174 TO THE RESCUE OF BIRDS. 



a torturer, or a cruel heart, in whatsoever form. He has 

 changed and is not worthy of any respect. But I know 

 the Author of life is wholly different from the ideal of the 

 cruel hypocrite who calls Him his God on Sunday and 

 destroys some of His most beautiful works on week days. 

 As Garrison said to the minister who told him his God 

 blessed slavery, " Your God is my Devil." A good many 

 people will find that out before they get through. O mag- 

 nificent retribution ! This is the one fact that alleviates 

 my suffering over cruelty of all kinds. When I think what 

 lies before those inflicters of pain in the compensative 

 punishment in which I most thoroughly believe, as must all 

 philosophic students of life, my grief ceases ; love of equi- 

 librium sees justice and her sword approaching ; and my 

 pitying heart stands mute before the vision, with no plea to 

 stay her hand. It is not always to be a helpless time for 

 those so helpless now ; and we will hasten that glad hour. 

 Our duty is to convince the thoughtless of their sin, and then 

 do what we can to stop it. Frances Power Cobbe says, 

 " First make vivisection infamous, then make it illegal." 

 It is a noble, a grand utterance ; but experience proves that 

 laws are made by wicked men to suit themselves and then 

 enforced at their pleasure. One of the wickedest laws 

 against birds was passed amid the laughter of the Illinois 

 Assembly over an indecent speech, and because of it. 

 Human laws are the work of very frail human beings. To 

 the rescue of birds we must call something better than laws. 

 Besides the argument I have advanced, laws framed by men 

 alone lack the influence of women, who, though as mean and 

 cruel as men, as a sex, have a quicker, keener discernment 

 of right and wrong. These laws are a sort of one-sexed 

 creation. Except to ask permission to kill, no boy pays 

 any attention to bird laws. We must look elsewhere. The 

 law makers amuse themselves after their fatiguing labors 

 by killing birds or watching them killed, by those fine shots 

 who take half-suffocated pigeons, shoot them as they strive 



