OCR Text |
Show A FOUL BIRD. ''The cathedrals and cities generally abound with beggars, they fairly swarm everywhere. Even the altar-boys, and choir-boys, during the services would put their hands through the railings and ask for money. Dirt, filth, poverty, and a low standard of morals is found in all Roman Catholic countries. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ which has made America what it is. Thank God, Spain no longer has any political control on either North or South America." An extract from a letter of one Rey, Greenfield traveling in Spain, published in the Elko Independent, Independ-ent, Elko, Nov. The Manx men originated the saying ,"It?.s a foul bird that foils its own nest," and the honest people of the llcbi'V.cs Isles have a proverb, "It's durty burd and n foul burd that soils another burd'j nest.'e The ReV Greenfield is in the nest of the Spanish bird, the Spanish bird is feeding him and protecting him from the hawks and cormorants known to us as thieves and sharpers and is extending extend-ing to this American bird the hospitality of its own nest. The Greenfield bird has left much filth in the Spanish nest. Clean American birds when they visit their Spanish neighbors are ashamed of the Greenfield birds and protest, as best they can against the dirty habits of the Greenfield flock, and appeal to the Spanish birds not to accept the Greenfields Green-fields as tj-pes of American birds. The clean Amor- ican birds contend that the Greenfields belong t0 a low family, that the parent birds are foul in their I habits and that when the chicks grow up they are 1 f 1 not .-diowed to associate with birds of clean and bright plumage. The Greenfield birds, moreover, cannot sing; they croak, and when they try to copy the notes of clean birds, their croaking is offensive, and with the annoying croaking, which rises some-times some-times to a shriek when they moot a Roman Catholic bird, there goes an unpleasant smell, and at tunes a stench. This offensive odor, it is said, conies from their breath when they attempt to sing. The Lreken notes which issue from their ulcerated th"oats are called lies, ol- calumnies, and as these dirty birds are always trying to sing, the air around them is filled with -these lie. The clean American birds disown the Greenfields and say they are covered with a vermin, known as "popophobia and with running son s called "bigotries." 'I lie Greenfields have another dirty habit : They rechev each other's feted vomit, call il their own food ami r( vomit the foul mess in the neighborhood of clean bi ds' nests. This filthy habit is known among clean birds as "playa rites." P,y a mysterious law of distribution, dis-tribution, wherever there is a colony of clean birds, there will always be found a Greenfield. Specimens are found in every country and croak in every lan guage. Not long ago one of them Hew over to this country from France. The Greenfields are called "Oiseaux verts" in France. Returning to France in l'.;e early autumn, the migratory season, this French Greenfield, that had received kind treatment in this country, croaked a dismal refrain on the terrible condition of morals in America. lie croaked of 4o,000 murders committed in three years ; of 4O.0') beggars called tramps, hoboes and yoggnin, many of whom are murderrrs. thieves and highway robbers. rob-bers. He said that a bird called Allan Pinkerton told him about these public beggars. This French Greenfield croaked about the frightful infidelities in the married state here; of i'O.OOO separations of husbands and wives annually; of how the judges are corrupt, of how the electors are debauched and members of congress and the national senate buy their seats; of li'O .negroes burned 'alive last year; of the crowded condition of the asylums, jails and penitentiaries and of the profanity, blasphemy and immoralities of the people. This French Greenfield Green-field then thanked God the mictions scoundrel that he belonged to a Catholic country where the church of Rome preached freedom and salvation to the people. The clean French birds told him he was a contemptable scoundrel, an ungrateful w retch who had accepted American hospitality and came home to vilify and ealurninate his entertainers. They made life for him in F'rance so unpleasant that early last mouth he returned to this country where, he croaked, there were thousands of "oiseaus verts" or Greenfields. lie is now learning to croak in the Greenfields' broken notes. These Greenfields are everywhere and seem to be endowed with immortality. immortal-ity. Like Milton's "Fallen Angels," they never die. "Salted with fire, they seem to show How spirits lost in endless woe May undecaying live." |