The Caged Parrot
I shall finish this book by telling you a story--a true story, which,
I hope, will make you think.
Many years ago a sea captain returned to his home in the north of
Scotland, after sailing the sea for a long time. He brought with him a
parrot. The parrot had lived in South America, where the people speak
the Spanish language. So all the words the parrot knew were in
Spanish.
The captain knew Spanish quite well, and often talked to the parrot in
that language. But after a time the captain died, and there was nobody
in that part of Scotland who could talk to the parrot.
The parrot grew silent, and never opened his mouth to say a word. But
he was thinking of his friend who was dead, and whose words in Spanish
had reminded him of his sunny home. The people around him did not know
that, and thought nothing of his silence. So the parrot in his cold
and bleak cage pined and pined for his sunny home land, but never a
word did he say.
Forty years passed, and a new set of people came to live there. They
took no notice of the silent old parrot. They put food and drink in
the cage, but knew nothing about him except that he had been in the
cage for many years. For a parrot lives much longer than a
man--sometimes one hundred years.
One day a sailor came to the house. He had lived in South America, and
knew Spanish. He saw the parrot sitting in his cage, all alone and
silent, with his head bent down, and his beak on his breast. Then the
sailor spoke to the parrot in Spanish.
The parrot looked up, as if he had awakened from a long, long dream.
Something reminded him of the days of his youth, when he was a happy
bird flying about over the sunny fields of South America. Then he
remembered the language of his youth, which he had not spoken for
forty years.
Suddenly he flapped his wings in joy, and spoke again. He spoke all
the Spanish words he knew, one after another. He spoke to that sailor
as to a friend come to him from his own home land. He flapped his
wings against the bars, and finally dropped to the floor of the cage,
dead. He had died in the thought of his bygone happy days.
My dear children, I am closing this book with this story, because I
want you to learn a great lesson from it: _be kind to all animals_.
I know that you would never willfully hurt any animal. But that is not
enough. You may think that you are very kind to some creature, because
you feed it and pet it; but all the same you may be very cruel, though
you do not mean to be so.
You may think it is great fun to have a pretty bird in a cage. But is
it any fun _for the bird_? How would _you_ like to be shut up in a
cage all your life, instead of playing about in God's free air and
living in your own home? The bird wants to fly about and live in his
nest in his own home land. Think of that when you wish to put a bird
in a cage.
Children who are kind to all animals grow up to be men and women who
are kind to other people. And it is only by being kind to others that
we ourselves _deserve_ to be happy and _are_ happy.
Remember all that I have said, till I come back and talk to you again
in the next book. Then I shall tell you many more Wonders of the
Jungle.
Till then, as they say in the Orient, God and His peace be with you!
* * * * *
End of Project Gutenberg's The Wonders of the Jungle, by Prince Sarath Ghosh