MY ROBIN

MY ROBIN

There came to me among the letters I received last spring one which
touched me very closely. It was a letter full of delightful things but
the delightful thing which so reached my soul was a question. The writer
had been reading "The Secret Garden" and her question was this: "Did you
own the original of the robin? He could not have been a mere creature of
fantasy. I feel sure you owned him." I was thrilled to the centre of my
being. Here was some one who plainly had been intimate with robins--
English robins. I wrote and explained as far as one could in a letter
what I am now going to relate in detail.

I did not own the robin--he owned me--or perhaps we owned each other.
He was an English robin and he was a PERSON--not a mere bird. An English
robin differs greatly from the American one. He is much smaller and
quite differently shaped. His body is daintily round and plump, his legs
are delicately slender. He is a graceful little patrician with an
astonishing allurement of bearing. His eye is large and dark and dewy;
he wears a tight little red satin waistcoat on his full round breast and
every tilt of his head, every flirt of his wing is instinct with
dramatic significance. He is fascinatingly conceited--he burns with
curiosity--he is determined to engage in social relations at almost any
cost and his raging jealousy of attention paid to less worthy objects
than himself drives him at times to efforts to charm and distract which
are irresistible. An intimacy with a robin--an English robin--is a
liberal education.