all finish this book by telling you a story--a true story, which,
I hope, will make you think.

Many years ago a sea captain returned to his home in the north of
Scotland, after sailing the sea for a long time. He brought with him a
parrot. The parrot had lived in South America, where the people speak
the Spanish language. So all the words the parrot knew were in
Spanish.

The captain knew Spanish quite well, and often talked to the parrot in
that language. But after a time the captain died, and there was nobody
in that part of Scotland who could talk to the parrot.

The parrot grew silent, and never opened his mouth to say a word. But
he was thinking of his friend who was dead, and whose words in Spanish
had reminded him of his sunny home. The people around him did not know
that, and thought nothing of his silence. So the parrot in his cold
and bleak cage pined and pined for his sunny home land, but never a
word did he say.

Forty years passed, and a new set of people came to live there. They
took no notice of the silent old parrot. They put food and drink in
the cage, but knew nothing about him except that he had been in the
cage for many years. For a parrot lives much longer than a
man--sometimes one hundred years.

One day a sailor came to the house. He had lived in South America, and
knew Spanish. He saw the parrot sitting in his cage, all alone and
silent, with his head bent down, and his beak on his breast. Then the
sailor spoke to the parrot in Spanish.

The parrot looked up, as if he had awakened from a long, long dream.
Something reminded him of the days of his youth, when he was a happy
bird flying about over the sunny fields of South America. Then he
remembered the language of his youth, which he had not spoken for
forty years.

Suddenly he flapped his wings in joy, and spoke again. He spoke all
the Spanish words he knew, one after another. He spoke to that sailor
as to a friend come to him from his own home land. He flapped his
wings against the bars, and finally dropped to the floor of the cage,
dead. He had died in the thought of his bygone happy days.

My dear children, I am closing this book with this story, because I
want you to learn a great lesson from it: _be kind to all animals_.

I know that you would never willfully hurt any animal. But that is not
enough. You may think that you are very kind to some creature, because
you feed it and pet it; but all the same you may be very cruel, thou