Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1884 — The Affection of Mocking Birds. [ARTICLE]

The Affection of Mocking Birds.

Some years ago, said the old gentleman, there was a young physician here who was loved by all on account of his gentle, loving disposition. Among his more humble but not less devoted admirers was a mocking bird that had been boin and raised in his garden. The bird took the greatest fancy to him, and when he returned home in th.e evening would hop around his front steps and then fly to near by and sing for hours at a time. The bird appeared to be in an ecstacy of delight whenever the doctor was at home. Finally the yellow fever broke out there, and, among others, the doctor was stricken down. He lingered for days and then died. On the night before his death the watchers by his bedside had their attention attracted by the mournful, sobbing notes that the “doctor’s bird,” ias they called it) uttered through the night. The next day the doctor died and that night the bird was silent. Alter the funeral the family opened the room to air it, and when the bed was drawn aside the thing seen was the mocking bird lying at the head of the bed, dead. How it got there no one knew, but there it was, dead, as though it could not survive one it loved so well.— Hudson (Texas) Post. The Chinese are meeting with success in Merced County, California, in their cultivation of opium poppy-