14 



Wo)?2a)i's Hcartlcssness. 



for the accutsed gun that shatters your 

 lovely life, quenches your delicious voice, 

 destroys your love, your bliss, your dutiful 

 cares, your whole beautiful being, that your 

 dead body may disfigure some woman's 

 head and call all eyes to gaze at her ! Hut 

 no — that will not save you ! Blackbirds 

 are not safe, they "are worn." Carrion 

 crows "are worn," unsavory scavengers 

 though they be. No matter on what they 

 may have fed — they "are worn." Soar, 

 swift sea-swallow — 1 would it could be mil- 

 lions of miles away from the haunts of men; 

 to the uttermost parts of the earth and 

 the ocean carry your grace, your slender 

 loveliness of shape, your matchless delicacy 

 of tint and tone of color, soft, wondrous, 

 like gray cloud and silvery snow — fly ! dear 

 and beautiful creature ; seek the centre of 

 the .storm, the heart of the arctic cold, the 

 winter blast — they are not so unkind as — 

 woman's vanity. Do I not see you every 

 day, your mocking semblance writhing as if 

 in agony round female heads — stifl and 

 stark, sharp wings and tail pointing in stiff 

 distress to heaven, your dried and ghastly 

 head and beak dragged down to point to 

 the face below, as if saying, '■'■She did it?" 

 The albatross of the Ancient Mariner is not 

 more dreadful. Yesterday I saw three of 

 you on one hat! Three terns at once, a 

 horrible confusion of death and dismay. 

 Does any woman imagine these withered 

 corpses (cured with arsenic) which she 

 loves to carry about, are beauti/un Not 

 so; the birds lost their beauty with their 

 lives. To-day 1 saw a mat woven of warb- 

 lers' heads, sjiiked all over its surface with 

 sharp beaks, set up on a bonnet and borne 

 aloft by its possessor in pride ! Twenty 

 murders in one ! and the face beneath bland 

 and satisfied, for are ncjt "Birds to be worn 



more than ever?" Flit, sandpiper, from 

 the sea's margin to some loneliness remote 

 and safe from the noble race of man ! No 

 longer in the soft May twilight call from 

 cove to cove along the shore in notes that 

 seem to breathe the very spirit of tender 

 joy, of happy love, of sweet content ; tones 

 that mingle so divinely with the warm 

 waves' murmur, with the south wind's balm, 

 and .sound in music through the dusk, long 

 after the last crimson flush of sunset has 

 faded from the sky. Year after year you 

 come back to make your nest in the place 

 you know and love, but you shall not live 

 your humble, blissful, dutiful life, you shall 

 not guard your treasured home, nor rejoice 

 when your little ones break the silence with 

 their first cry to you for food. You shall 

 not shelter and protect and care for them 

 with the same divine instinct you share with 

 human mothers. No, some woman wants 

 your corpse to carry on her head. You shall 

 die that vanity, that " Fashion," may live. 



1 fear we no longer deserve these golden 

 gifts of Clod. I would the birds could all 

 emigrate to some friendlier planet, peopled 

 by a nobler race than ours, where they 

 might live their sweet lives unmolested, and 

 be treated with the respect, the considera- 

 tion and the grateful love which are their 

 due. For we have almost forfeited our 

 right to the blessing or their presence. 



But still we venture to hope for a better 

 future, still the Audubon and other socie- 

 ties work with heart and soul to protect and 

 save them, and we trust yet to see the day 

 when women, one and all, will look upon 

 the wearing of birds in its proper light, 

 namely, as a sign of heartlessness and a 

 mark of ignominy and reproach. 



Cklia Thaxtkk. 



IJosKiN, Mass., Dec. 26, 1886. 



'Tis always morning somewhere, and above 

 The awakening continents, from shore to shore, 

 Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. — Longfellow. 



