White Egrets, "Ospreys," and Ostrich-Feathers
The last bird I am going to tell you about is the White Egret. But, do
you know, I am not quite sure if he is beautiful enough to be put in a
book of beautiful birds, because, of course, a book of beautiful birds
means a book of _the_ most beautiful birds that there are, and I am not
_quite_ sure if the White Egret is so beautiful as all that. At any
rate he is not so beautiful as the birds I have been telling you about,
and there are many other birds in the world that I have _not_ told you
about, that are more beautiful than he is. So, perhaps, you will wonder
why I put him into the book at all, but I will soon give you a proper
explanation of it. In the first place, if the White Egret is not one of
the most beautiful birds in the world, yet, at any rate, he has some of
the most beautiful feathers that any bird has, and that alone, I think,
gives him a right to be here, because, you know, "fine feathers make
fine birds." And, in the second place, this poor bird is so shot and
killed and persecuted for these beautiful feathers of his, that, unless
you were to get your mother to make that promise about him, there would
soon be no such thing as a White Egret left in the world. He and his
feathers would both be gone.
But now, perhaps, you will say that if "fine feathers make fine birds,"
then beautiful feathers must make beautiful birds, too, and so the
White Egret must be a beautiful bird. Oh, yes, he is. You are quite
right. I did not mean that he was not a beautiful bird at all. All I
meant was that he was not quite so beautiful as the Birds of Paradise
and the Humming-birds, and birds like that--birds that look as if they
had flown into a jeweller's shop, and then flown out again with all the
best part of the jewellery upon them. Whether he is not as beautiful as
some of the other birds we have talked about--but I will not say which,
for fear of offending them--that I am not quite so sure of; but, at any
rate, he is beautiful.
[Illustration: THE WHITE EGRET]
Oh, yes, he is quite a beautiful bird, is the White Egret; and now I
will describe him to you. I shall not have any colours to tell you
about, because he is all white--which of course you will have guessed
from his name--but you know how beautiful white can be. You will not
have forgotten the little Humming-bird who was made still more
beautiful than he had been before, by three snowflakes falling upon
him. But, with this bird, it is as if the snow had fallen all over
him and covered him up, for he is white all over, a beautiful, soft,
silky white, as pure and delicate as the snow itself. Only his shape,
perhaps, is a little funny--at least you might think so--for he has a
pair of long, thin, stilty legs, and a long, thin, snaky neck, and a
long, sharp, pointed beak, so that all three of these together make him
a tall, thin, stilty bird. "Something like a stork, that is," you will
say, for you will have seen pictures of storks, even if you have not
seen one alive in the Zoological Gardens--which is a very bad place for
him, _I_ think. Well, this bird _is_ something like a stork, but he is
a great deal more like a heron, that long-legged, long-necked bird that
stands for hours in the water, waiting for a fish to come near it, so
that it may catch it and swallow it; for the heron, you know, lives on
fish and frogs, and things of that sort.
Yes, he is very like a heron, and, do you know, there is a very
good reason for that, because the White Egret _is_ a heron. Some
birds, I must tell you, have names which are like our surnames, and
show the family they belong to. As long as you only know a boy's or
girl's Christian name--Reginald or Bertram or Dorothy or Norah or
Wilhelmina--you don't know a bit what family they belong to; but as
soon as you know their _surnames_--Smith or Brown or Jones or Thompson
or Robinson--why then you do--and it is just the same with birds. Heron
is really a surname, only the bird that has it, here in England, has
not a Christian name as well--unless "common" is one, for he is called
the Common Heron. But White Egret is a Christian name and the surname
to it is Heron--for the White Egret belongs to the Heron family. That
is why he is so tall and gaunt and stilty, for a heron is always like
that--it is the family figure--and so now, when I tell you that _he_
stands in the water and catches fish, you will know why he does that,
too; fish is the family dish, and no heron would think of going without
it, for long.
But now, let me tell you about those beautiful feathers which the
poor White Egret has. They grow only on his back--about the middle of
it--and droop down to a little way over his tail, so that they are
a foot or more long. You remember what I explained to you about the
feathers in the tail of the Lyre-bird, and those that make the plumes
in the beautiful Birds of Paradise--how the barbs of the feather on
each side of the quill have no barbules to hold them together, so that
they fall apart and wave about like beautiful, soft, silky threads. If
you have forgotten, then you must look back for it, because I should
not explain it better here than I do there, and, besides, it would
be twice over. Well, these feathers are made in the same way, only
they are of a pure, shining white--like all the rest of this birds
plumage--and although they are as soft as silk they are stiff at the
same time, and so smooth that they look like the delicate flakings from
a piece of beautiful, pure, polished ivory. Imagine a little fountain
of ivory threads all shooting up together into the air, quite straight
at first, and then bending over and drooping down in the most delicate,
graceful way imaginable. That is what a plume of those feathers looks
like, when they have been taken out and tied together, but I wish,
myself, that they did not look nearly so beautiful, for it is because
of those beautiful plumes, that the poor bird is being killed and
killed and becoming scarcer and scarcer, every day. For the women whose
hearts the little demon has frozen, wear these plumes in their hats and
in their hair, and they are called "ospreys," and are very fashionable
indeed.
Soldiers, too, used to wear them in their caps, but _they_ have
given up doing so. It is only the frozen-hearted women who are
killing the poor White Egrets now--but ah, there are so many of them
(the women I mean, not the Egrets). I have sat at the entrance of
a large concert-hall, and counted the faces that had these lovely
egret-plumes--these beautiful, fashionable "ospreys," so white and
yet so blood-stained--nodding above them--counted them as they
came in and as they went out, young faces, old faces, soft faces,
hard faces, shrivelled faces, puckered faces, painted faces, plain
faces, ugly faces, quite dreadful faces--ah, what numbers of them
there were! It was quite difficult to count them all. Every now and
again there would be a pretty face, and I used to count _those_
separately--one--two--three--four--five--sometimes up to half-a-dozen.
That was not so tiring, but, you see, I had to count them all.
Oh, wise but wicked little demon, who blew his bad powders into the
hearts of _all_ the women! There were two kinds, you know, and one of
them was "Vanity." Now if it had been a man--however wicked a one--I
feel sure that he would have looked about for the women with the
_pretty_ faces, and who were rather young, to blow _that_ powder into.
But the little demon was wiser, in his own wicked way. He did not go
about, looking and looking. He blew it into _all_ their hearts, and
that gave him no trouble at all.
Now, I must tell you that there are two different kinds of White
Egrets, with these beautiful feathers that the women with the frozen
hearts wear. One is much larger than the other, and is called the
Great White Egret. He is quite a big bird, larger even than our common
heron--and you know what a big bird _he_ is. The other one, which is
called the Small White Egret, is not more than half the size of the
great one, but his feathers are the most beautiful, so that, though
he has not nearly so many of them, he is worth nearly twice as much
money. That means, of course, that the servants of the wicked little
demon, who shoot him and sell his feathers, can get nearly twice as
much money for them as they can for the feathers of the other one. So,
of course, they like shooting him best, but they are very glad to shoot
the other one--the Great White Egret--too, for even _his_ feathers
are worth a good deal. Now, if the wicked little demon had not frozen
the hearts of women, they would never want to wear feathers that cost
the lives of the poor birds to whom they belong--because, you know,
women are, _really_, so kind. Then, of course, those feathers that are
so beautiful would not be worth anything (as it is called), and so
men would not shoot the White Egrets, because they would not be able
to sell their feathers. I am afraid they would have no better reason
for not doing so than that, because men, you know, are not kind and
pitiful--as women are, if only their hearts are not frozen. But, at any
rate, the White Egrets would be left alive.
And you must not think that their feathers would _really_ not be worth
anything, then. When we talk of a thing not being worth anything, what
we really mean is that we cannot sell it for money. Now what are things
that you cannot sell for money? I will tell you three. There is the
sky, and the air, and the sunlight. You cannot buy or sell them, but
do you think they are not worth anything! _I_ think they are worth a
good deal. Then there is a good temper; nobody can buy that, but yet
what a lot it is worth! Now if the beautiful feathers of the White
Egret could not be sold, because the world was better and there were no
frozen-hearted women to buy them, yet they would be worth something,
although it would not be money. They would be worth love and pity
and sympathy and interest and real admiration (which never wants to
kill), for all those things would be given to the beautiful bird with
its beautiful feathers, and it would be just because of those things
that no one would think of killing him. His feathers, then, would be
like the smiles on a face. You cannot take those _out_ of the face,
and put them in a hat. If you could, then some one would soon say to
you: "Will you part with a few of your smiles? They are fashionable
in hats just now; I will give you, for a nice, bright one--let me
see--half-a-crown." Then you might say that a nice, bright smile was
worth half-a-crown. But I think it is worth much more where it is, in
your face, though you cannot take it out and get half-a-crown for it.
Smiles are not bought for money in _that_ way, but you must remember
that what is not worth money is often worth much better things. That is
why I wish the feathers of the poor White Egrets were not worth even
a penny. If they were not, then, if you were to go to the countries
where they live, you would see those feathers on the birds themselves,
where they look most beautiful, and you could watch the birds (with
the feathers on them) flying through the air, or perched in trees, or
walking about in the water and catching fish in it, or building their
nests, or feeding their young, or doing all sorts of other interesting
and amusing things. And they would not be so rare then; in fact they
would be quite common, so that you would not have to go into such
out-of-the-way places--yes, and such unhealthy places too--in order to
see them. No, they would be all about, so that they would often come
to see _you_, instead of your going to see _them_; sometimes, even,
they might come into your garden--for why should you not have a garden
in another country?--and walk about on the lawn. Think how interesting
that would be, and how pretty it would look!--and all because those
beautiful white feathers would not be worth anything.
But, because they are worth a good deal, men who would kill every bird
in the world for money go out with guns, and shoot these poor White
Egrets whenever and wherever they see them. And, because of this,
they are only to be found, now, in swamps and places where you, and
most other sensible people, do not like to go; so that, now, the only
people who ever see these beautiful birds are just the servants of the
demon, who murder them as soon as they see them. You and I, and others
like us, who would like to look at them, and admire them, and watch
their ways, and learn all about them, cannot do so, cannot see them
at all, cannot even imagine them, unless in swamps, and being shot.
Yet once they were quite common, so that everybody might look at them.
Now they are getting rarer and rarer, so that very soon, if we do not
do something about it quickly, there will be no more of them left in
the world. How dreadful that is to think of! If you were to see a very
beautiful picture, or statue, and then, afterwards, you were to hear
that it had been destroyed, you would feel sorry, would you not? And
not only you, but all the world would. I feel perfectly sure that if
Sir Edwin Landseer, who (as your mother will tell you) was a great
animal artist, had painted a White Egret, everybody would think it
quite shocking if it were to be burnt or torn up. You would hear people
say (and they would be quite right to say so): "Oh, it is dreadful, it
is quite dreadful to think of! It can never be replaced! There is no
such other artist! To think of such a masterpiece being destroyed!"
Now, when all the White Egrets (and let me tell you they are _all_
masterpieces) have been destroyed, it will be quite impossible to
replace any one of them; so that that kind of bird--or any other kind
of bird or animal that has been shot and shot till there are no more
of it left--will have gone in just the same way that a picture goes,
when you burn it or tear it to pieces. But is there any picture of a
bird or animal, that is so beautiful or so wonderful as that bird or
animal itself? And is there any artist so great as the artist who made
it, who made that bird or animal, that picture with a life inside it?
You know who _that_ artist is, you know _His_ name--or if you do not,
your mother will tell you. I have called Him Dame Nature, but that is
only just a way of talking. He has another name, greater than that. He
is a much greater artist than Sir Edwin Landseer (or even Raphael or
Phidias), but I am afraid there are not many people who really know
that He is. Perhaps He is too great to be appreciated. That sometimes
happens, even amongst ourselves.
Well, these poor White Egrets--these masterpieces that are always
being destroyed--are birds that live, mostly, in America--in Mexico,
and California, and Florida, and, I think, all over South and Central
America. They live in the swamps and lagunes--as they are called--of
the great forests, where trees grow all about in the water--such dark,
gloomy, wonderful places--and the servants of the little demon, whose
business it is to kill them, have to follow them to those places, and
live there, too. Of course it is very unhealthy for them, and they
often die there; but the women with the frozen hearts do not mind that,
any more than they mind the Egrets being shot. They want the feathers,
and when they pay for the feathers they pay for the lives as well--for
they are honest, although their hearts have been frozen.
Perhaps you will wonder how men can live at all, in such places as
those. Of course, as it is all water, they have to live in boats or
canoes, and as soon as they have found out a pool or creek, where the
White Egrets come to catch fish, or some trees where they have built
their nests, they cover their boats over with reeds or rushes or ferns
or the branches of trees, so that, even though you were to come quite
close to them, you would not think they were boats at all, but only
part of the forest. That is what the poor White Egrets think, for the
men sit in their covered-up boats, quite silently--without speaking a
word--and, as soon as they come near enough to them, fire at them and
kill them.
And now I will tell you another dreadful thing, which makes the killing
of these poor birds more cruel even than you will have thought it was,
though I am sure you will have thought it cruel enough. I have spoken
of their having nests, so, of course, there will often be young ones
in those nests, who cannot feed themselves, but have to be fed by the
parent birds. What do the young ones do when the parent birds--their
own fathers and mothers--have been shot? I will tell you. They starve.
That is what they do, and that is what the women with the frozen
hearts, who wear these feathers, know that they do--for they have been
told so, now, often enough. Is it not terrible? For those pure, white,
beautiful feathers, not only have the grown birds been killed, but the
young ones--their children--have starved--starved slowly--in the nest
where they were born. Day after day they had looked out from it, to
see their father or mother come flying to them, with something to eat;
day after day they had not seen them, and when the night came--oh,
they were so hungry! Before, how glad they used to be when they saw
the great, white wings come floating to them, slowly, through the
air, like a silver sun, like a broad, white, silken sail. Nearer and
nearer they came, and then there was a cry of greeting, and such _good_
appetites for breakfast or dinner. Their appetites were just as good
now--indeed better, for they were starving--but where was father or
mother, where were the broad, white wings, the silken sail, the great
silver sun? Oh, how they strained their eyes and stretched their poor,
little, long necks over the side of the nest, to try to see them, to
see if they were not coming, if there was only a speck of white in the
distance! But they saw nothing, for father and mother had both been
shot. And, now, they grew so weak with hunger that they could not hold
their heads up, any more. They laid them down in the nest, and their
eyes closed, and their poor little voices only came in whispers, "Feed
us! feed us!"--they had been screams before. Then even the whispers
ceased, the beaks could not be opened, and slowly, slowly they starved.
And those are the feathers--feathers that have been got in that
way--which the poor women whose hearts the little demon has frozen,
wear in their hats. In those hats they go out to concerts, and hear
songs that are all of love and tenderness, and music that seems to have
been made by the angels in heaven; in those hats they go to meetings
that are held, perhaps, for some good and just thing--to save people
from being killed, or children from being starved--some of them may
even speak at such meetings--and in those hats, those very hats; in
those hats, too, they go to church, they kneel down in them, and they
pray--yes, _pray_.
Oh, it is wonderful--wonderful! In Africa, where the people believe in
witchcraft, one man will throw a spell upon another man that he hates,
so that wherever that man goes and whatever he does, he always sees his
face, his enemy's face. There it is, always before him, and, at last,
he gets so tired of seeing it that he dies, or even kills himself.
Of course, he does not _really_ see the face, and his enemy does not
_really_ cast a spell upon him, because there is no such thing as
witchcraft, _really_; it is all superstition, as I think you know. But
as the one man _thinks_ he sees the face, and the other man _thinks_ he
is casting a spell upon him, and making him see it, it comes to very
nearly--if not quite--the same thing as if it were real, especially as
the one man does _really_ die. Ah, if those hats could cast a spell
(not quite the same one as that, but something like it), if, wherever
the women who wore them went--whether it was to concerts where they
heard beautiful music, or to meetings where good things were talked
about, or to church where they kneeled down and prayed--they always
saw a picture of a nest, with young birds in it, starving--slowly
starving! if it was always there, always before them--that pitiful
picture--and if the voices came, too--the screams, and then the
whispers--"Feed us! feed us!" then, I think, they would take off those
hats, and they would not wear them any more. They need not die or kill
themselves, they would only have to take off those hats.
And they will do that now, because you and every little child in the
world will have asked them to. Yes, they will do it now. They will
take off those hats--those hats of starvation and murder, of terrible
and shameful cruelty--they will leave off wearing them, they will
never put them on, again. Those plumes called "ospreys," that one sees
everywhere--in streets and in shop-windows, at concerts, at meetings,
and in churches--that bend above fine sentiments, that wave over
charities and goodnesses, and tremble, softly, in the breath that
prayers are made of--they will tear them out of their hats and out of
their hair--yes, and out of their hearts too. They will hate them,
they will loathe them, and when they say, next time, in church, upon
their knees, "Give us this day our daily bread," they will try not to
remember them, or only to think that they are unfashionable.
Oh, make them unfashionable! for you have not yet, you have not said
"promise" yet. Oh, then, at once, at once! Break the spell of the
demon, that spell that is so real and so cruel, that spell that kills
the soul. Thaw the poor frozen heart, thaw it with your own warm one,
with your lips, with your soft hands and arms. Thaw it with the tears
in your eyes, as they look up, thaw it with the words that you say,
"Mother, do not kill parents, and make children starve! Mother, do not
wear 'ospreys!' Oh, mother, promise, promise!"
So, now, we have saved the White Egrets, as well as all those other
birds that I have been telling you of, and that your mother has
promised about. But does that save all the beautiful birds in the
world? Oh no, for there are ever so many more than I have been able
to say anything about, in a little book like this, more--oh, a great
many more--than all the Birds of Paradise, and all the Humming-birds,
and all the other ones in the other chapters--for, you know, there are
not many--put together. And though the Humming-birds and the Birds of
Paradise and the White Egrets and the others are, now, quite safe,
yet, if your mother does not promise about the rest, people will go on
killing them, till there are no more of them left in the world. Think
what that would mean! Why, besides hundreds and hundreds of beautiful
foreign birds, it would mean all the kingfishers--the star-birds (for
there has been no promise about them)--and all the chaffinches and
bullfinches and goldfinches and greenfinches--yes, and all the little
robin-redbreasts too--being shot and shot, killed and killed, till
there were no more of them left, either in England or anywhere else.
For, of course, when all the beautiful foreign birds were gone, then
the frozen-hearted women would begin to wear our own little birds,
here at home, in their hats. You would hear one lady say to another:
"I wanted to have a redbreast tippet this winter, but, my _dear_ they
are so expensive. You see, hundreds go to one, because there's only the
breast, so I'm afraid I must fall back on greenfinch. They're less, of
course; you see, there's a greater surface, and they're not quite so
rare. But I _did_ so want redbreast!" And, then, the other lady would
say: "Well, I think I should manage it if I were you, dear, for, you
know, they say there'll soon be no more real redbreast--only imitation.
So it's best to get one, whilst there's time." And you may be sure that
it would be managed somehow--things like that always are.
Well, then, but what is to be done? Do you think your mother would
make a promise about all the birds? I think she would if _you_ were
to ask her. But then, perhaps, she might think it a _little_ hard not
to wear any feathers--just at first, at any rate--although flowers
and all sorts of other things look ever so much nicer in hats. Oh,
but wait. Are there _no_ feathers that can be worn in hats without
its doing any harm at all--without any bird being killed to get
them? Why, yes, of course there are--and the very handsomest of them
all--ostrich-feathers. Ostriches are kept on farms, and twice a year,
their beautiful white and black feathers are clipped and sent to
the market. So, as they are not killed, but kept alive and fed and
taken care of, and have a very good time of it--as I can tell you
that they do, for I have lived on an ostrich-farm--I do not see any
reason why one should not wear their feathers--if one wants to. And
how beautiful their feathers are! I think, myself, that they are the
only feathers that really look nice in a hat--at any rate they are
the only ones that ever looked nice in a portrait. A portrait of a
lady in a beautiful, broad-brimmed hat, with beautiful, broad, soft
ostrich-feathers curling all round it, looks lovely; but a portrait of
a lady in a stiff little pork-pie sort of thing, with a lot of heads
and wings and tails, sticking bolt upright in it, looks _horrid_.
People, you know, always look like their portraits, as long as their
portraits are good ones--and, of course, we are not talking about bad
portraits. So I think that any _sensible_ woman, even though her heart
were frozen and she were determined to wear feathers, would only wear
ostrich-feathers. Of course, no woman whose heart the wicked little
demon had _not_ frozen would ever wear any other kind.
But there are not going to be frozen-hearted women in the world any
more, now, because their little children will soon have thawed all
their hearts, and the Goddess of pity is just beginning to wake up
again. So now, ask your dear, dear mother to make just one more
promise, just one more which will be better than all the others she has
made. Of course she could not be expected to make it quite at first,
but now, after all that you have told her, I think she will. Just go to
her and throw your arms round her neck, and whisper: "Mother, promise
not to wear _any_ feathers, except the beautiful ostrich-feathers that
you look so _lovely_ in." As soon as she has promised, then all the
beautiful birds in the world (and that means all the birds, for all
birds are beautiful) will be saved, and it is you and the other little
children who will have saved them. So, of course, you must keep on
saying "Promise" till she does.
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Archaic, obsolete, unusual and inconsistent spellings have been
maintained as in the original book. Obvious errors have been fixed as
noted below.
Page 119: spring from the top of the small
Originally: spring from the the top of the small