Oh, little birds, I have often wondered how many sorrows you have! Pain I know you have. The shrill cries and plaintive notes I have often heard from you have told me that your little breasts felt the pangs of anguish. The hurried flights which I have often watched have said how anxious you were. In our Northern climes, when the leaves have withered, when the cold winds blow, when the snow covers the earth, I know that you suffer from hunger, and I feel so sorry for you. When you come by the window you seem to say—“Do feed me, for I am so hungry and so cold!” I have crossed the seas, and hundreds of miles away from land I have seen you, in your forlorn flight, looking in vain for the way that might lead to a land where your poor little bodies and tired wings and tiny little feet could find rest. The storm and the winds had carried you away from the land where you were accustomed to rejoice and sing, and taken you above that ocean on which you looked with such dread, and which is always ready to engulf you. You were so tired that you had not even the strength to utter your cries. How then I pitied you, for I thought of the days and sleepless nights you had spent over the vast sea! how weary those little wings of yours were! how painful must have been each effort you made to support you in the air. How sad must have been your thoughts, for you could see nothing to guide you to that place you longed to reach! I have seen you when the good ship was close at hand. How welcome its sight seemed to be to you, who had suffered so much from thirst, hunger, and starvation, fatigue and exhaustion! and, as I watched your coming, I could detect joy and fear; for how strange the vessel appeared to you, how strange its ropes, how strange its sails. [Sidenote: _DEATH OF THE BIRDS._] When I have thought its masts and ropes would afford you rest, and seen you ready to reach them, you have dropped on the waves to rise no more. How you struggled before you came to this! You almost touched the water, when another effort would send you flying high above the sea; then again your flight became weaker; gradually you came down and made another frantic effort to escape by flight. At last you seemed not to know any longer what you were doing, and despite all your valiant struggles for life your doom came, and you dropped into the waves; and as the vessel sailed away I left you to your sad fate. At other times you fell on deck, for you were not strong enough to perch. Then how your bright little eyes became dim, for the touch of death was soon to close them, despite the care and the little water I would give you. How sweetly you looked as you laid still in the embrace of death! The storms of your life were over, your sorrows were ended, and your merry songs were to be heard no more in the groves you used to love. I know of nothing sweeter to look at than a dead little bird! and yet there is nothing which more pathetically touches my heart.