SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by MABEL OSQOOD W^RIQHT 

 Address all communications to the Editor of the School Department, National 

 Association of Au'liibon Societies, 141 Broadway, New York City 



A LITTLE CHRISTMAS SERMON FOR TEACHERS 



IT has been the habit of recent years, when we wish to hold the attention- 

 of the farmer, or any one else who seems particularly keen about the 

 material side of life, to plead for the bird from the side of its economic 

 value. Of course, this side of the question is very important, as fixing the 

 status of the bird as a citizen and a laborer in the republic, who is worthy of 

 his hire, and, therefore, has a right to protection and a living. 



It seems to me, however, that there is such a thing as pushing the economic 

 side of the question too far; or perhaps it is better to say, sometimes in the 

 wTong quarter and at the wrong season. 



This is undoubtedly an age of marvelous material progress, but of inade- 

 quate intellectual and spiritual development. Should we not then boldly and 

 without qualification plead for the birds through their ethical qualities of song 

 and beauty? For is not beauty the visible form of the spiritual? 



Not long ago, I was trying to convince a farmer, sufificiently of the new 

 school to have many of the modern appliances of his craft, on the necessity 

 of leaving nesting-places for birds in bushes, about his fences, and in odd 

 corners; of the wisdom of reducing the number of barn-cats, putting out food 

 in winter, and leaving a few shocks of buckwheat for the chance game birds 

 that might stray up from the brush lots. 



I w^as growing quite pleased with my own eloquence when a peculiar smile 

 on my listener's face brought me to an abrupt stop. At first, I thought the 

 man wished to ask a question, and then I read the curve of the eyebrows and 

 twitching of the lip corners to mean an amused tolerance that quite quenched 

 my ardor. 



"Of course there's truth in what you say," he mused, "and government 

 facts behind it; and yet no facts lie so loud as some of these same ones about 

 birds. I don't allow shooting or nest-hunting on the farm, and never did before 

 there was a law about it, so there are plenty of birds. All the same, if I just 

 stood by and waited for them to do my chores of potato-bug picking, and 

 hunting cutworms and spraying for currant and canker worms, and tree 

 blight, I should be standing barefoot instead of in a good pair of boots. 



"It isn't all because there are less birds, that the crops are bug-pestered to 

 death; it's partly because more stuff is grown, and there is more cleared land 

 and more disease and blight, as the soil gets old. 



(253) 



