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We were told, by people who had met the Boer Generals on their recent visit to the colony, that these latter were not in the least cast down by the result of the war; that they simply meant to bide their time and win in the Council Chamber what they had lost on the battle-field; that the oft-reiterated sentence, "South Africa for the Dutch," was by no means an extinct volcano or a parrot-cry of the past.
When a drive has been badly foozled, the readiest and most usual explanation is that the eye has been taken off the ball, and the wise old men who have been watching shake their heads solemnly, and utter that parrot-cry of the links, "Keep your eye on the ball."
At noon the auctioneer mounted his perch, gathered the crowd round him, and soon had the sale in full swing, catching head-bobs, or wheedling and insisting with, when persuasion could do no more, his monotonous parrot-cry of: "Going... going ... gone!"
I am not bound to find either sceptics or spiritualists in plausible explanations. But when they insist on an alternative to their respective theories, I suggest Puck as at least equally credible with Satan, Shakespeare, or the parrot-cry of imposture.
'Yo are hard on her, Hannah! exclaimed Reuben, in his perplexity pricked, too, as usual in his conscience. The repetition of this parrot-cry, as it seemed to her, maddened his wife. 'She's a wanton's brat, she said violently; 'an she's got t' wanton's blood. Reuben was silent. He was afraid of his wife in these moods.
One of the great characteristics of New Testament teaching of morality, or rather let me say of Christ's teaching of morality, is that it shifts, if I may so put it, the centre of gravity from acts to being, that instead of repeating the parrot-cry, 'Do, do, do' or 'Do not, do not, do not, it says, 'Be, and the doing will take care of itself.
For already the political horizon was darkening, and the wrongs of the "Uitlanders," real and apparent as they were, became a parrot-cry, which waxed and waned, but never died away, till the ultimatum of President Kruger, in October, 1899, brought matters to a climax.
"Ah, Sir Gad-about!" he exclaimed in a harsh, squeaky voice as he perceived Sah-luma "Back again from your self-advertising in the city! Is there any poor soul left in Al-Kyris whose ears have not been deafened by the parrot-cry of the name of Sah-luma?
Many of them complained that they never could get a glimpse of her now, that she shut them out, that "not at home" had become a parrot-cry on the lips of her well-trained parlor-maid, that she cared for nobody now that she had a husband and a baby, that she was self-engrossed, etc., etc.
And as for success it doesn't depend on things of that sort. I've proved that too. But he Jack got hold of the same infernal parrot-cry. Oh, I'm sorry, sir," he glanced upwards for a second with working lips. "I can't dress this up in polite language. Jack said to my boy Robin what you had said to me. And he believed it and so made an end."
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