duced a deadlock, so that the bird stood on a very knife-edge, trembling between a forward and a backward movement; and then, too, gradually to come to connect the look and bearing of each bird with its disposition, to know them, both outwardly and psychologically, to see them grow into their names that grew with them, and have the bold orange-bill, the modest grey, the swaggering white bird, the Duchess, the Fine Lady, the My Lord Tomnoddy, the Kaiser, the Swashbuckler, and so on, all about one, so many characters, so many amusing little burlesques of humanity—human nature stripped, without its guards, disguises, softenings and hypocrisies—all this was the solace and beguilement of many a tedious afternoon.
But there exists for some reason, in every town in England, a body of men who can do what they like, without asking anybody, to the annoyance of everybody, though everybody pays for them. One day, after an absence, I came with my bag of bread as usual, but there were no ducks to be fed; all had vanished—there was only the uninteresting pond. Alarmed, I inquired of the man at the entrance, and found that the Cheltenham Corporation had got rid of the whole of them on account of their being of no particular breed or strain, just ordinary tame ducks and no more. Their appearance, the indiscriminate diversity of their plumage, their infinite variety of colour and pattern, had been against them. It had, indeed, made the water gay, and gladdened
