eminent clergyman, wIuj <lcclares thai 'it they underhland what misery in the 

 bird reahn this costs, the world must lose its respect for them." These are bold 

 words, dear friend^. Ho yn w. .iKJcr I say the world's ideals of women are in 

 grave peril? 



I have referred to the J.ond(iM clergyman who thus addressed his congrega- 

 tion. "Some of you, my friends, followers of the gentle Christ, come to worship 

 wearing aigrette plumes. Do you realize that this aigrette is called the 'maternity 

 plume' because it only grows on the bird at the time of nesting, and to obtain 

 one such feather involves not only the cruel death of the beautiful mother heron, 

 but the whole nestful of newly born birds? What a price to pay! What a 

 travesty upon religion to stand and sing 'O, all ye fowls of the air ye the Lord, 

 praise Him and magnify Him forever!'' 



Dear friends, how can we pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on 

 earth as it is in heaven'' when we are wearing an aigrette on our hat? Do we 

 not know that we hinder the coming of His kingdom upon earth and the con- 

 summation of His will when we needlessly inflict pain? Is it His "will" that 

 these snowy nuptial plumes shall be torn from the still living, quivering body 

 for our so-called adornment? Was it His will that that good man and kind 

 husband and father, Guy Bradley, who had been established warden over a 

 little colony of these birds in Florida, that they might not be utterly lost to us, 

 should be killed by these brutal plume hunters that we might possess these 

 ornaments? His "will," who is "tenderer than a mother"? And can we 

 doubt we are fostering the lower instincts of the men and bovs who are mur- 

 dering these innocents the world over for our sake? Is it not of such stuff that 

 criminals are made ? 



And, friends, what of our husbands and sons, and their ideals of woman- 

 hood, and the risk we run of falling from our high place in their reverence? 

 They understand now the brutal methods by which the aigrette is obtained, yet 

 we wives and mothers dare to look into their faces with the satin breast of 

 a tern or sea gull shading our unshamed eyes ! 



Do you remember how stirred with righteous indignation the souls of decent 

 people were over the disgraceful scenes at the Long Island shooting matches 

 about eight years ago, and how that little, sensitive-souled boy who witnessed the 

 revolting pastime went into convulsions and became insane over the memory of 

 the massacre of the doves? 



"And tliis is the dove, whose progenetrix flew 

 Over world-whelming water the Earth to renew ! 

 With crippled wing drooping, its beak shot away — 

 A crime, not at midnight, but done in full day. 

 And this is a land that Humanity peoples : 

 And whose heaven is hid by confusion of steeples !" 



Our attitude toward the bird is against our American traditions, our national 

 spirit, and our boasted ideas of liberty. North, South, East, West, our gates swing 

 wide — too wide — to whosoever will enter. Here the stranger is admitted to full 



809 



