HORTENSIA M. BLACK. 173 
time I had seen that doctor she was seeking holiness in a 
prayer-meeting. She did not remember these words—“ Holy, 
harmless, undefiled,’ but she came to realize that no 
genuine holiness can visit the cruel heart. The situation is 
awful beyond description. We read of human tortures in 
past ages, and still continued in barbarous nations; but 
religionists claim an eternity of bliss for the human race, 
and only this brief terrestrial existence for birds and other 
animals. How much this adds to the claim upon us of these 
creatures we call lesser, for their right to live happily here, 
judge ye yourselves! The fact that human tortures are 
sooner or later avenged, but those of the helpless creatures 
go unavenged, adds to the cowardice of cruelty. The 
stealing of life makes a robber, and the method of that 
robbery gives still worse character to the act. One cannot 
too vividly portray the desperateness of the situation. At 
Christmas and especially Thanksgiving, millions of birds are 
strung on lines alive and plucked hanging head downward. 
It would be just as easy to kill them first, but the feathers 
are not so clean, and the mercantile element—the greed— 
appeals to selfishness. When the day of.the Lord draws 
nigh there are great feasting, long sermons, and riotous 
eating of those souvenirs of human diabolism; and we call 
this religion and civilization! Hypocrisy, I term it. I call 
no man holy who is party in any way to a deed of evil. If 
I feast on a creature obtained through another’s cruelty, 
although I saw not the deed, I am partaker in my brother’s 
degradation, and the stream cannot rise higher than its 
source, however much we may Strive to deceive ourselves. 
Hypocrisy! again I say. Like the minister who was asked 
to say grace over pork, and who said, ‘‘ Lord ! if Thou canst 
bless what Thou didst of old say was accursed food, if 
Thou wast one thing of old and of a different mind nowa- 
day, put Thy blessing on this dinner”—like him I would 
say, that if God, who said “Blessed are the merciful,” can 
give an eternity of bliss instead of woe to a vivisectionist, or 
