which, to my surprise, floated, Jim flew down stream, cawing loudly. With nice calculation, as it afterward proved, he sat down on the bank at exactly the right place and waited. In a few minutes, the bread came ashore, soft and palatable. Jim ate it with great relish, then, seeing me peering at him through the shrubbery, he distinctly laughed, and flew back home again. When I got there, he had soaked the rest of the bread in a pan of milk which I had left in an exposed position, and was finishing up with molasses.

He did a great many things which at first puzzled me, but which I afterward understood. I had taken down his perch, which was merely a branch nailed across one corner of the cabin, thinking to get a fresh one the next time I went out. Days passed, and I forgot it, but Jim called my attention to it in rather a curious way.

I had been fishing one afternoon, returning about five o’clock with a fine string of Fish which I intended to cook for supper. Jim lit on one of them and refused to budge. I picked him up and he pecked my hand so severely that I was glad to put him down. He let me take the other Fish without protest, but camped on this one until bedtime, cawing loudly at intervals of three minutes or less. When at last he flew in to take his accustomed place on my pillow, I picked up the Fish to see if I could solve the mystery, and, in an instant, my quick, active mind began to work. The Fish was a Perch—the only one I had caught—and Jim was doing his best, in his poor weak way, to remind me of my shameful neglect.

The brilliant Bird had his reward, and, that very night, before I slept, I fixed his new perch across his old corner of the cabin. Jim watched me, with something very like a smile upon his face, making sleepy caws of gratitude all the time I was at work. When I went to bed, he tickled my face playfully with his tail and caressed me with his beak, to show his appreciation.

We slept that night as we always did, with Jim’s feet high on my cheek. I did not mind it then, but long afterward, when I went back among the haunts of men, and discovered deep crow’s feet around my eyes, I wished that I had broken him of the habit by any method, no matter how desperate. It added years to my age and made it practically impossible for me to get a position in a telegraph office. Fortunately age does not affect literature. After a man is dead, he may continue in the business and often rank higher than his living competitors. Mr. Plato and Mr. Shakespeare are still formidable rivals of the industrious knights and ladies of the pen.

 Prev. P 53/112 next