Think of comparing the sensation produced by moving that heavy iron machine, with the rider but three feet from the ground, to the exhilaration felt by a bird spurning the earth and soaring on delicate wing through the fields of heaven!  It was truly laughable!

Our amusement was cut short, however, when we noticed that the lady’s hat was decorated with a dead dove.

“Can we never get away from this millinery exhibition of death?” I exclaimed in horror.

“No,” said my mother sorrowfully.  “The god, Fashion, I told you of has his slaves all over the land.  We will find them wherever we go, north, south, east, and west.  No town is too small, no neighborhood too remote, but there will be found women ready to carry out his cruel laws.”

Had we not been haunted by this vision of death which we were constantly meeting wherever women were congregated, we might have been happy in the fair land of rose blossoms and magnolias where we now sojourned.  The air was soft and balmy, and the atmosphere filled us with a serene, restful languor quite new to those who had been accustomed to the brisker habits of a colder clime.  Besides the birds there were many human visitors from the North spending the winter months here.  Some sought this warmer climate for their health, others for pleasure, and these also soon fell into the easy-going, happy-go-lucky ways induced by the sluggish climate.

Among the birds the waxwings most readily acquired this delightful Southern habit of taking life easy.  In fact the waxwings are inclined to be lazy, except when they are nesting; they are the most deliberate creatures one can find, but very foppish and neat in their dress.  Never will you find a particle of dust on their silky plumage, and the pretty red dots on their wings and tails look always as bright as if kept in a bandbox.  They have, indeed, just reason to be proud of themselves, for they are very beautiful.

Hunters by scores were after them with bag and gun mercilessly killing them for the New York millinery houses.  The slaughter was terrible, and made more easy for the hunters by reason of the poor birds flocking together so closely in such large numbers when they alighted in circles as is their habit.  As they came down in dense droves to get their food, the red dots on their wing tips almost overlapping those of their fellows, dozens were slain by a single shot.  They were very fond of the berries of the cedar trees, and after the other foods were gone they hovered there in great numbers.  Here too, the hunters followed them and made awful havoc in their ranks.  One man made the cruel boast that the winter previous he had killed one thousand cedar-birds for hat trimmings.

Many of our family had located for a time near the coast, but here too, on these sunny plains, the death messengers followed us and slew us by the thousands.

We learned that one bird man handled thirty thousand bird skins that season.  Another firm shipped seventy thousand to the city, and still the market called for more and yet more.  The appetite of the god could not be appeased.