Leaving Home A kindly, if satirical, American critic said that
England was a most happy place because whenever politics grew at all virulent someone brought in a Bill for the protection of birds ; and all was well. A new piece of evidence of this love of birds came to my knowledge this week. A lady is forced to sell her house—on the northern outskirts of London, though sufficiently rural—where the birds have been regularly fed for a generation or more, ever since a linnet was found dead on the doorstep one frosty morning. A number of people have wished to buy the house, but all have been rejected on the ground that they showed no interest in birds whatever. The house will only be sold to a purchaser who will desire to go on feeding the birds. Doubtless more sellers of houses should have more interest in the character of their successors and accept only those who might be congenial to their neighbours, whether human or avine. A house that has been porous to our individuality (like a Meerschaum pipe, as Wendell Holmes said) should not be lightly sloughed.
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