Word: stools
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...find a parallel for this cruelty, and at the same time the origin of our name "stool pigeon," in The Passenger Pigeon in Pennsylvania, a book compiled some years ago by Col. Henry W. Shoemaker, at present U. S. minister to Bulgaria...
...Stool Pigeon...
...tells us that in netting passenger pigeons the trappers would blind the decoy birds or "stool pigeons" by sewing their eyes shut with a fine needle and silk thread. The decoys were then fastened by their feet to the stool, which has a circular piece of board six or eight inches in diameter, fastened to a stick four or five feet long, the opposite end of which was placed in a slot in a stake, thus forming a hinge so that the bird could be raised and lowered by pulling a string running to the fowler's hiding place...
...Shoemaker says: "By raising the bird and dropping it suddenly it Avas made to flutter as it was going down; and the flying birds, seeing it, would begin to circle around, coming nearer and nearer, until they finally lit on the bed around the stool pigeon. Then the net would be sprung. At once there would be a mass of fluttering, struggling pigeons, with heads protruding through the meshes. The fowler and his assistants would rush to the massacre, which was the crushing of the head of each individual bird between the thumb and forefinger...
...tape of his job bored him; he knew how to laugh. When, newly appointed Ambassador to Spain, he presented his credentials to King Alfonso, he read his speech before the grandees of Spain, listened to the King's reply, bowed himself backwards toward the door, "stumbled over a stool, and fell flat on the carpet. Not a muscle moved on the face of King Alfonso. It was only when the great doors had closed behind him that Nicolson heard from the throne-room peal upon peal of schoolboy laughter...