The Stork

1895

In Holland some bad boys presumed upon the absence of the stork from her nest to substitute hen eggs for her own. The mother never suspected the trick and conscientiously hatched out her false progeniture. But when the little pullets made their appearance father and mother were in consternation. They screamed in turn, flapped their wings, turned around their nest in great excitement, then together pounced upon the fraudulent children and massacred them without pity.

A similar story comes from a greater distance. At Smyrna a French surgeon, wishing to procure storks' eggs for some purpose, abstracted them from a nest in the vicinity and replaced them with hens' eggs, as in the preceding case. The mother faithfully hatched them out, but at the critical moment there was a conjugal scene, and the husband left home only to return very soon with a large number of his brethren. A court was constituted and a circle formed around the wife accused of adultery. The husband exposed his complaint, and the poor innocent, condemned to death, was immediately hacked to pieces. The nest remained deserted.

Like Caesar's wife, the female stork remains above suspicion. — French of Maurice Englehart.