[Illustration of two birds.]

The cost of A hat.

“What does it cost, this garniture of death? 
   It costs the life which God alone can give;
It costs dull silence where was music’s breath,
   It costs dead joy, that foolish pride may live. 
Ah, life, and joy, and song, depend upon it,
   Are costly trimmmgs for a woman’s bonnet!”
                           May Riley Smith

Among the cruel things that are done thoughtlessly there is none more common than the wearing of birds’ feathers as ornaments in hats.  The coloring is often exquisitely soft and delicate, and we do not think, at first, what these beautiful feathers mean.

In the morning some mother bird sings her sweetest songs under your window as she flies forth to look for food for her nestlings.  At night she lies wounded or dead and her little ones must starve alone in the nest.  Is the pleasure of wearing a dead bird enough to pay for this suffering?

Perhaps you will say that since the bird is already killed when you buy it, it may as well be in your hat as in the shop window.  Now think a moment.  You may be sure that when you buy such a bird, another will be shot to take its place in the milliner’s show-case.  If no woman would buy these feathers, do you suppose that milliners would keep them for sale?

THE HALO.

Think what a price to pay,
Faces so bright and gay,
   Just for a hat! 
Flowers unvisited, mornings unsung,
Sea-ranges bare of the wings that o’erswung,—­
   Bared just for that! 
Oh, but the shame of it,
Oh, but the blame of it,
   Price of a hat! 
Just for a jauntiness brightening the street! 
This is your halo, O faces so sweet,
   death:  and for that! 
                       Rev.  W. C Gannett. 
In “Voices for the Speechless”

[Illustration with caption:  The snowy heron.]

The snowy heron.

One of the greatest sufferers among the bird mothers is the egret, or snowy heron.  The pretty, airy plumes which we see on many hats grow on the egret’s back, and fall over the sides and tail of the bird.  They are most beautiful at the time when the mother bird is raising her brood of little ones.  This is the time for the hunter to shoot her, and he finds it easy, because the egret will not readily fly away from her babies.

The little birds starve to death, and in many places there are no egrets left.  Every feathery plume in the dainty bonnet means that at least one happy, innocent life has been taken.  Do the feathers look quite so pretty to you when you think of all this?  Is it comfortable to feel that for the sake of being in the fashion you have been the cause of such distress?  If you can, for one moment, put yourself in the place of the mother bird as she lies dying on the grass and thinking of the little ones that will never see her again, I am sure nothing will induce you to be seen with her beautiful feathers in your hat.  No ornament, bought at such a price, is worth the cost.