THE happiness that is added to human
lives by love for the lower creatures is beyond telling.
Ernest von Vogelweide, the great German lyric poet of the
middle ages, so loved the birds that he left a large
bequest to the monks of Wurtzburg on condition that they
should feed the birds every day on the tomb-stone over
his grave.
Of St. Francis of Assisi’s love and tenderness for
birds and animals many beautiful stories have been told.
The former he particularly loved, and ‘tis related
they were wont to fly to him, while he talked to, and
blessed them. From the hands of a cruel boy he once
rescued a pigeon, emblem of innocence and purity, made a
nest for it, and watched over it and its young. |
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Of
George Stephenson, the inventor, a beautiful story is
told. One day in an upper room of his home he closed the
window. Two or three days afterwards, however, he
observed a bird flying against, and violently beating its
wings as though trying to break the window. His sympathy
and curiosity were aroused. What could the little
creature want? The window was opened and the bird flew to
one particular spot. Alas! one look into the little nest
and the bird with the worm still in its beak which he had
brought to the mother and his four little ones, fluttered
to the floor. Stephenson lifted the exhausted bird, and
tried to revive it. But all his efforts proved in vain.
At that time the force of George Stephenson’s mind
was changing the face of the earth; yet he wept at the
sight of the dead family and grieved because he had all
unconsciously been the cause of their death. |