The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864, page 140 by Various Authors
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the little wren, whose song broke my heart this morning; and there is nothing here for me to care for, except that young grave in Georgetown, whose white cross bears but the initials and the date. I must now try to make myself a new life elsewhere, and to-morrow I go forth, shaking off the dust that soils my garments; hoping for the promise of the rainbow in this storm--and sure of the strength that will not fail me. O world! be better than thy wont to thy poor, weary child! O earth! be kindly to a bruised reed! O hope! thou wilt not leave me till the end--the end for which I wait.
WORD-STILTS
If the reader is so favored as to possess a copy of the 'Comparative Physiognomy' of Dr. James W. Redfield (a work long out of market, and which never had much of a sale), he may find in a chapter concerning the likeness between certain men and parrots some wise remarks on ridiculous eccentricities in literature. 'In inferior minds,' says the Doctor,'the love of originality shows itself in oddity.' 'There is many a sober innovator,' he continues, farther on,' whose delight it is to ponder
'O'er many a volume of forgotten lore,'
that he may not be supposed to make use of the humdrum literature of the day; who introduces obsolete words and coins new ones, and makes a patchwork of all languages; makes use of execrable phrases, and invents a style that may be called his own.' The Doctor compares these writers to parrots.
Now it is a well-known peculiarity of parrots that they have a passion for perching themselves in places where they will be on a level with the heads of the superior race whose utterances they imitate. The perch a parrot affects is almost always an altitude of about six feet, or the height of the tallest men. They feel their inferiority keenly if you leave them to hop about on the floor. It occurs to us that nothing could please a parrot more, if it could be, than a pair of stilts on which it could hop comfortably.
The literary parrot, more fortunate than h