But perhaps you may say, “Well, I will not spoil the nest; I will only take the eggs.”  No, pray do not take the eggs.  What pleasure in the world can a parcel of little eggs afford you, compared with the delight that the poor harmless mother takes in them as she sits in her warm house, of her own making, listening for the first faint chirp of the tiny creature within?  Birds only bring up one family in a year; and if you take from them the eggs that are to produce that one, you rob them of all the happiness for which they took so much trouble.  You are not enough of a hen to hatch the eggs, though you may be enough of a goose to try:  then think, and be too much of a man to do such a silly, cruel thing.  You like, perhaps, to blow the inside out, and string the shells in a row.  Oh you thoughtless child!  You must certainly be a very little child to take pleasure in such a babyish thing; and you are very, very thoughtless and wrong to do it at the expense of a poor innocent bird which never injured or wished to injure you, though you can rob it of all its delight, to please such a silly fancy.  If you want a pretty thing to ornament your room, go and pick up some round, clear pebbles, of different colours, and give one side of them a polish at the grindstone; then get some pieces of brick, and join them together in the shape of an arch, or any thing you fancy, with a little mortar; spread more mortar, thick and rough, over the front, and, while it is wet, stick in your pebbles, with the shining side outmost, with bits of glass, moss, sealing-wax, and any gay thing that comes in your way.  I have seen such pretty contrivances, and have said to myself, “The boy who made this is skilful, and may come to be a good builder, or other artisan, some day;” but when I see bird’s eggshells hung up, I turn away with a feeling of pain, because I know that somebody must be there, either idle and cruel, or encouraging their children to be so.

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But there is something far worse than this.  When the mother bird has made her nest, and sat long days and nights on her eggs, and heard the little ones chirp within, and helped them to break the thin shell, and felt their little warm bodies cuddling themselves among her soft feathers, and seen their yellow beaks open to ask her for the food that it gives such joy to her affectionate heart to put into them; oh, then, can you turn all her honest happiness into misery and mourning, and kill those baby-birds with a miserable death, by cold and hunger, if not by other tortures.  If ever you have done this, pray to the Lord God to forgive your sin, for Jesus Christ’s sake.  Do you think He will forgive you?  Yes, you say, because he is very merciful.  Indeed he is and for that very reason he hates cruelty:  but while you look to the Lord’s mercy for pardon, you must steadily resolve to offend no more by doing what he hates; else you only mock him.