CAGING BIRDS.


I never liked the idea of rearing birds in cages; of confining those
little creatures, that seem to enjoy liberty most of all God's vast
family, in the little, stinted prison-house of a cage. Girls seldom
incline to keep them caged; I wish, fewer women did; but boys seem
almost to possess a different nature. Many really enjoy taking the
little helpless fledglings from the nest, hid away so slyly among the
thick boughs of the forest-tree; crowding two, three, or even four, into
one cage, oftentimes not eighteen inches square. They are even so
heartless as to laugh at the fluttering, slapping, and beating of the
poor prisoner against the wiry walls of his gloomy, unnatural home.

To be sure, I once owned a caged bird. It was a robin. A dear brother
had kept him several years, and, on leaving home for a residence in
Boston, where he could not take care of the bird, he gave him to me. It
was not at a season of the year when we could safely release him from
confinement; and, besides that, our oldest brother had taught him to
whistle parts of several tunes, and we feared, moreover, that he might
suffer even in the best season of the year, from the fact of his having
been taken when so young from other robins. Confinement, probably, does
not destroy the instinct of birds, so that they would starve if
released. After having been an inmate of our family nine years, having
suffered countless frights and manglings from the many kittens we had
kept in the time, he at last died by the claws of the family cat, when
released one fine afternoon for an airing, and to have his cage cleaned.

I never since have wished to own a caged bird. The song of a canary
bird, born and reared in a cage, never pleases me like the cheerful