166 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



Not the angel called woman. It is not that she 

 is naturally more cruel than man; bleeding 

 wounds and suffering in all its forms, even the 

 sigh of a burdened heart, appeal to her quick 

 sympathies, and draw the ready tears; but her 

 imagination helps her less. The appeal must in 

 most cases be direct and through the medium of 

 her senses, else it is not seen and not heard. If 

 she loves the ornament of a gay-winged bird, and 

 is able to wear it with a light heart, it is because 

 it calls up no mournful image to her mind; no 

 little tragedy enacted in some far-off wilderness, 

 of the swift child of the air fallen and bleeding 

 out its bright life, and its callow nesdings, or- 

 phaned of the breast that warmed them, dying 

 of hunger in the tree. We know, at all events, 

 that out of a female population of many millions 

 in this country, so far only ten women, possibly 

 fifteen, have been found to raise their voices — 

 raised so often and so loudly on other questions 

 — to protest against the barbarous and abhorrent 

 fashion of wearing slain birds as ornaments. The 

 degrading business of supplying the demand for 

 this kind of feminine adornment must doubtless 

 continue to flourish in our midst, commerce not 



