CHAPTER V
"DON'T, JOHNNY"
Farewell happy fields, where Joy forever dwells.
--_Milton._
A very pleasant, sociable fellow was this redbird, and often when on
hot afternoons we were hiding in the treetops from the rays of the sun
he told us stories and anecdotes about the people he had seen while he
lived in the city.
He and his brother had been caught in a trap in the woods set by a
farmer's boy. One cold spring morning when the boy came to look at his
trap he was overjoyed to find he had snared two redbirds, and forthwith
carried them to the village nearby and sold them to the grocer for five
cents apiece, which sum he said he was going to invest in a rubber ball.
As he put the dime into his coat pocket he told the man that one of the
birds was named Admiral Dewey and the other Napoleon Bonaparte. The
groceryman agreed that these names were good enough names for anybody,
but he thought he'd change Bonaparte's name to Teddy Roosevelt, as
being easier to pronounce, and the two birds were accordingly given
these titles then and there. Not having any cage at hand to put them
in, the man thought that for a few days the new-comers could share the
quarters of an old sparrow he had in the rear end of the store until an
extra cage could be procured.
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