I came to know him well, by and by, and be infatuated
with him. I suppose he is the hardest lot that wears feathers. Yes, and
the cheerfulest, and the best satisfied with himself. He never arrived
at what he is by any careless process, or any sudden one; he is a work of
art, and "art is long"; he is the product of immemorial ages, and of deep
calculation; one can't make a bird like that in a day. He has been
reincarnated more times than Shiva; and he has kept a sample of each
incarnation, and fused it into his constitution. In the course of his
evolutionary promotions, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he
has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a
blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading
politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a
reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel, a royalist, a
democrat, a practicer and propagator of irreverence, a meddler, an
intruder, a busybody, an infidel, and a wallower in sin for the mere love
of it. The strange result, the incredible result, of this patient
accumulation of all damnable traits is, that be does not know what care
is, he does not know what sorrow is, he does not know what remorse is,
his life is one long thundering ecstasy of happiness, and he will go to
his death untroubled, knowing that he w