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Beautiful Birds

[Pg 151] <h2>CHAPTER IX Hermit Humming-Birds and Two Other Ones</h2> I told you that as soon as the sun's light fell upon the earth all the sunbeams that had been asleep there woke up, and were changed into Humming-birds. But there was just one sunbeam who had gone to sleep in a cave, and when he woke up it was quite dark, and so he was changed into a Humming-bird without any colours, and when his brother Humming-birds saw him they laughed at him, and called him a hermit. It was very wrong of them to do so, for it was not his fault that he was brown. There is nothing wrong in going to sleep in a cave, and, of course, he could not tell what would happen. But they thought he looked ridiculous, coming out of it all brown, like a hermit. I don't think that made him ridiculous, really, but, even if it did, they should not have laughed at him. We should not laugh at people because they are ridiculous. It makes them unhappy, and, besides, we may be sure that in some way or other we are just as ridiculous as they are,[Pg 152] We may not know in what way. That only shows how ignorant we are. It is best not to laugh at other people. If we want to laugh at any one, we can always laugh at ourselves. Now, this poor Hermit Humming-bird was unhappy because he alone had no colours, and because all the other Humming-birds laughed at him. He complained of it to the sun, who was his father, and explained how it had happened. “It is unfortunate,” said the sun; “but since I was unable to shine upon you, when you awoke, I cannot give you my own livery to wear now. But do not be unhappy. The world is full of brightness and beauty, and if you go about asking for some of it from those who have it, none of them will refuse you, when they know that you are one of my children. They will grant it you for the love of me, for I am loved of all that live upon the earth. In this way, though I cannot clothe you directly from myself, it will come to the same thing in the end, for it is through me that all things have their beauty, so that in having what was theirs you will have what is mine, and still you will be a living sunbeam. Only do not ask any of your brother Humming-birds to give you anything, because then you will not be under an obligation to them.” (Your mother will explain to you what being under an obligation is, and how very many you are under to her.) [Pg 153] So the poor Hermit Humming-bird went about through the world, asking all the beautiful things in it for some of their beauty, and not one that he asked refused him, for the love of his father the sun. He begged of the clouds at sunset, when they were all crimson lake, and at sunrise, when they were all topaz and amber, and all three of these lovely colours fell upon his throat and struggled for the mastery, like the green and blue on the breast of that other Humming-bird that I have told you about. Then he begged of the bluest stars in the sky, and just on the outer edge of his now lovely throat, on the edge of that shining gorget, there fell such a blue as made one feel in heaven only to look at it. After that he begged of the sea that the sun was shining on in the morning, and now his head was of the loveliest pale sea-green, and then, again, he begged of it a little later in the day, and his back became a darker green, almost, if not quite, as lovely as the lovely one on his head. Thus he went about the world, begging and asking, and he did not forget either the jewels, or the flowers, or the colours that live in the rainbow. And at the end of the day this Humming-bird that had been all brown, and that his brothers had called a hermit, was one of the loveliest of all the Humming-birds, and his English name (we won't trouble about the Latin one) was the All-glorious Humming-Bird.[Pg 154] He was not called a hermit any more, after that, but those Humming-birds that had called him one, and laughed at him when he was brown, were changed into hermits themselves. That is how there came to be Hermit Humming-birds in the world, and one of them is the one that surprised you so much when I described him to you, because he was all brown. They are all of them brown, but you must not laugh at them, for all that, even though they did at their brother. They have their punishment, and it is bad enough to be punished and made all brown, without being laughed at about it as well. Now, of course, as all the Hermit Humming-birds are brown, it would be no use to describe them to you, one at a time, like the others. Instead of that I will tell you about some more Humming-birds who are pretty, and who came to be what they are like now in some curious way or other, which had nothing to do with their having once been sunbeams. One of these is the Snow-cap. He is very small, almost as small as the smallest of the Humming-birds—and you know how small that is—and although he is not exactly brown, still he is not at all a brilliant bird for a Humming-bird. What makes him so pretty is this. First, all the whole crown of his head is of a beautiful, pure, silky white, which makes it look as if a large, soft snowflake had fallen upon it,[Pg 155] and then, when he spreads out his tail like a fan—which you may be sure he knows how to do—there are two white patches upon it as well, which look like two smaller snowflakes. It is not many Humming-birds who are ornamented in that way. How did this one get those white patches, and are they really snowflakes that fell upon him? You shall hear. Once they were not white at all, those patches, but coloured with all the colours of the rainbow, and more brilliant than anything you could possibly think of, more brilliant even than any other colour that is upon any other Humming-bird. Indeed they were so brilliant that no one could look at them, and that made the Humming-bird very proud indeed. “Could my rivals have looked at me,” he said, “they would never have confessed my superiority, however plainly they must have seen it. Not to be able to look at me is, in itself, a confession. They are dazzled, and well they may be, for to look at me is like looking at the sun himself. Surely there is no earthly brightness that I do not outshine.” And as the proud bird said this, he looked up, and there, far above him in the blue dome of the sky, were the snows of the mighty mountain Chimborazo, and in their white, dazzling purity they seemed even brighter than himself. But instead of being humbled, the Humming-bird only felt insulted, and resolved[Pg 156] to do something decisive. “I will thaw those white robes of his,” he said; “my brightness shall burn them away, and there shall be no more snow in the world.” He was just a little larger than a humble-bee. So up this Humming-bird flew, right on to the top of Chimborazo, the great high mountain, where there was snow everywhere. “Have you come to thaw me?” said the snow, as it fell around him. “That is ridiculous. We shall see which of us is best able to extinguish the other.” With that one snowflake fell upon his head and two more upon his tail, just over those three patches that had been so marvellously bright. He tried to shake them off, but he could not. They stayed there, and instead of having been able to thaw them, it was they who had put his brightness quite out. All those wonderful colours were gone now, and there was only the snow-white. “Fly back,” said the snow, “or I will quite cover you. You have lost that of which you were so proud, but you have me in exchange. Fly back, and be a wiser bird for the future.” So the Humming-bird flew back, ashamed and crestfallen, and fearing to show himself. “What will the others say when they see me?” he thought. But when the other Humming-birds saw him, they all cried out,[Pg 157] “Oh, look! What beautiful bird is this that has come to dwell amongst us? What an exquisite white! Surely he has been to the top of Chimborazo and brought down some of its snow upon him. How pure and how lovely!” Yes, they could look at him now, and they thought him more beautiful than when they were blinded and dazzled. That is how that Humming-bird got his snow-white patches. He had no colours now with which to outrival the other Humming-birds, but he could put up with that, for the white snow was lovelier than them all. And then there is the Humming-bird that the Indians call the Jewel-flower-sunrise-and-sunset-Humming-bird (only they have one word for it, which makes it sound better). I have forgotten what his English name is—I am not quite sure if he has one. This Humming-bird was very beautiful to begin with, so beautiful, indeed, that the flowers, as he hovered over them, fell in love with him and wished to give him their colours to wear, for their sakes. But the Humming-bird did not want their colours, for he thought his own were much more beautiful. “If you sparkled like jewels,” he said, “as well as being soft and bright, then it would be different. But your beauty is too homely. You are not sufficiently refulgent.” (That was a word he was fond of, for he had heard[Pg 158] it applied to himself. Your mother will tell you what it means). So the flowers prayed to the sun from whom they have their beautiful colours, and the sun made them like jewels—jewels of the rose and the violet, of the lily and the daffodil, the sunflower, the pink and carnation. Perhaps they were not just the same flowers as those, for they grew in America, but they had all their colours and many more. “That is an improvement certainly,” said the Humming-bird, when he had looked at them. “You are much more beautiful now, but you remain the same all day long. It is very different with the sky. Every morning and evening when the sun rises and sets, she has quite a special beauty, and it is only then that she can be said to be refulgent. If it were so with you, then I might take you, but I do not care for flowers who have no sunrise or sunset.” So the flowers prayed to the sun again, and he made them as much more beautiful when he rose and set at morning and evening as the sky is then in the east and west. And when the Humming-bird saw that they were really refulgent, he took all their colours, and, for a little while, the flowers were quite pale, and only got bright again by degrees. But they never flashed and sparkled like jewels any more,[Pg 159] and there was never another flower sunrise or another flower sunset. The Humming-bird kept all that for himself; he never gave any of it back to the flowers. It was not very generous of him. I think he was going to be punished for it, but, somehow or other, it was forgotten. Punishments do get forgotten, sometimes—almost as often, perhaps, as rewards. Those are just a few of the beautiful Humming-birds that there are in the world—in that new world that Columbus discovered—but, as you know, there are more than four hundred different kinds, and numbers of them are just as beautiful—some perhaps even more beautiful—than those I have told you about. And you may be sure that they know exactly what to do with their beauty, how to raise up their crests and fan out their tails and ruffle out their gorgets and tippets in the way to make them look most magnificent, and give the greatest possible pleasure to their wives, who are all of them hermits—poor plain Humming-birds—just as the Birds of Paradise do for their wives, who are hermits too. And do you know that when two gentlemen Humming-birds are both trying to please the same lady—but that, of course, is before she has married either of them—they very often fight, and it is then that they gleam and flash and sparkle, more brilliantly[Pg 160] than at any other time. Ah, what a wonderful sight that must be to see—those fights between little fiery, winged meteors, those jewel-combats in the air—diamond and ruby and sapphire and topaz and emerald and amethyst, all angry with each other, shooting out sparks at each other, trying to blind each other, to flash each other down! Ah, those are fiery battles indeed, and yet when they are over—you will think it wonderful—not one Humming-bird has been burnt up by another one. No, Humming-birds do not kill each other, they do not even hurt each other very much, they are only angry, and even that does not last very long. We are not very angry with the poor Humming-birds, I even think we must be fond of them, for there is really hardly one that we have not called by some pretty name, though not nearly so pretty as itself. And yet we kill them, we take away those bright little gem-like lives that are so lovely and so happy. The people who live in those countries make very fine nets—as fine and delicate as those that ladies use for their hair—and put them over the flowers or the shrubs that the Humming-birds come to, so that they get entangled in them and cannot fly away. Then, when they come and find them, they kill them (could you kill a living sunbeam?), and send their skins over here to be put into the hats of[Pg 161] women whose hearts the wicked little demon has frozen. Into hats! Ah, I think if one of those poor, frozen-hearted women could see a Humming-bird, sitting alive in its own little fairy nest, she would blush—yes, blush—to think of it in her hat, even though she wore a pretty one and was pretty, herself, too. For I must tell you that the nests that Humming-birds make are so pretty and graceful and delicate that one might almost think they had been made by the fairies, and, indeed, the Indians say that the fairies do make them, and give them to the Humming-birds. But that is not really true. Humming-birds make their own nests, like other birds, though I cannot help thinking that, sometimes, the fairies must sit in them. Yes, they sit and swing in them sometimes, I feel sure, in the warm, tropical nights, when the stars are set thick in the sky and the fire-flies make stars in the air. For they hang like little cradles from the tips of the leaves of palm-trees, or from the ends of long, dangling creepers or tendrils, or even from the drooping petal of a flower. They are made of the fine webs of spiders, all plaited and woven, or of down that is like our thistle-down, but thicker and softer and silkier. And you may think of everything that is soft and delicate and graceful and fragile and fairy-like, but when you[Pg 162] see a Humming-bird's nest, you will think them all coarse—yes, coarse—by comparison. And to think of that bright little glittering thing, sitting there alive and warm, in its warm little soft fairy nest, and then to think of it in a hat—and dead! Oh, dear!—dusty too, I feel sure. Oh, dear! But it is all the fault of that most wicked little demon, and you are going to set it right. Now perhaps you will wonder why there has been nothing about promising yet, for there have been thirteen Humming-birds in the two last chapters, and not a single promise about any of them. But then, what would be the use of promising about thirteen when there are four hundred and more? It would be ever so much better, I think, to promise about all the four hundred and more together, and that is what I want you to ask your mother to do. Then all those little glittering, jewelly, fairy-like things will go on living and being happy—will go on glittering and gleaming, flashing through the air, sparkling amongst the flowers, sitting and shining in dear little soft swinging cradles, on the tips of broad, green palm leaves, or the petals of fair, drooping flowers. They will go on being living sunbeams then, not poor, dead, dusty ones in hats. And it will be you who will have done this, you who will have kept sunbeams alive in the world, instead of letting them be killed and go out of[Pg 163] it for ever. Yes, it will be you—and your dear mother. So now you must say to your dear mother, “Oh, mother, do promise never to wear a hat that has a Humming-bird in it.” Say it quickly, and with ever so many kisses. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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