The Mocking-Bird's Singing-School

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Title:     The Mocking-Bird's Singing-School
Author: Edward Eggleston [More Titles by Eggleston]

A lady brought a mocking-bird from New Orleans to her home in the North. At first all the birds in the neighborhood looked upon it with contempt. The chill northern air made the poor bird homesick, and for a few days he declined to sing for anybody.

"Well, I do declare," screamed out Miss Guinea-fowl, "to see the care our mistress takes of that homely bird. It don't seem to be able to sing a note. I can make more music than that myself. Indeed, my voice is quite operatic. Pot-rack! pot-rack! pot-rack!" and the empty-headed Miss Guinea-fowl nearly cracked her own throat, and the ears of everybody else, with her screams. And the great vain peacock spread his sparkling tail-feathers in the sun, and looked with annihilating scorn on the dull plumage of the poor mocking-bird. "Daddy Longlegs," the Shanghai rooster, crowed louder than ever, with one eye on the poor jaded bird, and said: "What a contemptible little thing you are, to be sure!" Gander White, Esq., the portly barn-yard alderman, hissed at him, and even Duck Waddler, the tadpole catcher, called him a quack.

But wise old Dr. Parrot, in the next cage, said: "Wait and see. There's more under a brown coat than some people think."

There came a day at last when the sun shone out warm. Daddy Longlegs crowed hoarsely his delight, the peacock tried his musical powers by shouting Ne-onk! ne-onk! and Duck Waddler quacked away more ridiculously than ever. Just then the mocking-bird ruffled his brown neck-feathers and began to sing. All the melody of all the song-birds of the South seemed to be bottled up in that one little bosom. Even Miss Guinea-fowl had sense enough to stop her hideous operatic "pot-rack," to listen to the wonderful sweetness of the stranger's song. Becoming cheered with his own singing, the bird began to mimic the hoarse crowing with which Daddy Longlegs wakened him in the morning. This set the barn-yard in a roar, and the peacock shouted his applause in a loud "ne-onk!" Alas! for him, the mocking-bird mimicked his hideous cry, then quacked like the duck, and even Miss Guinea-fowl found that he could "pot-rack" better than she could.

The Shanghai remarked to the peacock that this young Louisianian was a remarkable acquisition to the community; Gander White thought he ought to be elected to the city council, and Miss Guinea-fowl remarked that she had always thought there was something in the young man. Dr. Parrot laughed quietly at this last remark.

The very next day the mocking-bird was asked to take up a singing-school. The whole barn-yard was in the notion of improving the popular capacity to sing. And Daddy Longlegs came near breaking his neck in his hurry to get up on a barrel-head to advocate a measure that he saw was likely to be popular.

But it did not come to anything. The only song that the rooster could ever sing was the one in Mother Goose, about the dame losing her shoe and the master his fiddle-stick, at which Professor Mocking-bird couldn't help smiling. Mr. Peacock, the gentleman of leisure, could do nothing more than his frightful "ne-onk!" which made everybody shiver more than a saw-file would. Gander White said he himself had a good ear for music, but a poor voice, while the Hon. Turkey Pompous said he had a fine bass voice, but no ear for tune. Dr. Parrot was heard to say "Humbug!" when the whole company turned to him for an explanation. He was at that moment taking his morning gymnastic exercise, by swinging himself from perch to perch, holding on by his beak. When he got through, he straightened up and said:

"In the first place, you all made sport of a stranger about whom you knew nothing. I spent many years of my life with a learned doctor of divinity, and I often heard him speak severely of the sin of rash judgments. But when you found that our new friend could sing, you all desired to sing like him. Now, he was made to sing, and each of the rest of us to do something else. You, Mr. Gander White, are good to make feather beds and pillows; Hon. Turkey Pompous is good for the next Thanksgiving day; and you, Mr. Peacock Strutwell, are good for nothing but to grow tail-feathers to make fly-brushes of. But we all have our use. If we will all do our best to be as useful as we can in our own proper sphere, we will do better. There is our neighbor, Miss Sophie Jones, who has wasted two hours a day for the last ten years, trying to learn music, when nature did not give her musical talent, while Peter Thompson, across the street, means to starve to death, trying to be a lawyer, without any talent for it. Let us keep in our own proper spheres."

The company hoped he would say more, but Dr. Parrot here began to exercise again, in order to keep his digestion good, and the rest dispersed.

[The end]
Edward Eggleston's short story: The Mocking-Bird's Singing-School

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