there is gratitude for the beauty of the rose or the 
fragrance of the violet. 
“As ‘the winds of March take the world with 
beauty/ and every pasture and coppice is full of blos- 
som, which we too often tread under foot or pass unno- 
ticed in every daily country walk, so in the same manner 
do the multitudes trample down and pass by the ineffable 
charm and fragrance of disregarded affections and un- 
appreciated qualities in the other races of earth.” 
“ Hang a poor woodland bird in a cage, if you can bear 
to look on such a captive, above a blossoming honeysuckle 
or hawthorn, and note his anguish of remembrance, his 
ecstacy of hope, his frantic effort to be free. But the ac- 
cursed wires are between him and the familiar blossoms, 
between him and the blue sky. In a little while he realizes 
that he is a prisoner; the fluttering joy goes out of his 
heart and his wings ; his feathers grow ruffled and dull ; 
his eyes are veiled ; he sits motionless and heartbroken, 
and the breeze of the spring-time blows past him, and 
never more will bear him on its buoyant way.” 
If there exists no motive superior to comfort, utility, 
or convenience, then it were vain to plead. Then 
might we logically go on our way unconcerned, while 
our pleasure in animal death and pain continues, till at 
last “ an immense agony will have ceased, and with 
it there will have passed away the last smile of the 
world’s youth.” But somewhere in the bloody strug- 
gle from mollusk to fish, from fish to reptile, from 
reptile to mammal, from mammal to man, we can 
believe that pity found its warrant in the birth of affec- 
tion. Not all teachers, yet some, have proclaimed their 
recognition of love’s unselfish inspiration in the thirty 
thousand years, more or less, of known human record. 
Since men lived in caves it glowed in the passion of the 
mother for its young. Leading onward to immeasura- 
ble heights, it glorifies the taming of the wolf, and the 
transformation of the ferocious jackal, into the friendly 
dog. While the listeners are few, it is because of this, 
let us admit, that the voice of the pleader grows louder, 
and that we may look forward to the dawning of a 
wider mercy without despair. 
February 3, 1S97. 
Reprinted from City and State. 
