BY THE WAYSIDE 
l 
Illinois Prize Letter 
Emerson School, 
r *■ 
Maywood, Illinois, 
November 30, 1910. 
) the Wayside:— 
I have heard that there is to be a 
usade against the sparrows this year, 
n’t that a beautiful, humane thing 
: d0? 
The little sparrows, after all the 
her birds have deserted us for warmer 
untries, remain with us to be a cheer- 
1 spot on the lifeless landscape. Their 
urnage is not particularly gay, nor is 
eir song beautiful; but when there is 
thing else for us to see from our 
ndows except gray sky and white 
! ound, what is more cheerful than a 
L' 
zen or two little sparrows alight on 
lie ground around a few crumbs of 
■ 
>d and hear them chatter to one an- 
ler as they eat? When the Lord cre- 
id things He did not say to man, 
Now, I have created birds and ani- 
ils. If you think I have not given a 
I Tain bird the right kind of plumage 
i a song that is as beautiful as you 
uld like, you may kill it. If you do 
t approve of the way I have created 
ngs, you may destroy my work.” 
He said that we might use what 
wanted, and kill, for food. When 
murder (there is no other name for 
I sparrows by the thousands and hun- 
ids of thousands do we use them for 
d ? Our excuse is that there are ‘ ‘ too 
ny of them.” If God did not want 
many sparrows He would change 
ir number in His own way. 
Suppose that there should be “too 
ny” human babies. Would we mur- 
' them in great numbers? God cre¬ 
el life in sparrows just as much as 
1 created the life in humans; and it 
55 
is wrong for us to take life when there 
is no reason for it; we may have thou¬ 
sands of excuses and not one reason. 
We seem to think that the Creator 
does not know enough to manage His 
own affairs. I think that as the Lord 
has managed the universe for so many 
thousands of years, we ought to accept 
the fact that lie knows just how many 
sparrows He wants and how fast He 
wants them to multiply. 
Another excuse of ours is that “the 
sparrows eat too much.” Just think 
for a moment how much food you throw 
away. That crust of bread which some 
one has left, would be a fine meal for a 
dozen of the poor hungry little fellows. 
I think that of all God’s creation, 
humans are the most selfish and be¬ 
grudging. We have comfortable homes 
to live in and our larders are full of 
food, yet we are willing—even anxious 
—to take thousands of innocent little 
lives, rather than feed the sparrows 
with the crumbs from our tables. 
The Son said that not one sparrow 
falls to the ground but the Father 
takes heed of it. 
Life is life, no matter what body it 
is in—large or small. To take life is 
murder. Murder is crime. It is mur¬ 
der to kill a sparrow just as much as it 
is to kill a human. 
Shame! Shame on the human race if 
we have fallen so low that we have no 
more respect for the Father’s creations 
than to so thoughtlessly destroy them. 
Hon’t! Don’t, in the name of the 
All-Merciful, depart so far from Him 
and His teachings. Can you conjure 
up a picture of the Christ preparing a 
dish of grain mixed with poison, setting 
it out of doors in the reach of harmless 
little birds, and then smiling to see their 
