Page:Oscar Ameringer - Socialism; What It Is and How To Get It (1911).djvu/6

 quails out of every five, but the fifth one he ate himself.

This lone bird filled but a small part of his inners and he was hungry most of the time, and then Bateye would slap him on the back and say? "I'd give a million quails to have your appetite," but he never did.

Sometimes, when he was weary, wet and worried, Eagle-eye would bemoan his lot and curse fate for having been born. At such times Holyman, the soothsayer, who ate at the table of Bateye, would come to him with incantations and promises of mansions on the other side of the silver lining. He also spake much of golden harps.

Eagle-eye thought these good things to eat and was made happy again.

Thus he worked for many years, until his eyes became too dull and his legs too wobbly to shoot birds. But his appetite was as good as ever, when Bateye gave the gun to a younger hunter with clear eyes and steady legs. Thereupon Eagle-eye, who had eaten less every year as he grew older, quit eating altogether and gave up his ghost.

Holyman preached the funeral sermon and spake much of Providence, dust and being called home to the mansion above the clouds; whereupon a crazy man laughed and said: "If Eagleeye had a gun of his own, he could have kept all the birds he shot and he would now be still among the living, sporting a red nose and a shining bald spot and sitting in the front row at the Gayety." But all the people called this man loony and scoffed him, ana laughed him to scorn and said he was a dreamer, for even a fool knoweth that guns are made for some to own and for others to use.