Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1875-09-17
FLIRTING OF THE BIRDS.

ES% 10y
Tue Springs canarys are fitting home.
twitter through the car windows,
AID c'lirp about the railroad platforms,
bur,th.y do not look as fresh as they did
wi we saw them going through at the
commencement of the season. Their
feathers look soiled and rufled; their eyes
look weary and their little voices are
cracked and hoarse; but, then, they have
complied wish the ten commandments of
the deity Fashion, and now-well now,
they are going home. There are few
places more overrated than that same
place called home. By one common con-
sent we all agree to delude ourselves into
the belief that it is the place par excellence
of unalloyed happiness, and yet it would
puzzle any of us to tell exactly where it is.
Tell that man who heads a family and Is
toiling with anxious heart and busy hands,
of the pleasures of home, and his mini
flies back to the true when he was a boy,
and sees the little sitting room, and the
mellow light of the lamp throwing lis
broad white mark across the face of the
gathering night coming in at the window,
and he hears again the simple prayer
of the little white-gowned boy, repeated at
his mothers side, and he thinks you must
be talking about that time. That is the
home that he has brought all along up to
manhood with him. The reality has long
| since slipped away from him, but he keeps
the memory of it and the hope that i'll some
other world it is to re-appear with the same
sense of perfect happiness, and perfect rest,
and perfect innocence that he had then.
| His children, in their day, will look back
to their ideal home in the same way. And
so with his mate, whose ideas of the happi-
ness Of home in. it's highest state, find a
resting place in the time when she nestled
! close to her mothers side, before the stern
and stout man of business had come along
and made himself the maker and builder
| of her home. Indeed, all homes, that
is, the perfectly happy ones, are ideal, and
of such is the kingdom OF s'Home, Sweet
| Home" The men and women who ait SO
genuinely touched with that fraudulent
b~arcarole, and the gushing young people
that hail it with such a strong flavor Of
spooning, are not thinking Of the two
| story, or even the four story mansion in
which they may happen to live, but of
SOME far off ideal which dwells either in
their memory or their expectations.
But it is to the real homes-their cages
as it were, that u Springs birds are re-
turning. Some are gilded, snowy cages,
with hungry creditors waiting for the re-
appearance of the tenants; and some are
iron cages, whose wires have been blacken-
| ed and rusted by the shadow Of that ever
present creditor, Pinch. Some Of the de-
licious warblers with their plumage pin
ned back in the most enticing manner, We're
not expected to return. Ma had set her
heart on this being Mary's last season, and
had hoped that with her off, the rape-seed
and cuttle-bone would be more plentiful
for the rest of the brood, but Mary is still
with her, her plumage looking faded and
her voice shrill and her heart wroth against
the hardness and conceit and stupidity of
men. who nave heard her sweet carOliing
from the boughs of every watering place,
unmoyed. Frederick, who has just flu
tered out of the ever-present bar room ut
the railway station, is Oh his way back to
his perch in the family cage. His little
eyes were red and his plumage dowdy. and
his little beak is filed with the oaths and
slang Of the saloon and the gaming-table.
He has been taken out that he may see the
world; and he has seen 1.-THE dirtiest part
of it. The only really happy birds we see
fit by in the cars, homewArd bound, are
the children of the family. They know
nothing of disappointed hopes. and theif
chirping is as gay on the return as it was
on the start, and their CHEEKY, bright be
hayiour is in strong contrast to the sour
10 ks of the old birds. We all envy them
But after all it is no use being cross with
the Springs birds for not beng happy.
Very few of US have an overdose of that
We are all springs birds in one way or
another. We all sport cur best and
brightest feather borrowed
and make our little Gagged lives us agree
able on the outside as possible, all the time
beating the wings of our spirit against
the bars, until. some day. Death opens the
door and we fit home-where?