"When you enter, you will see opposite the door a bust of Socrates, and on its head is perched a prodigious owl. If I am with you, the owl will speak to us and say. 'How do you do, gentlemen?--I am glad to see you.'" "It must be a parrot," said Seddon. "No, Mr. Seddon, it is an owl. He never speaks except when I am present, and then he sometimes becomes quite eloquent. There is evidently something supernatural about the bird, and I have suggested to Boneskull that it may be a fairy. He has consulted it on several occasions, and has received most excellent advice." "No doubt of it," said Toney. "The owl is the bird of wisdom." "Boneskull has a number of animals, birds, and reptiles stuffed, and arranged around his room in glass cases. To show you how implicitly the learned man relies upon what is uttered by the bird of wisdom, I will relate one or two incidents. One morning I met a young fellow who had a rat which he had skinned and stuffed, and having ingeniously fastened bristles to its tail, was persuading people that it was a squirrel. I told him to take it to Boneskull. When I entered his study, the learned man was examining this curious specimen, and shaking his head rather dubiously. But on my entrance, the owl spoke and assured him it was a genuine squirrel, and of a very rare species; whereupon he purchased it, and it now forms a part of his collection." "But how happens it," said Seddon, "that the bird never speaks except when you are present?" "Oh, that is easily accounted for," said Tickle. "The bird of wisdom has a vast deal of discretion. He will not commit himself by any utterance except in the presence of a reliable witness. In me he has confidence, and in no other living man. I one day told a man to take a skull, which he had found, to the phrenologist, and that he would get a good price for it. When I entered, Boneskull had it in his hand and was carefully examining it. The owl now spoke, and said that it was the skull of a distinguished negro lawyer of Timbuctoo, which a missionary had brought home with him on his return from Africa. Boneskull was delighted with this information. He purchased the skull, and always has it before him on his table. It affords him great pleasure to point out its intellectual developments as indicated by the bumps. He says that an intellect once resided in that cranium equal to that of Clay, Webster, or Calhoun, and that its bumps clearly demonstrate that the negro is the equal of the white man in mental capacity. The vender of this valuable specimen of craniology afterwards told me that it was the skull of an idiot who had died in the almshouse; but I did not believe him, for how could I doubt the veracity and intelligence of the bird of wisdom?"