14 BEAUTIFUL “BIRDS 
feed them any more. For it is just at the time 
when the birds lay their eggs and rear their young 
ones that their plumage is most beautiful—most 
exquisitely beautiful—and it was just this most 
exquisitely beautiful plumage that the women, whose 
hearts the wicked little demon had frozen, wanted 
to put into their hats. They knew that to get it 
the young fledgling birds must starve in their nests. 
But they did not mind that now, their hearts were 
frozen and the Goddess of Pity was asleep. 
So the birds were killed, and the lovely, painted 
feathers that had lighted up whole forests or made a 
country beautiful, were pressed close together into dark 
ugly boxes—or things like boxes—called “crates” (large 
it is true, but not guize so large asa forest or a country), 
and then brought over the seas in ships, to dark, ugly 
houses, where they were taken out and flung in a 
great heap on the floor. Soon they were sewn into 
hats which were set out in the windows of milliners’ 
shops for the women with the frozen hearts to buy. 
You may see such hats now, any time you walk about 
the streets of London—or of Paris or Vienna, if you 
go there—for the Goddess of Pity is still sleeping, 
she has not woken up yet. There you will see 
them, and outside the window, looking at them— 
sometimes in a great crowd—you will see those poor 
women that the demon has treated so badly. There 
