Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/285

1868.] her anger and were afraid of her terrible beak. She never struck a friend but once, and then because the hand that caressed her was gloved, and she never lost an opportunity to inflict a blow upon an enemy. To her favorite next to her mistress, a lady of great gentleness and equipoise of character, she would come to be petted with the greatest eagerness, bending her neck, softening her voice, offering her claw, and in many ways manifesting her affection. She knew every member of the family, calling four of them by name, and what, considering the difference she made in every other demonstration between friend and foe, is remarkable, two of the four were her special dislike.

In all Polly's wonderful vocabulary there were no words which she used more effectively or appropriately than those intended to excite a consciousness of wrong. Nothing irregular ever came within her notice, nothing disobedient by the children, or evasive by the servants, or rude by visitors, or undignified by the elders of the family, which was not followed by an instant expression of scorn. "For shame! For shame!" spoken in those low, grave tones, with the falling inflexion, that give to our Saxon idiom an intensity of rebuke beyond most modern tongues, fell upon the unwilling ears of wrong-doers, not without good. Where she caught the words, or why she never misapplied them, was alike mysterious. To the attempt to terrify her by menace, or to punish her by blows—to the worrying of dog or cat—to the boisterous crying of boys or girls—to hasty words of anger spoken in her hearing—she applied the solemn, dignified rebuke, "For shame! For shame!" In this respect she was, in fact, the mentor of the household, many a door having been shut, and many a scene of disturbance removed from hall to study or parlor, to escape from hearing her reiterated rebuke.

Like most domestic animals she was strongly under the law of habit. She insisted upon the cleansing of her cage, supply of her food, change of her water for drink or bathing, removal to the open air from the house, and her daily lumps of sugar, at certain fixed hours, any omission or postponement of which she knew both how to make known and to punish. The only exception to this which her twelve years' membership in our family afforded, was her escape one morning to a neighboring roof in London, and her unwillingness to be captured and brought back. We at one time furnished her with a companion of her own breed, an African parrot, younger and sprightlier than she, but she refused all acquaintance or any introduction that should lead to it, not according even the recognition which she gave to dog, cat, or canary bird. Age had made her celibate habits a second nature, and she bridled up with the dignity of an ancient spinster at any purpose of invading them.

Of Polly's faults it is best to say nothing, "nor draw her frailties from their dread abode." Even humanity is imperfect, and the god Pan, who was more than human, sometimes changed the music that caused all the wood nymphs to dance, into cries that drove every one mad. With all her winning blandishments, Polly had the power of making herself infinitely disagreeable. At the approach of cold weather her gaiety disappeared, her spirits sunk, and her sulks came on, lasting the whole winter. This change of disposition was accompanied by shrieks—the country folk called them squawks—uttered at intervals of every few seconds, and continued for hours. Nothing availed to stop them—food, the warmest place in the house, or threats—except the total exclusion of light from her cage, and this was accomplished by drawing over it a thick covering of drugget.