People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1893 — POWER OF EXAMPLE. [ARTICLE]

POWER OF EXAMPLE.

A Garrulous Parrot I« Completely Cured by a Dignified Owl. One day a man who had considerable experience with parrots, says the Idler, happened to come in, and when I complained of the bird’s loquacity he said: “Why don’t'you get an owl? You get an owl and hang him up 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 in a cage next to the 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 awhile 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 in existence he was the ablest. But he could not turn a feather of the owL That noble bird sat silent as the grave and looked at the parrot as if to say: “Thisis indeed a melancholy exhibition of imbecility.” Well, before night, that parrot was so ashamed of himself that he closed for repairs, aud from that day forth he never spoke an unnecessary word. Such, gentleman, is the force o* example in the very worst of birds.