DON'T SHOOT AT THE BIRDS.
LAST spring we boys were having a splendid time with our rubber shooters; every boy in the neighborhood had one or more. One day I was wandering about the lower end of the garden with my shooter. There were plenty of birds all around, but I did not want to shoot at them, if I could find anything else to shoot at. I got over the fence into another lot, but still there were birds everywhere. I shot a few times, just to frighten them a little. Then I heard one singing beautifully right over my head. I couldn't see it very plainly, and I don't believe I meant to hit it at all, and I tell you I was frightened, when it came falling right down at my feet, with a sad kind of a little scream. I picked it up and tried to make it fly, or walk, but it would not,—its pretty eyes were half shut and it kept panting with its bill. It was a bluebird. I knew I could never keep it from mother, for when I have been doing anything dreadful, I always feel as if I was lost till I've been and told her. As I carried the poor bird through the garden, a drop of blood fell from its mouth, right onto a great white lily that seemed looking up to ask me what I had been doing. Mother was standing near the back piazza; as I laid the bird in her hand, it stopped panting and was still. Mother said, "What's the matter?" But there was such a lump in my throat, I couldn't speak a word. Then she saw the shooter in my hand and said,— "Did you kill that little bird?" I tell you it scared me, the way she spoke. I never heard her speak in such an awful voice before. Then she said, "You have stolen away its little life,—it was all the life it had. The Lord loves his helpless little creatures; he gave them to us to make us happy, and he will never bless those who are cruel to them." Then she put the little bird up to her cheek, and I saw her tears come. I'd a great deal rather she'd whipped me. I thought of all the beautiful days of sunshine I had taken away from that poor little bird, and how it would never fly through the air, or sing in the trees, or see the flowers, and the grass any more. And I wondered if it had a nest and little birds, and what would become of them if it had. And all of a sudden I jumped up, as I thought of the bluebird that had come to build its nest near us for so many summers, and I ran to her nest. The little birds all held their heads straight up, and opened their big little mouths, so I almost knew their mother hadn't fed them for some time. I fed them the best I could, and I watched that evening to see if their mother'd come, but she didn't. Before I went to bed I got a piece of soft cotton, and covered 'em up. I thought, you see, if I took good care of 'em, they might live without their mother. But in the morning only two of them held up their heads to be fed, and before night they were all dead. So you see I had taken away all the sunshine from them, too. My sisters cried when they621knew that their little birds and their mother were all dead. I don't think I want another shooter. I don't believe I'll ever see another white lily but what it'll say to me, "You killed that bluebird!"—Youth's Companion.