Is it not possible to persuade the women of Boston--the city we are
proud to consider a centre of refinement, reason and intelligence--to
take a decided stand in the matter of the slaughter of birds, and
protect them by refusing to wear them? We are fostering a grievous
wrong out of pure thoughtlessness. A bit of ribbon, or a bunch of
flowers, or any of the endless variety of materials used by the
milliner would answer every purpose of decoration, without involving
the sacrifice of bright and beautiful lives. But women do not know what
they are doing when they buy and wear birds and feathers, or they never
would do it. How should people brought up in cities know anything of
the sacred lives of birds? What woman, whose head is bristling with
their feathers, knows, for instance, the hymn of the song-sparrows, the
sweet jargon of the blackbirds, the fairy fluting of the oriole, the
lonely, lovely wooing-call of the sandpiper, the cheerful challenge of
the chickadee, the wild, clear whistle of the curfew, the twittering
of the swallows as they go circling in long curves through summer air,
filling earth and heaven with tones of pure gladness, each bird a
marvel of grace, beauty, and joy? God gave us these exquisite creatures
for delight and solace, and we suffer them to be slain by thousands for
our "adornment." When I take note of the head-gear of my sex a kind of
despair overwhelms me. I go mourning at heart in an endless funeral
procession of slaughtered birds, many of whom are like dear friends
to me. From infancy I have lived among them, have watched them with
the most profound reverence and love, respected their rights, adored
their beauty and their song, and I could no more injure a bird than I
could hurt a child. No woman would if she knew it. The family life of
most birds is a lesson to men and women. But how few people have had
the privilege of watching that sweet life; of knowing how precious and
sacred it is; how the little beings guard their nests with almost human
wisdom and cherish their young with faithful, careful, self-sacrificing
love! If women only knew these things there is not one in the length
and breadth of the land, I am happy to believe, who would be cruel
enough to encourage this massacre of the innocents by wearing any
precious rifled plume of theirs upon her person.
* * * * *
Extract from Henry Ward Beecher's letter to Bonner on the death of the
Auburn horse:
"Ought he not to have respect in death, especially as he has no chance
hereafter? But are we so certain about that? Does not moral justice
require that there should be some green pasture-land hereafter for good
horses--say old family horses that have brought up a whole family of
their master's children and never run away in their lives; doctors'
horses that stand unhitched, hours, day and night, never gnawing the
post or fence, while the work of intended humanity goes on; omnibus
horses that are jerked and pulled, licked and kicked, ground up by
inches on hard, sliding pavements, overloaded and abused; horses that
died for their country on the field of battle, or wore out their
constitutions in carrying noble generals through field and flood,
without once flinching from the hardest duty; or _my_ horse, old
Charley, the first horse that I ever owned; of racing stock, large,
raw-boned, too fiery for anybody's driving but my own, and as docile to
my voice as my child was?"
[Illustration: POLISHED WOODS.
CHICAGO:
A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER.
Hungarian Ash. White Walnut.
Cherry. Bird's-eye Maple.
Mahogany. Oak.]