oned softly, as they did when their mother
hovered them. The boy loved them better than anything he ever had; he
always saw them safe in the coop at night, and he ran out early in the
morning to see how they had got through the night, and to feed them. One
fatal morning he found them all scattered dead upon the grass, the
mother and every one of her pretty chicks, with no sign upon them of how
they had been killed. He could only guess that they had fallen a prey to
rats, or to some owl that had got into their coop; but, as they had not
been torn or carried away, he guessed in vain. He buried them with the
sympathy of all the children and all the fellows at school who heard
about the affair. It was a real grief; it was long before he could think
of his loss without tears; and I am not sure there is so much difference
of quality in our bereavements; the loss can hurt more or it can hurt
less, but the pang must be always the same in kind.

Besides his goat, my boy's brother kept pigeons, which, again, were like
the goat and the rabbits in not being of very much use. They had to be
much more carefully looked after than chickens when they were young,
they were so helpless in their nests, such mere weak wads of featherless
flesh. At first you had to open their bills and poke the food in; and
you had to look out how you gave them water for fear you would drown
them; but when they got a little larger they would drink and eat from
your mouth; and that was some pleasure, for they did not seem to know
you from an old pigeon when you took your mouth full of corn or water
and fed them. Afterwards, when they began to fly, it was a good deal of
fun to keep them, and make more cots for them, and build them nests in
the cots.

But they were not very intelligent pets; hardly more intelligent than
the fish that the boys kept in the large wooden hogshead of rain-water
at the corner of the house. They had caught some of these fish when they
were quite small, and the fish grew very fast, for there was plenty of
food for them in the mosquito-tadpoles that abounded in the hogshead.
Then, the boys fed them every day with bread-crumbs and worms. There was
one big sunfish that was not afraid of anything; if you held a worm just
over him he would jump out of the water and snatch it. Besides the fish,
there was a turtle in the hogshead, and he had a broad chip that he
liked to sun himself on. It was fun to watch him resting on this chip,
with his