The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1901-11-12
A BIRDLESS BONNET
BY Edward B. Clark.

that morning, and as Henry Sparks
rose from the breakfast table prepare
tory to lighting his cigar and starting
for the office he said to his wife: Eliza,
you may have the fall hat you've been
yearning for. Here's the ten dollars,
but please in making your purchase
remember my prejudice against birds
in bonnets."
Eliza beamed. "All right, Henry"
she said; III go straight down to
Nine. Capote's this morning. | can get
a beauty for ten dollars, l know, and L
won't have a single song bird on it.
That night after dinner Mrs. Sparks
sent the maid of all work into the front
bedroom to bring box that had ar
rived shortly before from Nine Ca
pote's. Mrs. Sparks opened the box,
lifted the wonderful creation and said
the usual womanly thing, isn't it a
dream?"
Henry Sparks looked at the hat quiz
zically. There was not perhaps ex-
pressed in his face the admiration and
entire approval that Mrs. Sparks had
hoped for.
Henry" she said, 81 know there's a
birds head or two and lot of feathers
in it, but Nine. Capote told me they
were all made up things, mostly barn
ward fowls. This head with the slate
blue neck and just touch of brown at
the place where it was separated from
the breast, she told me, was the head
of a common domestic fowl in China.
This other head, neck and breast with
the soft gray plumage, Nine. Capote
said, formed the upper parts of one of
the birds that have been eating up the
East Indian crops SO fast that the poor
natives have been starving to death.
To buy one of these birds she declared
was like dropping money into the con-
tribution box for the benefit Of the
heather. She quite touched my heart.
Now, don't look that way. Every
body's wearing feathers, and don't
see why shouldn't wear the plumage
of the birds that we eat and of birds
that are q pest. Yes, l know there are
other feathers here, too, but they are
all made up things. Nine. Capote said
so, and she knows"
Henry Sparks rose from the table
and took the befeathered hat out of his
wife's hand and looked at it through
his glasses.
Il, ooid rninfinn with
finger at a birds head with beautiful
steel blue feathers, lis, as l understand
Nine. Capote, the head of a common
Chinese domestic fowl.
eliza, when you wander along by
some tumbling stream in the spring
time you will hear now and then rat
Ting cry. 1t is birds voice. 1t is as
much part of the time and place and
of the wildness of it all as are the
trees. the stream or even the April
clouds overhead.
"Wander along the same stream in
the heat of summer, and you hear the
same rafting cry. A bird form dashes
by, then stops suddenly in midfight
and hovers lightly over pool beneath
Then there is a sound of the plash of
waters as a feathered form descends
and plunges. There is a sensation of
GOODNESS in the sound of that plunge
that tempers the heat of the August
day to the wayfarer.
perhaps you have legal right to
wear this bird because it may have
been killed in New York, where the
wise legislators withdrew from this
creature the protection Of the law. The
men who urged that it be exempt from
protection were men of the kind who
go into the northern woods and drag
seines, dynamite streams and catch
and kill thousands of fish that they
may pick out the big ones for the mar
ket The souls of these men are in their
pockets.
''This bird catches a few small fish
for the sustenance of itself and its
young. 1t adds, when not on bonnet, a
living interest to every waterside. Eli
"a, your Chinese domestic fowl is an
American kingfsher."
Henry, Mme."-
eliza, this bird that has been eat
ing up the crops in India, thus causing
a famine in that country, was Matched
in a nest in an Illinois tree Perhaps
you have the legal right to wear it.
The wise legislators of Illinois recently
added this bird to the game list, so
that it may be slaughtered and made
into pies. The souls of the legislators
cit,1ofod in thair at0naaphS
'This bird has stood as the emblem
of peace since the world was, and yet
every pot and millinery hunter in the
land makes war upon it. You are d
good Episcopalian, and you sometimes
tell me that there is nothing more
beautiful than all that pertains to the
church and it's teachings.
do you, Trinitarian that you are,
know that it was in the living form
of one of these murdered innocents
In your bonnet that the Holy Spirit
descended upon our Saviour as he
stood at the side Of the Baptist by
the waters of Jordan? Eliza. this East
Indian crop destroying, starvation pro-
ducing bird is an Illinois mourning
dove.
DOUBTLESS Nine. Capote told you
that this little bunch Of feathers that
clasps the upturned brim of the hat
came from a bird harpy of some re-
mote region, whose daily practice it is
to carry off and devour the sweet babes
of doting mothers. Well, these CHINA
mon brown feathers with these of soft
gray, dotted with darker color, rep
resent all that is left of a hermit
thrush, bird that sings its seraphic
song in the twilit northern wilderness.
1t is the note of this bird that Bur
roughs says suggests serene religious
beatitude."
"But, Henry, Nine. Capote said'-
ELIZA, there are a thousand Nine.
Capotes, and most of them are liz
But Mrs. Sparks was in tears.-Chi-
cago Record Herald.
Her Brilliant Inspiration.
That the proTerbial absentminded
professor is sometimes ably abetted by
his wife is illustrated by story told