. Alps and sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (Op. 6.) . el Desteffanisthere used to be a parrot which lived about loose andhad no cage, but did exactly what it liked. Its namewas Lorrito. It was a very human bird; I saw iteat some bread and milk from its tin one day andthen sidle along a pole to a place where there was atowel hanging. It took a corner of the towel in itsclaw, wiped its beak with it, and then sidled backagain. It would sometimes come and see me atbreakfast; it got from a chair-back on to the tableby dropping its head and putting its round beak on tothe table first,
. Alps and sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (Op. 6.) . el Desteffanisthere used to be a parrot which lived about loose andhad no cage, but did exactly what it liked. Its namewas Lorrito. It was a very human bird; I saw iteat some bread and milk from its tin one day andthen sidle along a pole to a place where there was atowel hanging. It took a corner of the towel in itsclaw, wiped its beak with it, and then sidled backagain. It would sometimes come and see me atbreakfast; it got from a chair-back on to the tableby dropping its head and putting its round beak on tothe table first, making a third leg as it were of itshead : it would then waddle to the butter and be^inhelping itself. It was a great respecter of personsand knew the landlord and landlady perfectly well. 270 ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. It yawned just like a dog or a human being, and thisnot from love of imitation but from being sleepy. Ido not remember to have seen any other bird hated boys because the boys plagued it boys generally go barefoot in summer, and if. CASTLE OF MESOCCO. ever a boy came near the door of the hotel this parrotwould go straight for his toes. The most striking feature of Mesocco is the castle,which, as I have said, occupies a rock in the middle ofthe valley, and is one of the finest ruins in Switzerland. MESOCCO. 271 More interesting than the castle, however, is thechurch of S. Cristoforo. Before I entered it I wasstruck with the fresco on the facciata of the church,which, though the facciata bears the date 1720, waspainted in a style so much earlier than that of 1720that I at first imagined I had found here another oldmaster born out of due time; for the fresco was in sucha good state of preservation that it did not look morethan 150 years old, and it was hardly likely to havebeen preserved when the facciata was renovated in1720. When, however, my friend Jones joined me, heblew that little romance away by discovering a seriesof names with dates scrawle
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