Part 12

“Excellent!” said every one. “Go on, and be quick.”

“Be as quick as you can,” said the Robin, “or there won’t be time for my speech.”

“Silence!” cried the president. “I call on the Blackbird.” And the Blackbird began his oration.

“Man,” he said, “is in the first place mean. This may be thought perhaps too obvious a proposition to need proof. I need but ask you to look over the orchard wall into the kitchen-garden yonder. What do we see there? Gooseberry-bushes, currant-bushes, covered with delicious fruit; I know it, for did I not try the flavour of every one of them daily till yesterday? And now, now, just as their juices are mellowing, each of those trees has been covered over with a most vile and treacherous netting! If time were not pressing I could easily produce statistics to show----”

“What are statistics?” asked a Flycatcher deferentially.

“A new kind of earwigs,” said the Blue-Tit promptly. “Don’t interrupt. What a flow of eloquence!”

“I could produce statistics to show,” continued the Blackbird, “that those gooseberries and currants would be sufficient to feed scores of blackbirds for several weeks together. Think of what is here lost to the world through the meanness of Man!

“The raspberries indeed are not netted; but, friends, I would ask you, if you can control your feelings for a moment, to look in the direction of the raspberry canes. There you may see--I can hardly bear to mention it--the dead bodies of two cousins of mine, who lost their lives through the meanness of Man, in the exercise of their natural rights and appetites. Shot, cruelly shot, by the farmer’s son, and exposed to view to frighten us!”

Here the speaker was overcome by emotion, and paused for a few moments.

“Go on,” said the Robin, “or you’ll never get to the end of your speech. Why do you want to eat fruit? Caterpillars are much better.”

“Order, order,” cried the President. “Trrrrr-lira-lira-trrr.” The Blackbird resumed the thread of his argument.

“I do not care,” he said, “to notice unseemly interruptions at a moment when such painful thoughts have obtruded themselves on my mind. I will proceed in the next place to show that man is mischievous. I need not dwell on this point; the fact is known to you all. The word is far too mild. Which of us has not lost a nest, or seen our young caught and killed, either by man himself, or by his parasite the cat? They are the only two animals who kill for the pleasure of killing. Of the two, as you know, man is far the worst; he is more cruel and more awkward than a cat. A cat is agile, nimble, even beautiful to look at, terrible as she is; and she does not steal the nests which we have taken such infinite pains to build. A kitten is a pretty and even a harmless little creature; but the young of man is horrible to contemplate. What dreadful noises he makes! What a contemptible object he appears! Though compelled by nature to keep to the ground and go along on two stumps, he will sometimes climb trees if he can but see a chance of doing us a mischief. You hear the awkward creature crashing through the branches; you are forced to fly for your life, and to leave your young and eggs to the monster’s mercy! I will not harrow your feelings further, but will content myself with the simple assertion that cats are far better.

“I now come to the third point. Man is malevolent. Man, that is (as some of you may not understand the word), is evilly disposed towards us. His evil deeds are the result of an evil will. I see you are getting impatient, so I will only give you a single instance of this, which shall at the same time be a crushing proof. As I was enjoying myself in a gooseberry bush a day or two ago, before the meanness of man displayed itself in those malicious nets, I heard the farmer’s wife singing to her baby as she sat on the seat under the pear-tree close by me. I kept very quiet, as you may imagine, and heard all she said. Fancy my horror when I heard her begin--

“Four-and-twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie.”

Thus you see from his earliest years--from the egg, I might have said, had Fate destined him for a higher sphere than that he occupies--is Man taught malevolence towards the birds. His mother whispers the poison even into his baby ears; he grows up thinking of baked blackbirds; and though no doubt in later life he prefers what he (luckily for us) calls bigger game, the malevolence of his mind towards us singing-birds is ever on the increase. Such then is Man: mean, mischievous, malevolent; a creature that might indeed, in many ways be our equal if he could but restrain his evil instincts; but as he is, degraded, demoralized, and dangerous.”

This burst of eloquence took the company by surprise; they never suspected the Blackbird of possessing such genius. There was general applause, which was broken in upon however by an unlucky incident. The Robin, when the Blackbird stopped, had instantly taken possession of the orator’s bough, a prominent one directly below that of the president. The Sparrow, seeing this, and being always ready to pick a quarrel with the Robin, had flown to the bough with angry screams, and was trying to turn out the new orator. Robin fought as might be expected of him, the other birds were preparing to join in, the President was calling for order, and whistling his very shrillest, when up came the Swallow once more. She preferred to be absent during the speeches, but looked in, she said, to see if their wits were getting sharpened.

“What!” she exclaimed, “quarrelling already! Ah, I see, no wits to sharpen, so try claws and beaks instead!”

“Where’s your repartee, Philip?” said the Blue Tit. But before the repartee was forthcoming the Swallow was gone again.

The Swallow’s remark had the result of calming the troubled waters; and as the Robin had been first on the bough, the President called on him to speak.

“I do not pretend to eloquence,” said the Robin; “but I know what I think, and shall say it as well as I can. Some things the Blackbird has said I agree with; but birds who habitually eat fruit must expect man to make war upon them. Now between my family and man there has been for ages a treaty of peace--a treaty which man keeps up, because he knows how much it is to his advantage; and which we keep up, not only for our own benefit, but because we hope that in due time we may improve and elevate man. He is powerful, but he is by nature vicious, as the Blackbird has observed. Well, we hope we have done something in the past, and may do something in the future, to rid him of his baser qualities.

“You probably do not know how this treaty of peace came to be made. I will tell you as shortly as I can. Long ages ago there was a king of this island who married and had two lovely children, a boy and a girl. These children went out one day to play in the wood near their papa’s palace, and lost their way. Night came on, and they lay down to sleep; they never woke up again, but lay there dead and cold. We saw them there; we covered them with leaves, and paid a last tribute to their beauty and innocence. The king and queen found us at the good work, and then and there made a treaty with us, which has lasted in this island ever since. By this treaty it was ordained--

“1. That man should not use his strength or his dreadful engines of destruction to kill or molest any robin.

“2. That man should abstain from taking the nest of any robin; but that he should be allowed to take one egg now and then, if he should feel his evil desire for collecting getting the better of him.

“3. That man should put food outside his windows for the robins in the winter, and should take care that it was not all eaten up by sparrows.”

(Here the Sparrow asked the President whether the speaker was in order in introducing such offensive matter into his speech. The President decided that as the Robin was quoting a historical document, no offence could be taken.)

“These,” said the Robin, “are the most important clauses of the treaty. On our side it was agreed:

“First, that the robins should abstain as far as possible from damaging man’s property, i.e. his fruit or his corn, and should do him as much good as possible by eating the grubs and caterpillars in his gardens.

“This clause has been faithfully kept by us, to our own lasting benefit as well as that of man. I would advise all birds who insist on eating fruit and corn to observe how excellent are the results of a grub and caterpillar diet.” Here the Robin paused a moment, and displayed his portly red waistcoat in all its glory to the audience. Then he went on:--