A DEAD BIRD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2520, 2 July 1902, Page 75

A DEAD BIRD.

"The time of the singing of t Tie birds \ra« come.' and even 111 so uiiroinan.tic a place ;t~s the city paik, I was re\elhng in then- music.

But suddenly my enjoyment of their meiriment ceased, and all the beauty of the time and place wa-> overshadowed. Coming swiftly towards me, down the gravelled-*"path, was a gorgeously-arrayed maiden, and perched airily among the flowers and laces of her hat was a dead bird.

I dropped upon a bench near by, and when she came up to me, she stopped to make some trifling inquiiy, and then seated herself sociably beside me. Very gently and politely I a«ked h^r if she did not wish she could give life to the beautiful bird on her hat. that it might fly and sing with its comrades. She stared at me, but before she could reply, I said : " It s>eem« to me we women ought not to take a life that we cannot leslore, just for our own adornment." Then she found voice with the old plea : " Oh. but you know, this bird is only a manufactured one."

" Manufactured,'' I repeated. " but out of what? Not wood or stone? You lull s-c.ncely deny that its body and win#s are m.'de of feathers, neither will you expect nit to belseve that any one of the edible fowls furnished them. Manufactured it may b , but out of parts of bird*. Only the other day theie was an advertisement in a Philadelphia paper for the skin's of 30,000 bad-, and I heard, aftei wards, that the coi:tia.ct in furnish these skins was taken Ly some men fioin the little State of Delaware. iS'> soothe your conscience no longer v. nh the >pecious word 'manufactured.' for the iinuirn.l bir<U represent le.s.s w.istc of bird life than the made one.--, where ilnce or four biids aie sacri^ cd 10 form unnatural combinations. Miihncib, 'wi«e in thoir generation, ' use this lucrlisounding teim to lull to sleep the consuence of the purchaser.' "

" But," said the maiden, ■with, the air of bringing forward an unanswerable argument, "'didn't you read in the paper the other day that Mrs , she who was once ' the first lady in the land,' and who has long been upheld as a model of gentleness and sweetness, wore at a certain dinner a costume of violet and white, and that her bonnet was a violet velvet toque trimmed with gulls' wings? And look here, too," she continued, unrolling a parcel, " here is a magazine a friend lent to me, and what do you think of that?" She extended toward me a well-known iLustiated publication, and pointed to the picture of a popular New York author, whose stoiies are full of gentle, womanly sentiments, and on her graceful her»d was * bonnet decked with birds" wings. " Well," I said feebly, "that doesn't make it kind, does it? Would not the birds give up their lives as reluctantly for a social ejucen or a talented author as for vour&elf ? "

" Ch. I suppose so." she said, ligiitly, '"but if women like these will wear birds and w ings, of course there is nothing for the rest of us to do but to follow suit ; but. really," she continued, putting her hands up to her hat.. '"I don't enjoy this bird half as much as I did a few minutes ago. I can almost feel these -wings trying to get loose and fly away, and I don't believe I'll ever buy another bird, even if they tell me it is manufactured out of goose quills." At this moment a rose-breasted grosbeak alighted in the top of a tall oak near us and began his plaintive evening song. "Hark," said the girl, "that, grosbeak is singing a dirge over this dead bird in my hat. Oh, I cannot bear it.' 1

And, rising, with swift feet she passed from the park. As I watched her disappear, I wished moFt ai den try that every wearer of bird millinery might hear in every feathered songster's lay a requiem over the lost life, joy and freedom represented by fhat inartistic but so-called ornament. — a dead bird.