8 
words are always weighty. I should not myself 
have used that language, but I would urge with an 
equally strong insistence that there is a heartless 
cruelty practised by you which is a disgrace'to your 
humanity, and which you could end next week, if 
you would. There may be excuses with regard to 
war—you may not know the political reasons which 
cause it, and so let things alone; but there is none 
with regard to your own fashions of dress. Here 
your will may be supreme. Fashion is a terrible 
tyrant, that is admitted, but it is only so because 
you will have it so. Now consider facts. How 
many of you have first admired and then worn that 
most delicate and beautiful spiral plume, called the 
“ Osprey ? ” But do you know at what a cost it 
has been obtained for you ? A writer says, “ The 
original owners are the egrets and the smaller sort 
of heron, who wear them in spring and breeding 
season.” To obtain them the old birds are “killed 
off in scores, while employed in feeding their young, 
who are left to starve to death in their nests by 
hundreds.” Their dying cries are described as 
“ heart-rending.” When you have seen that beautiful 
feather waving with your slightest movement, or the 
least breath of wind, did you not hear a cry, the cry 
of a dying, famishing bird for its mother ? When you 
have worn it on your breast, or in your head-dress, 
have you never considered that if the outer dress 
reflects, “ as in a mirror,” the inner spirit, no one 
could think of you as either loving or gentle ? 
“ O wad some power the giftie gie us, 
To see oursels as ithers see us ! ” 
Listen to the words of one of your own sex. The 
Hon. Mrs. R. C. Boyle (E.V.B.) says: “I ask my 
sisters to hear once more the truth spoken. Men will 
kill birds for sport, but not for so poor an end as 
personal vanity, but women command the wholesale 
