Killing A Bird

A ten-year-old boy of Newtonville was given a toy gun by his father, who laughingly promised hira a dollar for every crow he would shoot. Higlily elated with his gun, and sanguine ol sarning a small fortune by shooting crows, the young sportsman spent th( greater part of two dayy Ín a field watching for thc birda. Not a crow carne near hira, greatly to his disappointment, and he reported his ill-success to his father, who saiJ, to comfort him: "Well, never mind the crows. 111 ?ive you half a dollar for any kind of i bird you can shcot." Early the next mornlng the boy, gun in hand, took up his ponition in the back yard to wateh for sparrows. A half-dozen or more unwary blrds soon appeared to piek up the crumbs that he had thrown out to lure them within reach of a shot. At a movement on his part the sparrows rose, and the boy Bred. One of the birds was hit and feil to the ground, where it lay for a minute fluttering its wings, and then became motionless. The boy went forward, picked it p and looked at it. The poor llttle head hung llmp- the shot had broken the sparrow's neck. For a moment the boy stood contemplating the dead creature in his hand; then he turned and fled to the house. "Oh, Tve killed it! I've killed it, mamma!" he cried, in a shocked tone. "It can't fly any more!" and all that day his lament was, "Oh, I wish I hadn't done it! I wish I hadn't done it!" His father, who had not supposed the boy in any danger of hitting a bird, tried to solace him with the half-dollar and suggestlons of what might be bought with it. "No, papa," was his sorrowful answer, "I don't vaut it. I wish it could make the aparrow alive again. I never thought it would be like that to kill a bird!" "And," said his father, in concludlng the story, "I was more pleased at the tender feeling my boy displayed than I should have been had he become thp