"Oh, just the thing!" say Mr. and Mrs. Swallow, and they turn their backs on the new barn and proceed to build their cute little nests of clay among the rafters of that old tumbled-down affair. In their preference for the old gray barns, the swallows are like the artists, the painters that Mr. Dooley told about. He was talking about artists to his friend, Mr. Hennessey: "I don't mane the kind of painther that paints yer fine new barn," said Mr. Dooley. "I mane the kind of painther that makes a pitcher of yer _old_ barn and wants to charge ye more'n the barn itself is worth." WHY ARTISTS AND SWALLOWS PREFER OLD BARNS The reason the artists prefer old barns is that they look better in pictures, but the reason the barn-swallow shows the same taste is that, with windows that have panes in them and doors that shut tight you'd no sooner start to build a nest than, coming back with a pellet of clay, or bringing a feather for the little feather-bed, you'd be liable to find the door shut and you could no more get in until chore time than you could open the time-lock in the First National Bank. And suppose there were babies and you'd just _got_ to get back--you see it wouldn't do at all! But both the barn-swallows and the old gray barns will be seen only in pictures before long, if things keep on; what with these new barns and the cats always trying to catch the few swallows there are left--when you're swooping low to catch a squash-bug, say--and those hateful sparrows that tear your nest to pieces. And for several years swallows were killed by thousands to make ornaments for women's hats until this shameful business was stopped by law! On the Pacific Coast, if you're out there even as early as March, you'll see a purplish-bronze swallow, with bronze-green markings. These swallows make a specialty of orchard insects and that's why, perhaps, they build under the eaves of the farmhouse rather than the barn. But, like the rest of the swallow family, they think nothing quite so nice as a bed of feathers to raise babies in, and they know as well as the cliff-swallows and the barn-swallow that a barnyard is a great place for feathers. And besides, there's a man out there, in one place, that keeps a supply of feathers just to give away when the swallows are nesting. Watch him, over on the hillside. He takes a little bunch of feathers and throws them up into the air from his open hand. A swallow skims by and catches one of these feathers before it touches the ground. But soon the word passes along: "Here's that nice man with the feathers!" And, pretty soon, there are a half-dozen in the game. They flit closer and closer to that generous hand, seizing the feathers almost the moment they are in the air. Then one, bolder than the rest, snatches a feather right from the man's thumb and finger. The little rogue!