REGENERATION OF THE PARROT.
ONE day a man who had considerable experience of parrots happened to come in, says W. L. Alden in the Idler, and when I complained of the bird's loquacity, he said: "Why don't you get an owl? You get an owl and hang it up close to that parrot's cage, and in about two days you'll find that your bird's dead sick of unprofitable conversation." Well, I got a small owl and put him into a cage close to that parrot's cage. The parrot began by trying to dazzle the owl with his conversation, but it wouldn't work. The owl sat and looked at the parrot just as solemn as a minister whose salary has been cut down, and after a while the parrot tried him with Spanish. It wasn't of any use. Not a word would the owl let on to understand. Then the parrot tried bragging, and laid himself out to make the owl believe that of all the parrots he was the ablest. But he couldn't turn a feather of the owl. The noble bird sat silent as the grave, and looked at the parrot as if to say, "This is indeed a melancholy exhibition of imbecility." Well, before night that parrot was so ashamed of himself that he closed for repairs, and from that day forth he never spoke an unnecessary word. Such, gentlemen, is the force of example in the worst of birds.—Sel.