stripped you naked long before this and reduced you to the condition of a barnyard fowl prepared for the spit."
"Very well!" I cried, unable longer to submit to such injustice, "if that is the case, sir, never mind! I will relieve you of my presence; your eyes shall no more be offended by the sight of these poor white tail-feathers by which you are continually pulling me about. I will go away, sir, I will take refuge in flight; since my mother lays thrice a year there will be other children in plenty to console your declining years; I will go and hide my wretchedness in some distant country, and it may be," I added, with a sob, "it may be that along the gutters or in the neighbors' kitchen-garden I shall find some earth-worms or a few spiders to enable me to eke out my miserable existence."
"As you please," replied my father, far from melting at this speech of mine; "only let me never set eyes on you again. You are not my son; you are not a blackbird."
"What am I then, sir, if you please?"
"I have not the slightest idea; but you are not a blackbird."
With these crushing words my father strode slowly away; My mother sadly arose and went limping to her porringer to have tier cry out, while I, for my part, confounded and disconsolate, stretched my wings and took my flight as well as I could, and went and perched upon the gutter of an adjoining house as I had said I would do.
II
My father was so inhuman as to leave me several days in this mortifying situation. Notwithstand-
