A lady brought a mocking-bird from New Orleans to her home in the North.
At first all the birds in the neighborhood looked upon it with contempt.
The chill northern air made the poor bird homesick, and for a few days he
declined to sing for anybody.
"Well, I do declare," screamed out Miss Guinea-fowl, "to see the care our
mistress takes of that homely bird. It don't seem to be able to sing a
note. I can make more music than that myself. Indeed, my voice is quite
operatic. Pot-rack! pot-rack! pot-rack!" and the empty-headed Miss
Guinea-fowl nearly cracked her own throat, and the ears of everybody
else, with her screams. And the great vain peacock spread his sparkling
tail-feathers in the sun, and looked with annihilating scorn on the dull
plumage of the poor mocking-bird. "Daddy Longlegs," the Shanghai rooster,
crowed louder than ever, with one eye on the poor jaded bird, and said:
"What a contemptible little thing you are, to be sure!" Gander White,
Esq., the portly barn-yard alderman, hissed at him, and even Duck
Waddler, the tadpole catcher, called him a quack.
But wise old Dr. Parrot, in the next cage, said: "Wait and see. There's
more under a brown coat than some people think."
There came a day at last when the sun shone out warm.
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