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Updated: May 18, 2025
Shaded with beautiful trees—maples beginning to flame, horse-chestnuts a little browned, it was lined with wooden toy houses, set back of fenced-in yards and veiled by climbing vines. Pigeons were flying about, alighting now and then to peck at the ground or to preen their green and purple necks. Boys were spinning tops. Girls were jumping rope.
"Phyllis, my dear," a skipper would begin, and get about that far when she her right hand reaching for the bottle of Scotch and her left for the soda would be saying: "The same, captain?" thereby choking off a great rush of words, and forwarding the business for which she drew one pound ten a week. Before a creature of that kind these cargo captains were bound to preen themselves.
The heart was decayed and gone, but the outer shell was hard and resonant. The bird would keep his position there for an hour at a time. Between his drummings he would preen his plumage and listen as if for the response of the female, or for the drum of some rival. How swift his head would go when he was delivering his blows upon the limb! His beak wore the surface perceptibly.
Under the mangroves the pink ajajas preen and wade; and the white ibis walks the woods like a little absent-minded ghost buried in unearthly reverie.
A bluejay, sweeping gracefully out over the tree-tops, came to rest upon a lofty bough in the grove across the road. They sat for a long time without speaking, these two women, watching him preen and prink, a bit of lively blue against the newborn green. Then he flew away. He "moved on," a passing symbol.
She made a pretence of alighting upon the balcony railing, sheered off, coquetted among the treetops, came back again, retreated so far that she was merely a white speck against the blue vault, and then, true to her sex, having proved her liberty only to tire of it, with a flight so swift that the eye could scarcely follow her, she came back again and rested upon the farther end of the balcony, where she immediately began to preen herself and to affect an air of nonchalance and virtue.
Buntings desert their territories temporarily and collect in flocks on the newly sown fields of grain. Some of the males are single, others are paired, and accompanied, it may be, by their mates; they wander over the ground in search of food, uttering their call-notes from time to time, or, settling upon the hedges and trees surrounding the field, rest there and preen their feathers.
The hoopoe is again with us; in fact I do not think he really left the ship, but simply sought a secluded perch, secure from prying observation. He reappeared upon the port stay, and proceeded to preen himself and observe the ship's course. He is evidently bound for Aden, casting glances of quiet unconcern on Perim and the coast of Araby the blest.
It were good enough for the dove to sit on the pigeon-house, and preen her feathers, and coo, and take decorous little flights between the dovecote and the ground whereon her corn lieth. She cares for no more. The bare rock would frighten her, and the sun would dazzle her eyes. So man bindeth the eagle by a bond long enough for the dove, and quoth he, `Be patient! I am not patient.
The east is red beyond the river, and the round, red sun, insignia of this land, soars up like a cry of triumph. On the glittering road of the Sumida, loaded barges, covered for the night with huge squares of fringed straw mats, begin to nod and preen themselves like a covey of gigantic river birds.
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