But, alas!  I was to have a rude awakening from this pleasant thought.  As we flew that evening to our roosting-place, I observed to my mother that if there were no cats in the world what a delightful time we birds might have.

“You have a greater enemy than the cat,” she responded sadly.  “It is true the cat is cruel and tries to kill us, but it knows no better.”

“If not the cat, what enemy is it?” I asked in surprise.  “I thought the cat was the most bloodthirsty foe the birds had.”

My mother dipped her wings more slowly and poised her body gracefully a moment.  Then she said impressively, “Our greatest enemy is man.  No,” suddenly correcting herself, “not man, but women, women and children.”

“Women and dear little children our enemies?” said I, in astonishment.  “The pretty ladies who speak so sweet and kind!  The pretty ladies who gather roses in the garden!  Would they deprive us of life?”

My mother nodded.

“Yes,” she answered, “the pretty ladies, the wicked ladies.”

CHAPTER II

DICKEY DOWNY’S MEDITATION

  It hath the excuse of youth.
          —­Shakespeare.

That night I pondered long upon what my mother had told me.  Ever since I left my shell I had been taught to respect my elders, and that it was a mark of ill manners and bad breeding for children to question the superior knowledge of those much older than themselves.  Notwithstanding this, in my secret heart I could not help thinking that my mother was mistaken in her estimate of women when she called them wicked.  She had surely misjudged them.  However, I took good care not to mention these doubts to her.

I had heard from my grandmother, who had traveled a great deal from the tropics to the North and back again, that women were the leaders in the churches and were foremost in all Christian and philanthropic work; that they provided beautiful homes for orphan children, where they took care of them and nursed them when they were sick.  She told me about the hospitals where diseased and aged people were kindly cared for by them.  She said they were active in the societies for the prevention of cruelty to children and to animals.  They fed armies of tramps out of sheer pity; even the debauched drunkard was the object of their tenderest care and their earnest prayers.  They held out a friendly hand to the prisoners in the jails and sent them flowers and Bibles; they pitied and cheered the outcast with kind words.  They offered themselves as missionaries for foreign lands to convert the heathen and bring them to Christ.  They soothed the sick and made easy the last days of the dying.

On the battlefield, when blood was flowing and cannon smoking, my grandmother had seen the Red Cross women like angels of mercy binding up the gaping wounds and gently closing the glazed eyes of the expiring soldier.  In woman’s ear was poured his last message to his loved ones far away, and when death was near it was woman who spoke the words of consolation and her finger that pointed hopefully to the stars.