"It is iKJt :i hit worse," \vc say, "to kill hir(l>> to wear for ornament than to 

 eat as food ; we kill the poor little lamhs, and seals, and kids, and furry things ; we 

 should never kill a hird ourselves, of course, and we don't tell men to do it; hut 

 they are already dead when we huy them ; some one else would purchase them 

 if we didn't ; hesides we already had these aigrettes, and hate to thrtnv them 

 away ; and anvway we think ours are not real aigrettes — just whaleh(jne ; mo>t 

 of the feathers women wear are from harnyard fowls ; and don't you think 

 all this talk ahout the cruelty is generally exaggerated? I d(jn't helieve all 

 I read ahout it, and as for the men. who do all the killing, and some of it 

 for mere pastime — well, they had hetter keep still!" 



I'Viends, it is not exaggerated: the half has not heen told, and the world 

 refuses to "keep still." 



Good taste and mere cold relinement should make us hesitate to provoke 

 such criticism as the New York Tribune — one of numhcrless newspapers — pro- 

 nounces, where it says: "For women to persist in the cruel and harbarous 

 fashion in face of all the j)ublishcd facts is to enact a defiance, or so it must be 

 interpreted." 



Have you read, and did you shiver as we did over the action of the forestry 

 committee of women in St. Louis, to whom the State Federation referred the 

 Audubon pledge? Utterly blind to, and apparently ignorant of, the economic 

 relation between the insect, the bird and the tree which it is supposed to be the 

 object of a forestry committee to preserve, the secretary airily remarked: "I 

 must refuse to subscribe in that sort of thing, because if I want to wear an 

 aigrette I shall certainly do so, and my conscience won't hurt me a particle," and 

 the chairman agreed that "we must refuse to advocate the pledge, for I intend 

 to wear one of those very things on my hat" — and the newspaper that chronicled 

 this decision added: "The club women of St. Louis will uphold the forestry 

 committee in this action." 



It is the manner of this decision, the effrontery, the defiance of public senti- 

 ment by women, that hurts most in this occurrence. I think if our "Recording 

 Angel" has not grown too hardened to weep she must have shed tears over this 

 record. I tell you I am acquainted with grief, but I have rarely experienced more 

 poignant sadness and shame than when I read this. I felt, I say it in all rever- 

 ence, some faint touch of the horror that the people of old experienced when 

 darkness fell upon the land that day the Son of God was crucified. I felt that 

 those St. Louis women were nailing the world's ideals upon a cross ! 



I turned with something like a sob of relief from that cricifixion scene of 

 the forestry committee of St. Louis to the noble example of Mme. Lilli Lehman, 

 the world- famed singer, who long ago began her humane battle for, and raised 

 her beautiful voice in defense of the birds. She has come to even deny herself 

 feather pillows out of a gentle tenderness for the birds. She reserves no sacrifice 

 on their behalf. 



Extreme, do you say? Perhaps, if we can carry tenderness too far in a 

 world that needs it so much; but I would to God there were more such gentle 



811 



