bon-vivant, a mere gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and
gormandizing on the seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung,
and chaunted so musically. He begins to think there is nothing like "the
joys of the table," if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase
to his indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day
fare, and sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign
luxuries. He is to be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware,
banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon
acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop!
pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side;
he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is
the _reed-bird_, the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian
epicure.

Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still
farther south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging
himself in the rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to
bursting; he can hardly fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career,
we hear of him spitted by dozens, and served up on the table of the
gourmand, the most vaunted of southern dainties, the _rice-bird_ of the
Carolinas.

Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual
and persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined
and intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of
popularity, during the early part of his career; but to eschew all
tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this
mistaken little bird to an untimely end.