Page:HouseSparrowGurney.djvu/75

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IN AMERICA.
61

This nuisance was introduced some years after our list appeared; and so far from there being any prospect of its abatement, it has increased each year. There is said to be a remedy for every ill under the sun, but none has been found as yet for this one, notwithstanding the ceaseless complaints and protests that we hear from all sides. The rowdy little gamin squeaks and lights and does worse all through the city, to the annoyance and disgust of nearly all persons. In the aggregate the suffering he will entail upon invalids and those prostrated by sickness is immeasurable. Washington harbours and encourages a select assortment of noise-nuisances: the black newspaper imps who screech every one deaf on Sunday morning; the fresh-fish fiends, the berry brutes, the soap-fat scoundrels, and the o' clo' devils; the milk mercenaries with their detonating gongs: but all these have their exits as well their entrances; the sparrows alone are tireless, ubiquitous, sempiternal. They begin just about the time one of the authors of this treatise generally goes to bed and tries to go to sleep—towards daybreak—and keep it up till their voices swell in a diapason of horror with those of the other unspeakable wretches above alluded to. They breed during the greater part of the year—breed at a year old—keep breeding—breed numberlessly. In place of many sweet songsters which used to grace and enliven our streets, we have these animated manure machines, as almost every house-owner in the city knows to his cost. Whatever may be said to the contrary, notwithstanding, the sparrows, besides persecuting the human species, do molest, harass, drive off, and otherwise maltreat and forcibly evict and attempt to destroy various kinds of native birds, which are thereby deprived of certain inalienable rights to life,