Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-06-29
w. c. T. u. COLUMN.
MORO: God and Home and Native Land.
WHO KILLS THE BTRDS2

WHO KILLS THE BIRDSP
A correspondent of the Woman's
Journal says:
Women are very widely reproached
for wearing on their bonnets stuffed
birds, wings, feathers, and other re-
suits of a wholesale and cruel on
slaught upon our feathered friends.
They ought to be reproached, if it
were only for the bad taste of CARRYING
about and exhibiting such monstrosi-
ties. One shudders to see the poor
smashed, tortured-looking things with
their CLASSY eyes, squeezed into I'M
natural contortions, suggestive of their
miserable and agonized ending.
But there is something to be said in
| the girls defence. Each year some
mysterious conclave, composed, be-
lieve, of men, decides what goods
shall be manufactured and produced
for public sale. Those goods appear,
and one has little choice but to accept
them. Everything else is pretty near
ly swept away. One year we have
| tricots and satines, another year we
have cloths and challies, another year
tweeds and goodness knows what; and
the girls must take what it pleases the
manufacturers to provide for them.
Really, we women have no more to
do with it than the man in the moon.
So it is with the bonnet trimmings.
It was not that the women uttered a
demand for aChoH birds
the providers Of wholesale trimmings
men again-who determined that
for novelty they would provide
birds, whole or in remnants. Wanting
rather smart bonnet this year, I de-
termined to buy one ready made as [
passed through Boston. [ went to
two or three establishments, and ev-
cry bonnet brought me was trimmed
with an elevated pyramid of which
the foundation and principal feature
was a contorted bird. It all helped to
pile up into a natty and fairly becom-
ing arrangement that might be called
every stylish.'' [ looked through
counters after counters and saw birds
and remnants of birds by the thous-
andS and tens of thousands, and al
most nothing else. It had pleased the
manufacturers to give us these and
these only. Finally I chose reason
able bonnet, but made the stipulation
that the smashed bird should be re-
moved. [ suggested gray flower of
some kind instead. So the bird was
abstrcated, and we instituted a search
for something to set up again the NOR
tifiedlooking head dress that remain
ed. [ went over two large floors de-
voted to innumerable cases all filed
with endless defOrmed bird carcasses,
and there was actually not a single
gray flower to be found in the whole
establishment. Finally a little spray
of gray wheat was discovered, and
with it I had the bonnet perked up
again in a passable manner.
Now it is not to be hoped that every
woman will act in this determined
and strong minded fashion, still less
the girls. 1 wish they would; but they
will not. They will take what the men
who provide our supplies please to
give them.
We come, therefore, to the conclu-
sion that it is the men after all who
have brought all this upon us. What
shall we do with them? Shall we print
petition and send it around to the
great stores and manufacturers, hum
bly, suggesting that we are tired of
acting as undertakers to carry around
their deceased victims? Or what shall |
we do to secure a novelty of some
kind for the next season?