window, and every night all
the young mocking-birds gathered there to try out their voices. It was
partly elocutionary and partly vocal, but almost entirely
exercises--rarely did they favor me with a real song. This would go on
for some time, then just as I dared to hope that lessons were over,
another burst of ill-assorted trills and shrills would rouse me to fury.
I kept three pairs of boots in a convenient place, and hurled them into
the bamboos, paying the boys a small reward for retrieving them each
morning. Sometimes, if my aim was good, a kind of wondering silence
lasted long enough for me to fall asleep. There is an old song--we all
know it--that runs:

"She's sleeping in the valley, etc., etc.,
And the mocking-bird is singing where she lies."

That, of course, would be impossible if the poor little thing hadn't
been dead.

By day I really enjoyed them. To sit in the garden, which smelled
like a perpetual wedding, reading Lafcadio Hearn and listening to
mocking-birds and linnets, would have undermined my New England
upbringing very quickly, had I had time to indulge often in such
a lotus-eating existence.

Then there was "Boost." He was a small bantam rooster, beloved of our
landlady, which really proves nothing because she was such a
tender-hearted person that she loved every dumb creature that wandered
to her door. Had Boost been dumb I might have loved him too. He had a
voice like the noise a small boy can make with a tin can and a resined
string. He had a malevolent eye and knew that I detested him, so that he
took especial pains to crow under my windows, generally about an hour
after the mocking-birds stopped. I think living with a lot of big hens
and roosters told on his nervous system, and he took it out on me. Great
self-restraint did I exercise in not wringing his neck, when help came
from an unexpected quarter. Boost had spirit--I grant him that--and one
day he evidently forgot that he wasn't a full-sized bird, and was
reproved by the Sultan of the poultry-yard in such a way that he was
found almost dead of his wounds. Dear Miss W----'s heart was quite
broken. She fed him brandy and anointed him with healing lotions, but
to no avail. He died. I had felt much torn and rather doublefaced in
my inquiries for the sufferer, because I was so terribly afraid he
might get well, so it was a great relief when he was safely buried
in the back lot.

Though I love animals I have had bloodthirsty mo