roborated
by numerous little angelic soft fine feathers scattered about in
localities that precluded the cat. Cheri is a proud youngster, and I
suppose he thought if he must lose his good looks, there was no use in
keeping up his voice; therefore he moped and pouted for several months,
and would have appeared to very great disadvantage in case I had
introduced a stranger to his good graces.

So Cheri is still alone in the world, but when my ship comes home from
sea and brings an additional hour to my day, and a few golden eagles to
my purse, he is going to have his mate, eight young ones and all, and I
shall buy him a new cage, a trifle smaller than Noah's ark, and a cask
of canary-seed and a South Sea turtle-shell, and just put them in the
cage and let them colonize. If they increase and multiply beyond all
possibility of provision, why, I shall by that time, perhaps have
become world-encrusted and hard-hearted, and shall turn the cat in upon
them for an hour or two, which will no doubt have the effect of at once
thinning them down to wieldy proportions.

Sweet little Cheri. My heart smites me to see you chirping there so
innocent and affectionate while I sit here plotting treason against
you. Bright as is the day and dazzling as the sunlit snow, you turn
away from it all, so strong is your craving for sympathy, and bend your
tiny head towards me to pour out the fulness of your song.

And what a song it is! All the bloom of his beautiful islands sheds
its fragrance there. The hum of his honey-bees roving through beds of
spices, the loveliness of dark-eyed maidens treading the wine-press
with ruddy feet, the laughter of young boys swinging in the vines and
stained with the scented grapes,--all the music that rings through his
orange-groves, all the sunshine of the tropics caught in the glow of
fruit and flower, in the blue of sky and sea, in the blinding whiteness
of the shore and the amethystine evening,--all come quivering over the
western wave in the falls of his tuneful voice. You shall hear it
while the day is yet dark in the folds of the morning twilight,--a
weak, faint, preliminary "whoo! whoo!" uncertain and tentative, then a
trill or two of awakened assurance, and then, with a confident,
courageous gush and glory of soul, he flings aside all minor
considerations, and dashes con amore into the very middle of things. I
am not musical, and cannot give you his notes in technical hieroglyphs,
but in exact