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Show WHY THE ROBIN HAS A RED BREAST (Bv Dr. A. S. Condon) To the Editor, and most especially to my friends, the children: "Rise up, my love, and come away, for lo, the winter Is past." So burst forth in a rhapsody of delight the great linger of the Song of Songs, when the glad sun of the spring-time smiled upon the desolate sands oO old Syria and the world was young And so say we, in this charming valley, when our own mild winter is past, and leaf, and bud and bird are here, the sure harbingers o warm hearted summer. Aye, verily, so say we all "Rise up my love, and come away, for lo, the' winter is past." Through my chamber window, when the dawn was breaking, I beard a robin in a neighboring tree caroling a rondo to his sweetheart in inc. hedge beyond, and as the mornins hartn -'l away the lingering nitrht the love song of the minstrel seemed shitted to an anthem ,of praise, and swelled louder and louder as If to nxpross the jov of greeting the newborn new-born dn And I thought of a legend in Norse mythology that 1 read many years ago. It was about the robin and why its breast is colored red. and I shall tell the storv as I remember it licther the conceit be true or not. that epic of the old saga that teaches b icod f compassion and mercy toward the helpless, and its reward, Is beautiful beyond expression. It was the day of the crucifixion and the stage for the asful trapedy was already set, and the Christ, expiring, ex-piring, hunc upon the cross weird and unnatural mantle of darkness enwrapped the world, that the day mlghl not witness the awful catas- i raphe, A stillness, unreal, thouerh tangible 'and oppressive was everywhere, save I ihe rending of the temples by thf lightnings and the deep dreadbolied j thunders that aroused the dead in I their coffins for even the earth be j i aiiie sentient wilh the throes of sym pathetic anguish, and from the pres. ence of that appalling scene eVery human being excepl His mother had fled. The animals of field and forest subdued sub-dued their passions of envious hate and, mingling, fled lo asylums of refuge, even the birds of the air for- ; got the Unibre of song and sought seclusion among the branches of the trees, all all save the visitant and selfconsecra I ed robin Pityingly the robin beheld the crucified Savior mute with agony, transfixed and helpless It saw with compassion the spear-thrusts in the side, the crown of thorns crushing the temples, and the crimson sweat bathing the drawn features of ihe dy-inz dy-inz Christ. The gentle bird sought to mitigate the intense condition of suffering, In I ihe anguish of extreme apprehension it. hovered a boat the expiring Son of God, fanned with its soft wines tho pain-wracked face, strove with its downy breast to wipe away the oozing blond, and with a gentle beak to pluck from the bleeding wounds the pierc Ing thorns, and in these acts of com- I passion and mercy the dow ny breast was dabbled with blood, and from that da to this, as a token of Divine love, the robin's breast has ever been J red But the robin has practically dis- j appeared from his old haunts, and with him have gone the lark, the mourning dove, the blue bird, the wild canary and others of the feathered 1 choir. Their songs have died away on the lethal shores of oblivion, and soon the last flutter of a wing will be heard in this valley, for even the philanthropic philan-thropic sparrow has been doomed. Seemingly because he is a helpless bird. A member of the faculty of Utah's agricultural college of solons (exefise me, but I hae no patience with such neophvtes that assume, to teach others oth-ers for the sole purpose of their approbation) ap-probation) has written a letter to ihe. Farm Bureau, and is copied in The ! Standard, profoundly announcing for the firsi lime in ornithological his-torv his-torv that the fOnglish sparrows do not destroy or feed on the alfalfa weevil, or words to that effect Why. who ever said they did? , English sparrows are not predacious birds Of prey regardless of everything every-thing The good God did not create the sparrows with seriated beaks and talons and daws fitted to seek food in the earth. The alfalfa weevil is a large disgusting looking slug and lives in the earth, though close to the surface, and if the harrow har-row exposes the creature to the sun it dies in a few minutes I have visited the fields they had invaded and I know them. The food of the Knglish sparrows is seeds of noxious weeds, flies, bugs, crawling worms ants, spider and the larvae of paraites that prey on and destroy flower gardens, fmit blossoms blos-soms of the orchard, etc. No, ehil-Idren. ehil-Idren. the Farm Bureau did not doom the English sparrows because they refused to raid gopher villages in Huntsville. Some one has been lyyng about the Farm Bureau. I lie I. n -ii-.il parrows were brought to New England to save the orchards, the forest trees and permit the tran-I tran-I sli of railroad cars for benefit ot ; commerce, and they did their work I well. Then, lured, maybe, by ambitious ambi-tious stories of the boundless pros-j pros-j perity from Utah, (ill of which were quite true, and that Utah was familiar famil-iar with the tales of their great achievements among the caterpillars of New England, they came west in M arch of more worlds to conquer-all conquer-all the same Alexander the Great and the Farm Bureau, to the great j astonishment of the birds, instead ot taking them to their bosoms with thlnkful emotions, they welcomed ihem. in the language of Sam Houston Hous-ton in the I'nlted States senate fifty years ago, "with bloody hands to hospitable graves," by way of a graveyard grave-yard sowed with poisoned wheal Ogden. Utah, April 12, 1919. A FALSE CHARGE. ' Prisoner, have you any collateral about you?" "No. sir. Never touched the damned thing." |