I awoke very hungry, and consequently disposed to be very talkative, but was silenced by finding myself surrounded by a crowd of persons of both sexes, who were eagerly gazing on me.  A certain prostrate look of sly, shy humility, lengthened their pale faces, to the exclusion of all intellectual expression.  They formed a sort of religious meeting, called a tea-and-tract party; but the open door discovered preparations for a more substantial conclusion to the obbligato prayers and lectures of the evening.  My new mistress was evidently descanting on my merits, and read that paragraph from the chaplain’s letter which described my early associations, my knowledge of the Creed, and announced me as a source of edification to her servants.  Two or three words of this harangue operating on my memory, I put forth my profession of faith with a clearness of articulation and fidelity really wonderful for a bird.  What exclamations! what turning-up of eyes!  I was stifled with caresses, intoxicated with praises, and crammed with sweetmeats.  The moral agent grew pale with jealousy, when Doctor Direful was announced.  He rushed into the room like a whirlwind, but stood aghast at beholding the devout crowd that encircled me.  Instead of the usual apophthegms, and serious discourse, he heard nothing but “Pretty Poll,” “Scratch a poll,” “What a dear bird,” &c.  The malicious moral agent chuckled, and explained that the bird had, for the moment, usurped the attention which should exclusively belong to his reverence, who had taken the pains to come so far to enlighten the dark inmates of Sourcraut Hall.  Dr. Direful stood rolling his fierce eye (he had but one) on the abashed assembly; and, pushing me off my perch, drove me with his handkerchief into the dense crowd which filled the bottom of the room, and consisted of all the servants of the house, with some recently converted Papists from among the Sourcraut tenantry.  All drew back in horror, to let one so anathematised pass without contact.  I coiled myself up near a droll-looking little postilion, who, while turning up the whites of his eyes, was coaxing me to him with a fragment of plumb-cake, which he had stolen from the banquet-table.  Dr. Direful returned to the centre of the room, and mounted a desk to commence his lecture.  The auditory crowded and cowered timidly round him, while he, looking down on them with a wrathful and contemptuous glance, was about to pour forth the pious venom which hung upon his lips, when a sharp cry of “Get along out of that” struck him dumb.  Inquiry was useless, for all were ready to swear that they had not uttered a word.  Dr. Direful called them “blasphemous liars,” and proceeded one and all to empty the vials of his wrath through the words of a text of awful denunciation, which I dare not here repeat; but his words were again arrested by the exclamation of, “Aisy now, aisy—­what a devil of a hurry you are in!” uttered in quick succession.—­He jumped down from his altitude;