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'tis a bird I love with its brooding note. And the trembling throb in its mottled throat;
There's a hitman loo\ in its swelling breast. And the gentle curve of its lowly crest.
THE BELFRY PIGEON
PIGEONS
By GEORGE F. MAGILL
GREAT many people can get quite sloppily sentimental about pigeons. But I can take them or leave them alone, because pigeons have a habit of getting sloppy over people.
Most birds prefer the quiet of the fields. Not your pigeon. He lives, loves, and has his being in the smoke and noise of the city, and is never happier than v^'hen he is perched on a three-inch ledge about twenty stories above the street pitching woo to his squab. He swells out his chest like the ice man and walks around his lady love in little mincing circles, cooing his love song: "rickety-coo, rickety-coo." She preens her feathers and pretends complete indifference, and, if he circles too close, flies coyly across the city chasm to the eighteenth floor of another building, and the whole rickety-coo business starts over.
I have heard of the homing or carrier pigeon and how they will fly through gunfire and flak, carrying their message to Garcia in spite of hell and high water. Many of them have been decorated for bravery in action; but pigeons in action have decorated more people than people have pigeons. I doubt if the carrier pigeon is related in any way to the common or dropping variety of city pigeon. I have never known them to carry anything very long.
This affection for pigeons, which you gather I do not share, dates back to Bible times. It was a dove, which is nothing but a small variety of pigeon, that Noah sent out to scout the end of the flood. You may have wondered why he sent a pigeon when he might just as well have sent an
eagle or a swallow. If you have ever noticed the condition of the north side of the Keith and Perry Building or the once beautiful St. Gauden's eagle on the New York Life Building, you will sec why old Noah was anxious to get the pigeon away from his nice clean Ark, even if he had to invent an errand to do it.
The late Judge Henry F. McElroy was accused of many things; but he was a practical man. A prominent citizen once congratulated him on the beautiful new City Hall, which was built while the Judge was calling the signals in civic affairs.
"Judge," he asked, "how did you ever happen to achieve the smooth streamlined effect that makes the building so beautiful?"
"I really didn't have as much to do with it as people think," said the Judge. "I only gave the architect one specification. You see, for years I had my office in the old City Hall, one of those gingerbread, gay nineties structures full of ledges, cupolas and gables. I just told him our new City Hall must be built without a single place where a pigeon could light!"