BE, -LOVELIEST HEATHERS OF, ALL 223 
look ever so much nicer in hats. Oh, but wait. 
Are there zo feathers that can be worn in hats 
without its doing any harm at all—without any bird 
being killed to get them? Why, yes, of course 
there are—and the very handsomest of them all— 
ostrich-feathers. Ostriches are kept on farms, and 
twice a year, their beautiful white and black feathers 
are clipped and sent to the market. So, as they are 
not killed, but kept alive and fed and taken care of, 
and have a very good time of it—as I can tell you 
that they do, for I have lived on an ostrich-farm— 
I do not see any reason why one should not wear 
their feathers—if one wants to. And how beautiful 
their feathers are! I think, myself, that they are the 
only feathers that really look nice in a hat—at any 
rate they are the only ones that ever looked nice in 
a portrait. A portrait of a lady in a beautiful, 
broad-brimmed hat, with beautiful, broad, soft ostrich- 
feathers curling all round it, looks lovely ; but a 
portrait of a lady in a stiff little pork-pie sort of 
thing, with a lot of heads and wings and tails, sticking 
bolt upright in it, looks horrid. People, you know, 
always look like their portraits, as long as_ their 
portraits are good ones—and, of course, we are not 
talking about bad portraits. So I think that any 
sensible woman, even though her heart were frozen 
and she were determined to wear feathers, would only 
