Page:Under the Sun.djvu/34

12 poultry about her round the kitchen fire, and sat down to make them flannel jackets, — registering a solemn vow, as she did so, never to jump hastily at conclusions about either bird or beast, lest she might again fall into the error of misconstruing their conduct.

The mischief, however, was done; for the geese, who had got drunk with brandied cherries, and been plucked by mistake in consequence, had good reason for withholding from human beings for ever afterwards that pleasing trustfulness which characterizes the domestic fowl. They would never again approach their food without suspicion, nor look upon a gathering of the neighbors except as a dark conspiracy against their feathers. The dame herself, whom hitherto they had been wont to greet with tumultuous acclaim, and whose footsteps to and fro they had been accustomed to follow so closely, would become to them an object of distrust. Instead of tumbling over each other in their glad hurry to meet her in the morning, or crowding round her full of gossip and small goose-confidences when she came to pen them up for the night, they would eye her askance from a distance, approach her only strategically, and accept her gifts with reproachful hesitation. And how keenly the dame would feel such estrangement I leave my readers to judge for themselves.

This untoward inebriation of the geese points, however, another lesson; for I cannot but see in it one more of those deplorable instances of moral deterioration of the animal world which from time to time obtrude themselves, unwelcome, upon.the notice of lovers of nature.

In Belgium and other places men try to make dogs believe they are donkeys or ponies by harnessing them