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Page 17
Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of
this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for
the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits
and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and
sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from
injury; the very school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the
merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the
difference. As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and
the spring fades into summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He
gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and
professional suit of black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and
enters into the gross enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a
bon-vivant, a mere gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and
gormandizing on the seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung,
and chaunted so musically. He begins to think there is nothing like "the
joys of the table," if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase
to his indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day
fare, and sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign
luxuries. He is to be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware,
banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon
acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop!
pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side;
he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is
the _reed-bird_, the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian
epicure.
Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still
farther south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging
himself in the rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to
bursting; he can hardly fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career,
we hear of him spitted by dozens, and served up on the table of the
gourmand, the most vaunted of southern dainties, the _rice-bird_ of the
Carolinas.
Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual
and persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined
and intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of
popularity, during the early part of his career; but to eschew all
tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this
mistaken little bird to an untimely end.
Which is all at present, from the well-wisher of little boys and little
birds,
GEOFFREY CRAYON.
* * * * *
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA.
BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.
During a summer's residence in the old Moorish palace of the Alhambra,
of which I have already given numerous anecdotes to the public, I used
to pass much of my time in the beautiful hall of the Abencerrages,
beside the fountain celebrated in the tragic story of that devoted
race. Here it was, that thirty-six cavaliers of that heroic line were
treacherously sacrificed, to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of
a tyrant. The fountain which now throws up its sparkling jet, and sheds
a dewy freshness around, ran red with the noblest blood of Granada,
and a deep stain on the marble pavement is still pointed out, by the
cicerones of the pile, as a sanguinary record of the massacre. I have
regarded it with the same determined faith with which I have regarded
the traditional stains of Rizzio's blood on the floor of the chamber of
the unfortunate Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to
enlighten my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like
breaking up the shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of
half the reward of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical
illusions, and what a mere fag you make of it!
For my part, I gave myself up, during my sojourn in the Alhambra, to all
the romantic and fabulous traditions connected with the pile. I lived in
the midst of an Arabian tale, and shut my eyes, as much as possible, to
every thing that called me back to every-day life; and if there is any
country in Europe where one can do so, it is in poor, wild, legendary,
proud-spirited, romantic Spain; where the old magnificent barbaric
spirit still contends against the utilitarianism of modern civilization.
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