THE RULER WITH THE IRON HAND
But evil is wrought by want of thought
As well as want of heart.
--_Hood._
One morning as we flew across the open space which lay between the wood
and the wheat fields, we noticed two gentlemen in the orchard who were
carefully examining the trees, peering curiously into the cracks of the
rough bark or unfolding the curled leaves.
As we came nearer we discovered that one of them was the owner of the
place, the father of Miss Dorothy and Miss Katie. The other was a thin
gentleman in spectacles, who held a magnifying glass through which he
intently looked at a twig which he had broken off.
After a few minutes' inspection he said: "Colonel, your orchard is
somewhat affected. This is a specimen of the _chionaspis furfuris_."
"Is it anything like the scurfy-bark louse?" inquired the colonel.
"The same thing exactly. It occurs more commonly in the apple, but it
infects the pear and peach trees. You will find it on the mountain
ash, and sometimes on the currant bushes," he answered.
The colonel asked him if he would recommend spraying to get rid of the
pests, and was advised to begin immediately, using tobacco water or
whale-oil soap.
"By the way," said the colonel, "there is a beetle attacking my shade
trees. They are ruining that fine row of elms in front of the lawn."
"It is undoubtedly the _melolontha vulgaris_," said the professor. I
designate him in this way because he used such large words we did not
understand. My mother told us that she was positive he was president
of a college. "The _melolontha vulgaris_ is the most destructive of
beetles, but the larvae are still more injurious. They do incalculable
damage to the farmer. Fortunately enormous numbers of these grubs are
eaten by the birds."
"Unfortunately the birds are not so numerous as they used to be. They
are being destroyed so rapidly, more's the pity! These grounds and
woods yonder were formerly alive with birds of all kinds. Flocks of
the purple grakle used to follow the plow and eat up the worms at a
great rate. You are familiar with their habits? You know they are
most devoted parents. I have often watched them feeding their young.
The little ones have such astonishingly good appetites that it keeps
the old folks busy to supply them with enough to eat. They work like
beavers as long as daylight lasts, going to and from the fields
carrying on each return trip a fat grub or a toothsome grasshopper."
"I am a great lover of birds," returned the professor enthusiastically,
"and I find them very interesting subjects of study. By the way, I was
reading the other day a little incident connected with one of America's
great men which impressed me deeply. The story goes that he was one
day walking in company with some noted statesmen, busily engaged in
conversation. But he was not too much occupied to notice that a young
bird had fallen from its nest near the path where they were walking.
He stopped short and crossing over to where the bird was lying,
tenderly picked it up and put it back into its nest. There was a
gentleman of a noble nature! No wonder that man was a leader and a
liberator!"
"Who was he?"
"The grand, the great Abraham Lincoln," responded the professor
impressively.
"Well, he'd be the very one to do just such a kind deed as that," was
the colonel's hearty response. "No man ever lived who had a bigger,
more merciful heart than 'Honest Abe.'"
For myself I did not know who Abraham Lincoln was. I had never heard
the name before, but I was quite sure from the proud tone of the
professor's voice that he was a distinguished man, as I was equally
sure from the story of his pity for the helpless bird, that he was a
good man.
"You mentioned the industry of the grakle a moment ago," resumed the
professor. "Do you know that the redwing is equally as useful, and
besides he is a delightful singer?
"The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee.
"Do you remember that line, colonel?" and the professor softly whistled
a strain in imitation of a bird's note. "The services of our little
brothers of the air are exceedingly valuable to the horticulturist.
And think of the damage done to arboriculture by the woodborers alone
were it not for the help given by the birds. Did you ever notice those
borers at work, colonel? Some writer has well described them as
animated gimlets. They just stick their pointed heads into the bark
and turn their bodies around and around and out pours a little stream
of sawdust. The birds would pick off such pests fast enough if people
would only give them a chance and not scare them off with shotguns."
"Yes, the birds earn their way, there is no denying it, and he is a
very stupid farmer who begrudges them the little corn and wheat they
take from the fields. The account is more than balanced by the good
they do." Then the conversation ceased, for the colonel and his friend
moved off to inspect the quince bushes.
Pleased by the praises they had bestowed on us for our efforts in
cleaning the fruit trees and cornfields of injurious insects, I went to
work with new vigor to get out some bugs for my luncheon, and was thus
pleasantly employed when a sharp twitter from my mother attracted my
attention.
"Look, children!" she exclaimed. "Here come our young ladies with some
company from the city. Be careful to notice what they have on their
heads and then tell me what you think of our sweet, pretty ladies."
One of my brothers was swaying lightly on a little swing below me. I
flew down hastily and placed myself on the next bough, where I could
also get a good view of the ladies as they strolled toward us. They
were in a very merry mood and each one seemed striving to say something
more arousing than her companions. Miss Dorothy led the way, her arm
linked in that of one of the stranger guests. Then followed the others
with Miss Katie and Marian hand in hand in the rear. They were all
very handsomely dressed, and having just returned from a drive had not
yet removed their hats.
As they came under the tree where we were perched, which was a favorite
spot with Miss Katie, they halted for some time and consequently I had
an excellent opportunity to look, as my mother had bidden me.
And what did I see?
I saw six ladies' hats trimmed with dead birds. Fastened on sidewise,
head downward, on one was a magnificent scarlet tanager, his body half
concealed by folds of tulle, his fixed eye staring into vacancy. On
another was the head and breast of a beautiful yellow-hammer; it was
surmounted by the tall sweeping plumes of the egret, which this bird
produces only at breeding time. Oh, how much joy and beauty the world
had lost by that cruel deed! A third hat had two song sparrows
imprisoned in meshes of star-studded lace. Their blithesome carol had
been rudely silenced, their cheer to the world cut short, simply that
they might be used for hat trimming. Of the remaining ones some were
as yet unknown to me, but my mother, who had an extensive acquaintance
with foreign birds, said that in that strange murderous mixture of
millinery, far-away Australia had furnished the filmy feathers of the
lyre bird which swept upward from a knot of ribbons, and that the
forests of Germany had contributed the pretty green linnet. Dove's
wings and the rosy breast of the grosbeak completed the barbarous
display.
How my heart sickened as I gazed at these pleasant, refined,
soft-voiced women flaunting the trophies of their cruelty in the
beautiful sunlight.
Had they no compassion for the feathered mother who had been robbed of
her young for the sake of a hat?
"Oh, how can they do such dreadful, such wicked things!" I moaned. My
mother heard my lament and signaled for us to come up where she was
perching.
"You see now who are our worst enemies," said she. "The cat preys on
us to satisfy his bodily hunger, but women have no such excuse. We are
not slaughtered to sustain their lives but to minister to their vanity.
For years the women of Christian lands have waged their unholy war
against us. We have been driven from our old haunts and forced to seek
new places. We have been shot down by thousands every season until now
many species are destroyed from the face of the earth. There is no
security for us in any place. The hunter with his gun penetrates into
the deepest forests, he perils his life in scaling the most dangerous
cliffs, he wades through bog and marsh and mud and tracks us to our
feeding grounds to surprise us with the deadly shot, and kills the
mother hovering over the nest of her helpless offspring with as little
compunction as if she were a poisonous reptile instead of a melodious
joy-giver. And all this horrible slaughter is for women."
I grew feverish with excitement at this terrible arraignment of the
"gentler sex."
"But why are they so cruel? Why do they do this wicked thing?" I asked.
"For the sake of Fashion," said my mother.
"Fashion, what is that?"
My mother was very patient with me, so when I asked questions she did
not put me off by telling me she didn't know, or advise me to fly away
and play, or tell me she was busy and couldn't be bothered just then,
therefore she now took pains to make me understand.
"You ask me what is Fashion," she began. "Well, Fashion is an exacting
ruler, a great, tyrannical god who has many, many worshipers, and these
he rules with an iron hand. His followers cannot be induced to do
anything contrary to his wishes. He sits on a high throne from which
he dictates to his slaves what they must do. Often they do the most
outrageous things, not because they like to, but because he demands it.
He is constantly laying down new laws for their guidance, and some of
these laws are so unreasonable and absurd that a part of his followers
frequently threaten to rebel. They do not hold out against him long,
for he manages to make it quite unpleasant for those who disobey him or
refuse to come under his yoke."
"Has he any men slaves?" asked my brother.
"Yes, he has some slaves among men, but the larger number of those who
wear his most galling fetters are women. If he but crooks his little
finger these bond-women rush pell-mell in the direction he points.
They are thus keen to do his bidding, because each woman who is the
first to carry out his rules in her own particular town or neighborhood
acquires great distinction in the eyes of the other worshipers."
"His slaves are nearly always rich women, aren't they?" asked my
brother.
"By no means. Many of them are poor working women who have to labor
hard for a living. But they will rob themselves of necessities and
needed rest to get the means to follow his demands. Often it takes
them a long time to do this, and perhaps just as they have accomplished
the weary task he suddenly proclaims a new law, and all this toiling
and drudging and stinting must begin over again. In this way the
unhappy creatures have never a breathing spell. It is utterly
impossible for them to conform to the new law when it is first
proclaimed by the god, and so they are always struggling to keep up.
Their chains are never lifted or lightened a particle."
"If the chain is so heavy why don't they break it?" I asked impatiently.
"Because they are afraid," she replied.
"Afraid of the god?"
"No, no, child, they are afraid of each other. They are afraid the
richer slaves, who are able to comply with the demands will laugh at
them and ridicule them, and that is why they strain every nerve to
follow the god's wishes. A slave, whether she is rich or poor, grows
more cringing year by year, until at last she loses all her
individuality, and becomes a mere echo of the god."
"What about the slaves who rebel at first and afterward yield?"
"Oh, they denounce the god very severely when he lays down some new law
they don't happen to like, but as all the other slaves are obediently
complying with it they dislike to be set off by themselves as
different, and so they reluctantly give in after a time. Sometimes
they try to compromise with the god by going half-way."
I inquired what the other slaves thought of that.
"They mildly tolerate them," said she. "Sometimes they look askance at
them when they meet, and try to show their superiority as being
obedient, full-blooded, genuine slaves, while the others are only
lukewarm servants of the monarch!"
I wondered how the slaves regarded the woman who was independent and
wouldn't worship the god.
My mother twittered softly at my question, and I knew she was smiling
to herself. "Why," said she, "they call that kind of a woman a
crank--whatever that is."
It was very evident that this god Fashion was a cruel tyrant, and it
was clearly through his influence that we were killed, and I so told my
mother. She looked very sorrowful as she replied:
"Yes, the women do not hate us. They do not dislike to hear our pretty
songs; they have no revenge to gratify; but the god orders them to have
us killed, and they do it. He tells them that to wear our poor
mutilated dead bodies will add to their appearance, and so we are
sacrificed on the altar of their vanity and silly pride. As members of
humane societies women have denounced the docking of horses' tails as
cruel, but from what I know of woman's indifference to the sufferings
of the innocent birds, I venture to assert that were Fashion to say
that she should trim her cloak with horse tails there would not be left
an undocked horse in the country."
I knew my mother was very excited or she would never have been so
vehement.
"Just hear how those birds twitter," remarked one of the ladies,
looking up into our tree. "One would think they were holding an
indignation meeting over something."
"Yes, the dear little things; I love to hear them chirp," commented
Miss Katie, turning a sweet glance toward us, and then the party moved
to go and we saw the six hats loaded with their mournful freight file
off to the house. We followed the retreating hats with sad eyes till
they were lost to view.
My brother broke the silence by asking, "Are there any Christian women
who wear birds, and are among the god's worshipers?"
My mother's manner grew very grave and solemn. "That is not for me to
say," she replied. "They know whether they are guiltless of our
wholesale slaughter, and they know too, how the gentle, merciful Christ
regarded us when he declared that 'not a sparrow is forgotten before
God.'"