until I had become quite familiar with the idea of owning it. It was all in stocks when I found it. I converted it into real-estate securities, and as fast as my interest came in, deposited it in the bank. Meanwhile, I supported myself well upon the little shop; bought books, and laid something by.

'I was busy one morning at my stuffing-table in the back-room, when the bell over the street-door rang: and running into the front-shop, I found a new customer. He was a private bird-fancier, he told me, and had brought a specimen, which he wished mounted for his cabinet. As he spoke, he slid back the cover from a box which he carried under his arm; and as I looked in, expecting to see a dead bird, a live one hopped out and sat upon my finger.

''I declare that is very curious!' said the gentleman; 'the creature never did such a thing before! I have had it eight months without being able to domesticate it in the slightest. It will not even eat or drink when any body is in the room; yet there it is sitting on your hand.'

'I had never seen such a bird before. It resembled the northern meadowlark in size and shape; in hue, its wings were like the quail's, its breast ashcolor, its tail mottled above, like the wings, and of a delicate canary yellow beneath. But the greatest beauty it possessed was a bright crimson crescent, covering the whole back of the head. What is this bird?' said I.

"It is a Flicker,' answered the gentleman. 'It was sent me by a friend living in Florida.'

"Why don't you keep it alive?'

66

For the reason I've told you. It's perfectly impossible to tame it. My children and I have tried every means we can think of without success. If we confine it in a cage, it mopes all day and eats nothing; if we let it fly about the room, it sculks under the furniture as soon as we enter; if we take it in our hands, it screams and fights. There is a specimen of the execution it can do in an emergency with that sharp, long bill!'

'And my customer showed me his finger, out of which a strip of flesh an inch long had been gouged as neatly as it could have been done with a razor.

''It is nothing but botheration, that confounded bird!' he continued. 'It does nothing but make muss and litter about the house from morning till night; and for all our troubles, it never repays us with a single chirp. Indeed, I do n't believe it has any voice.'

'Just then the Flicker, still sitting on my finger, turned up its big, brown eye to my face and uttered a soft, sweet gurgle, like a musical-glass.

"Good heavens !' exclaimed the gentleman; 'it never did that before!' "Suppose you let me take it for a month or so,' said I; 'it seems to be fond of me, and perhaps I can tame it. I never felt so little like killing any bird in my life. We may make something of its social qualities yet.' "Very well,' answered the new customer. 'Keep it for a month. I'll drop in now and then to see how its education is getting on.'

"You may hold me responsible for it, Sir,' I replied; and the gentleman ieft my shop.

'All day the Flicker staid by me as I worked. Now it perched upon my shoulder, now on my head. At noon, when I opened my basket, it took lunch

.

with me. When I whistled or sang, it listened until it caught the strain, and then put in some odd kind of an accompaniment. The compass and power of its voice was nothing remarkable, but the tone was as sweet as a wood-robin's. I could not be enough astonished with the curious little creature.

'Still, every kind of animal takes to me naturally. I accounted for the previous wildness of the Flicker on the ground of mistaken management in the gentleman who owned it, and as a matter of professional pride, determined to make something of the bird, were it only to show, like your Sam Patch, Tryon, that some things can be done as well as others. When I went home in the evening I took the Flicker with me, and made it a nest in an old cigar-box on my mantel-piece.

'The next morning, when I awoke, the bird was perched above me on the scroll of the head-board! Again I carried it down-town with me; again I brought it up in the evening. After that it was my companion every where. You will hardly imagine how it could become better friends with me than it did immediately upon our introduction. Yet our acquaintance grew day by day, and with our acquaintance the little being's intelligence. It had not been with me a fortnight before it knew its name. You may think it curious, perhaps unfeeling, but you know it was my only friend in the world, and in memory of the one who had lately held that place, I called it 'Brenta.'

"Brenta!' I would say as I sat before my grate in the evening, and wherever the little creature might be, it would come flying to me with a joyful chirp, light on my finger, dance on the hearth-rug, eat out of my hand, or go through the pantomime of various emotions I had taught it. If I said, 'Be angry, Brenta,' it would scream, flap its wings, and fight the legs of the chair. 'Be sorry, Brenta,' and it would droop its little head, cower against my breast, and utter notes as plaintive as a tired child's.

'By the time the month was up, it could do almost any thing but talk. Its owner, who, to his great delight, had paid it several visits during the progress of its education, now came to take it home.

"I have become very much attached to the little thing,' said I; 'won't you let me buy it of you?'

"You should have asked me that when I first brought it,' was his answer. 'You have made it too valuable for me to part with now. To show you how much I think it is worth, here is a ten-dollar piece for your services.'

'I took the money, feeling very much as if I were receiving the price of treason. 'If you ever change your mind,' said I, 'remember that I am always ready with a generous bid.'

'When we came to look for the Flicker, it was nowhere to be found. I could not believe it possible that it had heard and understood our conversation, but other hypothesis to account for its disappearance was not at hand. After hunting every nook and corner of the shop, I forced myself into the traitorous expedient of luring it by my own voice. 'Brenta!' I called, and the poor creature instantly hopped out of my coat-pocket, climbed up to my shoulder, and nestled against my cheek.

'I could willingly have knocked him down! It was not until I had undertaken the business with my own hands that we could get the Flicker into the cage which the gentleman had brought with him. Even then, the poor thing continued clinging to my finger with claws which had to be loosened by force, and went out of my shop-door screaming piteously and beating itself against the bars of the cage.

'I had no heart for any thing the rest of the day. At night my room seemed lonelier than a dungeon. The very next morning, the owner of the bird came back with it in a terrible passion.

"You have been teaching the thing tricks!' was his first exclamation.

To be sure, said I mildly. 'Was n't that what you wished me to do?' "Wished you to do?' To mope, and wail, and lie on the carpet like a dead chicken? Never to sing a note or eat a morsel ? To peck at the hands that brought food, and — and

''I am sure I cannot help it, Sir, if the bird has become attached to me, and mourns when away.'

"'You've taught the creature to do it! Look at this finger, will you! another piece taken clean out of it! Piece, I say!— steak, I mean! The bird's a regular butcher! Here, kill the creature directly, and have it stuffed for my cabinet by this day week.'

'And as he set down the cage on the counter, the Flicker, with a joyful cry, jumped to the wicker-door, and tried to pick a way out to me by its beak.

''There! you see what you've done! Why do n't the wretch act so to me?'

"I really can't say, Sir. Perhaps because I've had a great deal to do with birds, and naturally know how to manage them.'

"Well, I don't care. Stuff the thing, and I shall be able to manage it then myself.'

"May I make you a repetition of my offer? your collection, there is a very fine one I'll give only last Saturday. Here's a young pelican would you like a flamingo ?'

If you have n't a toucan in you for the Flicker, stuffed a still rarer bird. Or how

"Got 'em all,' replied the gentleman curtly. And if I had n't, I count the Flicker. Kill the thing, I say, and stuff it.'

'Just then the bird cast on me a glance as imploring as ever looked out of human eye. For a thousand dollars I could not have done the wrong.

''Really, Sir,' said I, 'I prefer not to take the job. I am very much attached to your bird. I cannot bear to kill it.'

""'Pon my soul!' he exclaimed, 'if that is n't pretty for a taxidermist! I should suppose, to hear you talk, that you would faint at the sight of a dead sparrow! Well, you can get your courage up to stuff the bird, I suppose? As for the killing, I'll do that myself.'

'As the man said this, he thrust his hand into the cage, and caught the Flicker by the wing. With a sharp cry, his victim struck him again on the finger, enraging him more than ever. He opened his pen-knife, pulled the bird

out, drew the blade across its throat, and out of the cruel slash there poured, mingling with the blood, a bitter cry, like a woman's. I heard it, and every drop of my own blood returned to my heart. He let the bird drop upon the counter it gave one hop, tumbled over in my hand, and its eye-lids slid shut.

''This day week, remember,' said the man, and went out of the shop, wiping his knife.

'I took up the bird, laid it in my neck, and, I am not ashamed to say, cried over it.

'There are a good many things which may happen between now and this day week. I am not one of those people who regard every misfortune that occurs to an enemy the judgment of HEAVEN in their behalf. But I must say, that the event which occurred before that man's week was out, always seemed to me a direct blow from Nemesis. He was a very passionate fellow; subject to temporary fits of insanity. One of them came on in the morning while he was shaving, and he cut his own throat as he had the Flicker's.

'When his estate was settled, nobody thought of the bird. I inclosed the ten dollars he had given me for its education in an anonymous note to his executors, simply stating that my conscience demanded it; and having thus quieted that organ, kept the Flicker for myself. With a daguerreotype of Miss Brentnall's, found among a parcel of papers labelled, To be burned up,' and upon which alone, of all the parcel, I could not persuade myself to execute her will, I put the stuffed bird by. When I was too lonely to dare to be utterly alone, I went to the trunk, where they were preserved and looked at them.

III. THE MARMOSET'S CHAPTER.

AFTER the loss of my second only friend, a painful change came over me. I had risen from the shock of Miss Brentnall's death with an elasticity which surprised even myself. Partly for the reason that my constitution was better by several less months of anxiety, grief, and application to business. Partly because I felt assured that, as she said, we should some time or other meet again.

'When the Flicker died, I felt that this only thing hitherto left to love me, could never reäppear. The kind heart of the woman would beat again; the kind heart of the bird no more forever. And strangely enough, the whole sorrow that I had passed through for Miss Brentnall's loss revived, and I went about my day's work bearing the weight of a two-fold melancholy.

'The first thing that the bird-fancying public knew—indeed almost the first thing I knew myself, so abstracted, so moody was I—a paragraph appeared in the morning papers, to the effect that the celebrated Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor, Orloff Ruricson, was about to close his business, and make a voyage to Europe, Asia and Africa, from which parts he hoped to return in two or three years, with a large and interesting collection of rare animals, to establish a Natural History Museum.

'I had caused the appearance of this notice myself; but when I read it, felt quite as surprised by it as any body. In nerve and mind I was so worn out,

that although thoroughly resolved to make the move, the consolidation of the purpose into such a fixed form shocked me.

'When the novelty of the idea passed off, I disposed of all my stock to various amateurs who knew me and had every disposition to help me by paying large prices. I put the thirty thousand dollars I was now worth into such a shape that I could get its increase in regular remittances; packed the bird, the daguerreotype, and a small wardrobe, and took passage by barque for Genoa.

'At sun-rise one Monday morning, the barque's yawl took me out to her anchorage. As I went up the ladder at the side, I heard an opera-air playing on board, and when I reached the deck, the first thing that met my eyes was an Italian grinder, with his organ and monkey.

''Is that man going the voyage with us?' I asked the captain.

"Yes, Sir,' he replied; 'but he shan't play without permission after we get to sea. He's a Genoese, who has made enough in this country to keep a fruitstall in his own, and so he's going home.'

'Home! He had a home, and was going to it! I would have handed him my bank-book taken his monkey and organ-to be able to say that.

'As the tug hitched fast to us and we began walking down toward the Narrows, I crossed to the other side of the ship, that I might take a look at the fortunate man.

'Certainly, I said to myself, Fortune is blind. He had a home; but he was one of the most ill-favored rascals I ever laid my eyes on. No body would have taken him for a Genoese—the New-Englander of Italy—rather for a Romanesque cut-throat, or a brigand of the mountain, who had found his stiletto or his carbine good for only the slowest kind of shilling and taken to the nimble six-pence of the hand-organ, on the principle that honesty was the best policy. You have seen a thousand pen-and-pencil pictures of the fellow, and need no description of him from me.

'As I stood beside him at the bulwarks, his monkey leapt upon me.

''Pardon, good gentleman,' said the Italian with an abject smirk, and gave a jerk to the chain that brought back the little animal flying.

"Never mind that,' said I; 'let him come to me. I am fond of monkeys: I would like to look at him.'

"As it pleases, "then,' replied the Italian, with another smirk, and loosed the chain again. Go, Beppo!'

เ

'Beppo needed no command, but jumped instantly upon my arm and laid his cheek upon my bosom. As I patted his head, I examined him curiously, and found him the most beautiful little monkey in the world. A Marmoset, with a great brown, tender eye like a gazelle's; a face which varied its expression constantly without ever degenerating into the brutal leer of the common ape; a winning, confiding mien of head and hand that was human, childlike; and a soft coronal of golden fur around his little skull, that added still more to his baby-like look, giving him the appearance of some mother's favorite, dressed for a walk in a bonnet of down. I don't know how I could have been guilty of the folly of becoming attached to the little fellow, after all the lessons of warning my life had taught me. But I did take a great fancy to