A certain swallow built for two years together on the handles of a pair of garden shears that were stuck up against the boards in an outhouse, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that implement was wanted; and what is stranger still, another bird of the same species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy of the most elegant private museum in Great Britain. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 45: From "The Natural History of Selborne," being a letter to the Hon. Daines Barrington.] ADAM SMITH Born in 1723, died in 1790; educated at Glasgow and Oxford; lecturer in Edinburgh in 1748; professor in Glasgow in 1751; became tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch in 1763; traveled on the Continent in 1764-66; lived afterwards in retirement at Kirkcaldy; became Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh in 1778; elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1787; his "Moral Sentiments" published in 1759; his "Wealth of Nations" in 1776. I OF AMBITION MISDIRECTED[46] To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that, in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be enabled to act with such superior propriety and grace, that the luster of his future conduct will entirely cover or efface the foulness of the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many governments the candidates for the highest stations are above the law, and if they can attain the object of their ambition, they have no fear of being called to account for the means by which they acquired it. They often endeavor, therefore, not only by fraud and falsehood, the ordinary and vulgar arts of intrigue and cabal, but sometimes by the perpetration of the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion and civil war, to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in the way of their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than succeed, and commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment which is due to their crimes.