CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 



THE TRAGEDIES OF MILADY'S HAT AND CAPE 



Our savage ancestors depended largely for food upon 

 animals, birds, and fish which they obtained. They used 

 the skins and furs for clothing and the plumes for decorating 

 themselves. They allowed no part of the bodies of the 

 animals they killed to go to waste. 



We do not now have to depend upon the wild creatures 

 for food, because our flocks and herds supply all that we re- 

 quire. But Dame Fashion has decreed that furs and feath- 

 ers are still the proper thing to wear. Thus it has come 

 about that those animals that have soft, furry coats and 

 those birds that have bright plumage are hunted more 

 eagerly now than they were long ago when food was the 

 most important thing. 



The demand for furs has always been great and the trap- 

 ping industry has employed thousands of men ever since 

 our land was discovered, but in recent years feathers have 

 become almost as important. No region where fur-bearing 

 animals have their lairs, or birds of beautiful plumage have 

 their nests, is too far away or too difficult for the hunters 

 and trappers to go and hunt. 



The business of killing wild creatures for money makes 

 beasts out of men and has led to most heartless cruelties. 

 The savage, hunting for food, kills^his prey at once; but, 

 the fur trapper with a circuit which takes sometimes a week 

 to cover often has to leave his prey, tortured in the traps, 

 until it starves to death. 



If the wearer of that handsome warm fur coat could know 

 what was, perhaps, the story of the wild creature to which it 



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