TWO YELLOW-BIRDS.

By Anonymous

CONTENTS

TWO YELLOW-BIRDS.

MARIA

TWO YELLOW-BIRDS.

When Lucy Tracy was a very little girl, her mother had a beautiful yellow bird. He was quite tame, and would come out of his cage, and sit upon Mrs. Tracy's plants, and then fly upon the breakfast table, and pick the crumbs from the white cloth, while Lucy and her lather and mother were eating their breakfast.

Little Lucy had no brother or sister to eat breakfast with her; so that she enjoyed very much having Black-pate, as she called him, from the black tuft on his head. She could chatter to him, as if he were no older than herself. And she would often give him lumps of sugar.

He liked very much to fly into a basin of water and flatter his wings, bob his head in and out, and spatter Lucy's face Then she would laugh and clap her would peck at, while she held them in her fingers, and he would do it again, as if to make her laugh the more.

She would stand by her mother, as she filled his glass cups, one with hemp-seed and the other with water, and brush all the old seeds from the bottom of his cage; for birds love a clean cage, as well as little girls love a clean house.

He was not a Canary bird; but one of the wild yellow birds, that fly about in the woods and fields. He did not seem to mourn his liberty, but appeared generally very happy in his wire house. His kind mistress took good care of him. She never trusted any one but herself to wash his cage or give him food. She knew poor birds often to suffer from hunger and thirst, by the neglect of those who are told to take care of them. She would often say to Lucy, "It is a hard thing, my little girl, to be shut up in a cage, as this poor bird is; therefore, we ought to do all we can to make him comfortable. It is very wicked to let little birds want seeds, or water, either to drink, or wash themselves in."

"But mother, if he don't like his cage, what makes him sing so sweetly, when he flies into it, after he has washed himself in the little basin you keep for him? That don't look as if he were unhappy."

"I did not say that he was unhappy; but he has a feeling of confinement, when he flies against the wires of his cage, as if he wished to get out; just as you have when you find yourself shut up in a room, when you wish to get out. He sings