He opened one written by a Bittern, signed and crossed by many supporters. It ran as follows:—
“The undersigned declare that they have had enough of civil discords and of preliminary proceedings, and suggest that the white Blackbird should now be called upon to relate his history.”
“I like this petition,” said the Fox, “as it enables us to dispense with opening the others. The others may make a bonfire.”
No sooner said than done. They were burned.
How glorious and yet how painful it is to be an exceptional Blackbird! I am not a fabulous bird. M. de Buffon has described me. But, alas! I am of an exceedingly rare type, very difficult to find, and one that ought, I think, never to have existed.
My parents were worthy birds, who lived in an old out-of-the-way kitchen-garden. Ours was a most exemplary home. While my mother laid regularly three times a year, my father, though old and petulant, still grubbed round the tree in which she sat, bringing her the daintiest insect fare. When night closed round the scene, he never missed singing his well-known song, to the delight of the neighbourhood. No domestic grief, quarrel, or cloud of any sort had marred this happy union.
Hardly had I left my shell, when my father, for the first time in his life, thoroughly lost his temper. Although I was of a doubtful grey, he neither recognised in me the colour nor the shape of his numerous posterity.
“This is a most doubtful child,” he used to say, as he cast a side { 240} glance at me, “neither white nor black, as dirty-looking as he seems ill-begotten.”
“Ah me!” sighed my mother, who was always coiled up in a ball on her nest. “You yourself, dear, were you not a charming good-for-nothing in your youth? Our little pet will grow up to be the best of our brood.”
While taking my part, my mother felt inward qualms as she saw my callow down grow to feathers; but, like all mothers, her heart warmed to the child least favoured by nature, and she instinctively sought to shield me from the cruel world.
When I was moulting, for the first time my father became quite pensive, and considered me attentively. While my down fell off he even treated me with some degree of favour, but as soon as my poor cold wings received their covering, as each white feather appeared, he became so furious that I dreaded his plucking me alive. Having no mirror, I remained ignorant of the cause of his wrath, and was at a loss to account for the studied unkindness of the best of parents. One day, filled with joy by a beam of sunlight and the warmth of my new coat, I left the nest, and alighting in the garden, burst into song. Instantly my father darted down from his perch with the velocity of a rocket.