Whittier wrote a good deal about his pet parrot. Read his poem called “The Bird’s Question.” After his tragic end, the Quaker bard wrote of him: “I have met with a real loss. Poor Charlie is dead. He has gone where the good parrots go. He has been ailing and silent for some time, and he finally died. Do not laugh at me, but I am sorry enough to cry if it would do any good. He was an old friend. Lizzie liked him. And he was the heartiest, jolliest, pleasantest old fellow I ever saw.” He used to perch upon the back of his master’s chair at meal time; at times disgracefully profane, especially when in moments of extreme excitement he would climb to the steeple by way of the lightning rod, and there he would dance and sing and swear on a Sunday morning, amusing the passer-by and shocking his owner. At last he fell down the chimney, and was not discovered for two days. He was rescued in the middle of the night, and, although he partially recovered, he soon died. Whittier said: “We buried poor Charlie decently. If there is a parrot’s paradise he ought to go there.” He also had a pet Bantam rooster which would perch on his shoulder, and liked to be buttoned up in his coat. Grace Greenwood in Heads or Tails speaks of a diplomatic parrot belonging to Seward, at Washington, taking part in political discussion, trying to scream Sumner down, and so sympathetic that when his master had a cough he had symptoms of bronchitis. In a trustworthy collection of epitaphs may be found this quaint tribute with old-fashioned formality to a pet bird: “Here lieth, aged three months, the body of Richard Acanthus, a young person of unblemished character. He was taken in his callow infancy from the wing of a tender parent by the rough and pitiless hand of a two-legged animal without feathers. “Though born with the most aspiring disposition and unbending love of freedom he was closely confined in a grated prison, and scarcely permitted to view those fields of which he had an undoubted charter. “Deeply sensible of this infringement of his natural rights, he was often heard to petition for redress in the most plaintive notes of harmonious sorrow. At length his imprisoned soul burst the prison which his body could not, and left a lifeless heap of beauteous feathers. “If suffering innocence can hope for retribution, deny not to the gentle shade of this unfortunate captive the humble though uncertain hope of animating some happier form; or trying his new-fledged pinions in some happy Elysium, beyond the reach of MAN, the tyrant of this lower world.” Few women are so fond of pets as Sarah Bernhardt. She carries five or six with her in all her travels. When in New York the French actress has apartments at the Hoffman House. When the writer last visited her there he was received, upon entering the sitting room, by half a dozen dogs, ranging in size and species from the massive St. Bernard to the tiny, shivering black and tan.