But I was not brought up that way. I could not eat bugs, neither could I rummage in the garbage boxes as the sparrows did. Oh, how unwise of me, and how ungrateful to run away from a home where my every need was faithfully served by a kind mistress. Like the prodigal I would return. Surely I would know the house, the very window from which I had fled. Yes, I would start at once, and off I flew in the direction which I thought I had come. But, alas! how alike all the houses in that neighborhood seemed. Vainly did I fly down on many a window-sill and peer in. No mistress' face greeted me, no empty cage swung idly between the curtains. At length, faint from hunger and fatigue, I flew down and perched upon the railing of a porch where two ladies were sitting. "You dear little thing," said one of the ladies--I want to say here that I am much smaller than the dark Hartz Mountain bird who sat for her picture--"I never saw a sparrow so tiny, or marked like you before." "It's a canary, not a sparrow," said the other lady, "doubtless, somebody's lost pet," and she held out her hand, and chirped and talked to me very much like my lost mistress had done. "Poor little wanderer," she at length said, as I looked at her, but made no effort to fly away, "I have an idea you came to us for food," and then she went into the house and shortly returned with a cage in the bottom of which she scattered seed, placing it upon the ground very close to me. "Rape, hemp and canary," I chirped, "the seed I am used to," and down I at once flew, hopped into the cage, and, the next moment, was made prisoner. Sorry? Well, really I don't know. My period of freedom had been so brief, and attended with such anxiety and fear, that I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. The next day, however, I knew that my lines had indeed fallen in pleasant places. My first mistress had been kind, but oh, how much more tender and thoughtful the new one proved to be! "I was a helpless little creature," she said, "and upon her depended my entire comfort and happiness." Never for one day did she neglect me. Though my regular bill-of-fare was bird-seed, yet she varied it as she did her own. Cracker, lettuce, apples, grapes, cherries, sugar, and always in the summer, pepper-grass. If you little folks have a canary never fail, I beseech you, to give them of the latter all they want to eat. It costs nothing and may be gathered in any vacant lot fresh every day. What pleasure so kind a mistress could find in keeping me in a little gilt cage, I could not see, for there were screens in the window, and even if there had not been I don't believe I should have cared to fly away. Something in my appearance one day suggested the thought to her, I am sure, for looking at me earnestly, she said: