OUR LOQUACIOUS POLL
APOLOGY may be due for including in these simple domestic annals the memoirs of a mere Poll Parrot. But as the kitchen was the room preferred and mainly inhabited by this unruly fowl, and especially, as its presence there was a very decided factor in "making home pleasant" for our indispensable Janet, justice demands their inclusion.
Polly was a St. Valentine's bird. She exchanged commercial for domestic life in the midst of a blizzard on the wildest 14th of February I ever experienced. She came done up in a mountainous bundle, her cage enveloped in innumerable layers of paper—both brown and news—each tied up separately in hard knots. I feared to find nothing within but a limp mass of green feathers, when the last wrapping was removed, but instead, there was discovered an observant, grave-looking creature apparently absorbed in inner contemplation.
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