Dill

“ The young count attacked the magician, who turned into a bull. But the young count was not afraid: he rubbed the bear's hair; the bear came running up and tore the bull in pieces. But out of the bull flew a wild duck and tried to escape. Then the count thought of the eagle feathers, and immediately the eagle flew up, and he tore the duck to pieces. But a golden egg fell from the duck and it rolled into the pond. But that too was of no avail, for the count rubbed the fish scales, and after a while the fish threw the egg upon the bank. ”

“ For my little birdies, you know they have none;
When they get older they'll all want to play,
And I've room by my nest to tuck her away."
"Oh, no; Mother Robin, my dolly would cry,
If she lived in a nest that was up so high;
When the wind blew my dolly would fall,
Then down would come birdies, nest, and all.
"So I'll keep my dolly, for I think it is best,
And you keep your birds till they fly from the nest;
They will be happier, I know, to be free,
And my dolly's contented to stay here with me." ”

“ The gull is not over particular in his mouthfuls, and I have seen one take a herring as long as his own body, head first, swallowing the fish as far as circumstances would permit, then sitting placidly on the water with several inches of shiny tail protruding, waiting, like continuous performance table d’hôte diners, for the first course to be digested so that there should be room to swallow the last one. ”

“ Right towards us, as if on some express and special errand, came the gull, one of the largest and most beautiful of sea-birds, until he was within less than fifty yards of us, when by a change of poise, and a scarcely perceptible movement of wing, he slowly swept round our heads, screaming the while as only a black-backed gull can scream—a wild and eerie note that may be heard for a league. ”

“ Indeed, whether swimming calmly on the surface of the sea, or skimming over the crests of the waves borne on their long and powerful pinions, and every now and then plunging into the water to seize a fish or some floating morsel of food, gulls in general are some of the most elegant and graceful of all birds, their delicate colouring, in which grey and white, relieved to a greater or less extent by black or chocolate, generally predominate, thus giving a refinement to their whole appearance which is wanting in many birds of brilliant plumage. ”

“ At half-past one the male gull, which has been near all the while, walks slowly and importantly to the nest, which he passes and then, turning back towards it, disgorges on to the rock a small fish, which he takes up in just the tip of his bill and pushes towards both the chick on the rock and the mother on the nest, all slowly and with a dry sort of manner, as though the bird were a cynic. ”

“ Yet one gig alone this morning has brought in fourteen thousand herrings. No wonder that there is an atmosphere of excitement in the harbour. No wonder that the carts almost run over you as they make journey after journey between boat and barrel. No wonder that three different sorts of sea-gulls—the herring gull, the lesser black-headed gull, and the black-backed gull—have gathered about us in screaming multitudes and fill the air like a snowstorm. Every child in the town seems to be making for home with its finger in a fish's mouth, or in two fishes' mouths, or in three fishes' mouths. ”

“ Three times three and nine times nine:
These are only her usual clothes:
Look, there’s a wardrobe! gracious knows
It’s pretty enough, as far as it goes!
So you see the way we dress the Doll:
You might make her a shepherdess, the Doll,
If you gave her a crook with a pastoral hook,
With sheep, and a shed, and a shallow brook,
And all that, out of the poetry-book.
Chorus: Bless the Doll, you may press the Doll,
But do not crumple and mess the Doll!
This is the way we dress the Doll;
If you had not seen, could you guess the Doll? ”

“ It swims lightly enough even on a rough sea, riding like a cork on the wave-crests, and sleeps upon the water, when roaming far from land. Flocks of this Gull may often be seen standing upon the mud-flats or level sandy reaches, preening their plumage, and waiting, it may be, for a turn of the tide that may bring some particular food of which they are in quest. ”

“ What a gull will eat, and want no liver pill, would make any other respectable bird on the wing bilious; but the gull is always bright and cheerful, and ready for another gorge, and its natural store of gastric juice would set up a chemical factory. When fish is scarce the gull goes inland and feeds upon the fields, or joins the noble army of poachers over gentlemen's preserves.
On the wing the gull is the spirit of poetry, and in storm the spirit of the tempest ”

“ All the comings and goings took place in silence, over the top of the tree, and I have watched the nest an hour at a time without being able to see a sign of its occupancy, except the one thing a sitting bird cannot hide, the tail. And, by the way, how providential—from the bird student's point of view—that birds have tails! They can, it is true, be narrowed to the width of one feather and laid against a convenient twig, but they cannot be wholly suppressed, nor drawn down out of sight into the nest with the rest of the body. ”

“ At the suggestion of a doll, the world seemed suddenly and solely peopled with these little creatures, and winking, crying, walking and talking dolls crowded about the bewildered customers,—dolls with flaxen hair, and dolls with no hair at all; dolls of imposing proportions when viewed in front, but of no thickness to speak of, when held sideways; dolls as rigid as mummies, and dolls who exhibited an alarming tendency to double their arms and legs up backward. ”

“ Platonist philosophy strove to give rational expression to this movement, to reconcile cultivated moral sense with the worships of the past, to find a bond between the vagrant religious fancies of the crowd and the remote esoteric faith of the philosophic few. On the higher minds, from whatever quarter, a spiritual vision had opened, which was strange to the ancient world, the vision of One who is no longer a mere Force, but an infinite Father, Creator, Providence and Guardian, from whom we come, to whom we go at death. ”

“ Then I saw a great light. Duck language is not expressed with the tongue, but with the tail. There is a sameness about the sounds they utter that would make it impossible for them to carry on a connected conversation. With their tails it is different. They seem able to give an infinite variety to the way in which they wiggle them. They can express joy, satisfaction, contempt, surprise, or any other emotion, by the simple wiggling of their tails. Did you ever see a duck dive into the water in such a way as to leave only its tail exposed? ”

“ Even when they smelt the hot food, the gulls did not alter their rhythmical pace and movement, but performed their journey in regular order, descending with each circle nearer and yet a little nearer to the ground. At last the first gull ventured a foot upon the territory of man, and immediately they all dropped on one another, wings falling on wings, and cries filling the air as the beautiful hungry creatures forgot all their poetry in their ravening and scrambling for the food. ”

“ Whether they pick their food from the rocks or in a field of cows, the alert head and jerking tail are never still, but are nervously ready for flight almost before the hint of danger. And they have usually with them as nervous companions the rock-pipits, charming little tight-skinned, low-crowned birds that hurry off wavily through the air, reiterating their solitary note of fear as they fly. ”

“ The crafty bird had made a note of the fact that several sparrows always came down at feeding-time to get some of the food spread for the pigeons. "By getting among the pigeons, and keeping my head down," reasoned the gull, "I shall get close enough to catch some of these nice little fellows easily."
And this is how the gull made use of its friends the pigeons. It went among them, and, by stooping, avoided detection. Then, to use the words of the eye-witness, the gull "set at a sparrow as a pointer dog would do at its game." ”

“ Look how they tuck up their pinky feet under them when they fly, and how they turn their heads from side to side, looking for something good to eat. See, there's a great big flock all together in the water, over yonder, must be a thousand hundred. Now they all fly up at once, like when you tear a newspaper into little scraps and throw a handful out of the window. Where do you suppose they go at night? Perhaps they sleep on the water. That must be fun! Do they have gulls in Ireland, Biddy, and are all their eyes black and shiny? ”

“ She held it out to the queen, saying, ‘In the basket you will find a bird’s egg. This you must be careful to keep in a warm place for three months, when it will turn into a doll. Lay the doll in a basket lined with soft wool, and leave it alone, for it will not need any food, and by-and-by you will find it has grown to be the size of a baby. Then you will have a baby of your own, and you must put it by the side of the other child, and bring your husband to see his son and daughter. The boy you will bring up yourself, but you must entrust the little girl to a nurse. ”

“ SAINT KENETH OF THE GULLS
"Poor little thing!" said all the mother gulls in chorus. "He talks our language, he must be saved. Come, brothers and sisters, and use your beaks and talons before the [34] clumsy nest in which he lies is sunk beneath the waves. Cree-e-e, little one, cree-e-e! We will save you."
Now, I don't know what cree-e-e means in Gull. But the baby must have understood. For he stopped crying instantly, and looked up laughing at the white wings which fanned his face and the kind gray eyes which peered into his own blue ones. ”

“ Look at his tail-pieces, Reader, and say if you ever saw so much life represented before, from the glutton who precedes the Great Black-backed Gull, to the youngsters flying their kite, the disappointed sportsman who, by shooting a magpie, has lost a woodcock, the horse endeavouring to reach the water, the bull roaring near the style, or the poor beggar attacked by the rich man’s mastiff. ”

“ The many names by which men call him may each find some answering trait in the laborious work of the chisel. In the lines of that majestic and benign image are shadowed forth the mild king and father, the hearer of prayer, the guardian of civic order and family love, the protector of the stranger, and the power who gives fertile increase to flock and field. ”

“ This breathing of life into playthings is seen in all its magic force in play with dolls. A doll, broadly conceived, is anything which a child carries about and makes a pet of. The toy horse, dog or what not that a little boy nurses, feeds and takes to bed with him has much of the dignity of a true doll. But adopting conventional distinctions we shall confine the word to those things which are more or less endowed by childish fancy with human form and character. ”

“ A gull is not reckoned an especially graceful bird, but yonder I see one, snowy white, that has come to fish in this safe lagoon, and it dips and rises on its errands as lightly as a butterfly or a swallow. ”

“ Poor Doll! beyond the icebergs of your life
There throbs no open sea!
I sought it once, and lo! my former self
Is shipwrecked in the quest.
See the impassioned Franklin, with his pelf,
Dead on your gelid breast.
You scream—’tis but a delicate doll’s cry—
A trick, as all perceive it;
They say you’re stuffed with sawdust—though a lie,
A skeptic might believe it! ”

“ On this stormy sea of time, philosophy gives us the veil of Leucothea to charm the troubled waters. It is true that only when release comes at death, does the soul attain to the full vision of God. For the Highest is separated from us by a great gulf. Yet the analysis of the soul which Maximus partly borrows from Aristotle, discovers His seat in us, the highest reason, that power of intuitive, all-embracing, instantaneous vision, which is distinct from the slower and tentative operations of the understanding. ”

“ They feel an equal disgust for the noise and squalor of the narrow streets, an equal love for the peace and freshness and rough plenty of the country farm. In both may be seen the scions of great houses reduced to mendicancy, ambitious poverty betaking itself to every mean or disreputable device, the legacy-hunter courting the childless rich with flattery or vicious compliance. You will often encounter the sham philosopher, as you meet him sixty years afterwards in the pages of Lucian, with his loud talk of virtue and illustrious names, while his cloak covers all the vices of dog and ape. ”

“ Most of you know something of the habits of the tame or domestic duck. But perhaps you have never noticed its curious bill, which is constructed so as to filter, through its toothed edges, the soft mud in which these birds love to dabble. The tongue of the duck is full of nerves, so that its sense of taste is very keen, and thus provided the bird can find out all that is savoury to its palate in puddles, ponds, etc., and throwing away all that is tasteless, swallow only what it likes. ”

“ Asia is a mere corner, the sea a drop, Athos a tiny clod in the universe.2628 Life is so little a thing that death is no evil.2629 Yet, looked at on another side, the daemon, the divine spark within each of us, may, by its irresistible power, create a moral whole in each human spirit which, during its short space of separate being, may have the rounded harmony and perfectness of the whole vast order—it may become a perfect miniature of the universe of God.2630 This consummate result, attainable, though so rarely attained, is the ideal which alone gives dignity to human life. ”