The area of their prevalence coincides with the empire of white men, for wherever, and as soon as, the flag goes up, in sign of the white man’s rule, the sparrow perches on the top of it. Ships of all nations carry him as a stowaway from port to port, and, thus defrauding every company alike, these birds range the world, settling where they will. And everywhere the sparrow is safe alike.
And who cares to catch him? Youth, it is true, lays preposterous snares of bricks to entrap him, and sparrow clubs conspire against him; but no sportsman goes out to make a prey of him. Who, indeed, would expend time and patience in fetching a compass about a sparrow, or sit a summer’s day with net and line, decoy-bird and call, with a sparrow before his mind as his reward?
Abroad, also, the sparrow’s arrival is hailed with patriotic glee, and municipalities incontinently go to and legislate for his protection. The sparrow soon discovers that he is favored, and no sooner makes the discovery than he presumes upon it. Selecting prominent corners of public buildings, he stuffs rubbish into the crevices of the friezes, and advertises by long rags which he leaves fluttering and flapping outside that he has built a nest. Secure from cats and assured of man’s patronage, he thrives and multiplies his kind, each generation adding to the general stock of effrontery and presumptuously acquired privileges, until nations turn in wrath upon their oppressors. Men hired for the purpose rake out the sparrows’ nurseries from under the eaves of the churches, and purge the town-hall. But the sparrow cares little for such clumsy retaliation. One house is as good as another, and as for a nest being destroyed,
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