CHAPTER V.
"DON'T, JOHNNY" Farewell happy fields, where Joy forever dwells.
-- _Milton._ A very pleasant, sociable fellow was this redbird, and often when on hot afternoons we were hiding in the treetops from the rays of the sun he told us stories and anecdotes about the people he had seen while he lived in the city.
He and his brother had been caught in a trap in the woods set by a farmer's boy.

One cold spring morning when the boy came to look at his trap he was overjoyed to find he had snared two redbirds, and forthwith carried them to the village nearby and sold them to the grocer for five cents apiece, which sum he said he was going to invest in a rubber ball.
As he put the dime into his coat pocket he told the man that one of the birds was named Admiral Dewey and the other Napoleon Bonaparte.

The groceryman agreed that these names were good enough names for anybody, but he thought he'd change Bonaparte's name to Teddy Roosevelt, as being easier to pronounce, and the two birds were accordingly given these titles then and there.

Not having any cage at hand to put them in, the man thought that for a few days the new-comers could share the quarters of an old sparrow he had in the rear end of the store until an extra cage could be procured.
But alas for Teddy Roosevelt! The very first night he was ignominiously whipped by the spiteful occupant of the cage, who resented having these country visitors thrust into his house without his leave.

Poor Teddy died the next day.