The Black Cat (magazine)/Volume 14/Number 9/Parkinson's Lightning Calculator

by James Francis Dwyer

 

Parkinson's Lightning Calculator.^[1]

BY JAMES FRANCIS DWYER

In the old St. Kilda road, a few miles outside of Melbourne, the queen city of Australia, stands "Parkinson's Palace." It is the most unique establishment of its kind in the southern hemisphere. Globe-trotters whose names are on the registers of The Savoy in London, Shepbeard's at Cairo, Watson's at Bombay, and many other famous hostelries on the world's broad breast, are startled out of that indifference born of travel when they enter Parkinson's hotel—or rather the magnificently appointed bar-room, which is the chief attraction. The place has distinction and originality. Parkinson had an idea, and in the building of The Palace he saw that the idea was carried out.

The first object that strikes the eye of the visitor is a stuffed crow that directs a lifelike stare upon the crowds that throng the bar. The bird is a magnet. It looks out from a gorgeous case of polished gold quartz, studded with Queensland fire-opals and New Zealand greenstone, and immediately rivets attention. This crow has a history, and in a country where the species is universally hated, the fact that one should be stuffed and elaborately encased leads to a continual repetition of the story. As every Australian regards the crow as the most deadly and despised foe of the sheep-breeder, native visitors to the hotel look upon this specimen, with its glistening diamond eyes, as a personal insult, until the proprietor has explained that this crow was an exception—the one solitary exception on the entire island continent that brought prosperity instead of desolation and disaster.

Parkinson was a small sheep farmer on the Gippsland hills till the drought of 1891 swept over the land. That year put him out of business. The crows feasted on his dead and dying sheep, fire swept through his pasture, and, finally, the bank seized his property on account of an overdue mortgage. Included in the few head of stock taken over with the farm, was a thoroughbred colt, upon which Parkinson set great hopes, so his ruin was complete. The unfortunate man's wife died from the shock of the disaster, leaving him to care for the only child, a girl of six.

It was shortly after his wife's death that Parkinson got an idea. Some weeks before, one of the stockmen had brought the lonely child a young crow to play with, and Parkinson, hating the bird with all the true bushman's hate, decided to kill it before leaving the sheep run. But fate intervened. An attachment had sprung up between the child and the bird. The crow's cunning capers, of which it never tired, greatly amused the little girl, and while Parkinson watched the two playing in the shadow of the homestead, an inspiration came. He packed the bird up with his few belongings and removed to the nearest township.

Three months afterwards his name became a household word among the farmers on the bronzed plains. Parkinson appeared at the small agricultural shows, race meetings, and dog exhibitions, and he startled the natives by giving performances in which a tame crow was the shining star. The bird was a lightning calculator of the first water.

The bushmen know well that the crow possesses ten times more cunning than any other bird, but they were not prepared for the exhibition of intelligence given them by Parkinson's pet. Its feats astounded them. The extraordinary ability it displayed in dealing with figures left them speechless. They had heard of horses that had been trained to distinguish between numerals, but a crow that could juggle with figures like the actuary of a life insurance company was something new in their experience of life. Gippsland gasped. Men rode fifty miles from the ranges to see the marvel, and went away amazed.

Two months after the crow made its début, its fame spread so rapidly that Parkinson refused a score of offers from the proprietors of circuses and music halls, and arguing wisely that that he could successfully manage his own feathered wonder in the larger cities, he hired a theatre in Melbourne and wealth started to roll in upon him.

The Calculating Crow took the town by storm. Its feats were marvellous. It revelled in figures. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division seemed to be the joy of its life, and the people came in thousands to view the marvel.

By nodding its head smartly the bird invariably gave the correct result to the sums, no matter how difficult, that were placed before it on a blackboard. Thus, if the answer to a sum was two hundred and thirty-seven, the crow would nod twice, pause a moment, then nod three times, and after another little interval give seven smart bobs of its shiny black head. It made no mistakes. Parkinson acted as interlocutor, and standing at the blackboard encouraged the audience to call out sums of all kinds, which he chalked upon the board to be worked out by the feathered prodigy.

Even in mental arithmetic the crow's skill was remarkable. The boy who wanted to know the cost of two dozen apples at two pence half-penny each, received his reply offhand in five quick nods to signify five shillings, and more intricate problems were disposed of in the same fashion. The bird also gave the dates of the most important events in the world's history. By a single nod, eight nods, one nod, and then five, it told the date of the Battle of Waterloo, and answered in like manner questions concerning the discovery of Australia, the accession of Queen Victoria and matters of a like nature.

The city of Melbourne went wild over the crow. The performance was unique. Statesmen, school teachers, lawyers and divines came to see and wonder, and the press was flooded by writers who argued lengthily concerning the opinion of different ornithologists who had written upon the brain power of birds. Doctors examined the size and shape of the feathered calculator's head when it was not busy figuring out the answers to the thousands of questions put by the big audiences, and they decided that the bird had a brain that was abnormally developed. The crow became the one topic of conversation. Thousands of school children were were brought to see the bird, and the fame of The Lightning Calculator spread across the continent. Parkinson became rich, and as he thought over the drought days on the sheep run he pondered over the strange ways of fate. Crows had helped to ruin him by plucking the eyes out of his starving sheep, and yet a single crow had now brought him affluence!

Then something happened. The Governor of the colony wished to witness the performance, and in company with his aides-de-camp he attended Parkinson's theatre. Parkinson was delighted. The Governor was the representative of royalty, and his visit was a distinct honor to the show.

Shortly after the performance began it became apparent that the crow was in a bad humor. It bobbed its head sullenly when answering questions put by the audience, and Parkinson, by gently stroking and patting the bird, tried vainly to put it in its usual happy mood. But the performer became more irritable as the minutes went by.

When the Governor intimated that he wished to propound a question, the house was instantly hushed. He was a small, stout personage, and when he rose and looked straight at the crow, the latter returned the stare. Parkinson, detecting a look of annoyance in the bird, breathed heavily as the exalted one propounded his problem.

"If—er—fourteen bananas cost one shilling and two pence," stammered the pompous dignitary, "how much will one banana cost?"

His Excellency sat down but the crow made no movement. It stared at the questioner as if it had been suddenly petrified. Parkinson, standing on one side of the stage, mopped the perspiration from his forehead and looked around uneasily. It was evident that something was wrong. The small boys in the gallery began to make remarks, which led to an uproar. Suddenly the crow started to pick violently at its right leg, and Parkinson made frantic signals to lower the curtain. The last glimpse the audience got of the performing crow showed them that feathered marvel rolling over and over and picking madly at something they could not see.

It was a Herald reporter who discovered the secret. When he dashed behind the stage to discover the reason why the bird had refused to answer the question put by Lord Marmaduke Errington, he found Parkinson cutting a piece of thread from a dead crow's leg.

"You can tell the world now," muttered Parkinson. "The crow is dead and I'm not going to the trouble to train another."

And so it happened that the Herald of the next morning contained this paragraph:

A piece of thread tied round the bird's leg and held by a man in the wings, who could see the blackboard and hear each question, was the simple solution of the mystery. The crow had been trained to bob its head each time the thread was pulled. That His Excellency's question remained unanswered was due to the fact that the thread had become tangled round the bird's toes and it refused to respond to the usual signal.

But Luck did not forsake Parkinson. He found that the colt that he had been forced to part with when he lost his farm was entered in the Melbourne Cup, the richest purse in the world, and he determined to back him heavily. Glenloth started at fifty to one, carrying two thousand pounds of the fortune made by the crow, and the year 1892, when that brilliant outsider ran away from his field, will never be forgotten at Flemington. Parkinson built The Palace out of his winnings, sent his daughter to Europe to be educated, and settled down to a life of ease. But he honored the dead crow. And that is why the bird that had the distinction of being questioned by the representative of royalty sits in its gorgeous case and with its diamond eyes surveys the thirsty tourists that come from all parts of the globe. It is the only protected crow in Australia—the only crow that ever brought money instead of ruin to a woolgrower.

1. Copyright, 1909, by The Shortstory Publishing Company. Copyright secured In Great Britain. All rights reserved.