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I was almost always alone on this top story alone with the clouds and the sparrows! But at Paris nothing lasts; the current of life carries us along, like the seaweed torn from the rock; the houses are vessels which take mere passengers. How many different faces have I already seen pass along the landing-place belonging to our attics! How many companions of a few days have disappeared forever!
'Tain't the quarrellin' as I mind so much, women an' sparrows, they say, must cherrup an' quarrel, but they needn't allus keep a-nag-naggin' about the same thing. 'What's their subject, Panuel? I asked. 'Subjick? Why you, in course. That's what the subjick is. When women quarrels you may allus be sure there's a chap somewheres about.
Seclusion is not at all to his taste, and if there are only a few sparrows in the neighborhood those few will most certainly be found living near each other. One of the early adaptations of the sparrow to his city surroundings was the ability to find for himself a considerable proportion of his food in the undigested seed that could be picked up from the droppings of the horses.
Town residents are apt to despise the sparrow, seeing him always black; but in the country the sparrows are as clean as a pink; and in themselves they are the most animated, clever little creatures. They are easily tamed. The Parisians are fond of taming them.
The sparrows fluttered and chirped, quite helpless. A white chicken looked round the corner of the house. He was almost full-grown. His comb shone red as wine. He peered and spied, crowed and called. The hens came, a row of white hens at full speed, bodies rocking, wings fluttering, yellow legs like drumsticks. The hens hopped among the stacked peas. Battles began. Envy broke out.
In front of them lay the lawns of vivid green, with the sunlit raindrops gleaming upon the grass. The air was full of the chirping of the sparrows. Across their vision, from the end of Whitehall to Victoria Street, the black ribbon of traffic whirled and circled, one of the great driving-belts of the huge city.
I know it fell to me to supply this hawk with food: English sparrows, red squirrels, and small game, a ceaseless undertaking and one which took most of my time, so much so that Mother took me to task for it time and again. When later Father "wrote up" the hawk and got something for the article I felt that I should be paid for what I had been compelled to endure in the cause!
When we hear the call of the flicker we may know that spring is here to stay. They are as infallible as the yellow-breasted larks in the meadows. "Chip-chip-chip-chip," yes, of course that's the chipping sparrow; another of the engaging creatures which almost has been driven from the habitations of his human friends by the miserable English sparrows.
He is too busy numbering hairs and matching sparrows; He is listening for blasphemy; He is looking for persons who laugh at priests; He is examining baptismal registers; He is watching professors in colleges who begin to doubt the geology of Moses or the astronomy of Joshua. All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable serenity.
There, I see his marines and small arm men handling their firelocks, as thick as sparrows under the lee of a hedge in a snow storm, and the people are training the bull dogs fore and aft. Why, this is downright, stark staring lunacy, Obed; we shall be smashed like an eggshell, and all hands of us whipped off to Davy, from your cursed foolhardiness."
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