I paid them extortionate prices on account of extreme ignorance; and the birds, of course, flew home as soon as released, to be bought again by some gullible amateur.

I had omitted to secure the names and addresses of these guileless lads.
A sandy-haired, lisping child with chronic catarrh offered me a lot of pet rats! "I hear you like pets," she said, "Well, I've got some tame rats, a father and mother and thirteen little ones, and a mother with four.
They're orful cunning.

Hope you'll take 'em." A big, red-faced, black-bearded, and determined man drove one day into the yard with an immense wagon, in which was standing a stupid, vicious old goat, and almost insisted on leaving it at a most ridiculously high price.
"Heard that the woman that had come to live here wanted most every animal that Noah got into the ark; was sure she'd like a goat." It was with considerable difficulty that he could be induced to take it away.
Dogs, dogs, dogs--from mastiff to mongrel, from St.Bernard to toy poodle--the yard really swarmed with them just before the first of May, when dog taxes must be paid! A crow that could talk, but rather objectionably, was offered me.
A pert little boy, surrounded by his equally pert mates, said, after coming uninvited to look over my assortment: "Got most everything, hain't ye?
Got a monkey ?" Then his satellites all giggled.
"No, not yet.

Will not you come in ?" Second giggle, less hearty.
A superannuated clergyman walked three miles and a quarter in a heavy rain, minus umbrella, to bring me a large and common pitcher, badly cracked and of no original value; heard I was collecting old china.
Then, after making a long call, drew out a tiny package from his vest pocket and offered for sale two time-worn cheap rings taken from his mother's dead hand.

They were mere ghosts of rings that had once meant so much of joy or sorrow, pathetic souvenirs, one would think, to a loving son.