ONCE upon a time, my little ones, there was a be-yewtiful parrot. He had long green wings, eyes like rubies,with grey wrinkles round them, and a crest that looked as if it had been dyed in the blood of Prester John. But, when he ruffled his feathers, he looked like an opalescent mist of emotions. So he was called the Opalescent Parrot. He was hatched by the Orinoco, where the Spanish bells go ping-pang-pong when it is time for the alligators to eat another explorer ; but there must have a conventional strain in his blood, for he actually cracked his shell at the very moment in 1837 when the Archbishop, Dr. Howley, entered Kensington Palace, and therefore it is only right that the misguided bird should be called a VICTORIAN parrot.
- Alfred Noyes, The Opalescent Parrot
