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Next the gentle Redbreast claimed his vest, and the Bluebird her azure feathers, and the Ostrich her train which she had sorely missed. Each of the birds in turn came up and with much chattering and scolding twitched away the property of which he or she had been robbed, until the Crow stood before them in his customary suit of solemn black, a bird ashamed and sore.
One day father came in the parlor where I was sitting moping, having just seen Tom Todd drive by in a new buggy with his bride, and said to me: "John, I am disappointed in you." "I know it," I answered him meekly. "You look well enough, and you have talent enough," he went on; "but you are too ridiculously bashful for an ostrich." "I know it," I again replied.
Maddalena, in her broad Tuscan hat with its old-fashioned black velvet for she would never give in to the modern innovations of flowers and ostrich feathers held her distaff in her hand, and as she twisted the spindle and drew out the thread evenly, she thought with satisfaction of the improved behaviour of the twins.
Timbo asserted that not only does man wage war against the ostrich, but that a white vulture is particularly fond of her eggs. As his beak is not sufficiently strong to break the shell, he seizes a large stone between his talons, and soaring with it high into the air, gets over the nest; he then lets it drop upon the eggs, seldom failing to break a sufficient number to afford himself a repast.
The power of the ostrich, too, is quite equal to his strength of will. He stands from seven to nine feet in height, and is very heavy. His tremendous legs are his only weapons, and his kick is almost, if not quite, equal to that of a horse.
Off again, over the same country, but looking more inhabited; passed several ostrich farms, with groups of the big, graceful birds walking delicately about; also some herds of cattle, and a distant farm or two, white against the blue hill-shadows. Soon came the first visible signs of war graves, and long lines of trenches here and there.
All that day he journeyed on towards the ocean over a great plain. There was no trees and no rocks nor hills, only grass on the level earth, in some places so tall that the spikes, looking like great white ostrich plumes, waved high above his head.
But among the uneducated the partially educated nay, even the weakly educated the feeling exists which prompted the futile experiment of the well-known ostrich. They imagine that, by closing their own eyes to apprehended evil, they avert it. The expression of fear is supposed to accelerate the coming of its cause.
The tallest hen in the world has laid an egg for your instruction and amusement the ostrich has immortalized the town of Milledgeville by laying an egg within its sacred precincts, and my friend, Teddy Tucker, in discovering it, has accomplished an achievement beside which the discovery of the north or south pole is a cheap side show." The audience yelled its approval and appreciation.
About the same time died the Duchesse de Gesvres, separated from a husband who had been the scourge of his family, and had dissipated millions of her fortune. She was a sort of witch, tall and lean, who walked like an ostrich. She sometimes came to Court, with the odd look and famished expression to which her husband had brought her. Virtue, wit, and dignity distinguished her.
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