When, on the approach of spring, some of his room-mates grew belligerent, and there arose occasional jarring between them, my bird showed his dislike of contention and coarse ways by declining to come out of his cage at all. Although the door stood open all day, and he was kept busy driving away visitors, he insisted on remaining a hermit till the restless birds were liberated, when he instantly resumed his usual habits, and came out as before. His sensitiveness was exhibited in another way,--mortification if an accident befell him. For example, when, by loss of feathers in moulting, he was unable to fly well, and fell to the floor instead of reaching the perch he aimed at, he stood as if stunned, motionless where he happened to drop, as if life were no longer worth living. Once he fell in this way upon a table beside a newspaper. As he landed, his feet slid on the polished surface, and he slipped partly under the loose paper, so that only his head appeared above it. There he stood for five minutes looking at me, and bearing a droll resemblance to a bird's head on a newspaper. He was not more than four feet from me, and was obviously deeply chagrined, and in doubt whether he would better ever try to recover himself; and I positively did not dare to laugh, lest I hurt him more.
The first time the clarin fell to the floor, I ventured to offer him the end of a perch which I held. Not in the least startled, he looked at it, then at me, then accepted the civility by stepping upon it, and holding there while I lifted and carried him to the door of the cage. This soon came to be the regular thing, and all through the trying season of moulting he waited for me to bring a perch and restore him to the upper regions where he belonged. He would have been easily tamed. Even with no efforts toward it, he came on my desk freely, talked to me, with quivering wings, and readily ate from my finger. The only show of excitement, as he made these successive advancements, was the rising of some part of his plumage. At one time he lifted the feathers around the base of his head, so that he appeared to have on a cap a little too big, with a fringe on the edge; and on his first alighting on the arm of the chair where I sat, the feathers over his ears stood out like ear-muffs.