11.) THE HISTORY OF A ROOK. 77

 

garden, with its high brick wall. around it ;—all these
things come back to my memory, and seem to flit
before my aged eyes'as I muse over the early and
happy days of my youth. But stay: I have said
enough of a place which you, dear reader, cannot
identify, and to think of which, now that I am so far
from it, makes my beak feel dry and my eyes watery.
So I ruffle up my old feathers, give my tail a shake,
and taking in my claw the pen which my kind old
neighbour Owl has manufactured for me out of the
feather of a wood-pigeon’s wing, set myself to tell you
that which I have to relate.

This beak, which many years have hardened, was
soft and tender when its first infant effort chipped the
egg which contained my puny form. I cannot actu-
ally remember the event, but from what I have seen
in after years, I imagine that I must have presented a
somewhat ridiculous appearance when I first emerged
from the maternal shell. My first distinct recollection
is of the ousting from the nest of two little crea-
tures, brothers and sisters I suppose, I know not which,
on whom my mother had unfortunately trodden, and
the sending after them of an egg at which we little
ones had stared for some hours as at an object of im-
mense interest, but which the wiser instincts of my
mother discovered to be rotten.

There were three of us left, and certainly we had
nothing to complain of in our treatment. Never had
young rooks a more devoted mother, or a father who
better understood the duty of bringing home slugs
and other tender edibles to his as yet helpless off-