And
as Mrs. Harrington does not travel to the city, even this charge will
not hold against her. And yet I cannot help feeling that neither of the
two really hears the catbird say "miaow" or the robin "cheer up," as
they pretend to. At the first twitter or chirp from some invisible
source Mrs. Harrington stops and with radiant face asks me whether I do
not distinctly catch the "pit-pit-pity-me" of the meadow-lark. I say
yes; but I really don't, and I don't believe she does. My explanation is
that Mrs. Harrington is a woman and consequently ready to hear what she
has been led to expect she would hear. As for Harrington, he is a
devoted husband.
For let us look at the matter with an open mind. Our alphabetical
representations of animal sounds are at best only rough approximations.
Most often they are not even that. They are mere arbitrary symbols. We
use consonants where the bird uses none, as when we give the name cuckoo
to a bird whose cry is really "ooh, ooh." Or else we put in the wrong
consonants, which is shown by the fact that different nations assign
different consonantal sounds to the same bird.
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