The Cost of a Feather 



By Mrs. Mary Smith Riley 



In pleading the cause of my "little brother of the air" today, let me impress 

 upon you that while my theme demands frankness of expression, the personal 

 element does not enter in. I am absorbed in my subject. I am never conscious 

 of this or that one wearing birds, and I pray you if you have them on your hat, 

 forget them while I speak, and let no sensitive, inhospitable spirit obtrude itself 

 between us. Let us reason together. You are more to me than many birds, and 

 if you will grant to me the loving loyalty I bring to you we shall be closer 

 together, and better friends when I am done than when I began. I am going to 

 lean hard upon your woman's sympathy, for mine is not altogether a congenial 

 task. My errand does not take me by the "primrose path." 



I have come to plead for the preservation of something infinitely dearer 

 to me and more precious to the world than birds : its ideals of womanhood ! 

 And truly, friends, they are in imminent peril. Woman has stood through the 

 centuries as embodied tenderness and sympathy. Her "gentleness has made her 

 great." Painting and sculpture represent her with the deep, maternal breast 

 within which little children and helplessness everywhere hide their tearful faces. 

 About her knees humanity clings for refuge from cruelty and wrong. She is 

 Portia, when men's arguments fail in courts of justice, and the Bible hath it 

 that only the Father above is "tenderer than a mother." 



This is the world's reverent ideal of a woman ; the pillow upon which its 

 '^u't has slept undisturbed until the present. 



And now, a cry is heard in our land, in all lands, that this ideal the world's 

 cherished possession, is being slain by woman's own hand. A whisper has risen 

 to a menace — I do not exaggerate — for do we not know that in this day, when 

 the nations of the earth are meeting together in an effort to hasten the consum- 

 mation of peace upon earth ; in this which has been called the "Woman's Cen- 

 tury," we are appealing to the courts of justice to protect one of the most innocent, 

 beautiful and useful of His creations, against the cruel vanity of woman, and, 

 women of the Federation, unless you, and I, and all good women use our influ- 

 ence against this fashion, the danger is imminent that ours will be a birdless 

 world! From seashore and forest and field the wail is swelling that where once 

 there were thousands upon thousands of useful ornamental birds, some localities 

 have been entirely depopulated. Where once the islands about Florida were white 

 with the beautiful egrets, one is now rarely seen. A picture on exhibition in New 

 York by the great painter, George Inness, represents a forest interior in Florida 

 with a solitary egret ; a prophecy of no light import. 



The press, always the champion of the helpless and oppressed, pronounces 

 the wearing of birds "degrading" and declares that women can no longer plead 

 ignorance, since this alarm has sounded through the civilized world. The pulpit 

 expresses amaze that women, supposed to be more tender than men, will allow 

 cruelties simply fiendish to be carried on at the beck of fashion. I quote an 



808 



