from the smart, pert, airy little character that we had so often seen
flirting with the flowers. He was evidently a humming-bird in
adversity, and whether he ever would hum again looked to us
exceedingly doubtful. Immediately, however, we sent out to have him
taken in. When the friendly hand seized him, he gave a little,
faint, watery squeak, evidently thinking that his last hour was come,
and that grim death was about to carry him off to the land of dead
birds. What a time we had reviving him,--holding the little wet
thing in the warm hollow of our hands, and feeling him shiver and
palpitate! His eyes were fast closed; his tiny claws, which looked
slender as cobwebs, were knotted close to his body, and it was long
before one could feel the least motion in them. Finally, to our
great joy, we felt a brisk little kick, and then a flutter of wings,
and then a determined peck of the beak, which showed that there was
sonic bird left in him yet, and that he meant at any rate to find out
where he was.

Unclosing our hands a small space, out popped the little head with a
pair of round brilliant eyes. Then we bethought ourselves of feeding
him, and forthwith prepared him a stiff glass of sugar and water, a
drop of which we held to his bill. After turning his head
attentively, like a bird who knew what he was about and didn't mean
to be chaffed, he briskly put out a long, flexible tongue, slightly
forked at the end, and licked off the comfortable beverage with great
relish. Immediately he was pronounced out of danger by the small
humane society which had undertaken the charge of his restoration,
and we began to cast about for getting him a settled establishment in
our apartment. I gave up my work-box to him for a sleeping-room, and
it was medically ordered that he should take a nap. So we filled the
box with cotton, and he was formally put to bed, with a folded